Thread: AZ: Illegal immigrants burying border in garbage

Hey pjr40, I grew up in Downey. Florence and Woodruff. Moved out in '71 though. Mom and dad both grew up in Huntington Park. It was a middle/ upper middle area then. HP and the rest are unfit for human habitation now.

pjr40 wrote:

I am growing tired of typing this material and it depresses me. but I could regale you with stories which would curl your hair. The fools in Washington have no idea these things exist and, if they did, they wouldn't give a damn because they are always protected from it.

I gave up and moved out of Downey seven years ago, swearing I would puke if I heard another word of Spanish.

I feel exactly the same way! The stories I could tell!

Here in Wisconsin, when I hear Spanish (which I've only heard about one or two times, thank goodness), I cringe. The dread I feel is amazing. Now, don't get me wrong...it's not the actual Spanish language that makes me cringe (actually, I think it"s a lovely language).....it's the memories that come flooding back when I hear Spanish: the filth, the scum, the disgusting things I saw and heard. Ugh.

Originally Posted by pjr40

Illegal immigrants burying border in garbage

Gee, from the looks of many cities in my state of California, I just assumed the illegals brought all their trash with them.

So true, pjr40! I have lived on the same quiet residential street in a suburb of LA for years and for the last year our street is littered with candy wrappers, beer cans, half eaten fruit, paper sacks, soda cans...all because of the day laborers, handymen, and construction crews that are working in my neighborhood! TWICE A DAY I have to go out and pick up their trash! It is sooooooo disgusting! What a bunch of pigs!!!!!!!

oldsalt wrote:

Hey pjr40, I grew up in Downey. Florence and Woodruff. Moved out in '71 though. Mom and dad both grew up in Huntington Park. It was a middle/ upper middle area then. HP and the rest are unfit for human habitation now.

Half of Downey was originally from Huntington Park or South Gate. All fine, upstanding, middle class Americans. Raised our children with sound All American values. It breaks my heart to see what has happened to the entire area these past 20 years. The folks in middle America don't realize it, but this will be their fate if this Senate Bill passes.

oldsalt wrote:

The folks in middle America don't realize it, but this will be their fate if this Senate Bill passes.

That's exactly right. If this amnesty bill passes, people who slept through all of this will have the rude awakening of all rude awakenings. And I just hope it's not too late to do something about it. Because if it becomes legal for them to "come out of the shadows" as Bush rants on about all the time, believe me THEY WILL. And they'll buy houses in the middle-class and upper middle-class neighborhoods, and they'll live 25 to a house...they don't care. They don't mind using the back lawn for a toilet or sleeping on bunk beds on the garage. They're used to that kind of living. And when Mr. and Mrs. Middle-America, who are used to their green, manicured lawns (mowed, by the way, by an illegal immigrant), and their quiet, peaceful streets, have to deal with the chickens crowing, the trash, the noise, and the filth....well, it will be interesting to see how it all comes down.

June 06, 2007
U.S. Pays Millions To Clean Illegal Immigrant Trash
American taxpayers will dish out $63 million to clean up 25 million pounds of trash and human waste left by illegal immigrants who cross through federal and state parks during their trek from Mexico to the U.S.

After three years of very costly cleanups, the federal government has barely put a dent on the massive problem which has ruined the vegetation and wildlife in this country’s most prized national forests. With the help of volunteer groups, the federal government has removed a mere 1% of the trash--about 250,000 pounds--from thousands of acres.

The litter includes water bottles, clothes, razors, homemade weapons, food, ropes, radios and lots of human waste. The trash, from millions of illegal immigrants attempting to enter the country annually, is piling up at a much faster rate than it can be cleaned up and has proven to be devastating to the area’s natural habitat.

As an example the government agency responsible for the cleanup, the Bureau of Land Management, figures that the 577,000 illegal immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol in 2005 alone, left about 4 million pounds of trash during that period.

This has severely damaged the otherwise pristine 1.5 million acres of national forest located within 50 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. Among them are Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and Huachuca Mountains as well as California’s Cleveland National Forest.

In Congressional testimony last year, a high-ranking U.S. Forest official provided troubling details of the devastating effects illegal border activities are having on federal land management agencies. Besides the trash crisis, the official told the House panel that 370 acres of U.S. National Forest burned that year due to illegal campfires.

