Posted on 06/18/2010 10:07:19 AM PDT by AuntB
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 3,500 acres in southern Arizona have now been closed to U.S. citizens because of the dangers posed in that area from Mexican drug smugglers. The area includes part of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge.
Refuge manager Mitch Ellis told Fox News: “The situation in this zone has reached a point where continued public use of the area is not prudent.”
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said: “It’s literally out of control. We need support from the federal government. It’s their job to secure the border and they haven’t done it. In fact, President Obama suspended the construction of the fence and it’s just simply outrageous.”
Babeu continued: “We need action. It’s shameful that we, as the most powerful nation on Earth, … can’t even secure our own border and protect our own families.”
In addition to using U.S. public lands to smuggle drugs into this nation, the Mexican drug cartels are growing huge amounts of marijuana in our national parks. It is estimated that the cartels produce 30 tons of pot in our parks annually.
Brent Wood, a supervisor for the California Department of Justice's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, recently told the Associated Press: “Just like the Mexicans took over the methamphetamine trade, they've gone to mega, monster gardens. It's amazing how they have changed the way they do business. It's their domain.”
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, in 2008 alone, U.S. law enforcement agencies police across the nation confiscated or destroyed 7.6 million marijuana plants from 20,000 outdoor plots. Of course, the seized plants represent only a small fraction of the cartels’ crop.
Large pot farms have been found from Klamath National and Sequoia National Parks in California, and Pike National Forest in Colorado to George Washington National Forest in Virginia and all points in between. Often, those farms are booby-trapped with trip wires surrounding the operations.
Natural streams are diverted to irrigate the illegal crops, and the soil is severely damaged with harsh pesticides. When those operating the farms move on to another location, the areas more resemble a garbage dump, than a national forest. The harm being done to both flora and fauna is immeasurable.
This is not a problem unique to the American Southwest, but now affects public lands across the entire nation, and the smugglers are becoming increasingly more destructive.
In August 2009, investigators determined that the wildfire known as the La Brea Fire, in the Los Padres National Forest, which began on August 8, was actually started by a cooking fire being used by Mexican marijuana growers.
The Santa Barbara County sheriff's office and the U.S. Forest Service held a joint press conference and stated that the raging wildfire was touched off by a "cooking fire in a marijuana drug trafficking operation ... believed to be run by a Mexican national drug organization."
At the time, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Jim Turner said: "The suspects are still at large. We've closed the area to the public ... so if anyone is likely to encounter them, it would be the firefighters, and of course those people have all been alerted and are on the watch."
The fire destroyed more than 130 square miles of forest and forced more than 2,000 residents from their homes.
While the La Brea Fire may have represented the first time that the mainstream press reported on a fire which was set by illegal alien drug traffickers, this incident is only the latest and perhaps most costly fire. However, arson has actually become a favorite tactic used by those who now regularly invade this country.
In May 2007, in Arizona, Border Patrol Agents chased five illegals back across the Mexican border. Once on the other side, the five began pegging the agents and their vehicles with rocks. The agents moved back and continued to observe, then a Molotov cocktail was hurled at the agents. It hit the ground and missed the Border Patrol vehicles. The agents then contacted the Mexican military for assistance.
As usual, that help never came.
About an hour later, an agent noticed a fire burning in a nearby wheat field. The San Luis Fire Department responded and fortunately the only property damaged in the extremely dry area was the field itself. A total of five fires were set that night by illegal aliens. The fires surrounded a Border Patrol observation post and were an attempt to burn the agents out. No agents were injured in the multiple blazes and none of the illegals were apprehended.
The border area has become so dangerous due to Mexican drug smugglers and illegal aliens crossing into this country, that in 2007, firefighters battling wildfires in the Coronado National Forest had to be accompanied by police officers.
For several years, the U.S. Forest Service has reported numerous accounts of encounters with heavily armed drug dealers approaching firefighters.
On August 9, 2002, U.S. Park Ranger Kris Eggle, 27 was killed by Mexican drug dealers while on duty in Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument Park. Ranger Eggle was attempting to apprehend two drug dealers, after being notified by Mexican authorities that the two had crossed the border and were headed into the park.
One of the drug dealers opened fire on Ranger Eggle with an AK-47. Eggle died before a medivac helicopter arrived on the scene. Mexican police officers shot and killed Eggle's murderer.
U.S. Park Ranger Eggle left behind his grieving parents and his sister (also a U.S. Park Ranger).
In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt started the National Parks system, setting aside 194 millions of acres of pristine wilderness by the end of his presidency, so that all Americans could enjoy nature’s beauty and peaceful tranquility. He brought these unspoiled lands under federal protection so that they would remain that way forever.
I would venture to say that never could TR could have imagined the day when American families could no longer venture into those parks because an invading army of criminals now use them for their own enterprises. Nor could he have ever imagined a day when his own government, sworn to protect those public lands, would sit by and allow such an atrocity.
In a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas on August 31, 1910, Roosevelt stated: “I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the nature resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste the, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.”
Unfortunately, we are all being robbed as our national parks become nothing more than marijuana farms, occupied by illegal aliens carrying automatic weapons and trashing once unspoiled national treasures.
What use is a government which chooses not to defend its land and people?
The best way to fix the problem is to stop feeding them AND shame the Mexican Gov for the way they treat their citizens.
Exactly. And for the winners, you get a trip to the coast of Somalia, where you get to apply your newly honed skills in a sea-borne environment.
Whack-a-mole in AZ is First though ;-)
So why doesn’t the Border Patrol concentrate on the border of the reservation? Trap those smugglers on the sovereign land and not let them out the other side.
They are.
One photo has a Vatican shrine
Can anyone name the European leader who wants to revokes citizenship or removal of any illegal threatening police or leaders of that nation?
Due to the copyright laws of AP, you will have to go there and read the good news.
Very pathetic when our own politicians have fewer cajones than the French!
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