Is it getting better?  Have all your efforts, building a fence, installing surveillance towers, setting up “Inner Border” checkpoints all along the border, continually increasing the size of the Border Patrol Army ( 50-60 thousand now), helped?  Have they stopped drug traffic and illegal immigration?  Or just monitored it? You’ve spent billions of dollars for a “virtual fence.  This boondoggle has all the earmarks of a wildlife study – should have been Game and Fish monitoring the migration of the Hooded Scratched Back.  A thousand passed by; eighty-seven were captured and relocated!  Did anyone ask—will this solve the problem?

Years ago I developed an analysis formula that may help you.  1) Define the problem! 2) Go back in time before the problem occurred; what happened, what changed? Eliminate the constants—search out the variables.  3) Cause and Effect needs to be reworded to Effect of the Cause and how they Affect us and the Environment.  4) Action—Reaction, the reaction to Actions has two sides: the Positive and the Negative.  Count the cost!  When you look around at all the problems in the state, country, and world, they are the result of the negative side of past positive actions.

Evidently Mr. McCain, you have never ventured outside Arizona. You stated that the drug wars have spilled into Arizona.  They exist in “Everytown, U.S.A.!”  As long as there is a buyer there is a supplier.  All your efforts, laws, fines, fees, and your solutions are not eliminating the cause of the problem. You deal only with the effects and so do “We the People.”  But we not only deal with the effects, but also have to undergo the affects of your solutions.  Towers monitoring our every move, going through inner border checkpoints, being asked if we are a U.S. citizen.

I am a disabled vet; on June 10/10 I underwent a nuclear stress test at the VA hospital in Tucson.  I was given a form about the test and that I might set off security devices.  I put it in my wallet.  On June 11/10 I had another appointment at the VA.  I pulled up to the inner border checkpoint on Arivaca Road in Amado.  The agent greeted me and glanced down at a monitor on his belt.

I was told to pull over and asked if I had been exposed to radiation. I explained about the test and showed him the papers. I was told to pull over and step out of my vehicle. I was escorted to the front of the truck by an agent resting his hand on his Taser.  I gently opened my shirt and showed him my pacemaker—“You know that thing will short-circuit this pacemaker and kill me.”  The agent informed me he had training and was certified (isn’t that comforting!).  The other agent made the rounds of my truck and came toward me checking his monitor and then backed up.

I was told another agent and monitor were coming. I said, “I had a medical procedure and have another doctor’s appointment at 9:00am.  It’s 8:15am.”

“It’s procedure!” An agent arrived and came at me with his yellow box, making all kinds of noise.  He starts saying what the box is telling him to do—Back—Back—Back—Safe at six feet.  He wanted my ID and papers.

“Just call the V.A., the number is on the paper.”

He’s on the phone and then starts taking more readings, “I’ve never encountered a reading like this.”  He disappears into the trailer.  Must have had to check his training manual!  He finally returns and says everything is OK.

As he hands me my license and papers, he asks me if I will be coming through again tomorrow. “Maybe, why?” “Because this is standard procedure and if you come through tomorrow the same thing will happen.”

Remember “Cause Effects Affects.”  Are we the problem or just “Soft Targets”?  Awhile back I heard on the news that because the traffic was increasing in our area more BP agents would be patrolling.  Where do they patrol? In Town!  Up—down, back and forth all day in a postage stamp town; 10 trucks, 20 agents.  Are we the illegals, drug runners OR because we live here we’re automatically accused and under surveillance.

The illegal immigration problem affects every state in the country.  The barn door has been open for many years and has caused very complex and costly problems.  Are your solutions solving the problem?  The Fence -build the dang fence. Humans can climb fences, wildlife can’t.  Have you ever traveled the Border between Nogales and Sasabe?  A very mountainous, pristine and beautiful wilderness.

You keep passing more laws that do nothing but clog the system and cost billions of dollars!  There’s a tidal wave coming across the Mexican border!  Before you can mop up you have to stop the wave!

