On tribal land along US-Mexico border, drug and human smuggling corrupts an ancient culture

ABC News ^ | 05/16/19 | dan harris , brian epstein, evan simon

[yesthatjallen]

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In Arizona, southwest of Tucson, lies the Tohono O’odham Nation, the third largest Native American reservation in the United States, and home to one of the busiest smuggling corridors in North America. The Tohono O’odham, or “desert people,” have lived and died here in the Sonoran Desert since long before the border divided our nations and theirs, but over time, tribal members found themselves on the front lines of this illicit trade and the efforts to stop it.

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“It’s no secret,” Garcia said, “that a lot of our tribal members are involved in the smuggling of migrants and drugs.”

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“I think that there is a very deep-rooted involvement in smuggling. I think that it’s gone on for generations, so there are a lot of people that get involved in it,” Hall told ABC News. “Not only are we dealing with border issues, but we really have to balance the sovereignty, the culture, and all of those things that come with being on the reservation.”

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[yesthatjallen]

A multi-generational effort to smuggle drugs and people through Native American lands.

[Paladin2]

Build a wall around the Res on the US side.

[Oscar in Batangas]

So it begs the question:

Where are ‘Friends of the Earth’, ‘Greenpeace’, ‘Sierra Club’, etc, ad nauseum when it comes to addressing the environmental damage which will not be healed for centuries, or millenia-—

-—as they would be were it caused by some weekend off-the-road enthusiasts.

Or WORSE, some gun owners setting up a target range miles away from other human beings???

Priorities and outrage certainly can be selective, huh?

[Lurkinanloomin]

Fence them out since they don’t want to be part of US.

[TBP]

Why do we permit this?

[yesthatjallen]

No one seems to want to enforce our laws anymore.

It's going to be a very different US for our grandchildren when our laws no longer matter.

[Redwood71]

“....we really have to balance the sovereignty, the culture, and all of those things that come with being on the reservation.”

So you do this by smuggling people and drugs across the border unbalancing our sovereignty, culture, and those things that come with being a US citizen to accomplish this quest? Somehow it sounds remarkably like passing the buck to make the buck. He’s full of bolshevik.

rwood