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.
"Minutemen find few migrants (Police in Mexico discouraging illegal crossings)"
Mission accomplished!
"We're having to work around them instead of concentrating on the actual border where we need to work," Adame said.
Sounds like what we in the Marines used to call a major CHARLIE FOXTROT.
"(Police in Mexico discouraging illegal crossings)"
The Minutemen are even more effective than I had hoped. They're getting a better response than the federal government ever could.
Wait a minute, that hasn't happened.
If anything, this has proven that the Mexican government could stop the flow of illegals if they so desired. A very interesting result, indeed.
But you're too busy trying to defame what the Minutemen are doing to notice.
"What Minuteman volunteers have succeeded in doing is setting off false alarms by tripping ground sensors on the border, he said."
Apparently the sensors aren't tripped by the thousands of illegals who pass every single day.
Perhaps. Maybe more disappointing (for you) is there really isn't a border problem and the numbers these MMK'ers claim are simply bogus.
It is a blot on this administration that they are not accomplishing this Constitutional task and the people HAVE to take matters into their own hands. Wake up to the will of the people pres.!
I don't think it's a CF, except for the politicians.
I think it is a publicity stunt -- that appears to be working.
The Mexican Gov. is smart. One dead old man volunteer = a cry to shut down the border.
(BTW, the Army called things a CF, too.)
Adame wasn't doing such a hot job "concentrating on the actual border" BEFORE the MMP showed up.
Darn shame that they won't be able to stay there full time.
Maybe there are not thousands that pass every day. There probably aren't even hundreds. Immigration is like global warming or population control - those with an agenda simply make up the numbers.
Uh, yeah, right. I guess the Border Patrol is just making up all those people it arrests every year in that sector.
I've seen bad cases of fact allergies before, but that one was textbook.
And suggesting less fortified border-crossing locations, no doubt.
Which is why the Mexican patrols are lying to the illegals and telling them to try again next month when the MMP is gone.
You are a sick individual.
Uh yeah sure, the illegals we see with our own eyes aren't real. That's the ticket.
I find it more than disappointing when US officials aren't on the side of America.
there's a front page article in the nyt today complaining that illegals pay into social security and don't get much back.
it's odd that the nyt hasn't noticed the hospitals in california that have gone broke due to illegals, or the collapse of the health care system elsewhere.
Sure. Someone on your side is going to have to make up some theory to keep the masses pumped up and contributing money to ALIPAC. It's not unlike the Maxine Water's rumor that the CIA spread crack through african-american neighborhoods. It makes good reading, but does anyone take it seriously?
Dude, you're from MICHIGAN!! Beside the canucks that come over to catch a Tiger's game, how many illegals do you see every day?
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