Thread: Texas border security situation is not a joking matter

Texas border security situation is not a joking matter


By GREG ABBOTT
HOUSTON CHRONICLE

May 18, 2011, 8:05PM

Last week in El Paso, President Barack Obama proclaimed our border secure. The president all but ridiculed those who refuse to accept his proclamation that the Obama administration has answered Americans' concerns about border security. Obama even joked about those who believe the federal government has not done enough to secure the border: "Maybe they'll say we need a moat," the president said. "Or alligators in the moat."

Perhaps the president's glib remarks can be blamed on the fact that the El Paso trip marked the first border visit of his presidency. For those of us who live and work in border states, the situation is neither funny nor solved. In reality, border violence is escalating and vast sectors of the border remain unsecure.

Just three months before the president proclaimed the border secure, the U.S. Government Accountability Office revealed that the Border Patrol still lacks "operational control" over 55 percent of the border. According to the GAO, the Border Patrol acknowledges that more than half of the nation's 1,954-mile southwest border is "not acceptable for border security."

The situation in Texas is worse. The GAO reported that Texas' stretch of the border is by far the least controlled — and therefore least secure - of any southwest border state. In the Marfa sector, for example, the Border Patrol exercises operational control over just 10 percent of the border.

The director of the Texas Department of Public Safety recently testified to Congress that 70 percent to 90 percent of the Texas-Mexico border "is only being monitored as opposed to managed or controlled" by the Border Patrol.

The day after President Obama declared he had "answered" our border security concerns - and that cartel violence is really only a problem in Mexico - Texas law enforcement officials told Congress a very different story. Included in their testimony were these details:

 DPS has directly tied Texas-based shootings, kidnappings and murders to Mexican cartels.

 Zeta-cartel enforcers were apprehended in Texas after crossing the border to murder a law enforcement informant.

 Gunfire from Mexico struck a college dormitory in Brownsville and City Hall in El Paso.

 Border law enforcement authorities apprehended gang members who possessed caches of hand grenades and .50 caliber bullets - munitions designed to destroy aircraft and military equipment.

These incidents are in addition to the recent cartel-related murder of a U.S. consulate employee who lived in El Paso, the murder of David Hartley on Falcon Lake and the steady stream of reports detailing gory beheadings and mass graves within miles of the border.

As Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez put it, local law enforcement officials are "outmanned and outgunned." But Sheriff Gonzalez added an even more important - and frequently overlooked - observation in his congressional testimony: "There cannot be homeland security without border security."

Underscoring that point, a separate GAO report revealed that Mexican drug cartels are increasingly collaborating with "aliens who illegally enter the region from countries of special interest to the United States such as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan." Also, federal prosecutors in San Antonio recently revealed that a Somali man illegally smuggled hundreds of Somali nationals - including committed jihadists - into the United States through Mexico.

By dismissively joking about moats and alligators, the president is ignoring the dangerous situation threatening our border communities. We need the Obama administration to finally get serious about securing what Sheriff Gonzalez correctly called an "unprotected, wide open and extremely porous" border with Mexico.

President Obama should start listening to state and local law enforcement officials, stop treating border violence like a joke and get serious about securing the border.

Abbott is the 50th attorney general of Texas.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/edi ... 70877.html

[quote="jean"]Texas border security situation is not a joking matter


Obama needs to be leaned on so hard, that he's "backed up against a corner"! (not literally, I don't want to get in trouble)! He needs to be humiliated for ridiculing Americans! Tail, meet between Obama's legs!

Originally Posted by FreeRideIsOver

Originally Posted by jean

Texas border security situation is not a joking matter


Obama needs to be leaned on so hard, that he's "backed up against a corner"! (not literally, I don't want to get in trouble)! He needs to be humiliated for ridiculing Americans! Tail, meet between Obama's legs!

Agree - we need to get noisier than the Dreamers and open borders crowd. I don't think the tail between the legs thing would ever happen - Obama has no sense of shame.