Posted on 04/16/2005 6:09:01 PM PDT by Spiff
Congressman Charlie Norwood, 9th District, Georgia
April 8, 2005
The Miracle on the Southwest Border: Illegal Immigration Smashed
A Direct Field Report on the Arizona-Mexico No-Man’s Land
April 4, 2005: The Arizona border with Sonora outside Naco
By Congressman Charlie Norwood
An on-going miracle is occurring this month in America’s Southwest, a miracle with a direct impact on our district. After decades of being told that it is impossible to stop illegal immigration on the Arizona border, it has been all but halted since April 1 through the very means we were told wouldn’t work – dedicated manpower and willpower.
This past Sunday, the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, of which I am a member, sent two senior staffers to investigate first-hand a chain of events beginning in late March which could force Congress and the Administration to dramatically rethink our approach to combating illegal immigration.
I insisted that John Stone from our Washington staff be a part of that first two-man team, so that we would have the most direct information on the situation possible. Stone is currently a Captain and public affairs officer with the Virginia Defense Force, the reserve to the Virginia National Guard, and a homeland security policy advisor. He partnered with retired Marine Colonel Fred Peterson, an expert on international homeland defense. They went into the border zone independently from any other federal agencies, with Caucus instructions to investigate every side of what is occurring in the zone, talk with any and all sources both on and off-the-record, and report those findings back to Congress. Their final and full report will be filed May 2, but their initial findings need to be known immediately.
The catalyst for the new focus on the border is a controversial movement by private citizens who are simply fed up with the ineffectiveness of federal efforts to combat the problem. They call their effort the “Minuteman Project”, and have kicked off what they describe as a “Neighborhood Watch” effort to help our Border Patrol control illegal immigration through additional free, volunteer manpower.
Our Border Patrol has officially responded with less than open arms to the offer of free help, in spite of complaining for decades of not having enough officers to adequately cover the vast desert region. It is estimated that more than half of the current 16 million illegal aliens in this country walked right through this same sector, yet the Border Patrol still says “no thanks.”
Vigilantes or Patriotic Volunteers?
While that hasn’t slowed the Minutemen down in bringing their 30-day project to reality, it has created an uncomfortable situation of armed civilian volunteers operating without first being sworn in by a lawfully authorized local, state, or federal agency.
That is a legitimate concern. One of the foundations of our Republic is that our military and law enforcement answers through an established chain-of-command to publicly elected officials. It is one of the key differences between the 200-year success of our nation and economy and the banana republics to our south that are the precise cause of so many folks wanting to flee to the United States.
Yet it is likewise an underlying principle of our Republic that elected officials faithfully act to defend and enforce the laws of the land, including our immigration laws. And our elected officials have repeatedly failed to take the necessary steps to do so.
Are the Minutemen vigilantes? That is a question for which Congress needed direct, unedited feedback from the field to attempt to answer.
President Bush has said he is against “vigilantes”, while not directly calling the Minuteman volunteers by that name. But Mexican President Vincente Fox has directly referred to the Minutemen as “vigilantes.” An interesting statement from a President with troops under his command who consistently violate our border. He obviously doesn’t mind taking our law into his hands, he just has a problem with us doing the same with our own law.
So what is a vigilante? From a variety of sources, a vigilante is “One who takes law enforcement into one's own hands; vigilantes often operate in secret.” The Caucus investigation has so far uncovered the following field evidence:
- No Enforcement Efforts: Project organizers are maintaining rigid rules that volunteers take no enforcement action whatsoever. They simply report the location of suspected illegal immigrants to the Border Patrol. Our team confirmed all volunteers are drilled on avoiding confrontation, even if provoked, and under instruction to allow all persons to pass unobstructed, and without verbal harassment. They are allowed to provide emergency aid to illegal immigrants if necessary, and our team investigated one incident of an illegal immigrant who fell behind his group, and was actually provided emergency food and water by Minutemen while Border Patrol agents were in transit. An illegal immigrant who claimed on Wednesday (6 APR) to have been detained by the Minutemen is likewise reported to have received food, water, and money from sympathetic volunteers before changing his story, reportedly after outside coaching.
- Transparency: The Minutemen organization has opened its operations 100% to media, government, and public inspection. Local, national, and international press, along with all government agencies, have access to all Minutemen facilities in the area, as well as being offered the opportunity to observe all field operations. Our team accompanied newspaper reporters on an overnight observation of a high drug-trafficking area this week. Stone and Peterson confirm the reporters had full access to the entire operation, and the ability to talk to all members of the team. Some individual Minutemen team members chose not to talk or have their picture included in the story, which is within their rights, consistent with standard public affairs operations guidelines of state and federal agencies. By contrast, the U.S. Border Patrol did not allow our team to accompany their agents through ride-along requests that are traditionally provided as a courtesy to congressional fact-finding missions. From these initial findings, if the Minutemen are “vigilantes”, then so are all Neighborhood Watches that are not formally recognized by a law enforcement agency.
