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.
I didn't say you were lying. I just said on that particular point, we'll have to disagree. Disagreeing, at least to me, doesn't mean you're calling the other person a liar.
Are you in charge of counting illegals and vigilantes? Figures.
Mahmoud Youssef Kourani
That's funny, I don't see him listed as one of the 9-1-1 teorrorist. But thanks for trying.
Wow...these guys are getting it done just by showing up...hmmm, maybe a very vocalized and advertised federal effort really could have a huge impact on illegals entering the country.
Excuse me? I'm not sure I understand your comment.
Are you trying to be sardonic?
Your repeating it does not make it true. Either post your own translation or STFU.
Better yet, Just read this one...
Nice try at deflection though troll...
I'm sorry you are having a hard time understanding the point I made regarding terrorists. You seem to really struggle with the concept. Why?
The fact that your sub-par intellect cannot grasp this is none of my concern.
Maybe we should impeech them then?
Until you've been to Brownsville, shut your f*cking yap.
Well, the Border Patrol I could do without. Just a bunch of overpaid, underworked union stooges and bosses. As you know, the President and his administration has been wonderful on this issue. I can't imagine anyone wanting to impeach either Bush or Rice over anything. But the truth is, no one has been able to connect Mexico to 9-1-1, and you know how hard they've tried.
Then how come the most notorious border stops in the past few years have come at the border of Canada? Again, the facts seem to contradict your theory.
As for connecting Mexico and 9-11, you are the only one trying that I have seen so far. Moron...
We don't have millions of Canuks coming down here soaking up our resources, but they are still a porous border that could be exploited by the likes of Al Queda.
So you agree then that Mexico had nothing to do with 9-1-1?
What was quite clearly stated is that Al Queda is targeting "soft" points of entry, like our Southern border, and that Middle Easterner's have been apprehended there. If we caught a few, then more have already gotten through.
Thanks to asshats like you... Thanks for nothing.
Well, I think the INS got the Millinium Bomber Ahmed Ressam up in Vancouver. For the life of me, I don't know why we don't spend more time looking at the people that cross from the North.
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