Posted on 10/22/2006 11:01:51 AM PDT by John Jorsett
SELLS, Ariz. – The latest front in the federal government's struggle to control the border with Mexico runs partly across 75 miles of sand, tall saguaro cactuses and mesquite creosote brush, guarded by brooding mountains 8,000 feet high.
Congress wants to build a triple fence along the border to make it tougher for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers trying to cross. The barricade would divide an American Indian tribe whose people were on this land four millenniums before the birth of Christ.
“We didn't ask for this fence to be built here,” said Chairwoman Vivian Juan-Saunders of the Tohono O'odham Nation. “We have some individuals who feel the federal government can come onto the Nation and do what they want.”
The Secure Fence Act of 2006, passed in late September, requires 700 miles of border fence from Texas to California, including a stretch extending 10 miles east and 10 miles west of Tecate in San Diego County.
It has generated mixed feelings among some Tohono O'odham, who oppose being walled off from roughly 1,400 tribal members in Mexico, but who also are losing patience with the flood of illegal immigration crossing their desert.
Traditionally, the Tohono O'odham were able to move between their reservation and Mexican territory through informal portals such as the San Miguel Gate, little more than a gap in a barbed-wire cattle fence. Tribal members in Mexico came north for medical and other reservation services, while their Arizona counterparts would head south to Magdalena, in the Mexican state of Sonora, for cultural and religious events.
The proposed fence would force them to use official ports of entry miles away in Sasabe or Nogales. There are no public buses on the reservation, and nearly half of the Tohono O'odham don't own a car.
(Excerpt) Read more at signonsandiego.com ...
So build the fence around the reservation. What's the big deal?
Take back the Mexican side...
So give them a couple of buses.
This isn't the United States of Indians for good reason. We have to protect our interest without regard for this sort of nonsense. They can move to Oklahoma for all I care.
My thinking, exactly.
susie
For what this all costs.. it seems to me.. they just need a manned gate.. where they want it... Not a big thing.. this is just a reason to write someone is upset about something..
Solution: Build a casino fence!
Well, are they a "sovereign nation" or not? If they are going to take money from the Feds, they have to police their own areas; which they have been attempting.
They do not have the monetary resources to do it themselves.
Welcome to the 21st century Tohono Oodham nation.
If you cannot do it yourselves, we will do it for you.\
Vote for Raul Grijalva. He will take care of you.
Shocking.
Move off the reservation, get a job, buy a car, and JOIN THE FRIKKIN' 21st CENTURY.
So what. We don't need your permission, ma'am.
hire a few of the Indians and let them man a crossing station.
"Tribal members in Mexico came north for medical and other reservation services,"
When did we vote to give Mexican Indians our taxpayer-funded services? I must have missed that election. It's bad enough having our own permanent Indian indigents free-loading off the system, but we definitely don't owe Mexican Indians any freebies.
Yes they do. They put language in the fence bill to do exactly that.
The following excerpts were buried in the story and demonstrate the spin that the Union-Tribune was putting on this:
"...Except for those living on or very near the border, the fence isn't a big issue yet with most tribal members, said Terrel Dew Johnson, co-director of the Tohono O'odham Community Action group.
“I've never heard anyone talking about it,” Johnson said..."
"...These days, for those who live near the border, it is the specter of illegal immigration that looms over this desert land.
“They come at all hours of the night. You really can't sleep,” Toro said. “They steal clothes off our lines. They want to use your phone.
“I guess I'm a captive in my own home because of what's going on around us.”
Richard Saunders, Nation police chief and Juan-Saunders' husband, said, “We've had as many as a hundred turn up at somebody's back door, or walking through the desert.”
The Tohono O'odham traditionally have been sympathetic toward the illegal immigrants heading north for jobs, “but over time . . . it's just gotten out of hand,” Toro said.
With the increased traffic has come “increasing violence to our people, with homes being burglarized and people just living in fear,” Juan-Sanders said.
The twin flow of illegal immigrants and narcotics also is increasingly exposing the Tohono O'odham people to drugs, Toro said.
“What some of the (illegal immigrants) have started doing is carrying small amounts (of illegal drugs) to trade for food and water,” she said. “One girl took it to school and was just giving it out. Marijuana..."
"...Smugglers are taking advantage of the Tohono O'odhams' condition to lure some of them into becoming smugglers.
“Teenagers are dropping out of school,” Paxson said. “They can make several thousand in a day, just by transporting drugs and illegal aliens...”
"...More than 300 have been found dead on Tohono O'odham land since 2002, from grandmothers to children as young as 3, sometimes in terrain so isolated that Nation officers must be lowered from helicopters to retrieve the bodies.
“A lot of them were in poor health to begin with. They've been walking for days, some of them for weeks,” Saunders said. “They get up here, and they're dying up here.”
Then there's all the trash left behind by illegal immigrants crossing the desert, 72 tons of it in 2004 alone. That doesn't count the hundreds of stolen and abandoned cars, almost none of which belong to tribal members..."
“...They clean it up, and weeks later, there's a repeat of it,” Saunders said.
As a result of all this, the Tohono O'odham government has leased the Border Patrol space for two substations..."
"...Estimates of illegal immigration's financial impact on the Tohono O'odham reach $7 million a year – $3 million in law enforcement costs alone, funded by revenue from their two casinos and other sources.
“We've spent $132,000 (this year) just in autopsy costs,” the tribal police chief said. “Nobody has helped us pay for any of this...”
They get a nice check to stay on the rez.
Sounds like they'd be in favor of a fence.
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