Elements at Play
The Minutemen: Leaders of the Minutemen Project say they currently have around 450 volunteers in the field. They have been in the field since Monday, April 4, and will be relieved over the coming weeks by another thousand or so volunteers. They estimate somewhere between 1000-1500 volunteers will participate before the project is over at the end of the month, with around 500 in the field at any given time.
The Border Patrol: The Border Patrol has pulled in 534 seasoned agents from elsewhere in the country to reinforce the 2600 agents already in the sector. The Border Patrol says these reinforcements have nothing to do with the Minuteman Project, and are a planned step in the ongoing Arizona Border Patrol Initiative.
Coronado Memorial National Park: The National Park Service has trucked in an undetermined number of tactical officers from other states. Coronado Memorial National Park covers nearly 5000 acres on the border with Mexico.
The Media: Our team identified the Los Angeles Times, the San Antonio Express, La Raza Radio News 97.9FM, NBC/MSNBC Crew West, the Associated Press, FOX News, and multiple European media outlets remaining on the scene long-term. Members of these and other media are constantly following the Minutemen, and have at times disrupted observation efforts.
Opposing Groups: The ACLU; La Raza; Hispanic separatist Dr. Armando Navarro; street gang MS-13; Mexican drug and human trafficking gangs, and Earth Liberation.
Fort Huachuca: The U.S. Army maintains its own security and patrols over the base area, frequently used by illegal immigrants. ROTC Cadets from Arizona State University on training duty at the base apprehended and detained 16 illegal immigrants earlier this week; 513 illegals were apprehended on base in March.
Border Action to Date
Prior to the Minuteman Project observation posts becoming active on April 4, open-borders advocates protested and sent observers into the field, reportedly for the duration of the project. These groups included the ACLU, Earth Liberation, and others. Stone observed what is believed to be elements of these groups attempt to disrupt observation posts.
The Salvadoran street gang MS-13 along with Mexican human smuggling and drug rings has reportedly threatened armed attacks against the Minuteman volunteers. This MS-13 gang is the very one which is spreading so rapidly across our country, with a worldwide membership of 700,000, and a history of vicious machete attacks in the Washington, DC suburbs. It seems they object to having their illegal access to our country blocked.
The government-controlled Cuban press is telling the world that “armed racists” are standing by to shoot innocent migrant workers.
Mexican President Vincente Fox has ordered his military to mass on the U.S. border in higher numbers than usual, “just in case,” of a confrontation. There won’t be, as the Minutemen are under strict instructions to walk away from confrontation, but this policy position of Mexico is worth noting. This is the same Mexican military that provides water, aid, and traveler’s advice to immigrants seeking to cross our border illegally, to help them do so. According to multiple reports, beginning April 1 the Mexican military has been blocking immigrants from attempting to cross the section of border patrolled by the Minutemen, and advising illegals to cross to the east and west of the Minutemen’s area of operations. They are telling these immigrants that “crazed ranchers” are waiting to shoot them on sight on our side of the border if they cross in the wrong place.
The Minuteman volunteers, with a heavy percentage of armed former U.S. military members, have held firm to their project goals in spite of these threats and distortions.
Results – A Dramatic Decline in Illegal Immigration
Our team heard two conflicting stories on the results of these developments on the Southwest border. But both stories have the same ending: illegal activity in this, the heaviest illegal immigration border sector in America, has been brought to a screeching halt.
The U.S. Border Patrol attributes any and all decreases in illegal immigration this spring to their own efforts to increase enforcement, primarily their bringing in those 534 seasoned officers from other parts of the country the week before the Minuteman Project kicked off. They also credit the increased Mexican military presence on the other side of the border. Their official stance is that the Minutemen Project has had little or no effect, and was timed by its volunteer organizers to try to claim success for the efforts of the Border Patrol. A fascinating position when you think about it – a reverse conspiracy theory, in which federal bureaucrats suspect citizens of designing sophisticated plots against them. Interestingly, the Border Patrol had no knowledge of increased federal efforts elsewhere, such as the National Park Service team deployed to the state, or of whether U.S. Army enforcement efforts were increased.
Local law enforcement, and individual Border Patrol officers speaking off-the-record, say that illegal immigration has virtually stopped in the sector patrolled by the Minutemen as a direct result of Minutemen activity and publicity.