Drug trafficking and illegal immigration has been going on for many, many years and is escalating. It’s a war zone. A rancher killed, Vigilantes terrorizing and shooting illegal immigrants!  The death toll is mounting.  For the safety of all those living on the border, on both sides, the border has to be manned.  How do you secure a perimeter, a border?  Line of sight bunkers with crossing fields of fire.  Patrols.

We already have an army: Border Patrol Armed with war wagons, all manner of ATVs, horses, millions spent on a “Ray” gun with half-mile range that stings.  We don’t need to spend millions on engineering bunkers—bags and dirt worked before!  You need creature comforts- there’s a surplus of trailers from Katrina!

As long as you continually focus and deal with Effects you will never achieve a solution.  The causes are economic and people seeking a better way of life.  You can’t solve it or change it!  The best you can do is stop it  – at the Border.  The fence hasn’t stopped the flow; the laws haven’t stopped the flow.  All you have created is a money pit of compounding problems.

The Border has to be manned 24/7.  Is it getting better?  I would like to repeat—I am a disabled vet—have traveled the World, seen many things, done many things, learned many things.  I’m of the adage Stand Beside Her and Guide Her, but is “She” listening? Are you?

Sincerely,

Sandy Schlesinger
SandyintheDesert123@yahoo.com

Our border with Mexico is 1,969 miles long.  Some folks in our federal and state governments thought it would be a good idea to build an impenetrable fence along the entire length of the border.  Are you for or against that?  I suspect you are against it.  Some others, or maybe the same ones, thought it would be a good idea to build some towers at some point inside the border to detect, and help in the apprehension of, ILLEGALS (I’ll use that word here instead of another editorial writer [Ms. Bushmaker’s] “workers, visitors or travelers”).  Are you for that or against it?

And, just as an aside, did you and others in your part of the country know that the folks who put up those towers also spent great heaps of your tax dollars for folks to drive their fancy trucks down there from Tucson every day to post a security guard at each of the towers?  But I think all that has been scrapped now, or is about to be.  For some reason, the system seemed unable to distinguish between ILLEGAL and JAVALINA.

So, we don’t want our government to build a fence, right?  We don’t like security towers in our back yards, right?  And we don’t want to be stopped at checkpoints inside the border, right?  Because, if those things happen, we then say that our politicians and law makers are committing terrorist acts upon us because they “violate the rights of American citizens without the worry of any repercussions, right?  We just want the ILLEGALS stopped at the border, right?  And we want that to happen 24 hours a day, 365.25 days a year, right?

All that would take is one, or maybe even two, border agents for every, let’s say, 300 yards of border.  And, since we wouldn’t want any of them working overtime, we’d have to have three shifts a day, right?  And let’s not forget all the fancy night operations equipment that would be needed, right?

Just to put the required staffing in perspective, there are 1760 yards in a mile, right?  So that’s, um, 5.87 agents per mile (if we just have one agent every 300 yards – and one likely isn’t enough).  And 5.87 multiplied by 1969 miles is 11,558 agents on each of three shifts, right?  And these agents are needed 365.25 days a year, so we’d need 101,317,428  (that’s 101.3 million) labor hours to cover 24 hours, 365.25 days each year.  Using an average annual hours worked by these agents of 1,920 (after vacation and sick leave), that would require 52,769 agents.  And how much money might it cost to maintain an agent for a year?  My estimate is around $50,000 including all their benefits.  That equates to over $2.6 billion, each and every year.  And that doesn’t include all the support personnel required to maintain a force this large.  You could probably tack on another 10,000 or more support personnel.  And that would be another $500 million.  Is it worth $3.1 billion to stop the ILLEGALS at the border?  I don’t know; maybe it is.

Then, what would you propose be the duties of each of these nearly 53,000 agents?  Should the agents shoot the ILLEGALS they see?  I suspect that shooting a few would make the next group think twice, or even three times, about whether they want to come to the United States.  Should the agents run the maximum 150 yards thru the desert and hope they get to the ILLEGALS before they disappear into the next arroyo?  And, while they make this run, don’t they have to hope that 5 more ILLEGALS don’t cross while the one is being chased down?  Should the agents have helicopters every mile or so to drop a net on the ILLEGALS?  Maybe snares should be placed every few yards in the hope of keeping the ILLEGALS in one place until the agent(s) arrest them?

