AZ - Researcher observes 330 illegal crossings in one night
Sunday, 03 June 2012
By Chase Kamp Today Publications
Pinal County Today
During the night of March 23, 2012, a researcher with the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington immigration think tank, observed significant illegal activity in the Vekol Valley area that included 330 illegal entries, drug mules and an ultra-light plane performing a drug drop.
The observation came along 12-mile stretch of border in the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation in Arizona and extending into the United States northwest about 80 miles to the Sonoran Desert National Monument's Vekol Valley on I-8 and about another 20 miles north of the interstate. The area of observation is owned and operated by the federal government with the exception of the Tohono O'odham Nation's border property.
The researcher, Janice Kephart, observed these same areas in a video series last year, “Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border,” which show videos of activity in the regions where Maricopa and Pinal Counties share a border.
“The entry of 330 illegal aliens through Tohono O'odham in one night over a 12-mile stretch of border is shockingly high,” Kephart said in the report, available on the think tank’s website.
Kephart said these numbers illustration the severity of activity in the Vekol area but cannot be used to determine actual illegal border activity in the state as a whole. “If illegal entry were equal across the 286 miles of Arizona border (which admittedly it is not), that would mean the illegal entry of 7,865 illegal aliens per night or 2.87 million per year just in Arizona,” she said.
Kephart said that would equate to 2.38 billion crossing in the entire southwest over the course of a year.
“Of course, the numbers are nothing like that,” she said, “But the destruction and illegal use of federal taxpayer lands and the great chance of success that the drug cartels and alien smugglers have tells a story of a border where illegal activity is high and the border remains out of control.”
One Old Vet
GoldCanyonToday - Researcher observes 330 illegal crossings in one night