FINALLY: The Mexican Cartels’ Worst Nightmare Just Arrived at the Texas Border
After a Customs and Border Protection chopper was forced down by gunfire from
the Mexican side of the border earlier this month, the CBP is finally getting the machinery they need to do the job right — namely, heavily-armed Blackhawk helicopters.
The June 5 incident, which happened just north of the border in Laredo, Texas, occurred in the middle of a drug bust.
http://conservativetribune.com/mexican-c...re-border/
A couple of key points:
1. Those Blackhawks are no one's "worst nightmare". They're just armored to withstand small arms fire that comes at them from the Mexican side--something that standard Border Patrol choppers are not. They don't pose any threat to the cartels.
2. Even if they were armed, that gunfire is coming from the Mexican side. As in, the, "If you shoot at us, you're committing an act of war," side. Cue the, "Maybe we should go to war with Mexico," crowd. No, we shouldn't. Stop being dumb. Sending armed Blackhawks up along the Texas border would accomplish nothing except burning extra fuel to compensate for the weight of those weapons and really ticking the Mexican government off.
So, basically, nothing to see here. It's not even a scare tactic. It's just something designed to put an extra layer of armor between Border Patrol pilots and small arms fire from the Mexican side.
I personally would rather see the National Guard patrolling the border.
Quote:I personally would rather see the National Guard patrolling the border.
Speaking as someone who spent seven years living near the Mexican border, it's not that simple. If it was, we'd have gone that route already. There's a lot of border to cover, and a lot of it is in terrain that's virtually impossible to patrol. Think mountains. Big, jagged, mountains in the middle of the desert, that are a two-hour hike in and an equally long hike out, and nowhere to safely land a chopper. Putting troops in that situation is taking a
huge risk, not so much of coming under cartel fire, but of serious injury. Kevlar armor (which might be more of a liability than a protection during the 115-degree summer days) might stop a bullet, but it won't be of any help if you lose your footing and tumble 20 feet into a ravine.
Quote:Speaking as someone who spent seven years living near the Mexican border, it's not that simple. If it was, we'd have gone that route already. There's a lot of border to cover, and a lot of it is in terrain that's virtually impossible to patrol. Think mountains. Big, jagged, mountains in the middle of the desert, that are a two-hour hike in and an equally long hike out, and nowhere to safely land a chopper. Putting troops in that situation is taking a huge risk, not so much of coming under cartel fire, but of serious injury. Kevlar armor (which might be more of a liability than a protection during the 115-degree summer days) might stop a bullet, but it won't be of any help if you lose your footing and tumble 20 feet into a ravine.
Speaking as someone who is very familiar with the boarder and who was born and raised in a border state, I can assure you that the perilous areas that you describe are not the areas that need patrolling.
Quote:Speaking as someone who is very familiar with the boarder and who was born and raised in a border state, I can assure you that the perilous areas that you describe are not the areas that need patrolling.
How long ago were you on the border? I can assure you that the smuggling activity is increasingly working its way to those areas. The DHS actually ignored environmental laws to fill in an entire ravine in San Diego County that had become a hotbed for smuggling activity. The more that the Border Patrol clamps down on the broad, empty, open stretches of desert, the more illegal border crossers will shift into the harsher terrain, and the focus will inevitably have to change.
Quote:How long ago were you on the border? I can assure you that the smuggling activity is increasingly working its way to those areas. The DHS actually ignored environmental laws to fill in an entire ravine in San Diego County that had become a hotbed for smuggling activity. The more that the Border Patrol clamps down on the broad, empty, open stretches of desert, the more illegal border crossers will shift into the harsher terrain, and the focus will inevitably have to change.
It depends on your question. I haven't lived in the border state (New Mexico) for several years, yet I've been there numerous times since I was born and raised there.
So shifting the accessible entry into our country to much harsher terrain is a bad thing? Putting the Nation Guard on the "easy" border crossing points is a bad thing?
Have you ever been to Arizona, New Mexico or Texas on the boarder? I have. It certainly isn't as you described. Heck, in the early 1980's I remember driving down the "border highway" in El Paso, Tx. and you could watch them wade across the river in the mornings. Drive down later in the afternoon and you could see them going back. Do you know what they were doing? They were coming over here to work, and when they were done they went back across to their homes.