Regardless of the cause, a historic immigration reform myth has been exposed as a total travesty in just the first week of the Minuteman Project. That myth is that it is impossible to stop illegal immigrants from crossing the border with any reasonable amount of additional manpower, that controlling illegal immigration could only be accomplished through new technology still years away from implementation, and that a necessary ingredient is immigration “reform” that would allow most of those entering our nation illegally to just walk across the border with impunity.
That myth is now dead forever thanks to a remarkable first week of April on the Arizona-Sonora border. We can stop illegal immigration anytime we please by simply providing adequate and reasonable numbers of Border Patrol personnel, with Army or National Guard backup if necessary, to bring our national illegal immigration nightmare to an immediate end.
We have the manpower. The only question left is whether we have the willpower.
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Once they fixed the criminal record mistake they made with you records, I was fine.
>>>I have finally gotten to the point that I will vote for whoever will defend our borders be it democrat or republican or whomever! I'm tired of this whole crapy situation!<<<<
please don't let your indignation over the criminal border crossers and those who would reward them and ease their illegal entry blind you to the fact that you can NEVER trust a dem/socialist/communist. no matter how butch Mz Klinton and her bunch talk - don't be sucked in by their lies. we are lucky to find a handful of Rupublicans in office who haven't joined the dark side.... but there certainly aren't any dems/socialist who have these United States of America as their #1 priority.
imagine a Klinton or another power-mad communist at the helm of this country with all the executive mercenary powers in place. Waco will seem like a Sunday morning stroll.
there are pro-open border disrupters on these threads who use the commie tactic of repeating a lie often enough (that Hellary is tough on illegal aliens) to get you to vote for their side - don't buy their bs. if you check out Hellary's voting record you will find that she is like all commies-pro illegal and anti-American.
she's just sneaky and getting ready to steal some votes come 2008 and her little infiltraitors here are working overtime to help her.
I don't care what you think of him, I responded to what he wrote.
Did you miss the sarcastic humor accidently or on purpose? Get on his case for not using a SARC tag if anything.
Implying someone is a Nazi is a grevious insult that's not taken lightly. Same as calling people traitors (even when the shoe fits).
Travis lives out in SoCal last I heard - why don't you invite him over to the restaurant and patch things up?
Sorry about the rant - sometimes the pent up frustrations of life combined with the horror of modern politics drives me off the deep end.
I'm solidly convinced we'd be living in a near paradise if our laws weren't selectively enforced, our judiciary was subject to citizen removal on every level and the latest generation had had the opportunity to learn civics and national pride from non-socialist professional educators.
You can see it if you squint hard enough...an America that could (should) have been.
You were the one crying last year after JimRob kicked you off. Did you forget that you made it a hobby to cyberstalk me and send me vicious FReepmail every chance you could? Did I take the low road? No, I tried to reason with your better side because I thought you were a human being.
Now you're repeating the same cycle of behavior that got you suspended in the first place. Man, I have a pair and I also learn from my mistakes. I suggest that you examine your motivations and ask yourself why you feel compelled to tear down those who dare to stand up for this country.
Uh, you just villified yourelf and proved my point - again.
Nothing I wrote of is false. My work ethic is beyond question. I am not "playing victim", just pointing out how hard work and determination somehow didn't pan out for me while I observed human slime proving it's not what you know but who you know.
I attribute unfortunate luck to my lack of aggressiveness and adherence to order in a society that increasingly views rules and laws as minor inconveniences. Kind of like the illegal laborers you underpay in your restaurants.
Now about that stalking you did...is that against the law? I know it is in certain states.
Thanks - I'm dropping it.
Both of you knock off the personal attacks.
That is false, too.
I've never whined about a temp banning and calling you a dummy on Freepmail isn't stalking.
Stalking is chasing people thread to thread and repling when not posted to...like you did here.
And your #302 speaks for itself.
I feel privileged.
I've never conversed with member Skeeter. Why is this person attacking me? I readily acknowlege that I'm a dummy at times but have never bothered this individual.
I said I'm dropping it, but putting up with underserved antagonism is asking too much.
Nevermind...Skeeter FReepmailed me that the message was directed toward PRND21.
Got to build up the skin of a rhino without becoming a RINO. I'm 43 today so excess skin is the least of my worries.
Incorrect. While the term "La Raza" when used broadly merely means the Hispanic race, when you refer to any La Raza group, you are referring to a group who varies between radical all the way to extremely radical, and who all embrace the Aztlan movement, in which 1/3 of the United States would be take from the United States in order to form a new country.
WHAT IS RAZASource
"La Raza" (The Race) is a broad term which refers to those whose ancestry is indigenous to the area of Mexico (or "Aztlan"). MEChA members refer to themselves as "La Raza" or "Raza," but the term itself is used to indicate camaraderie among those in different organizations with the same objectives. There are a number of organizations who consider themselves to be La Raza.
