Illegal aliens concern retired border officer
Published 2/12/08 in The Times-Herald

By W. WINSTON SKINNER

Fred Carter is concerned about illegal aliens coming across America's porous borders.

Unlike many of those concerned, however, Carter has a wide breadth of experience that forms his view. He is a retired U.S. Border Patrol officer, and he lived in Mexico City at one time.

Carter has been a Coweta County resident for about eight years, moving here to live near family.

Narcotics trafficking — and the crime related to it — concerns Carter. He keeps abreast of what is happening south of the border through a service provided by one of his fellow members of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers. NAFBPO, which has its headquarters in Odenton, Md., was formed last year.

There is an older organization, the Fraternal Order of Retired Border Patrol Officers, organized in Denver, Colo., in 1978. While the FORBPO is strictly fraternal, the NAFBPO was organized with a view toward sharing the experienced viewpoint of border patrol retirees on the immigration issue.

A NAFBPO member who grew up in Peru and is fluent in Spanish is providing a service through the organization by translating online reports about immigration issue and narcotics-related crime in Mexico and other Central and South American countries.

People who want to get the reports can sign up by e-mailing m3report@yahoo.com . "He's started to put out a daily report," Carter said.

Carter said the information in the daily NAFBPO reports vividly illustrates the problems with a lax immigration policy. Some drugs are coming directly from Mexico to the United States, and other illegal substances are coming from more distant points through Mexico and across the U.S. border. Carter noted serious problems with violence related to narcotics often occur just across the border from the United States in Mexico.

The translated reports detail the crime and corruption often associated with narcotics trafficking, pointing to potential U.S. problems that could be avoided through a more vigorous approach to regulating immigration.

Carter said he believes the problems related to narco-traffic in America's neighbors to the south portend just as much danger as more visible trouble spots in the Middle East. One factor makes the drug/crime danger even more worrisome. "They're our next door neighbors," he said.

Having large numbers of illegal immigrants from areas where the drug trade is a daily way of life is troublesome. Carter pointed out that getting hard information — even about how many illegal aliens are in the United States — is difficult.

"They talk about 12 million illegal aliens who nobody knows how to count," he said. Carter personally believes the number could be as high as 24 million.

Having that many people "living in a clandestine manner" and earning wages that largely are sent to another country "has got to affect our economy," he said.

"I don't understand why the legal Latin community hasn't risen up," Carter said.

Carter's answer to the immigration problem is to simply enforce laws that already exist. "I'm not a spokesman for anybody but me," he emphasized.

NAFBPO's Web site — nafbpo.org — details the organization's stance on immigration law. A letter there posted by Kent Lundgren, chairman of NAFBO, expressed concern about current legislation that might allow many illegal aliens to remain in the United States.

"We believe that the results for the nation will be disastrous if anything is passed that resembles what has been under debate in the Senate recently," Lundgren wrote.

NAFBPO also favors a strict enforcement of laws that would prohibit employers from hiring illegal workers, a strengthened patrol of the borders and the systematic removal of illegals to their home countries.

Enforcing existing laws "would solve a whole lot of the problems," Carter said.

While Carter is concerned about illegal immigration — and particularly the negative role narcotics trafficking could play in that process — he had good things to say about Mexico. He lived in Mexico City for four years.

"It's a fantastic, beautiful country," he said. The narcotics traffickers there "are giving it a bad name," Carter said.

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