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's going to be whatever story works best for the front men of this group. Like I said before, Maxine Waters has the CIA/crack story going on, your side will need to create a reason too."
That is a red herring. Seems to me you like to label those who disagree with you as anti-immigrant and compare them to Maxine Waters. You disqualify all figures on border crossings and lump them into 2 groups....Border Control figures and "those who hate immigrants" because they are "biased." Yet, you refuse to provide any facts to back up your views, but are content to demonize others as biased and anti-immigrant.
I am hoping you are simply engaging in a ruse to be provocative since you claim to be a member of the USMC. If it is not a ruse and you are in fact a Marine please consider retirement or at least an assignment to a non-combat area. Safety first. Thank you.
Drugs have financed several of our government's "secret" programs.
I don't think it takes years to get a job picking grapes or cherries. They are probably just legal workers. If they're from another country, they're probably working under a H-2A visa.
"Of course I take the "rumor" that the CIA spread drugs throughout the United States seriously."
LOL you're kidding me? So you're pro-drug and anti-immigrant? Interesting combination. Don't meet too many like you around.
Still busy flacking for your soft-on-illegals cohorts, I see.
No one on this thread is "anti-immigrant".
Great point, kidd.
"where they are encouraged to wait before trying to cross" are the key words here. They are simply telling them to wait until the coast is clear. I'm sure there are more crossings in NM, TX and CA now.
Time to put a stop to it all.
ClintonBG uses "MMK" in place of MMP (MinuteMan Project) in a shallow attempt to bait. more than likely trying to imply "klan" for the "K". really subtle and impressive eh?
LOL
Actually, I was waiting to hear the claim that they caught 162 more than they did in this same period last year, or 162 more during this period than they average during such period. Do you have that data?
Remember Iran-Contra? Remember Mena, Arkansas? Remember Waco? Remember Elian? Remember the innocent men framed for murder in Boston in order to "protect" government informants? Remember the syphilis experiments on uninformed black men in the '60s?
Remember all the innocent babies killed by abortion, and now even "useless" people like Terri Shiavo murdered, all "legally," by our government.
Why do you trust an institution that even our Founders warned us needed to be watched with a critical eye?
Well it sounds like you agree President Bush - reform the system to take away the cloud or question of illegality and you've solved this supposed problem.
God bless their efforts!
So you're saying that anyone can get social security worker benefits without paying into the system? That's news to me. In fact, they allow you to send for a statement every year that tells you how much you've earned and how much your social security check will be based on how much you've contributed by way of your salary.
And we know this how?
Elian Gonzalaz was part of a CIA program?
I agree, go minutemen!
While the crossings have like just moved to areas they aren't patrolling, it's still a rousing success. They have accomplished in a few days what the border patrol in that area couldn't do in over a decade.
Here's to hoping the program expands to cover our entire border.
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