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.
The U.S.'s borders, rather than becoming more secure since 9/11, have grown even more porous. And the trend has accelerated in the past year. It's fair to estimate, based on a TIME investigation, that the number of illegal aliens flooding into the U.S. this year will total 3 million?enough to fill 22,000 Boeing 737-700 airliners, or 60 flights every day for a year. It will be the largest wave since 2001 and roughly triple the number of immigrants who will come to the U.S. by legal means. (No one knows how many illegals are living in the U.S., but estimates run as high as 15 million.)
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.
Why don't we just have tropical provide us the link to HIS source, so we can avoid this silly exercise. I had hoped to avoid this to begin with, but Tropical didn't exactly live up to expectations when it came to backing up his claims.
".....come from people that simply don't care for immigrants."
There you go again.
Are you that dumb that you can not make the distinction between "immigrants"...who come here legally and the trespassers who come here illegally?
Take the time to browse the polls that were taken here on FR.
Get a clue.
And the longer YOU post, the more YOU lose credibility. Keep it up.
Precisely...
Thank you, Minutemen.
Database was kind enough to provide it in post #281. Still don't know the ropes all that well. But that is the article to which I was referring. Thank you Database.
It's not really that tough, and there is a surprising consensus among the vast majority of FR members. There are just a few (4 at last count and dropping) perpetually obtuse, race-baiting, thread polluting, Arbusto/Fox cheerleaders.
The rest of us want the laws enforced, current immigration plans managed to provide sufficient labor to satisfy market demands, and the illegal industries of people smuggling, document forgery, and identity theft stopped along with the primary enabler for those industries, the multi-billion dollar illegal alien industry.
The MMP is forcing a spotlight on this problem. In that regard that have been tremendously successful.
Welcome to FR.
In your case? Nope. It's like Ebay. Your total feedback score is a function of both your postitives AND your negatives :)
So even Mexico fears pictures of lots of illegals flooding the USA being all over our national TV and making trouble.
I am surprised they are "that" smart!
"We're having to work around them instead of concentrating on the actual border where we need to work," Adame said.
I spent some time in the military working with sensors (about 20 years). I worked with the same sensor systems used by the Border Patrol. Proper emplacement would have the sensors deployed in "strings" that would be activated in sequence providing not only an alarm but also a probable direction of movement. Further analysis of the data would also allow the determination of target speed. The information could then be plotted on a map; capture sites could be determined and manned prior to the arrival of the bad guys.
Review of the sensor activation pattern would quickly indicate that a group of cattle or a known presence such as the Minutemen were causing the activation, since the same sensors would constantly be activated. This would negate the need to send an agent out to the sensor site to investigate.
This all means either the Border Patrol isn't using the sensor system properly or that the admin types are blowing smoke at the unknowing public. The guys in the field know what they're doing, so the problem must be the admin types.
Because the penalty for the latter is much more punitive than the former.
Funny how you showed up to defend ClintonBeGone. I guess birds of a feather really do flock together.
Well then it sounds like you would be OK if the President's reforms pass and there is no longer a cloud on the status of these folks. You would be ok with that? Then they would just be 'immigrants'.
And you're only at post 147! Wait, there's more :)
BUMP for truth in an otherwise polluted thread.
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