Thread: National Guard troops scare would-be migrants away from bord

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/44924.html

10:26 am: National Guard troops scare would-be migrants away from border, officials say

By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ | Associated Press
June 12, 2006

SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Mexico (AP) - The arrival of U.S. National Guard troops in Arizona has scared off illegal Mexican migrants along the border as a whole, significantly reducing crossings, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.

U.S. authorities said Monday that detentions along the U.S.-Mexico border have decreased by 21 percent, to 26,994, in the first 10 days of June, compared with 34,077 for the same period a year ago.

Along the Arizona border, once the busiest crossing spot, detentions have dropped 23 percent, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.

The desert region's blistering June temperatures typically drive down the number of migrants, but not so drastically, said Mario Martinez, a spokesman with the U.S. Border Patrol in Washington.

The 55 soldiers who arrived June 3 are the first of some 6,000 troops to be gradually dispatched all along the border as part of U.S. President George W. Bush's plan to stem illegal immigration to the United States.

The soldiers aren't allowed to detain migrants and have been limited to projects like extending border fences and repairing roads, but the military's presence is keeping would-be crossers away from the area, migrant rights activists said.

"Some migrants have told me they heard about the troops on television and, because the U.S. Army doesn't have a very good reputation, they prefer not to cross," said Francisco Loureiro, who runs a migrant shelter in Nogales, Mexico, across the border from Arizona.

Loureiro said the shelter was housing about 12 migrants a night, down from about 100.

Jorge Vazquez, coordinator for Mexico's Grupo Beta migrant aid agency in San Luis Rio Colorado, across from San Luis, Arizona, said that before the troops arrived, his agents encountered at least two dozens migrants daily, most waiting for nightfall to begin their trek through the sandy desert.

"There have been days ... when we've found only three migrants," Vazquez said.

Some migrants may be moving to the California-Mexico border, the only stretch of border that saw a spike in detentions, which were up 7 percent to 5,965 in the first 10 days of June.

But it was too early to tell if the deployment would have a permanent effect on migrant routes and crossings of the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border.

Wearing army fatigues and hard hats, the soldiers have worked on projects such as installing vehicle barriers to help prevent smugglers from driving cars full of migrants or drugs across the border.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano has said that 2,500 troops will be stationed in the four U.S. border states _ Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas _ by the end of the month.

The deployment plan has been criticized in Mexico as heavy-handed, and the Mexican government has said it will watch to ensure National Guard troops aren't detaining migrants.

Only the most persistent migrants remained in San Luis Rio Colorado, which sits across from the area patrolled by the U.S. Border Patrol's Yuma station, the busiest of the Patrol's 143 outposts.

Migrants in the region walk some 25 miles (40 kilometers) through the scrub-covered desert with summer temperatures often exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 Celsius), and then hop on cargo trains to reach their destination.

Laureano Miranda, a 37-year-old farm worker from Mexico's Sinaloa state, said he was trying to get back to a construction job in Los Angeles.

Miranda and six relatives, who were sewing pieces of carpet to their shoes to avoid leaving footprints, planned to wait for nightfall and start walking across the border 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of where the troops were stationed.

Miranda, who earned about US$6 (?5) a day picking tomatoes in Sinaloa, said he had heard about the deployment but planned to cross into Arizona anyway.

"If there are soldiers or not it's the same thing, because it's always been difficult to cross," Miranda said. "Here, we depend on our luck."

Miranda said he made it into the United States on the first try last year, but he expected a more difficult journey this time.

"We've heard that there are soldiers and armed 'migrant hunters' but we have to try," Miranda said. "If we don't make it in three tries, then we'll go back home."

The deployment plan has been criticized in Mexico as heavy-handed, and the Mexican government has said it will watch to ensure National Guard troops aren't detaining migrants.

And just what in the hell are they going to do about it if they do detain them????? That's what I want to know?? They gonna sue us? They gonna whine some more as usual? What? I am so sick of their stinking attitude of control. I wish we had some reps. with a spine that would tell Fox to stick it where the sun don't shine!