I don't fault the people that were doing that, rather I commend them. They knew that in this country that there was opportunity and a chance at a better way of life. They came/come here to do the jobs that most Americans won't, and work hard doing so.
I often think about those people when I see another labor union trying to organize people for a strike to demand a $15 per hour minimum wage. People that have no skills and have not made any effort whatsoever to better themselves are "demanding" that they get "more". Meanwhile, illegal immigrants are more-than-happy to do the "grunt work" or "dirty work".
Perhaps it's time to shut off the spigot of illegal immigrants entering this country, and put those that are on welfare to work.
I've been along the border in Texas, but only while cruising through Hell Paso a couple of times. I've seen pictures of the Rio Grande, and it seems to range from a backyard creek to a swamp. That's definitely not the hardest area to cross in, and it does need visible enforcement.
New Mexico's border is a disaster all around. There is some rough terrain, but for the most part, yeah, it's broad and flat. Making things worse is that the government cheaped out and put "vehicle barricade" fencing all over the place. I am not a fan of a border fence based upon things I saw in San Diego; it's way too expensive for the little good it does, and way too easy to defeat. That said, vehicle barricade fencing is the absolute dumbest of the dumb ideas. Want to walk across the border? Cool, duck under it or use the base as a stepstool to propel yourself over the top. Want to drive around it? Get a nice, rugged vehicle and put up a ramp. It's beyond useless.
Arizona's border tends to be pretty flat, but the southeast corner of the state gets to be pretty rugged, and as you move west, you encounter an entirely different problem: the Tohono O'odham Nation. It's a reservation, so the US government has very little power there, and the Tohono can (and often do) just tell them to get out entirely. When you consider that the typical "border crossing" down there is a gated range fence, the area surrounding the reservation needs to be watched perhaps more closely than anyplace else along the entire border. Thing is, the sand is loose and easy to get your ankle stuck in, and the temperatures out there are dangerously high to be sending a National Guard trooper from Minnesota into with a 60-lb. pack. That's an area where drone patrols would be extremely helpful.
California's border is an entirely different ballgame. It's sand dunes in the east, which gives way to mountains, then open, hilly desert, then mountains again before reaching the shoreline. You can literally swim around the border at Imperial Beach. I saw someone try to make the swim across, and they were swarmed by Border Patrol upon reaching the shore. It was kind of funny.
Southwestern California is the part of the border I know best, from San Diego over to Jacumba, and it's a wild place. Once you get out near the Otay Lakes wilderness (an area that I refused to go through after dark), the terrain becomes rocky and overgrown. Follow that through Tecate towards Potrero, and it's mountains, sometimes steep cliffs. From Potrero to Campo it opens up into hilly desert terrain again, easy to patrol, but once you get towards Jacumba and points east, you're back into mountains so jagged and steep that there's no way to safely patrol the area, let alone build a fence.
I don't think you and I are too far apart on this one. I'm not in favor of trying to round up and deport immigrants who are already here. I think it would be a massive time and money sink. I don't even think we should be spending too much effort trying to track down illegal immigrants who are crossing the border by themselves or with one or two trusted friends. They're just coming over to find work, and I can respect that. America was built by people like them. Where I draw the line are drug smugglers and human traffickers. Anyone caught in the US illegally with any illegal substances on them, regardless of type of amount, should be charged with smuggling and get to spend some time in a nice, cold jail cell before being dumped back into whatever country they came from.
Human trafficking is a different story for me. On the one hand, I do genuinely feel for people whose lives down there are so bad that they're willing to spend all their family's money to try and get into America for a better life. On the other, the guides those people pay their money to are cartel employees, and they instill the fear of God into their paying customers about what will happen if the guide is ratted out when the group is caught. You just can't let anyone from those large groups across, because you might be letting the guide in along with them, and you're legitimizing the trade.
And welfare, there's a fun topic. Without diving too far into it, I believe that the majority of people on welfare have no business receiving government money, and if locking the doors on illegal immigrants helps force them back into the workforce, then I'm all for it.
