Thread: ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DEVASTATE THE TOHONO INDIAN RESERVATION

http://www.sofmag.com/news/permalink1/2 ... 98904.html

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DEVASTATE THE TOHONO INDIAN RESERVATION
Dr. Martin Brass
Wednesday, August 16 2006 2:06 PM

The 2.8 million acre Tohono O'Odham Reservation, the second largest in the United States, just west of Tucson, Arizona, is an illegal immigration battle ground.


A Senior Customs Patrol Officer looks across the desert after
discovering a footprint, or sign in the desert. He will track them
until they are caught.


It is a "border security crisis that has caused shocking devastation of our land and resources. ...illegal immigration levels have sky–rocketed causing a flood of crime, chaos and environmental destruction on our Reservation," Ned Norris, Jr., Vice–Chair Of The Tohono O'Odham Nation told the Senate.

The reservation has become "a prime avenue of choice for undocumented immigrants and drug traffickers traveling into the United States. 1,500 immigrants illegally invade the Reservation daily, making it the "busiest corridor of illegal immigration in America

"The Nation's longest international border of any Tribe in the United States has created an unprecedented homeland security crisis for America,"


Don't Cross This Three–Strand Barbwire Fence

The border that stretches along the Reservation is ‘protected' by a deteriorated three–strand barbwire fence that has been torn down repeatedly by the never–ending swarm of illegal immigrants.

There are 160 illegal passageways along the 75 mile shared border with Mexico – in 36 locations there are no barriers at all.


Using traditional Native American tracking techniques, these
four Senior Customs Patrol Officers are personally responsible
for hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana being
interdicted on the Tohono O'Odham reservation in southern
Arizona.


The trespassers have trashed the reservation with garbage and litter, creating a sanitation catastrophe.

Six tons of trash per day is littered on the Reservation, resulting in 113 open pit dumps that need to be cleaned up.

The Nation, struggling for financial survival, diverted $7 million from tribal revenues to try to maintain the sovereignty of the reservation from 2001 until June 2004.

The Nation blames the federal border security policy that concentrated on sending available agents and assets to close down key points of entry such as San Diego (CA), Yuma (AZ), and El Paso (TX).

The flood of immigrants just shifted gears, and headed for the defenseless reservation.

"Rather than preventing illegal immigration into America, this policy created a funnel effect causing the flow of undocumented immigrants, drug traffickers, and other illegal activity to shift to other less regulated spots on the border," Norris said.


The Reservation Becomes A Stolen Car Lot

"Tribal members live in fear for the safety of their families and their properties. Homes are broken into by those desperate for food, water and shelter.

The 28,000–member Nation fights hoards of illegal immigrant drug and human traffickers, robbers, and rapists.

The Nation's seventy–one member police force apprehended 71,700 illegal immigrants in 2002 and seized 65,000 pounds of illegal narcotics.

In 2003, police confiscated over 100,000 pounds of illegal drugs. From October 2003 to June of 2004, 180,000 pounds of narcotics were seized. 130,000 pounds of marijuana were seized by the end of 2004.

The police enforcement efforts cost $3 million dollars through mid 2004, but a bigger cost is the corruption of Indian teens and other tribe members.

Drug traffickers offer the unemployed and poverty stricken Indians thousands of dollars to smuggle in their drugs, running carloads of drugs outside of the reservation. In addition to turning into criminals and ruining their lives, many of them have become addicts.

In 2002, 4,300 vehicles were used for illegal drug and immigrant smuggling. A total of 517 stolen vehicles were recovered on tribal land.

From January 2003 to June 2004, 2,675 abandoned vehicles were found on the reservation with 308 stolen vehicles used for criminal activities en route to Mexico, according to Norris.

The Nation Police assist the Border Patrol and other federal law enforcement agencies in making drug busts and apprehending criminals.

Some of the poorest Americans in the world, in the spirit of American compassion, give the little they have to take care of the uninvited strangers.

"They wanted food and we were eating so we gave them a couple of plates. We thought they'd be on their way, but they grabbed a bag of clothes on the way out. They want to dress like Americans to blend in, so they stole my grandson's clothes right under our noses," an Indian woman told the San Francisco Chronicle. She didn't have much to give.

Nation members reported a per capita income of $8,000 in 2000, almost two thirds less than the average American and 1/3 less than other Indian tribes, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Other than starvation, Immigrants die of dehydration during the brutal summer, when desert temperatures reach 110 degrees.


Here a Customs Patrol Officer looks at a fiber left on the end
of a plant. He is trying to determine if it is just clothing or burlap
used for transporting bales of marijuana.


In 2003, sixty–nine people died on the Reservation and in 2005, 145 illegal immigrants perished. That is onethird of all reported deaths of illegals crossing the Mexican border.

The Nation was stuck with the bodies, and was obliged to pay $1400, per body for each autopsy.

Two million dollars a year are taken out of the Indian Health Care funds to provide emergency health care treatment for undocumented aliens.

Sick and ailing Indians were unable to receive necessary health care services when the fiscal budgets dried up.

Our Tohono O'Odham Indian citizens are being psychologically, physically, and financially devastated while politicians agonize over how to get elected and big business figures out how to line its pockets with cheap labor.

The opinions expressed above do not necessarily represent the views of Soldier of Fortune.

Enough! W e have to militarize the border!

Enough! W e have to militarize the border!

Just what I've been saying all along!

That's good to see the American Natives in this fight as well. I can imagine the anger the Indian Nations must be feeling on this issue. Illegals desecrating holy land, etc. certainly doesn't ride well w/ any of us either.

