Border BoletÃ*n: Another hidden camera documentary coming next week
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Brady McCombs Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Friday, September 24, 2010 10:39 am

The Center for Immigration Studies is set to debut its third installment of its much-watched "Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border" documentary series next week.

The new documentary will debut Tuesday in Washington D.C. at the Army-Navy Club. Here's a link to the second installment: Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2: Drugs, Guns and 850 Illegal Aliens.

The footage comes from two websites that set up hidden cameras along known illegal immigrant and drug smuggling trails: SecureBorderIntel.org and BorderInvasionPics.com.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based organization that advocates for slowing immigration, says the second installment received 540,000 hits on YouTube.

The Center says the documentary leads to the "inescapable conclusion is that hidden cameras reveal a reality that illegal-alien activity is escalating."

However, there is no empirical evidence to suggest that is true. Apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol have been declining for the past six years across the entire Southwest Border, including in the agency's Tucson Sector, where the footage comes from.

Apprehensions in the Tucson Sector declined to 241,000 in fiscal year 2009, down from about 491,000 in fiscal year 2004. Across the U.S-Mexico border, apprehensions dipped to 540,000 in fiscal year 2009, down from 1.1 million in fiscal year 2004.

Apprehensions are a flawed statistic, of course, because they only account to the number of times Border Patrol agents arrest an illegal immigrant and don't account for how many get past them. But, it's the best statistic available from the agency to gauge flows of illegal immigrant traffic.

There are still plenty of people crossing through Arizona's desert, no doubt about that, but I don't know of any data backing their claim that more illegal immigrants are crossing.

Maybe they are referring to drug smuggling?

The total pounds of marijuana seized have been on the rise over the same five-year period: 1.2 million pounds seized in the Tucson Sector in fiscal year 2009, up from 446,000 in fiscal year 2004. The seizures have gone up across the Southwest Border too: 2.5 million pounds seized in fiscal year 2009, up from 1.3 million pounds seized in 2004.

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