Quote:I've been along the border in Texas, but only while cruising through Hell Paso a couple of times. I've seen pictures of the Rio Grande, and it seems to range from a backyard creek to a swamp. That's definitely not the hardest area to cross in, and it does need visible enforcement.
New Mexico's border is a disaster all around. There is some rough terrain, but for the most part, yeah, it's broad and flat. Making things worse is that the government cheaped out and put "vehicle barricade" fencing all over the place. I am not a fan of a border fence based upon things I saw in San Diego; it's way too expensive for the little good it does, and way too easy to defeat. That said, vehicle barricade fencing is the absolute dumbest of the dumb ideas. Want to walk across the border? Cool, duck under it or use the base as a stepstool to propel yourself over the top. Want to drive around it? Get a nice, rugged vehicle and put up a ramp. It's beyond useless.
Arizona's border tends to be pretty flat, but the southeast corner of the state gets to be pretty rugged, and as you move west, you encounter an entirely different problem: the Tohono O'odham Nation. It's a reservation, so the US government has very little power there, and the Tohono can (and often do) just tell them to get out entirely. When you consider that the typical "border crossing" down there is a gated range fence, the area surrounding the reservation needs to be watched perhaps more closely than anyplace else along the entire border. Thing is, the sand is loose and easy to get your ankle stuck in, and the temperatures out there are dangerously high to be sending a National Guard trooper from Minnesota into with a 60-lb. pack. That's an area where drone patrols would be extremely helpful.
California's border is an entirely different ballgame. It's sand dunes in the east, which gives way to mountains, then open, hilly desert, then mountains again before reaching the shoreline. You can literally swim around the border at Imperial Beach. I saw someone try to make the swim across, and they were swarmed by Border Patrol upon reaching the shore. It was kind of funny.
Southwestern California is the part of the border I know best, from San Diego over to Jacumba, and it's a wild place. Once you get out near the Otay Lakes wilderness (an area that I refused to go through after dark), the terrain becomes rocky and overgrown. Follow that through Tecate towards Potrero, and it's mountains, sometimes steep cliffs. From Potrero to Campo it opens up into hilly desert terrain again, easy to patrol, but once you get towards Jacumba and points east, you're back into mountains so jagged and steep that there's no way to safely patrol the area, let alone build a fence.
I don't think you and I are too far apart on this one. I'm not in favor of trying to round up and deport immigrants who are already here. I think it would be a massive time and money sink. I don't even think we should be spending too much effort trying to track down illegal immigrants who are crossing the border by themselves or with one or two trusted friends. They're just coming over to find work, and I can respect that. America was built by people like them. Where I draw the line are drug smugglers and human traffickers. Anyone caught in the US illegally with any illegal substances on them, regardless of type of amount, should be charged with smuggling and get to spend some time in a nice, cold jail cell before being dumped back into whatever country they came from.
Human trafficking is a different story for me. On the one hand, I do genuinely feel for people whose lives down there are so bad that they're willing to spend all their family's money to try and get into America for a better life. On the other, the guides those people pay their money to are cartel employees, and they instill the fear of God into their paying customers about what will happen if the guide is ratted out when the group is caught. You just can't let anyone from those large groups across, because you might be letting the guide in along with them, and you're legitimizing the trade.
And welfare, there's a fun topic. Without diving too far into it, I believe that the majority of people on welfare have no business receiving government money, and if locking the doors on illegal immigrants helps force them back into the workforce, then I'm all for it.
Ol Bender is a certified drug trafficker!
Quote:Ol Bender is a certified drug trafficker!
I used to tell people that I was a Colombian druglord because it was so much easier to explain than what I actually do is. Maybe I wasn't kidding
It's economics in terms of Mexicans coming here to work. If you made it harder for employers (IE penalties) to hire undocumented workers, the market for their labor would dry up.
Quote:It's economics in terms of Mexicans coming here to work. If you made it harder for employers (IE penalties) to hire undocumented workers, the market for their labor would dry up.
That would address part of the problem certainly. However, I have seen people hire illegals to do private work. Need some landscaping or construction work done on your house? You can "DIY" by hiring a few hands to do the labor for you. I've seen it personally. Want your house cleaned? Need to clean some horse stalls? Bail some alfalfa? The list goes on.
