Posted on 12/24/2002 1:18:42 PM PST by sarcasm
First drug dealers, next a wave of illegal immigration, then fear of terrorists--and now the rise of vigilantism. It's just a matter of time until blood is spilled in Cochise or Santa Cruz counties.
This isn't good. Here's Glenn Spencer, chief of the private group American Border Patrol, standing on a lonesome dirt road near the Mexican border, where all his nightmares about the future of America play out, and he's stuck in a keystone moment.
His ATV, one of the vehicles he'll use to prowl terrain like this for so-called illegal immigrants crossing into this country without proper documents, will have to stay tethered to the flatbed. So much for a nifty photo op.
"I brought the wrong key," Spencer says, embarrassed. "It won't start."
Oh, well. Worse things happen in the border wars every day, and besides, the ATV isn't crucial to Spencer's mission.
But cameras and satellites are, and on this day, the 65-year-old tech-head with lots of money and a powerful anger at this human flood, demonstrates it.
His assistant fires up a generator rigged to a satellite on a trailer behind Spencer's truck, and begins videotaping the scene. Spencer's excitement grows.
"This is it. This is what we've demonstrated we can do." He points to the camera. "Right now, this image is being sent up to our satellite link and out onto the Internet.
"My idea is that if people around the country can go online and watch, in real time, illegals walking right into this country, maybe they'll ask why the government doesn't stop it. What's wrong with a little competition for the [U.S.] Border Patrol, right?"
In Spencer's view, this human traffic is overwhelming the country's health care and education systems. It is importing poverty. It allows within our borders an army whose leaders seek nothing less than the takeover by Mexico of the American Southwest.
"Plato said only the dead have seen an end to war," he says. "I think conflict is coming."
Ultimately, he wants to set up videotaping stations from San Diego to Texas, in the belief that outrage will brushfire around the country, forcing change.
Until then, it's Spencer to the rescue. When he talks about why he moved to Sierra Vista this past September from Sherman Oaks, Calif., he sounds like he's leading a cavalry charge.
"I concluded this summer that California was hopeless," he says. "The left has gotten what they want and the open borders policy is causing a meltdown there. I could either cut and run and go fishing in Idaho, or come to the belly of the beast and tackle this problem head-on."
ON ONE POINT, Spencer is undeniably correct, if behind the times. Conflict has already arrived, and it plays out every day in the mountains, in the pastures and along the roads and trails that crisscross the border country of Cochise and Santa Cruz counties.
Residents along this broad frontier report a skyrocketing number of illegals crossing their land, turning their daily lives into nightmares.
Some describe living under almost wartime conditions, with high levels of stress, fear, sleeplessness and especially frustration at the inability of the Border Patrol, or any law enforcement agency, to help them.
Ranchers say they've been howling about this for years. But no one has paid attention.
Reporters who took up the border chaos story viewed it mainly from one angle, hammered over and over again--the sometimes deadly suffering illegals encounter in their treks across the desert.
But now that a few ranchers, after years of frustration, have formed self-defense groups to protect themselves and their property, reporters won't leave them alone.
Suddenly, they find ranchers interesting--but only as vigilantes, men loaded down with Skoal and ammo, so dangerous they merit a Congressional investigation.
Both images--the harmless illegal and the out-of-control cowboy--contain some truth. But not enough. They're cartoon cutouts, easy renderings that frame a complex problem too simply.
Stuck in the middle--angry as hell, with nowhere to turn and wary for the future--ordinary ranchers and border residents, American citizens, try to hang on amid the chaos.
B.J. Kuykendall shares a ranch with her husband, Tommy, 34 miles north of Douglas. It has been in their family for six generations. She's not certain they'll make it to seven.
Her voice shakes with anger as she describes some of what's happened to her.
Illegals have chased her down the road near her home on foot, and used their vehicles to run hers off the road. On four separate occasions, they've piled boulders and debris across the road, apparently efforts to steal her truck.
They've tried to steal her horses, too. Two months ago, Kuykendall found her dog, a mastiff, poisoned with strychnine. The animal suffered for five hours before dying a horrible death, "for the crime of barking."