This is more spin produced by the border patrol and the administration in an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes to further the jackass administration's attempt to show they are providing border security. Illegal aliens laugh at our unarmed guardsman giving them the finger as they pass by. Several hundred troops performing support duties in what constitutes a small part of the very large Arizona border cannot possibly, in all known forms of logic result in a decrease in arrests/border crossings. And I am sure Vicente Bush is on the phone with his brother Fox trying to allay any fears telling him their Latino brothers and sisters have nothing to fear; they can cross the border at will. Comrade Bushero will use any means necessary to include selling his mother, to further his Globalist Manifesto vision.

Originally Posted by mrmiata7

This is more spin produced by the border patrol and the administration in an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes to further the jackass administration's attempt to show they are providing border security. Illegal aliens laugh at our unarmed guardsman giving them the finger as they pass by. Several hundred troops performing support duties in what constitutes a small part of the very large Arizona border cannot possibly, in all known forms of logic result in a decrease in arrests/border crossings. And I am sure Vicente Bush is on the phone with his brother Fox trying to allay any fears telling him their Latino brothers and sisters have nothing to fear; they can cross the border at will. Comrade Bushero will use any means necessary to include selling his mother, to further his Globalist Manifesto vision.

The ones that need to be armed will be.

http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/new ... _event.doc

Q: General, there is a difference between those groups. This group will not be carrying any weapons, and the others who support DEA, and all the others, do in fact carry weapons. That’s a difference.

Second, how is the Guard going to respond to incidents like we have seen with the Border Patrol which officers have been shot at, presumably by drug runners? How are they going to respond and what’s the policy on that?

LTG BLUM: Excellent question. The chief and I have talked about this. Everyone that he has requested from the National Guard does not need to be armed. If they’re working – we have 581 people that we’re going to provide for the Border Patrol to free up Border Patrol law enforcement officers from doing non-law enforcement work to get out and do law enforcement work. Those people will probably be working in headquarters and offices and we don’t see a need to arm those individuals. They’ll be administrative positions; they’ll be communications positions. They’ll be working far off of the border in a place where they’re not likely to run into the criminal elements that you’re talking about.

Half of the force that are in the entry-identification teams will be there both day and night in places that we’ll not share here, for operational security reasons, but the Border Patrol will tell us where they want to put our teams. Those teams will be armed because they could encounter a criminal element that does not want to be detected and doesn’t want the law-enforcement apparatus called in on them. Or they may inadvertently run into them and then find that they need to – that their lives will be threatened.

Every solider that we put on the border, every young man or woman, Army or Air National Guard, has the inherent right of self-protection, and they will be armed or – we don’t call ourselves the armed forces for nothing. I mean, they are trained, we will be armed, but in a appropriate manner where the mission set requires or puts that solider or airman in the potential of danger, they will in fact be armed. They will not, just because they’re armed, be authorized to conduct law enforcement operations. It is clearly prohibited on the instructions, on the memorandums of agreement that all four governors have signed with the Department of Defense now, that the National Guard will not be performing overt law enforcement operations under the authority of this Jumpstart operation.

MR. AGUILAR: Well, let me –

(Cross talk.)

LTG BLUM: Yeah, the inherent right of self-defense means if you fire on me and I know where it’s coming from, you can expect equal treatment back.

MR. AGUILAR: Let me just add the following, that on all of these force deployments that you see up here, we have an obligation also to deploy what is known as force protection where we have deployments of Border Patrol agents in and around where these National Guard’s personnel are deployed in order to protect them. In those cases, they are also armed to basically protect themselves. So, yes, there is that type of situation.

Now, let me just expand on it a little bit because I think it’s important, is that the deployments of the entry identification teams are going to be such that they will be high-profile in some cases, and in others cases they will not be high profile. Some will be highly visible; other cases will not be highly visible, but in either case, it will be the Border Patrol agent that will be responding to make the interdiction, to make the arrest, to do the confrontation of any kind of illegal encouraged to cross our nation’s borders, okay?

I think the 20 something percent decrease is good news. Yes some can be cotributed to the heat in June but some has to be a result of the Guard being on the border.

Before the would run the risk of travel with all the associated dangers against the chance of being detected by maybe a few dozen sets of eyes. Now they have to worry about several dozen more sets of eyes detecting them. I don't think they are that desperate.

When the border businesses that cater to the illegals just before they plan to cross, that has some significant impact.

I also found it interesting that the price to hire a coyote went up so much.

The real results will come from the Minutemen Civil Defense Corp,
I`m with them and I`m assigned border duty next month