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Rep. Steve Pearce focuses on border issues during recent visit (4 p.m.)
By Ashley Meeks Sun-News reporter
Article Launched: 04/12/2008 04:03:13 PM MDT


LAS CRUCES — Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce keeps a chunk of the border fence on his desk in Washington, he told a cross-section of law enforcement at a pancake breakfast Saturday.

The aspiring senator needs no such reminders among his constituents, who have of late faced border brutality that recall passages from Cormac McCarthy's "No Country For Old Men," Pearce said.

In the ongoing violence between two rival drug cartels battling for control of border corridors, Mexican and American law enforcement in February and March have seized .50-caliber rifles, capable of destroying bulletproof vehicles. Just this week, Tim Manning, state director of Homeland Security, estimated drug-style executions had killed around 250 in Juárez and 30 in Palomas.

Pearce said he supported "beginning" with 10,000 Border Patrol agents, 2,000 more attorneys, and possibly by 2010, implementation of motion-detectors, unmanned aerial vehicles and sonic tunnel detection. He also spoke in favor of increased armed forces training along the border, which he said could ensnare thousands of criminals.

"To tell you how we squander our money in Washington, (Border Patrol) training costs $180,000," Pearce said. "Our values system is upside down. There are 15,000 Border Patrol agents. Know how many people we've got checking shoes at the airport? 55,000."

Pearce said he backed Gov. Bill Richardson's request of President George Bush to extend Operation Jump Start presence for another year, saying he had written the president a year ago asking him not to stop Jump Start.

Police and officials from the district attorney's office told Pearce they were troubled by a porous border and having to "catch and release" human traffickers who transported fewer than five illegal immigrants. They also reported increasing gang violence, especially in the south valley, more illegal weapons traffic and solitary drug traffickers carrying 50 pounds of drugs at a time in backpacks.

"No one wants to see a militarized police department, and I don't either," said Las Cruces police Officer Kiri Daines, "but it's literally me and my sidearm and they're paramilitary, using the same weapons they're using against our guys in Iraq."

During Saturday's session at the International House of Pancakes on North Telshor, Pearce also pledged support for Operation Stonegarden, the controversial federally funded border-crime initiative that netted 28 immigrant arrests in September in Chaparral.

He also agreed that a proposed wilderness designation of local lands designated as wilderness study areas was unwise.

"The other side doesn't care what the law is — they're already breaking it," Pearce said, adding such a designation would not only make it harder for drug agents to locate hundred-acre marijuana fields but also prevent emergency workers from fixing dams after disastrous floods.

http://www.lcsun-news.com/news/ci_8904519