My point is, it's not just companies that hire illegals and it's not something easily tracked.
Quote:It's economics in terms of Mexicans coming here to work. If you made it harder for employers (IE penalties) to hire undocumented workers, the market for their labor would dry up.
IMO the immigration has far less to do with labor than is the widely held perception. I'm sure it happens but it's not like us farmers are scooping up every illegal we can and tossing them out in the field.
And as far as farming, we do face pretty hefty fines for allowing undocumented workers in a field.
Quote:That would address part of the problem certainly. However, I have seen people hire illegals to do private work. Need some landscaping or construction work done on your house? You can "DIY" by hiring a few hands to do the labor for you. I've seen it personally. Want your house cleaned? Need to clean some horse stalls? Bail some alfalfa? The list goes on.
My point is, it's not just companies that hire illegals and it's not something easily tracked.
I can attest to this. Hang out in front of any Home Depot at around 8:00 AM on a weekday morning in SoCal or Phoenix and you'll see a crowd of men waiting for someone to come by and ask who's available to come "help out" for a day. That's virtually impossible to police, as a homeowner isn't required to perform visa checks like an employer would be. Technically, landscaping and construction companies have to verify immigration status, but lots of those guys are sole proprietors who drive their own personal, unbranded trucks. Good luck to any cop who's trying to prove that they aren't just looking for help on their own property.
I do recall stories on the news in San Diego of Imperial Valley farms being raided by the feds in surprise immigration checks of all workers, and having any undocumented immigrants working the fields would net very hefty fines.
Quote:I do recall stories on the news in San Diego of Imperial Valley farms being raided by the feds in surprise immigration checks of all workers, and having any undocumented immigrants working the fields would net very hefty fines.
Yes, they do patrol, although in my area it's not Feds per se. They patrol around mainly for safety violations, and illegal burning, and if they stop they will check documents too. That's why I say it's not as widespread in commercial farming as most people believe. No one is risking a $10,000 fine to pay a guy $7 cash instead of $10. I'm certainly not and no one I know is either.
It was prevelant 25 years ago but not as much today, although I'm sure it still happens.
Quote:It's economics in terms of Mexicans coming here to work. If you made it harder for employers (IE penalties) to hire undocumented workers, the market for their labor would dry up.
Agreed...I can't fault the Mexican people for wanting to better themselves...I would do the same thing for my family that they are doing by coming across the border to work...If (as you said) the penalties for employers hiring undocumented workers were tough enough to cause them financial difficulty, there would be a reduction in illegal immigration...Now there are two more points that I think would further help to dry up the market for illegal immigration...
Landlords...Fine landlords a hefty sum for renting housing to undocumented persons...
PUBLIC ASSISTANCE...Stop giving public assistance to anyone who is illegal...Stop giving them health care, stop giving them food stamps, stop giving them anything at all..
Take away the availability of jobs, housing, medical, food, cash benefits and there would be very little reason to cross illegally...
I fully support immigration, all I care is that it's done legally...Entering our country illegally is a CRIME of which our government willfully rewards, and that is just plain wrong...
Quote:That would address part of the problem certainly. However, I have seen people hire illegals to do private work. Need some landscaping or construction work done on your house? You can "DIY" by hiring a few hands to do the labor for you. I've seen it personally. Want your house cleaned? Need to clean some horse stalls? Bail some alfalfa? The list goes on.
My point is, it's not just companies that hire illegals and it's not something easily tracked.
Yeah, I hear ya. There will always be the "underground" market. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't hit up the low hanging fruit. Why there aren't stiff penalties on New Mexican restaurants that hire illegals is beyond me...
When I was in college I worked at a restaurant called Guarduno's as a waiter. The kitchen staff had at least 3 people that weren't documented. 1 was from Cuba and the other 2 were from Mexico that I knew of. They were all working as dishwashers, which nobody wants to do. But man, it's obvious that the owners were getting a good deal by not having to pay payroll taxes, FICA or any other expense. It was all under the table, straight cash.
Yeah, there will always be cracks in the system, but it doesn't mean you ignore the easy fixes.
