http://www.woai.com

Illegals "Don't Bother to Run Away Anymore"
LAST UPDATE: 11/11/2005 12:29:55 PM
Posted By: Jim Forsyth
This story is available on your cell phone at mobile.woai.com.

A Texas border county sheriff says its not a matter of 'if,' but a matter of 'when' a terrorist will enter the United States through Mexico with a dirty bomb or some other terrorist weapon, 1200 WOAI news reported today.

Sigifredo Gonzalez, Jr, the sheriff of Zapata County Texas, east of Laredo, and the chairman of the Texas Border Sheriff's Association, told a conference in San Antonio that the "federal government has failed its citizens' by failing to protect its borders.

"Illegal immigration is the least of our concerns," Gonzalez said. "We'll deal with illegal immigration. What I worry about is the dangerously violent narcotics gangs and especially the terrorists. There is people from countries of interest to the United States which could easily come over this border. They may already be in the country. We don't know."

Gonzalez said the situation along the border has gotten so 'chaotic' that illegal immigrants don't even try to run away from Border Patrol agents any more.

"Illegal aliens will come across, and once they come across they will even change into better clothing, come out of the brush, and simply surrender to the Border Patrol," he said. "They get processed and they get a certificate telling them to go to a hearing before an immigration judge, and then they let them go. Of course, they don't show up for the hearing."

Gonzalez says border sheriffs and Border Patrol agents alike think the system, which is known locally as 'catch and release' or 'a notice to disappear' is ridiculous.

Gonzalez also blasted the system in place to check to see whether people coming across the border are criminals.

"You could have committed 100 murders in your home country, and your name wouldn't show up on this system because it does not register crimes committed out of the United States," he said.

Officials estimate that 1.2 million people have entered the United States illegally in the past year, including 10,000 people a week who are classified by law enforcement as OTM's or 'Other Than Mexicans.' Gonzalez says the vast majority come here to find jobs and to better themselves, but its the 'few percent' which arrive 'with other intentions' that keep him awake nights.

He says most border lawmen support a very controversial proposal floated by Congressmen John Culberson of Texas which would provide up to $6.8 billion to border counties...money to, among other things, deputize civilians as 'reserve officers' who, with training, would patrol the borders, and perform a function similar to that performed now by the untrained Minutemen groups.

"We're asking for funding to protect the border. We want to secure that border. We want to say we are the second line of defense protecting that border."