Because Arizona’s Coronado National Forest has 60 contiguous miles with Mexico and therefore the nation’s highest incidence of cross-border violators, it has been the most affected. In 2005 the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector apprehended half a million illegal immigrants as well as 99,000 pounds of marijuana being transported through the Coronado National Forest.

Posted by at June 6, 2007 04:26 PM

http://www.corruptionchronicles.com/200 ... _ille.html

Border trash troubles
FROM STAFF AND AP REPORTS
June 6, 2007 - 9:43PM
Despite cleanup efforts by various agencies and the federal government in the desert along the border, southern Arizona, including Yuma County, still faces the problem of trash left behind by illegal border-crossers.

Although trash is found all over the desert, larger quantities found in Yuma County are along the Colorado River and in designated "lay-up" spots or desert areas where undocumented immigrants await to be picked up, usually near interstate freeways and highways, said Ruben Conde, chief ranger for the Bureau of Land Management Colorado District.

Over this year, the Yuma sector Border Patrol has seen less trash, due possibly to the 68 percent decrease in the number of entries, although littering remains a problems, said Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling.

"I'm sure it's not all illegal aliens (leaving all the trash) but a great majority of it is," Easterling said.

The BLM Yuma Field Office sees a large amount of trash such as "lots and lots" of water bottles, food containers and clothing, plus items that help aid illegal crossings like carpet, foam and abandoned smuggling vehicles, Conde said.

"It runs a gamut depending on which area, which part of the border," Conde said.

When driving in the desert, smugglers not only violate regulations by driving off established roads and trails on public land but also destroy the landscape and vegetation, Conde said.

"They don't care if they're tearing up the landscape, if they're causing land erosion, if they're running over protected plants or cactus or anything like that. So that's a problem we're left with. The results of that: a scarred landscape and it looks terrible."

The amount of personal trash left behind also causes a "huge problem" because there are not enough people and resources to keep up with the area's desert cleanup. The trash that is never picked up is left and harms the environment.

"There's so much of it (trash) there's not enough volunteers to go to all these different places," Conde said.

Even Border Patrol agents have helped out in community projects to help clean up the desert, and individual agents occasionally fill up a plastic bag and bring it back to a city trash bin, Easterling said.

Nonbiodegradeable plastics, other man-made materials and other disposables left along the river bottom can get into the river channel, causing harm to fish and birds, Conde said.

Animals get tangled up in items and swallow objects that kill them, in addition to being disrupted in their natural environment by all the human activity.

Among the animals living in the area are two endangered species, the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher and the Yuma Clapper Rail, which primarily live along the Colorado River along the border, Conde said.

"It seems like a rare and minor thing but it's not, it's pretty serious. We're not
talking casual littering by a few people."

Not only does the trash do damage to the environment, but the cleanup is "extremely expensive, extremely expensive. We've spent tens of thousands of dollars just out of the Yuma field office over the past couple of years cleaning up trash related to illegal border crossers," Conde said.

Authorities estimate the 3.2 million-plus immigrants caught by the Border Patrol dropped 25 million pounds of garbage in the southern Arizona desert from July 1999 through June 2005. The figure assumes that each illegal immigrant discards eight pounds of trash, the weight of some abandoned backpacks found in the desert.

The trash is piling up faster than it can be cleaned up. Considering that the Border Patrol apprehended more than 577,000 illegal immigrants in 2004-05 alone, the BLM figures that those people left almost 4 million pounds of trash that same year.

That’s 16 times what was picked up in three years. And that doesn’t include the unknown amounts of garbage left by border-crossers who don’t get caught.

In 2002, the United States estimated that removing all litter from lands just in southeast Arizona — east of the Tohono Reservation — would cost about $4.5 million over five years. This count didn’t include such trash hotbeds as Ironwood Forest National Monument, the Altar Valley, Organ Pipe and Cabeza Prieta.

Since then, Congress appropriated about $3.4 million for a wide range of environmental remediation measures in all of southern Arizona. This includes repairing roads, building fences and removing abandoned cars.

The five-year tab is $62.9 million for all forms of environmental remediation for immigration-related damage across southeast Arizona, including $23 million for the first year.

http://www.yumasun.com/news/trash_34497 ... esert.html