The most visible of these groups are MEChA, The Brown Berets de Aztlan, OLA (Organization for the Liberation of Aztlan), La Raza Unida Party, and the "Nation of Aztlan" to name a few. Although the activism of these organizations vary from somewhat radical to extremely radical, they share the same objectives, the "liberation of Aztlan." Each follows the Raza manifesto "El Plan de Aztlan (sometimes called "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan"). The Nation of Aztlan, tied to La Voz de Aztlan disseminates the exact same propaganda that MEChA spreads including antisemitic propaganda. Believers in the Aztlan legend insist upon the indivisibility of "La Raza" and their common goals, one of them being the need to abolish the border between the U.S. and Mexico. There is a myriad of Raza college newspaper. Some are El Popo, Aztlan News, Chispas, Gente de Aztlan (UCLA), Voz Fronteriza (U.C. San Diego), La Voz Mestiza (U.C. Irvine) and La Voz Berkeley. It is not uncommon for the writers of these publications to refer to the U.S., as "AmeriKKKa."
Rhetoric by some Chicano educators strongly suggest Communist or Socialist leanings. Recently (May, 2000), more than 1,200 students gathered at UCLA for the seventh annual Raza Youth Conference, which the members say promotes higher education and recognition of the Aztlan culture. Sponsored by MEChA, the year's theme was "Reclaiming Our Razas through education, resistance, and promoting the idea of remembering the historical struggles of Raza" said Erika Ramirez, co-chair of the conference. The conference drew students from 80 middle and high schools and community colleges; featured speeches by those actively involved with the Chicano community.
The keynote speaker was Antonia Darder, a professor of education and cultural studies at Claremont Graduate University and director of the Institute for Cultural Studies in Education, who received a standing ovation for her speech.
Darder described American capitalism and what she said were its impacts on racism and sexism. "I grew up in a capitalist society, a society that taught us that the greed of corporations control politics," Darder said. "Capitalism is the root of domination. Racism and sexism exist because capitalism requires it." Darder said a globalized economy forced smaller countries to give up their self-sufficiency, resulting in people migrating to the U.S. "We're here because U.S. foreign policy in Latin America has forced us here," she said.
The University of Oregon Chapter of MEChA hints at its communist sentiments by posting a picture of Cuba's communist dictator Fidel Castro. On its web site, "La Voz de Aztlan" has an excerpt from a speech of February 7, 1997, by Fidel Castro who said "the United States should return to Mexico huge chunks of that country's territories it acquired more than a century ago" La Voz de Aztlan, whom Antonio Villaraigosa refuses to repudiate, also disseminates antisemitic propaganda,
Apparently, these "Raza" cults are composed of people who unabashedly hate the United States and often support other groups and leaders who also hate America. Raza's hatred of America is so intense, that most make bedfellows to anyone else who also hates America, like dictator Fidel Castro; murderer of his own people Sadam Hussain; and the women hating Taliban -- and of course they sympathize with all Islamic Terrorists over the Israel/Palestine issue. Raza cults are the loudest and most insistent element of the immigration lobby in California. Inebriated with a sense of righteous victimhood, and entranced by myths of a heroic racial past, devotees of the Aztlan cults are rapidly extending their influence within California's Hispanic population, particularly among students in the university system. The official national symbol of MEChA is an eagle holding a machete-like weapon and a stick of dynamite. WHAT IS MEChA The acronym MEChA stands for "Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan." or "Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan."
MEChA is an Hispanic separatist organization that encourages anti-American activities and civil disobedience. The radical members of MEChA who refer to themselves as "Mechistas," romanticize Mexican claims to the "lost Territories" of the Southwestern United States -- a Chicano country called Aztlan. In its national constitution, MEChA calls for self-determination by its members to liberate Aztlan. MEChA's national constitution starts out: "Chicano and Chicana students of Aztlán must take upon themselves the responsibilities to promote Chicanismo within the community, politicizing our Raza with an emphasis on indigenous consciousness to continue the struggle for the self-determination of the Chicano people for the purpose of liberating Aztlán."
These anti-American "Mechistas" live with the false illusion that they are being racially discriminated against because they are Latinos while totally dismissing the idea that maybe it is their ideology that is being discriminated against.
At the MEChA National Conference on March 15 - 18, 2001, the official "MEChA Philosophy" was ratified. An excerpt from the document states: "as Mechistas, we vow to work for the liberation of Aztlan."
The MEChA Clubs on each of the Santa Barbara high school campuses are not the only ones. MEChA groups exist on 90 percent of the public high school, college and university campuses in the Southwestern United States.
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