One of Kuykendall's neighbors found his dog dead, too, its throat slashed. Another has had four dogs poisoned.
"Every day of our lives, every facet of our lives is threatened," says Kuykendall, an ER nurse. "We can't leave here for any length of time because there might be nothing left when we come back. We're afraid of losing everything if this keeps up."
Kuykendall's neighbor, Gary McBride, tells a similar story. In a 100-day period beginning in January, he recorded 101 calls to the Border Patrol to report illegals crossing his property--not counting cell phone calls.
"I can pretty much guarantee that tonight there'll be 40 of them, maybe a hundred, going up the road here to Highway 80. You think anybody's gonna catch them? Nope.
"Night before last I had one hollering at the back door, trying to get in my house. It's unbelievable.
"What burns our butts is that the Border Patrol won't let agents on the ground do their job, and that's damn sure our biggest problem. They get their asses chewed if they make too many arrests because the chiefs don't want big numbers going to the higher ups.
"We don't lie out here. I'll tell you exactly how it is. These Border Patrol chiefs are the sorriest SOBs I've ever seen."
Not all ranchers suffer the same predicament. Some, even those a few miles from the Kuykendalls and McBrides, are largely exempt from these problems by the grace of geography.
Illegals generally avoid wide-open land, preferring the shelter of trees and deep canyons.
But for those who live on heavy crossing routes, whether outside Douglas, to the west in the Huachuca Mountains, or in the Patagonias near Nogales, the story is the same: Water lines cut, cattle gates left open, pastures and canyons full of garbage and human waste.
"They use the canyons as toilets," says Carrol Bercich, who lives near Parker Canyon Lake. "We've got three semi-loads of garbage to haul away right now."
Ranchers also report a change in the illegals they encounter. Five years ago, a group might approach and say, "Excuse us, Señor, could we work for water or food?"
Now, many demand food and water, demand rides and show a profound lack of respect for people and property.
"Every fence they hit they destroy, and that was before they discovered wire cutters," says Anna Magoffin, a Douglas area rancher. "Last year was the worst. We had huge groups, but the destruction, I mean, we still haven't gotten the fences back up. Every acre of the ranch is impacted."
McBride says their level of aggression has increased markedly.
"They make remarks, give you the finger and won't go away," he says. "Sometimes they go into your house and you have to pull guns to get them out."
Numerous ranchers contacted for this story wouldn't speak publicly.
They're afraid of being branded vigilantes and targeted in a possible police investigation on the one hand. And on the other, they fear reprisal by Mexican gangs that operate drug rings and increasingly powerful and nasty people-smuggling rings.
A few ranchers said they've received such threats and are clamming up for good.
Arizona ranchers have always carried guns, mostly for snakes, and to put down injured animals.
But in this siege atmosphere--with law enforcement response times ranging from 20 minutes to forget about it--ranchers now carry weapons for self-defense.
As one said, "Before, maybe a .22 plinker. Now we carry .38s and .357s."
One ranch has a weapons instructor on retainer. The owner requires that employees have a concealed-carry permit, allowing them to keep guns in trucks and other places.
As for the widespread belief that border country is crawling with armed ranchers seeking out illegals, that's more Hollywood than it is reality. The vast majority do precisely the opposite. They do everything they can to avoid them.
"If I see illegals in a ravine, I'll wheel my horse away and call the Border Patrol," says retired Marine general Bud Strom, a Hereford rancher who estimates that a thousand illegals cross his land every week.
"If I see drugs, or what I think are baled backpacks, I might call Customs. I don't have a vigilante mentality and neither do any of my friends."
But when you turn around and find illegals standing in your kitchen, how do you avoid them? When you're a woman alone and you step from the corral and suddenly find yourself surrounded by 35 men, how do you avoid them?
That happened to Kuykendall, who never goes to her corral without a sidearm, a two-way radio and a cell phone.
She quickly called the Border Patrol in Douglas and was told only three ranch patrol agents were on duty, the nearest two hours away.
"Sorry, B.J.," said the supervisor sheepishly.
"They were between me and the house and I couldn't get back there," she says. "I didn't know what they were going to do."