And what about the Canadian border, eh?

For crying out loud!  What it sounds like to me is that we just want to beef about what we don’t like,  but we don’t really have any sensible ideas to replace what we don’t like. Except maybe to make citizens of all the ILLEGALS already in the country.  And then implement a “guest worker” policy for those who would otherwise be the new wave of ILLEGALS.  I’ll admit that these might be good ideas if it was feasible to make them happen.  But, if the government put a system into effect to make that happen, it would take another huge bunch of federal and/or state employees to oversee and administer it.  And, if that happened, those who are opposed to the steps being taken now would beef and moan about all the tax money being spent on that solution.

So, what do you think now?  What’s the answer?

Terris N. Teale

The changes were subtle at first, new migrant trails forming east of the railroad tracks in the desert going past the house and a more visible Border Patrol presence. The trickle became a stream that turned into a flood right around the time the Border Patrol put up a temporary checkpoint on 1-19 three miles south of the ranch. The migrants walk north until they have passed the check-point, then turn west to the freeway under heavy natural cover, call their rides on cell phones, pop out of the underbrush after leaving everything they were carrying behind, hop into the car and they’re gone. There has been a demand for their labor in agriculture, construction, and the service industry; the remittances they send home are a large part of their country’s income. The “false documented” workers with the fake Social Security cards pump billions of dollars into that fund, but will never claim it. Is it any wonder that this problem has not been dealt with politically in this country?

We get hundreds of trespassers every week on this property. Whether they are walking, driving, or riding, they drop trash as they go, cut fences, bust water lines, and scatter cattle. The migrants wear scruffy clothes, the Border Patrol wear green uniforms, but whatever they are wearing they are infringing on our personal space and I’m sick of it!

Here are some typical scenes:

As the moon gets fuller and the nights are brighter, the human smugglers and the solos start their trek north. During the night the dogs bark out into the desert letting us know people are passing. In the morning I walk several hundred yards into the desert and count 8, 10, or 30 sets of fresh footprints.

Someone is on the tractor at l0am and can see a group of 8 migrants walking along the river. They call Border Patrol and describe, again, where we are located, how to get in here and down to the river. The last agents who learned the lay of the land have been reassigned, so a new batch has to learn where to go. By the time they show up the walkers have moved into dense cover in the mesquite trees. They won’t be found.

I’m out on my daily walk enjoying a gorgeous stretch of the Santa Cruz River when the dogs let me know there are people. A migrant peers out from behind a bush. I look at him, he looks at me, I wave, he waves, and then I make a detour and continue on my way while he ducks back into the shadows of the trees. The next day, in the same general area, I’m sitting on a log enjoying the view when a BP agent comes galloping along on his horse. He almost passes me before he sees me. He slows down and comes over. I notice his horse is lame, “Have you seen any people?” he asks. “Not today” is my reply “but maybe you should check where all the garbage is a half mile that way.” He moves off at a fast clip and I regret, for the horse’s sake, not pointing out that it’s lame on the right front. A short while later I watch him gallop back the way he came.

A frustrated young BP agent from Arkansas is huffing back to his vehicle, “They didn’t stop when I yelled STOP. The academy didn’t tell us they wouldn’t stop!

An older migrant resting in the shadows explains that he is headed back to Florida where he has lived for 18 years and where his wife, kids, job, car, and house are. He was caught and deported when he let his driver’s license expire; now he’s headed home. It’s his third try.

It’s Saturday and we’re driving on I-19. A convoy of pick-up trucks that have seen better days is going south, each one piled high with furniture, toys, bikes, appliances, etc. Goods accumulated during the owner’s stint in the US, but now they are headed home. This is a common sight.

It’s the end of the day and we are sitting outside enjoying a beer and the sunset when a large BP truck with a spy tower bolted to the flatbed drives noisily by on the ranch road to the desert. A short while later another BP truck misses the turn off for that road and is coming towards the house; I amble out to greet him. “Your buddy went that way. What’s happening?” I ask. “A large group is going through.” I contemplate following them out to watch the excitement, but the beer and sunset are more entertaining. Fifteen minutes later they leave, empty-handed.