Our Tohono O'Odham Indian citizens are being psychologically, physically, and financially devastated while politicians agonize over how to get elected and big business figures out how to line its pockets with cheap labor.

I'd say that sums it up!

It's a shame that some of our nations poorest citizens have to suffer the most for our federal governments complacency!

http://www.signonsandiego.com

Indian nation divided over U.S.-Mexico border fence


By Tim Gaynor
REUTERS

8:17 a.m. August 18, 2006

ALI JEGK, Arizona – Members of a traditional Indian nation spanning the Arizona-Mexico border are divided over plans to erect a fence to stop drug and human traffickers driving over the desert from Mexico.
The U.S. Border Patrol is to start building a 75-mile vehicle barrier across the Tohono O'odham nation lands abutting Mexico's Sonora state as early as next month, as part of a move to gain greater control over the porous border

Tribal authorities back the barrier, made of closely set steel posts sunk in concrete. They hope it will stop cars and trucks packed with marijuana and undocumented immigrants streaming into their lands each night from Mexico.

But some traditionalists in the nation, whose name means ”People of the Desert,” call the barrier an affront to beliefs centered on the natural world, and fear it heralds other get-tough measures that may weaken ties to members in Mexico.

“It's like somebody put a knife in your mother. The barrier will be continually there, and you can't pull it out,” said activist Ofelia Rivas, who organizes the “O'odham Voice Against the Wall” pressure group.

The nation of 25,000 members reaches up to Casa Grande in the north, a few miles south of the state capital, Phoenix, and stretches across the international line into Mexico, where some members live in nine scattered communities.

They frequently use informal crossing points – sometimes little more than gaps in the rusty barbed-wire border fence – to visit relatives on either side and attend traditional religious ceremonies marking the seasonal calendar.

“Our children and their children are never going to understand what it used to be without a border there,” Rivas said in a tiny hamlet of cinderblock and adobe homes on the parched borderline.

“From this point on, it's never, ever going to change.”


NO PASSPORTS

Tribal authorities say the barrier is necessary to stop the smugglers, who frequently duel with the Border Patrol in high-speed chases on back roads, and dump tons of trash including clothing and water bottles on the tribe's land.

Chairwoman Vivian Juan-Saunders said plans for building the barrier were drawn up in consultation with the nation's government and would not affect tribal traditions.

“It will not prevent members from crossing the border on foot, and will include three gates to allow them to continue to cross with vehicles,” she said in a telephone interview.

The Border Patrol is also adamant that there are no plans to build further barriers that would prevent people crossing on foot through the tribe's harsh, cactus-studded lands, or to require members to obtain passports to do so.

At present tribal identity papers are sufficient to cross the international line informally.

But some traditional Tohono O'odham fear that could change with a drift toward tightening security along the 2,000-mile border that is gathering pace in Washington.

The U.S. Senate voted in May to build 370 miles of triple-layered fencing against illegal incursions, while the U.S. House of Representatives in December went further, authorizing 700 miles of the barriers.

“Many people have no birth certificates as they were born at home,” elder Margaret Garcia, 68, said as she sat just yards from the dusty international line she first rolled over in a horse and cart to attend ceremonies in Mexico as a girl.

“If we are ever required to get passports, it would be very difficult for us.”

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/142709.php

So. Arizona tribe wants more federal help for border security
Associated Press
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.18.2006
PHOENIX - A southern Arizona Indian tribe wants more federal help to battle illegal immigration and smuggling on its reservation, saying it is spending $3 million a year to secure a 75-mile stretch of the Mexican border.

The Tohono O'odham Nation has spent years trying to limit intrusions onto its land, with little obvious success. The reservation is crisscrossed with at least 160 smuggling trails, littered with trash and even shrines erected by migrants. The tribe has given unprecedented access to the U.S. Border Patrol in hopes of stemming the tide.

Now the tribe wants more direct financial help from the Department of Homeland Security, tribal officials said.

"We're caught in the middle of this whole problem," Tribal Chairwoman Vivian Juan-Saunders said. "It creates a really high stress level for our people."

The 25 tribes along the southern and northern U.S. borders are forced to appeal for money directly from states because the Homeland Security Act of 2002 does not recognize Indian nations as sovereign governments. That adds a layer of bureaucracy and brings complaints than tribes are left out of the federal decision-making process.

Juan-Sanders said Tohono O'odham tribal leaders have met with top Department of Homeland Security officials, including Secretary Michael Chertoff, in the past month in an effort to solve the problem. U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., said he wants to help the tribe, but doubts legislation could make it through Congress this year.

"They're supplementing this enforcement activity, and they deserve to have a direct pipeline," Grijalva said. "I think their request is more than justified; I think it's overdue."
All the lobbying and official visits have so far led nowhere, Juan-Sanders said.

Smugglers are still operating on the vast reservation, which covers 2.8 million acres, the size of Connecticut. The tribal police department has 65 officers who are spending 60 percent of their time on illegal immigration. Border Patrol agents scour the tribe's land, and the tribe recently approved allowing the National Guard onto the reservation.

Since 2001, the tribe has received about $900,000 in security grant money distributed by the state to purchase equipment to deal with emergencies, Juan-Saunders said, and an extra $200,000 after Gov. Janet Napolitano declared a state of emergency along the border. But that's far below the costs to the tribe.

Undocumented immigrants crossings are down from the peak of 1,500 a day a few years ago, but still high, Juan-Sanders said. They dump trash, and they die. So far this year, the tribe has paid for autopsies on at least 51 migrants, including three children, at a cost of $1,200 to $1,400 each.

"These resources should be spent on education and health care and infrastructure and economic development," she said.

"But we have no other choice than to do what we can to protect our people.