Thread: Senate looks at border

Published: 04.21.2009

Senate looks at border
Some highlights of special committee hearing in Phoenix featuring state officials
By Brady McCombs
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

PHOENIX — Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik and seven other Arizona officials delivered testimony during a three-hour hearing on border violence Monday morning before Sens. Joe Lieberman, John McCain and Jon Kyl.
The hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs also featured Gov. Jan Brewer, Attorney General Terry Goddard, Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever, Tohono O'odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris Jr., Nogales Mayor Octavio Garcia-Von Borstel, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris.
Some highlights of the hearing:
Guns to Mexico
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik called for the creation of a task force devoted to slowing the flow of guns, cash and stolen vehicles. "Putting more people at the ports of entry to check southbound activity is imperative," Dupnik said.
Dupnik said the National Guard could be used in the plan. Gov. Jan Brewer, said it concerns her to hear legislators in Washington discussing increased gun-control measures and said stopping the flow of guns from the U.S. into Mexico won't prevent the cartels from getting weapons.
National Guard
Brewer expressed surprise and disappointment in the Obama administration's "negative" response to her request for 250 more National Guard troops on the border.
"I believe we need to get additional National Guard on the border in order to secure our border," Brewer said. "If we do not secure our borders quickly, we are at great risk.
Sen. John McCain said the administration's response was "unacceptable," and Sen. Joe Lieberman likened the need to send the guard to the border to sending troops to Iraq.
"Boots on the ground matter," Lieberman said.
Money
Attorney General Terry Goddard asked Congress to make it illegal to carry funds south across the border in "stored-value cards," like merchant gift cards, prepaid telephone cards and prepaid debit cards, which have been used to move hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, across the border.
"They are not considered financial instruments under United States law and as result, there is no crime to take a million dollars in a card across the border," Goddard explained.
Lieberman pledged to take action on the suggestion.
Mexican drug cartels likened to terrorists
In his opening remarks, Lieberman likened the Mexican drug cartels to terrorist organizations and said the FBI has identified the cartels as the top organized-crime threat in the United States, replacing the Mafia. The U.S. and Mexico must continue to squeeze the cartels from both sides of the border, he said.
"As we've begun to do this, they have reacted as the lawless thugs that they are," said Lieberman. "Many of the killings that I've described in Mexico bare the characteristics, frankly, we typically associate with the threat this committee has been most focused on, the threat of Islamic terrorism. Beheadings, gunfights on crowded city streets, targeted intimidation, assassination of government officials."
Lieberman admitted that there are no present indications that the cartels plan to carry across the border the extreme violence occurring in Mexico but said law enforcement and legislators can't afford to relax.
"My friends, these cartels have the money, the weapons, the networks, the operatives throughout the United States and the utter disregard for human lives to do so at some point, and that is what we must be on guard for and push back," Lieberman said.
Tribal drug smuggling
While the flow of illegal immigrants across the Tohono O'odham Reservation has slowed to about 400 to 450 a day from 1,500 a day in 2005-2006, drug smuggling is worse than ever as the Sinaloa and Tijuana cartels battle for the corridor, tribal Chairman Norris said.
Marijuana seizures by the Tohono O'odham police are up by 27 percent from the year before and, worse yet, more tribal members are being sucked into the trade, he said.
Due to many miles of steel vehicle barriers on the U.S.-Mexico border, the cartels have shifted their tactics. Instead of driving loads across, they steal vehicles from cities such as Phoenix and drive back to the border to pick up loads.
The cartels offer $700 to $5,000 to tribal members to transport or store drugs, he said. Of 534 drug cases prosecuted by the federal government from 2004 to 2009, 30 percent of them were filed against tribal members, Norris said.

http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/289558

http://oneoldvet.com/

I'm not for putting National Guards on the border for ONE reason.
This administration and DHS will have many in prison for killing them, the enemy!
I don't want that to happen to good Americans.
I can see the writing on the wall.
Let them all in!
Let them live in Washington DC and next door to Napalitano and Bill the Crook Richardson!