We are jumping on the trampoline at dusk. The unmanned spy tower is visible a mile away, but since so many migrants walk past I assume that its all for show – but maybe we show up as two bouncing blips on the night vision scope and give the boys in green a chuckle.

It’s dark and I step outside to breath in the cool night air. I immediately hear the helicopter a quarter mile away and I see its lights illuminating a hill in the distance. I watch with mild curiosity and wonder if I’m in Fly-speck, AZ or South Central LA. The noise goes on for 20 minutes or so, then the chopper leaves and the dogs let me know people are going past. I can hear the excited voices of the BP agents as they walk the distance back to their vehicle in the moonlight, empty handed. The fresh prints the next day tell me that the group they were after broke into smaller groups and moved deeper into the desert. The smugglers know this land as well as I do and as well as the Indian scouts from a hundred years ago; we all just melt into the landscape if we have to.

Night has arrived and the news is on saying that in the continuing effort to secure the border 200 more agents have been assigned to the Tucson Sector. I roll my eyes as I roll over in bed. During the night the dogs will bark letting us know people are going past.

Our stories could fill volumes, and everyone who lives along the border region has variations, mine are not unique.

My observations would be incomplete if I didn’t mention the trash. I know of four huge campsites on this property alone, hidden in the trees. Each one would fill a dump-truck up with Made in Mexico blankets, Made in Korea shoes, Made in Taiwan jackets, Made in China backpacks, and enough plastic bags and bottles to sink a boat. I’m sure that if all the trash were picked up within a 5-mile radius it would overwhelm the local landfill.

Everything is made of synthetic materials that won’t break down for decades; they will become artifacts in 50 years! The four large sites on the ranch are reaching the critical point smothering the grass that the cattle would eat as the garbage spreads out over an acre. Maybe we could dig 4 large holes with the tractor and hire some of these migrants to toss it all in. They are the only ones who would want the job at the rate I would want to pay. Why is it our responsibility to deal with this volume of trash that’s there because of failed politics?

As the campaign season heats up I would love to hear the candidates talk about this issue, and not just about securing the border–because that’s a pipe dream. The solid fence being erected along the border is cutting off wildlife corridors; although blowtorches are already cutting holes in it (where there is a will there is a way). The multi-million dollar permanent checkpoint that is back on the table for the Amado area would be a huge, expensive, inefficient (they walk around it for Pete’s sake) eyesore that wouldn’t change anything from my perspective. Throwing more money and gadgets at the Dept. of Homeland Security is not the answer. Let’s do like the Italians have done and give all the migrants with a job and a place to stay a green card. It would be business as usual and the workers wouldn’t be afraid of getting deported when they got their card. Then we can sort out who’s whom and the migrants can come out of the shadows and have a voice. Another good idea I heard a few years ago was for the migrant to open a bank account at the border on their way into this country with the money that would have gone to the smuggler, then have a portion of their pay deposited into it. When it was time to return home they would have a nice sum in their account as incentive to leave. Mine is only a small voice in the wind, but it is part of a loud chorus in the border region. I hope we make enough noise to be heard and some creative politics comes into play to end this insanity.

The Border Patrol does not have any current plans for and is not actively seeking to place a station in Arivaca. They were looking into it in the past fueling much speculation.

The Project 28 towers, though called a “successful” experiment, will be scrapped and replaced with new towers in the same area, though not necessarily in the same exact locations. Director King said that technology has dramatically improved since way back in October of 2006 and the towers will be rebuilt from the ground up. The new towers will feature portable, pre-formed concrete bases without guy wires, solar power with generators used only as backup, and cameras and radar now being used on mobile truck units. Microwave communications will replace P28′s satellite communications. $64 million of custom software will tie it all together.

Boeing is still the lead contractor for the towers and for the SBInet as a whole. Border Patrol officials didn’t know if there are any performance requirements in any of the task orders for the new towers. In fact, the new towers were described by one official as another test, another experiment. The new towers are expected to be in place by the end of 2008. Any existing towers will come down afterward. The Arivaca Surveillance Tower may be moved depending on its operational capability said Director King. It did not perform well in the P28 system. Then again, the entire system did not perform to expectations.

