View from the Border

I thought that this was a interesting read. It's a whole different prospective when you live down there. My in-laws live in Yuma and they are afraid to go out after dark. It's a shame when American citizens are held prisoner in their own homes because our government refuses to secure our borders and enforce the laws that they passed.



 Report from Cochise County, Arizona


 By T.J. Woodard

 Being an avid AT reader, and living on the Arizona border in Cochise County,
 I thought I would provide those who wish to be informed some insight into
 the truth about the state of the U.S.-Mexican border -- at least in this
 part of the state.

 I moved to Cochise County after retiring from the Army in 2008 to take a
 position working at Fort Huachuca (pronounced "wa-choo-ka," an Apache word
 meaning "place of thunder" and referring to the time after the summer
 monsoon season). Having lived here in 1991 for eight months while attending
 an Army school, I soon realized that the place had changed considerably in
 the eighteen years of my absence.

 The first thing I noticed was how many border patrol vehicles were on the
 roads in the city of Sierra Vista. The Border Patrol has a large station
 near here in the city of Naco. There are far more Border Patrol vehicles in
 the area than SV police cars. They come in many forms -- trucks for off-road
 work, trailers carrying all-terrain vehicles, pickups with capacity for
 carrying large numbers of people once apprehended, and even a staff car for
 the area chaplain. The Border Patrol presence has grown substantially, so
 one would think the border area was nice and safe.

 Not so. Within a short time after arriving in southern Arizona while on my
 way to work, I noticed eight illegal immigrants on the side of the road.
 Fortunately, they were in the custody of capable and attentive Border Patrol
 agents. Unfortunately, they were less than a hundred feet from my daughter's
 bus stop. She gets personal service to school now, as the school district
 refuses to enter the gated community in which we live. There is a nice wash,
 a valley into which the rainwater drains during the monsoons, which provides
 a nice route for the illegals to follow into the city, and therefore into
 their locations for pickup by the vehicles that will get them farther north.

 Later, after I attended a movie on a Friday night, a car passed by me in the
 next lane going nearly a hundred miles an hour. It took a few seconds before
 I saw the police behind -- way behind -- with lights and sirens, trying to
 catch up. Surprise, surprise -- the next morning's paper discussed a Mexican
 drug runner being caught by County Sheriff's Deputies. On several occasions,
 the Border Patrol's helicopter has flown low and slow over the neighborhood,
 rattling windows and shining its spotlight in our backyard. When this
 happens, I strap on my pistol, grab a flashlight, and look and listen.
 Fortunately, I haven't found anybody within a hundred yards of the house --
 yet.

 Working on a U.S. Army fort, one would think we were fairly secure from
 these threats. Just not true. Reading the Fort Huachuca newspaper one
 morning, I noticed an interesting part of the "community" page. It asked for
 volunteers to assist in cleaning up "dumps" on posts where the illegals
 would drop their supplies used to cross the border and change clothing. They
 do this in order to blend in and not look like they just spent a day or two
 crossing the border in the dust and heat of southern Arizona. The most
 frightening part of this is that Fort Huachuca is the U.S. Army Intelligence
 Center, where the Army trains its intelligence soldiers -- analysts,
 interrogators, radio intercept specialists, and counterintelligence
 agents -- for operations overseas. If we can't secure the fort we use to
 train our intelligence soldiers, how can we secure anything else?

 Much has been discussed about the new law in Arizona making it unlawful to
 be in Arizona in violation of federal immigration statutes. However, much
 less has been discussed about the shooting of rancher Robert Krentz. Robert
 was killed on his ranch on March 28, 2010. His ranch, on which the family
 began grazing cattle in 1907 (Arizona became a state in 1912), is a large,
 35,000-acre area in remote Cochise County. It is so remote that the original
 Cochise, an Apache leader, used the mountainous terrain near it to hide from
 the U.S. Cavalry in the early 1870s. But much less is being said about the
 eight illegal immigrants and their load of 280 pounds of marijuana seized
 the day before Krentz was killed.

 So Arizona should be boycotted because its people would like to keep it
 safe? Somebody please explain the logic of that for me. It doesn't take a
 bullet from a drug runner's gun to make those of us down here near the
 border understand that this is drug-related violence -- and Rob's death
 proves it.

 It also doesn't take much more reading to see that the drug dealers are a
 huge problem with far-reaching capabilities. On April 27, 2010, a large drug
 bust took place here in Cochise County. Among those arrested was Angelica
 Marie Borquez, the secretary for the Drug Enforcement Division of the
 Cochise County Attorney office. Allegedly, Ms. Borquez was tipping off the
 drug runners to counter drug operations conducted by the county. She was so
 bold that she used the phone in the County Attorney's office to make some of
 her calls.

 This isn't a blatant effort by drug cartels to obtain control here in
 America?

 Many have already called Arizona residents racists. They are concerned that
 police will profile Hispanics and disproportionally harass them. But we
 understand something others in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco don't seem
 to remember -- we border Mexico. The fact is that most illegal immigrants
 coming across the border here are, well, Mexicans. Those of us down here
 facing the danger every day really don't care what some Hollywood actor has
 to say about the issue. Nor do we care about what the Colombian government
 or the Latino music community thinks of it. We just want to stay safe.



 This is not about race; it's about facts. Use a few of these facts the next
 time somebody wants to engage you in discussion about the border. Tell him
 you learned these things from somebody who can see Mexico from his front
 porch.



 T.J. Woodard is a retired Army officer who lives less than ten miles from
 the Mexican border. He carries a pistol even in his own house (my underline)
 in order to be prepared to defend his family whenever necessary.