Posted on 04/05/2005 8:34:29 AM PDT by Kokojmudd
By Michael Marizco ARIZONA DAILY STAR
NACO, SONORA – A Mexican military Humvee moves across the cow pasture; soldiers nod at federal agents in bright orange shirts roving by on ATVs. An hour later, a Sonora State Preventive Police truck moves through a sandy wash, the officers looking for migrants waiting to sneak across the border.
Across the barbed-wire border in Arizona early Monday, excitement grips Minuteman Project volunteers when they observe a group of six people moving north.
Dan Russell, 62, watches the group walking toward him. "They're getting closer," he says. "They could just be reporters." They are.
In the first few days of the Minuteman Project, volunteers have been slowing illegal immigration into the Naco area.They've accomplished that with the help of an unlikely ally: Mexico.
Eager to avoid confrontations between volunteers and its people, Mexico is sweeping the area south of the Minuteman Project clear of migrants.
Gov. Eduardo Bours Castelo has placed 44 members of the new state police force across the border at La Morita, a cattle ranch that leads directly to the border south of Bisbee, said Diego Padilla the governor's Arizona representative.
The state police are working with Grupo Beta, Mexico's migrant protection force, which is plucking migrants out of the desert and depositing them in nearby Agua Prieta, where they are encouraged to wait before trying to cross.
"We are very crude with them; we tell them they may be shot, that there's rancheros out to stop them and hurt them," said Enrique Enriques Palafox, a Grupo Beta commander in Agua Prieta. The point is to terrify the migrants from the area so they won't cross illegally and encounter Minuteman volunteers, he said.
Sunday, the coordinated efforts of the military, Grupo Beta, and the new police force pulled 22 groups of migrants out of the ranch, Palafox said. By Monday, only a handful of people had to be told to go somewhere else.
Even as the Minuteman Project brought national attention to Cochise County's border woes, volunteers had few encounters with illegal entrants. But their presence has brought Mexican law enforcement to this part of the border, and that has had the effect of slowing illegal immigration.
Organizer James Gilchrist said Sunday that volunteers had reported 118 illegal entrants to the U.S. Border Patrol. There is no way to confirm that, because the agency's Tucson Sector says it doesn't keep track of Minuteman callers separately from normal calls from citizens about illegal border crossers.
Since Friday, when the protest started, there have been 78 citizen call-ins leading to the apprehension of 162 people, said Border Patrol spokesman Andy Adame.
What Minuteman volunteers have succeeded in doing is setting off false alarms by tripping ground sensors on the border, he said.
"We're having to work around them instead of concentrating on the actual border where we need to work," Adame said.
The number of illegal entrant apprehensions at the Naco station has dropped.
U.S. and Mexican officials say it's because of Mexico's efforts.
Minuteman organizers say otherwise. "We're having an impact," Gilchrist said Sunday.
● Contact reporter Michael Marizco at 573-4213 or at mmarizco@azstarnet.com.
Actually, it sounds a lot more like disinformation.
If their sensors were so effective and so effectively used, then why was this section of the border the most porous?
Illegals who pay into SS get ripped off just like everybody else.
Then, why are the BP complaining about having to work the area with the MM instead of the area of their own choosing?
Or that Bush signed a totalization agreement with Mexico that will allow these very same to receive their US Social Security checks at home, in Mexico, forever.
Yeah; but the krauts give them a real deal 50% of cost. Look it up.
Yes...I noticed in that article that the Socialism Security Administration receives billions every year in connection with millions of fictitous SS numbers (9 million such W-2's received last year)
Does the SS Adminstration alert Immigration?...of course not, it just collects (and spends)the money
And so it goes...until the American people wake up
Now all we need is a Boston Tea Party against taxes --
Carolyn
PING PINGPING!!!!!!!!!
i'm picturing CBG scurrying around the ACLU website looking for "stats"
LOL
Utter moron. You aren't even trying to make sense anymore.
THANKS checked out gogov.com. will use it.
It would be like you trying to show up the US post office by delivering mail on Sunday. They don't want any possible perception what problems exist lie with them.
I thought it was a crime NOT to pay your social security taxes?
You idiot analogy would only be apt if the Post Office in your example also only delivered SPAM, only on Monday and Thursday, and had the Presidents sanction to do so.
What I would like to know is how many checks for SS are sent to a Mexican address??????.
No stat that deals with border crossings is provided by an objective source.
Thier first crime was BEING HERE in the first place. If they came here LEGALLY, they wouldn't have that problem.
This is a big waste of time and effort. The illegals aren't going to cross there. They'll just cross somewhere else. However well intentioned these people are, they're not stopping anything.
Sorry to bust anybody's bubble but there's no "mission accomplished" here. They just made the illegals cross somewhere else. They will find a way across one way or another.
So in your mind anyone who works on a farm and is hispanic is illegal?
Yes. I've noticed that you make all kinds of wild claims with NOTHING to back them up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.