As with the P28 system, the Border Patrol called the Sasabe fence a success even while admitting that people can get past it and it must be manned to be effective. Those who have analyzed barriers and surveillance used to secure borders point out that they are much more effective at keeping people in than keeping them out. The Border Patrol concurred when they said the real advantage was in apprehending crossers trying to get back over the wall after being spotted. They said the number of people seen crossing is down dramatically in the area of the fence but did not address the fact that most simply go around it.

There are plans to build a vehicle barrier along the border from the east end of the Sasabe fence into the National Forest, perhaps all the way to Flat Top Mountain east of California Gulch and just short of Sycamore Canyon. The barrier would be of the rail on post type, similar to the one at Organ Pipe National Monument. A substantial construction road would accompany the barrier along the border in the National Forest. The project has not been funded yet, however, and it is not known when it will be built.

The Border Patrol said they intend to do environmental assessments and mitigation even though the Real ID Act waiver of environmental regulations has been invoked. It is not clear if any assessments will be public ally available. Presumably, no project would be stopped because of environmental concerns.

A special meeting will be arranged with the branch of CBP that operates the helicopters to address issues that many residents have with their operations.

It is the intention of the Community and the Border Patrol to meet more often to discuss issues, perhaps quarterly.

Thanks to Mary Scott for arranging and moderating this meeting.

Copyright 2008 Peter Ragan

Regarding the surveillance towers, Tom King, BP Director of Field Operations from Washington, DC told us that “Boeing didn’t hit the ground running” when it took on the erection of the 9 towers last year (at a cost of 20 million tax dollars) from the Babo through the Altar Valley to Tres Bellotas Road south of Arivaca. Now, a year later, deadlines unmet and a basketful of excuses, they admit the towers are so flawed they are unworkable and will be abandoned.

So what’s in the future? King says they will replace the faulty towers with all newly designed models. When asked who has the contract for this upgrade, King said, “Boeing. ” A snicker went through the crowd but there was no reproach; we were all making nice.

Reinforcing the general attitude from the head table, Agent Fitzpatrick, Assistant Chief of the Tucson sector, told us that “we may or may not abandon the Tres Bellotas Road location (the spy tower that overlooks our 1,500+ residents), but it won’t have anything to do with how the citizens feel about it, it will be a matter of logistics. ” – Logistics? Their system of reasoning places public opinion – the constitutional rights to privacy and freedom from undue surveillance – in the trash can! Boeing has been granted another massive sum of money to create these new toys ($68+ million. The cost of living has gone up 3.4 times, right in line with our daily bread… ).

The table of dignitaries certainly did not prove to those of us who attended the meeting that the situation of smuggling, migration or terrorism (a word they wisely refrained from using this time around) would be improved by more millions being thrown at Boeing, a corporate giant closely linked to Cheney and Halliburton.

When is all this BS going to end? The country slides closer and closer to total bankruptcy and we are all now feeling the crunch, while Boeing laughs all the way to the bank!

Two wrongs will never make it right. It won’t ever help our southern neighbors feed their children or help the human species to survive, and that is the bottom line.

Copyright 2008 C. Hues

Today we know that P28 is not effective as designed, though you won’t hear that from DHS Secretary Chertoff. At a February 22 press conference where DHS took full acceptance of P28 he did nothing but praise the system and said it met all DHS requirements. At a February 27 House Committee on Homeland Security hearing, Richard Stana, Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues for the Government Accountability Office, concluded his overview of the project this way, ” P28 resulted in a product that did not fully meet user needs and will not be used as a basis for future SBInet development”. Chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Management and Oversight Christopher Carney said in a February 27 statement he had been told by DHS acting Deputy Secretary Schneider that P28 does not do what DHS expected it would.

At the House hearing, a representative for DHS said that people’s expectations got out of hand somehow, that P28 was never intended to be an operational system ready to roll out along the border. It was an “initial prototype demonstration designed to be a proof of concept”, to “demonstrate the feasibility of the SBInet solution. With problems at every level, you’d think that feasibility was emphatically not demonstrated. Instead, DHS went ahead and fully accepted the project.

