Border dangers are increasing

Whether it is drug smuggling, human smuggling or illegal immigrants, the border crossings will mostly occur after dark. Our group’s next desert excursion will be at night, and we have all started training.

The criminal activity across the border has turned into a very dangerous game. Around dusk the drug and human smugglers begin to push across the border, and the game begins. The Border Patrol tries its best to stop all this activity but there is just too much of it, coming from too many places, and the majority of smugglers and immigrants make it through.

The smugglers have lots of help. Cartels have spotters stationed in the hills and mountains along southern Arizona’s smuggling corridors to tell the smugglers where Border Patrol and civilian groups are waiting.

At times, the desert turns into a super highway of smugglers, illegal immigrants, Border Patrol agents and us. My guess is, it’s just a matter of time until a full-scale firefight breaks out among the various factions, then this cat and mouse game will end.

The first night I spent training in the desert was like a horror movie; everywhere I looked I imagined a cartel member with a machine gun. This training was in what we call a hot area, with actual activity. We were practicing with night vision equipment, trying to accurately judge distance and location. We also practiced spotting the spotters — and keeping them from spotting us.

What I saw that night was like something out of a bad movie: Groups of men carrying oversized backpacks of drugs, mules trudging and winding their way through desert gullies, back and forth like a make-believe snake train. Some of groups had at least two guards armed with what appeared to be automatic rifles. Another group we observed looked like adolescents or young teenagers; the distance was considerable, so I could not tell for sure.

Trust me; this environment is no place for most adults much less for kids.

Seeing the children moving through the desert reminded me of a book I read a couple of weeks ago, “The Death of Josseline,” by Margaret Regan. Josseline, 14, from Guatemala, was trying to cross the desert with her 10-year-old brother, a number of adults and a drug cartel coyote who Josseline’s mother had hired. The children were trying to reach their mother who was living in Los Angeles, also an illegal immigrant. Josseline fell ill shortly after crossing the border and began to vomit, and simple could not go on. The coyote left her in the desert, and no one in the group stayed with her. What she must have gone through as she died is impossible to imagine, but her death is both unforgettable and unforgiveable. A member of a Mexican drug cartel killed her through negligence, but our government is not without blame, and neither are we.

Regan’s book is full of stories like Josseline’s, putting faces on what is mostly statistical information published in newspapers all over the U.S. and Mexico. It is reported that 1,800 humans have lost their lives in the Arizona desert over the last several years, a record 59 in the month of July 2010 in Pinal County, Ariz., alone.

This situation here in the southwestern United States is tragic in every sense of the word. There are no winners, only losers, with the American people and those who wish to become Americans losing the most. The two governments responsible for resolving these life and death issues are not facing up to their responsibility. Mexico can’t or won’t stop the cartels from using the border as their personal highway, and the U.S. government has convinced itself that millions of people, thousands of deaths, and tons of drugs entering our country illegally is somehow a civil rights issue.

Amidst all of this tragedy I find myself at night in the desert training with other men and women for a fight that will almost certainly end in more tragedy. Why do this? At this point we are spotting drug runners, smugglers, or illegals and reporting them to the Border Patrol, preferably without confronting the smugglers. I hope above hope that we will rescue someone like Josseline and make this all worthwhile. The desert is a very tricky and deceiving environment, and I know one of these days we will come face to face with real trouble. That’s the moment I dread the most but that’s what we are mostly training for.

The truth is that there is no know solution, at least not one the America government is willing to use. There are more than 20,000 border patrol agents, 1,200 National Guard, hundreds of local law enforcement officers, FBI and, most likely, CIA agents all over the border. They have technology buried in the ground, cameras stuffed in cactus, night vision technology, encrypted radios, satellites, microwaves, drone, and God knows what else. However, the drug, human smugglers, and illegals just keep coming.

Our government is broken and it does not have the political will to act in our defense, nor does it appear to even recognize its responsibility towards its citizens. Citizens have to decide each for themselves what type of action, if any, they are willing to take. How will history remember the men and women of our generation? Will we be just a footnote to the destruction of America? Or will we be known to the world as the defenders of rightful liberty?

Source - http://www.austindailyherald.com/2010/10/15/column-border-dangers-are-increasing/