After yelling at them, radioing her husband and making sure they saw her sidearm, which she kept holstered, they retreated.
But with such a volatile mix now pouring across the border--job seekers, drug runners, gun runners and human traffickers, who pull down a reported $30,000 apiece to bring across Asians and Mideasterners--Kuykendall can't know what she'll encounter next.
"A neighbor told me he stepped outside and found 80 Iranians in his backyard," says Kuykendall.
Greg Nicholson, former manager of the Lone Mountain Ranch, which ranges from the Huachucas east almost to the San Rafael Valley, says his ranch used a secret code to communicate with a rancher in Sonora, Mexico.
This rancher, when he saw crossers, would call Lone Mountain headquarters and say, "You've got a red cow out," then identify the canyon by the mile marker. This triggered a call the Border Patrol.
The Mexican rancher had received threats for trying to run off the intruders, and feared traffickers had tapped his phone.
Nicholson spent 10 months at Lone Mountain, but quit over rising concern for his safety, and his family's.
"It's not a legal issue anymore. It's a military issue," says Nicholson. "Whether it's drug runners or illegals, we're being invaded down there."
(Excerpt) Read more at tucsonweekly.com ...
Yeah, well the invasion happened already.
L
"So called," huh? What do you call it when someone illegally enters the country. I believe that this is a part of the deliberate balkanization of America, to run down all that this country is great for, to purposely teach the young only bad things about this country, and then make citizenship appear worthless, that being an American citizen is nothing more than "luck of birth," in order to bring down the country.
I have no idea why the media works SO HARD to drive the US to this state, when it's only in the US that there's a truely free media. I suppose that they believe that with their support of tyrants, they'll be able to do what they will once tyranny is established.
Mark
You don't avoid them. You make them avoid you. It's called 12 guage diplomacy.
Probably be classified as a "hate" crime.
Isn't it funny private citizens can do what the government won't do?
This thing will come to a head at some point. How many more Americans have to die first is the question. Homeland security is a total joke as long as anyone can cross our borders at their convenience. At best these are all law breakers, at worst we are allowing more terrorists into the country and the border patrol sits helplessly by while it happens.
It is going to take a lot of light shed on this subject to get the powers that be in Washington to do anything about it.
Even if we solved the problem of illegal mexicans which would be relatively easy that would not remove the danger of terrorists crossing the border, or the drug traffickers.
Good article, I read the whole thing. I wonder just how many sitting here on FR at their keyboards would like to live under the conditions the ranchers on the border are living under.
WarHawk42
That might be the best-kept secret of the border wars, the number of OTMs--Other Than Mexicans--entering the U.S. It's a secret because the Border Patrol won't break down by country the apprehension statistics it releases publicly.
"Since September 11, we're restricted in what we can say about OTMs because of national security," says Border Patrol spokesman Rob Daniels.
If the agency did release OTM numbers, the public might register alarm to learn that among those arrested in Arizona in 2002 were six nationals from Egypt, two from Lebanon, three from Yemen and one from Iraq.
These figures, provided by an INS source who asked to remain anonymous, also showed nationals from Sudan, Cuba, China, Jordan, North Korea and the Philippines, the latter a place where American forces are currently on the ground fighting groups affiliated with al-Qaida.
The OTM numbers are a small fraction of the number of Mexicans apprehended in Arizona 2002--375,000. But the figures represent only apprehensions in Arizona, and remember, five times that number got through.
Moreover, OTMs crossings have grown markedly of late, and it only takes a few with bad intentions to create havoc, as the country learned on September 11, 2001.
I have a ping list that would be interested in this! Here is a lengthy but important document which should be read by all!
Jihadis in the Hood
Race, Urban Islam and the War on Terror
JIHAD IN AMERICA:
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| click here >>> | JIHAD IN AMERICA | <<< click here | ||
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"a Border Patrol agent approached Spencer and asked if the group was with American Border Patrol. When told yes, he said, "Thank God for you people."
How will anyone at the Fed level be able to pretend they didn't know it was this bad? After reading these stories, (and the comment by the BP agent) I have to believe these poor people have probably screamed to Washington for help for a very long time. This is truly disgraceful.
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