The Department’s solution to the SBInet solution is to praise P28 while scrapping it and starting over with new hardware, new software, new communications links, new everything. It plans to put its new system in two locations in the Tucson sector by the end of 2008, then extend it through the Tucson, Yuma and El Paso sectors by the end of 2011. More deadlines to watch come and go.

The House Committee hearing on February 27 was titled, “Lessons Learned; The Future of the SBInet”. What lessons has DHS learned? They say they’ve learned that off the shelf components do not automatically interface with each other out of the box, that systems need to be thoroughly tested in the lab before being put in the field, that input from people on the ground is vital to designing a system for their use.

These commonsensical lessons could have been learned from experience before P28. In 2005, the DHS inspector General reported on two border surveillance programs ongoing since 1998. They produced a system that was triggered by insects, horses and weather so that BP agents didn’t bother to investigate 60 percent of sensor alerts. Of the rest, 90 percent were found to be false alarms. All at a cost of $429 million. Lesson unlearned.

What lessons can we learn from the P28 experience? Once again, we learn that we cannot expect DHS to deliver honest, accurate assessments on anything to do with the border. We learn that no level of futility will keep them from steamrolling ahead with towers and fences.

We also learn that along with outsourcing conception, design, procurement, installation, support and maintenance, DHS shipped off their oversight and management responsibilities as well. If not for the GAO and the House Committee on Homeland Security there would be no public oversight at all. And this oversight is one or two levels removed and only grudgingly gets accurate information from DHS. On February 27, Subcommittee Chairman Carney said that only recently had DHS finally informed him privately of P28′s problems and he was still disappointed that their public statements were so “disconnected from reality”.

Boeing seemingly wrote its own contract for P28. Said Chairman Carney, “In an ideal world, Boeing wouldn’t have played such a large role writing their own contract specs”. These specs did not originally include operational performance requirements for the system.

The $20.6 million that Boeing received for P28 is a small fraction of the $1.1 billion in task orders it has been awarded for SBInet projects through February 15, 2008. Some of these contracts are for fencing, Boeing is big into fencing now. Still, they received $135.9 million for mission and systems engineering, testing and evaluation before the P28 contract. They received $69 million for designing and planning the extension of SBInet even as they were missing deadlines on P28. They received $8 million for support and maintenance and $64.5 million for new software at the same time DHS announced “conditional” acceptance. SBInet is a contract mill for Boeing.

We’ve seen it in Iraq, in New Orleans and elsewhere in government: this administration’s insistence on privatizing and outsourcing government functions isn’t resulting in greater effectiveness and efficiency. It’s bringing more abuse and a lack of accountability.

The biggest lesson we can learn here is that there is no technological miracle coming to make problems on the border disappear. We are experiencing an enormous migration of people into this country being driven by global economic and political forces that overwhelm any attempts to control them through mere law enforcement. These are forces of our own making, generated by our own global economic exploitation. As a visiting professor from the Netherlands said at a border issues conference in Arivaca awhile back, if you want globally mobile capital and globally mobile markets you’re going to also get globally mobile labor. Our attempts to secure the border have been counterproductive because they don’t align with the economic and political realities that we ourselves have created. And they don’t deal with human issues from a human perspective.

For too long people have suffered and died to get into this country to do jobs that are already waiting for them. Jobs we are told no one else will do. Jobs we are told are necessary in our economy. Yet we respond to these people as if they were attacking us. We’ve created a low level war situation on the border between countries that should be allied neighbors. The lesson of 14 years of experience is that ever increasing levels of law enforcement have only led to increased violence, increased suffering and decreased civil and human rights along the border. It hasn’t diminished the number of people crossing but has increased the illegal immigrant population in this country by making it more difficult to cross back and forth.

The vast majority of people illegally crossing the border are not criminals or “terrorists”. Militarization of the border is a misguided and futile response. We need immigration and economic policy reform to address the real human issues faced by the large number of border crossers. If we can deal with immigration through humanistic policies that allow
needed people to come here and work and help create opportunities in other countries, we can dramatically reduce the number of people trying to cross the border illegally. Reasonable levels of law enforcement can deal with the remaining criminality. The threat of terrorism does not necessitate the fencing and surveiling of our entire southern and northern borders.