Oh and El Paso has changed quite a bit from the 90's.... Just to say. I visited there for my wife's 1st cousin who just graduated in May. The city looks alot different in 2015 compared to what it looked like in '94 when last I went for a soccer tournament out there. It's not the Hell Hole that I remember it to be.
Juarez is absolutely a stones throw from El Paso, there is obviously going to be some influence from people coming across the border. There's no way to really stop it. But I wouldn't say that the El Paso is overrun and deteriorating from it. Like I said, the city looks much improved now as opposed to back when I used to go there over the summer for soccer tourneys in the 90's. It's still hotter than all get out, and I would never live there... But hey, to each their own. I-10, the main highway and all the surrounding commercial and residential areas are actually pretty well maintained and look newly developed. The old industrial corridor that used to surround I-10 is no longer the eye sore it used to be. Matter of fact, I couldn't see it at all. And we spent 3 days driving around the city.
I live on a farm in Tennessee, and lease our cleared land to a man who farms hay. When it comes time to cut and bale, he goes to a Home Depot 35 miles away and hires about 6 - 8 Mexican immigrants to work. I have no idea if they are in this country illegally, but he prefers them because the local men either don't want the job, or won't stay the full day or show up the next day. He pays a reasonable wage of $10 per hour, and tells me they are the best workers he can find.
Is he part of the problem? Sure, but I find it hard to blame him.
Quote:I live on a farm in Tennessee, and lease our cleared land to a man who farms hay. When it comes time to cut and bale, he goes to a Home Depot 35 miles away and hires about 6 - 8 Mexican immigrants to work. I have no idea if they are in this country illegally, but he prefers them because the local men either don't want the job, or won't stay the full day or show up the next day. He pays a reasonable wage of $10 per hour, and tells me they are the best workers he can find.
Is he part of the problem? Sure, but I find it hard to blame him.
Alabama passed the harshest anti-illegal law in the country. When alot of the farm workers moved out, the farmers had a hard time finding good workers among the local populace.
Quote:Yeah, I hear ya. There will always be the "underground" market. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't hit up the low hanging fruit. Why there aren't stiff penalties on New Mexican restaurants that hire illegals is beyond me...
When I was in college I worked at a restaurant called Guarduno's as a waiter. The kitchen staff had at least 3 people that weren't documented. 1 was from Cuba and the other 2 were from Mexico that I knew of. They were all working as dishwashers, which nobody wants to do. But man, it's obvious that the owners were getting a good deal by not having to pay payroll taxes, FICA or any other expense. It was all under the table, straight cash.
Yeah, there will always be cracks in the system, but it doesn't mean you ignore the easy fixes.
Oh and El Paso has changed quite a bit from the 90's.... Just to say. I visited there for my wife's 1st cousin who just graduated in May. The city looks alot different in 2015 compared to what it looked like in '94 when last I went for a soccer tournament out there. It's not the Hell Hole that I remember it to be.
Juarez is absolutely a stones throw from El Paso, there is obviously going to be some influence from people coming across the border. There's no way to really stop it. But I wouldn't say that the El Paso is overrun and deteriorating from it. Like I said, the city looks much improved now as opposed to back when I used to go there over the summer for soccer tourneys in the 90's. It's still hotter than all get out, and I would never live there... But hey, to each their own. I-10, the main highway and all the surrounding commercial and residential areas are actually pretty well maintained and look newly developed. The old industrial corridor that used to surround I-10 is no longer the eye sore it used to be. Matter of fact, I couldn't see it at all. And we spent 3 days driving around the city.
Kind of a small world. I was friends in high school with the brother of the owner of Garduno's. They were our neighbors in Alameda and I used to know the family very well. The owner's daughter is a few years younger than me, and I remember that she was definitely a hottie.
I had the same experience working at a different restaurant, only it was not only the dishwasher, but also some of the cooks. I don't know if they were illegals or not, but they could not speak English. Language wasn't an issue since pretty much everybody that worked there was bilingual.
Regarding El Paso, I haven't been back there since the mid 80's when we used to go down for the weekend to party in Juarez. I never thought that it was a bad place at all.