How secure are U.S. military installations? You would think the answer is: very. But, as a reporter uncovered, one installation, in southern Arizona, has been overrun by illegal alien border crossers, and the problem is only getting worse.
Last month, TRN reported on a criminal illegal alien fugitive who managed to gain security clearance and access to an Arizona Air Force base. Now comes the story of Fort Huachuca — only 15 miles north of the border with Mexico — which has been invaded by “hundreds” of illegal aliens over the past year. Or at least that is the number that were caught.
February 20, 2014
by Brian Hayes | Top Right News
Fort Huachuca is home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and the U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command. Much of the work that goes on at Fort Huachuca is classified but, as News 4 Tucson Investigators learned, the Army seems to be unable to keep foreign nationals out.
And the number of illegals apprehended on the base has doubled in 2013 over the prior year.
Dave Stoddard, a former U.S. Border Patrol supervisor said, “I think the average American should be petrified.”
Stoddard knows the area well. He grew up in Cochise county, served in the U.S. Army, and has even testified before Congress about illegal immigration.
“That smuggling operation going through there is very very sophisticated. They’ve been getting by with it for years. They know the formula. They know the routine,” Stoddard says.
In fiscal year 2013, there were 331 illegal aliens apprehended on Fort Huachuca. In fiscal year 2012, that number was 112. There were 96 captured on-post in fiscal 2011.
Stoddard says the problems of illegal immigrants slipping onto the post isn’t a new one. “The military chooses to close its eyes and ignore it,” Stoddard says.
Officials at Fort Huachuca refused requests for an on-camera interview on the issue, saying “apprehending undocumented immigrants is a Department of Homeland Security mission and not a D.o.D. one.”
Passing the buck? That’s their answer to this security nightmare?
Incidentally, DHS did not respond to TRN’s requests for comment on this issue.
Stoddard says he worries about the possibility that weapons could also be coming across the border, and through Fort Huachuca.
“When you look at the photographs of these aliens coming through the border, and some coming through Fort Huachuca, with backpacks weighing 30 to 50 pounds, who knows what’s in there really?” Stoddard says.
Stoddard believes the solution is simple.
“Our immigration laws work, they’re just not enforced, and therein is the problem,” Stoddard says.
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