Of course, there are substantial interests in keeping the situation like it is. There is huge money in smuggling people across the border now. So much so that drug smugglers are getting more involved. This is increasing the violence perpetrated on migrants. As we’ve seen, there is huge money in securing the border on this side and much of our economy is fueled by exploiting migrants for substandard wages. War is an economic engine.

We’re told not to expect any significant discussion on comprehensive immigration reform until well after November’s elections. The war at home on our own border needs to be addressed as much as the war in Iraq and the economy. This is an opportunity to bring the issue before the public and make it stay there.

DHS is coming to the Arivaca Community Center for the latest in our series of community meetings on Thursday, April 10 at 6pm. Now that they own the obsolete P28 system, maybe they’ll be interested in removing the Arivaca surveillance tower, the one that can’t see south even if it could work. It’s not such a shining example of progress in securing the border anymore. We’ll see.

Copyright 2008 Peter Ragan

I was forcibly pulled over by the Border Patrol on my way to work. I have traveled that road every day for the past 10 years. Mostly without incident, but I have been harassed a few times, such as the BP tail-gating with their bright lights in my rear view mirror. But up until now I haven’t ever had any real trouble. I’ve heard stories of people being hurt, held at gunpoint, and forced from their vehicles. This list goes on. My sister was hit in the face, dragged from her vehicle, thrown to the ground and handcuffed with her face in the dirt. I can’t say that in light of these things I feel very safe when in comes to those little boys.

I have always been told, in every self-defense class, even those taught by law enforcement, that you should go to a populated area before you pull over for anyone you don’t know including law enforcement. Slow down, drive as close to the right side of the road as possible without leaving the pavement and continue to drive until you reach a populated area.

The Border Patrol turned their lights on me at about milepost 20 after following me for about 4 miles. I did what I was taught. I slowed down to 20 miles per hour, pulled to the side of the road and continued to drive. They followed me for a little way and then the first vehicle pulled in front of me and cut me off. I hit the brakes and a second BP vehicle sandwiched me in. Both agents jumped out of their vehicles and pulled their guns. They screamed at me several times to get out of my vehicle. I told them no and they continued screaming at me. “Roll down the window! Get out of the vehicle! Why do you hate authority?” etc. I tried to explain that I was moving slowly toward a populated area.
“We only have a mile to go. Can we just get to the Cow Palace?” They answered, “No, you’ve already proven that you’re going to run.”

Now even a moron knows that if you’re going to run you should go a little faster than 20 mph. Something in me was more afraid to be outside of my vehicle with them than to die in my vehicle from a bullet to the brain at 6 inches. I didn’t leave my vehicle. They “threatened” to call DPS and I said, “Please do.” They finally told me to pull off to the side of the road so that we weren’t obstructing traffic. In the meantime 5 more Border Patrol cars showed up. I guess they felt really threatened by me. I’m 49-years-old, have blonde hair, drive a small pickup and I work at a book store. They could see in the back – there was nothing.

Finally the Sheriff’s deputy showed up and talked to them first. Then he edged his way up the passenger side of my truck and knocked on the window. I rolled it down and told him how glad I was to see him. He asked for my ID and I gave it to him. He asked what was going on here and I told him the story of my sister. I told him I was afraid and I only wanted to drive to someplace safe before cooperating with them. He asked why they were pulling me over and I told him I really didn’t know. “Maybe I look like a Canadian terrorist.” He laughed, “Never saw one of those before.” He then told me that I could be charged with a felony for not pulling over when the lights came on. He said I could be arrested. He told me that my obligation to them was to pull over and show ID. They couldn’t do anything else. They can’t force me to exit the vehicle. They can’t search my vehicle or my person.

The information came back letting them know that I was not a terrorist; he gave back my ID and told me I could go. I haven’t found out why they pulled me over.
And, after following me for 4 miles, using their ethnic profiling techniques couldn’t they tell that I am not Hispanic or Iraqi? We’re told they are here to protect us, to keep our borders safe. But who is going to protect us from them?

Copyright 2007 Monica Tilley