U.S., Mexican legislators discuss border vigilantes
Posted on 11/24/2002 2:06:29 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
U.S., Mexican legislators discuss border vigilantes
States may take action against groups that target migrants
11/24/2002
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - U.S. and Mexican lawmakers expressed concern Saturday about a growing number of American vigilante groups that capture and sometimes hurt or kill Mexican migrants who cross into the United States illegally.
The fringe groups have sprung up in several border towns in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, where residents frustrated by U.S. border agents' inability to stop illegal migration have taken matters into their own hands, said Arizona state Rep. Robert Cannell.
Mr. Cannell said Arizona legislators will likely take up the issue of vigilante groups during the state's next legislative session. The Democrat said he was "strongly opposed" to the groups.
Mr. Cannell was one of eight U.S. state legislators - three from New Mexico, two from California, two from Arizona, and one from Texas - who joined 38 lawmakers from the six Mexican border states at the third annual legislative border forum in Nuevo Laredo.
In separate Binational Commission meetings on Monday and Tuesday in Mexico City, high-ranking U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, will hold talks with their Mexican counterparts on what to do about the estimated 3 million Mexicans working illegally in the United States.
New Mexico state Sen. Mary Jane Garcia said vigilante groups appeal to undereducated young men who feel that state and federal governments haven't done enough to protect towns along the border. The Democrat said the issue also needed urgent attention in the New Mexico legislature.
Also on Saturday, Chihuahua state lawmaker Cesar Castro Lopez called on investigators from the FBI and Britain's Scotland Yard to help solve the brutal slayings of women in Ciudad Juarez.
More than 75 women have been raped and killed since 1993 in Ciudad Juarez, the border's largest city. Dozens of suspects have been arrested, but bodies have continued to turn up in the desert.
Mr. Castro Lopez said that Mexican state and federal commissions assigned to investigate the crimes have failed to produce any concrete leads.
"It has become a financial issue of vital importance for those who do business on the border," he said, adding that violence in Juarez has begun to affect U.S. commercial interests, thus ensuring that the killings fall under U.S. jurisdiction.
The killings have "ruined the reputation of Ciudad Juarez in the eyes of the world," Mr. Castro Lopez said.
Until then, I will say as to my agenda that I am Catholic and pro-life above all else, homeschool my kids, come from a working class factory-working New England family (the only avenue on which I have any sympathy at all with all the flapdoodle over the borders is the claim that it suppresses American workers' wages but certainly no more than GATT or NAFTA), practiced law for 25 years and am proud to be a recovering attorney who has sworn off being part of that particular problem in the future, believe in the strongest military America can create and that it should not be wasted on border duty, that we need no iron curtain around America, that taxes are bad, guns are good, encironmentalism (to which Tancredo has recently sunk) is a scam, that homosexuals have no business attempting marriage, that Ronald Reagan is the best president I will ever see and that Dubya is working his way up the list.
I would gladly see us bomb the UN to protect actual American sovereignty and torpedo at least GATT as a very real threat to our ability to conduct our own nation as we see fit.
Let's not exaggerate. There are many more important constitutional provisions to be vindicated (the right to keep and bear arms individually, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of assembly, fredom of the press, the right not to be sujected to warrantless search and seizure, the right to a jury trial, etc.) than the "constitutional mandate" (what constitutional mandate?) to defend our nation's borders.
I also know that Dubya is President because he had enough sense as governor of Texas and as a candidate for president to be polite and ASK for Hispanic votes.
I wrote a longer post but lost it through computer glitch. I won't try to duplicate it here. Two more points: One is that if you think that was a disingenuous attack on Hillary you don't know me very well and you are not familiar with my posts. I have for years referenced her and her consort and her as the Arkansas Antichrist and Mrs. Antichrist and to her as Her Satanic Majesty. If you don't believe that, ask me if I care. Second, yours is a prescription for guaranteeing a permanent regime such as the unlamented one of the Arkansas Antichrist. If we throw away the Mexicans and other Hispanics, we don't deserve to govern and we won't. Those are our reinforcements (on social issues) coming across that border even if they do not look like you or me. I am Irish, English, Scottish, Scots-Irish and German without a drop of Hispanic blood but fair is fair and truth is truth. Wait a generation or so and see if they are not solid citizens.
Splain me that, Lucy. How do I imply anything like that with anything I've said?
Reparations? Si, I've got their stinkin' reparations. Mira aqui. Sonrisa, ahora.
The chinese and middle easterners are paying upto 65k to drug cartels to sneak in through mexico. Some would wonder who is footing the bill and why they are being sent here.
You know crime springing up along the highway of illegal immigration and drug smuggling in the form of fraudulent documents gave aid to some of the 9/11 terrorists. John Muhummad was a human smuggler and involved with a fraudulent document ring.
This is not hysteria. The 8 corpses of immigrants killed execution style found in the desert where I live in Maricopa county is not hysteria and calling it so wont make the bodies go away. Shouting hysteria isnt going to bring back the murdered border patrol agent or change the fact that the danger is increasing.
Eventually you are going to have to realize that there is a RULE OF LAW and that citizens have CONSTITUTION RIGHTS and calling people paranoid or racist isnt going to make the problems that are very real, go away.
The cause is a lack of law enforcement and amnesties. When you stop enforcing the law and start rewarding crime guess what.. you get a crime wave. That is exactly why this problem has grown exponentially since the first amnesty.
I don't know if we disagree or not. Your dissociated hysterical rantings on this thread aren't clear enough to determine that.
You should consider that the problem becomes catastrophic for many of its victims well before we would have to worry about "they" are taking over the country.
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