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.
With that kind of law "enforcement," we could put a stop to all crime in the United States, simply by reforming the system and seeing the question of "illegality" in a whole new light.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Correct. But if there are closet racists on here, they are staying cloistered.
Now, if we can just get you illegal border crosser apologists to do the same...
I think, to some degree, we (you, me and the President) agree. So I take it then that you'll welcome with open arms someone who under the Bush plan is unquestionably legal in this country?
The CIA is corrupt as a result of being a part of that corrupt national government.
Just as our Founders warned us, a government unrestrained is not a good thing.
The Bush plan pardons the millions of illegals already here. How this will stop others from coming here, equally illegally, has yet to be explained. It didn't work when Reagan did it. It ain't gonna work for Bush either.
Bush is wrong to give illegal migrants amnesty, and he is wrong to justify lawbreaking by saying that illegals do work that American citizens "refuse to do." That is a lie.
The goal of the MMP is not to "stop" illegal border crossings. They admit that nothing short of military intervention will seal the border. But it is bringing the problem to the forefront and forcing the Federal government to directly address it.
In that sense, it has been a major success.
That is their SOP. If someone doesn't agree with them 100% then they start the personal attacks and lies in an effort to bait people to get them banned. Funny how a person can be threatened with a ban for "name calling" and yet two people in this thread have called ClintonBeGone at least 8 different names and accused him of being an illegal alien.
How about expanding the program to the entire border, Mexico and Canada ??
Well, over 200 posts without a border ping...must be a good article! Thanks, Mudd, for the 'ping'.
I wonder how long it's going to take before someone starts asking Andy Adame some tough questions? I've just sent an editorial to the Sierra Vista Herald chiding their reporter for swallowing Adame's position hook, line, and sinker.
Nice crowd you hang with.
Ditto!
Meaning no disrespect to the Pope, it is too bad he died at this moment because the news has been all Pope all the time and it has been hard for any other news stories to squeeze in edgewise.
Um, because I know how to do math? It's not hard. If you know the formula, and your gross wages over the years, you too can figure it out.
As opposed to our open border with Mexico, during wartime.
Can someone explain to me why a simple pair of sturdy fences is out of the reach of the world's greatest super power?
The answer is: our leaders want lots of cheap illegal labor.
Hi, how are you today? I hadn't seen you in a couple of days and thought something might have happened to you.
Border Patrol agents in March of 2005 arrested 24,232 illegal aliens in that portion of the Tucson Sector that encompasses Cochise County. That's over 780 per day. Last year it was over 1,000 per day. Source is Andy Adame, USBP spokesman in Tucson, as quoted by reporter Bill Hess in today's Sierra Vista Herald, www.svherald.com.
You really need to work on either curing your ignorance or ceasing your prevarications.
What would be funny if it wasn't so sad is that Americans pay huge amounts in Social Security and don't get much back.
Social Security is the single worst investment one can make with their money.
You couldn't beat the Mexicans lead by brother Santa Anna at the Alamo - You're certainly not going to beat Mara Salvatrucha with a bunch of fat old ex-supply sergeants.
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