By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Throughout his presidential campaign, Donald Trump advocated building the southern border wall as if it were a one-man project that just meant rolling up his sleeves after he was elected. He didn’t say he’d have to try to talk more congressional Republicans into funding it, or persuade judges to let him do it.
However, making serious progress on that wall remains elusive, although increased border security is a grim necessity.
Are U.S. politicians and judges harder to reach agreement with than the tough North Korean dictator whom Trump sweet-talked into apparent amiability? Is protecting the United States from illegal, unlettered border-crossers on foot in the desert harder than assembling supersonic air defenses against high-tech military enemies who potentially could invade from the upper atmosphere?
With the backing of those who support lawful immigration, Trump continues to talk up border security on the campaign trail for this November’s midterms, calling for the election of more Republicans to assist him. How much more time and cooperation does he need to succeed?
Conservative GOP political consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer on September 24:
“Congress remains at an impasse over everything related to illegal immigration, including DACA, other amnesties, the wall, and more. If Democrats take the House, we can expect that various amnesties will become the price the White House will have to pay to achieve any of its own priorities, which means the GOP will have wasted perhaps its final chance to resolve these issues in a way that respects the rule of law.”
As Trump brought up border protection at a September 20 Las Vegas rally after audience members chanted “Build the wall,” the McClatchy news service quoted prominent Trump ally Steve Cortes saying:
“Tacitly approving of illegal crossings, as our federal government has permitted for decades, is not only counterproductive to our national and economic security, but also highly insulting and unfair to legal immigrants, like my own father, who go through a lengthy and difficult process to become legal new Americans.”
Illegal aliens’ large presence remains consequential in the U.S., sometimes thrust into the news through some tragedy.
A head-on nighttime crash on a southern Arizona highway near the town of Florence on September 19 left eight people dead, four of them illegal aliens. An additional three unauthorized aliens in the northbound SUV smuggling vehicle survived the collision after a southbound car reportedly crossed into its path.
The driver and another passenger in the SUV, both killed, reportedly previously were convicted on alien-smuggling charges.
Meanwhile, Yale University’s Yale Insights site reported on September 21 that the actual number of unauthorized aliens in the U.S. may far exceed the commonly used number of around 11.3 million people. This is a figure that curiously hasn’t changed for years, despite a tsunami of illegal immigration.
Yale Insights reported that “a paper by three Yale-affiliated researchers suggests all the perceptions and arguments based on that number may have a faulty foundation; the actual population of undocumented immigrants residing in the country is much larger than that, perhaps twice as high, and has been underestimated for decades.”
Breitbart news service posted on September 22 that Border Patrol agents apprehended 2,000 migrants in only three days at a small location in Texas known for illegal crossings, mainly families and unaccompanied minors from Central America.
The news service quoted from a statement by Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent Manuel Padilla Jr.: “The transnational criminal organizations exploit family units and unaccompanied-children populations and create diversions for agents, leaving areas along the Rio Grande vulnerable.”
The San Diego Union-Tribune posted on September 24 that the Border Patrol launched Operation Blazing Sands in August “to deter illegal border crossings and thwart human-smuggling attempts.
“Border Patrol noticed an uptick in smuggling-organization activity along a stretch of border in the southeastern-most part of the California desert, according to agent Justin Castrejon,” the Union-Tribune said.
“Agents responded in mid-August with Operation Blazing Sands, a collaboration between Border Patrol’s El Centro and Yuma sectors.”
The Wanderer contacted two women it knows who live in different parts of southern Arizona about the current situation. They both requested that their real names not be used because of their security worries where uncontrolled illegal immigration is common.
One, whom we’ll call Mrs. Smith, said the Yale study on higher illegal-immigration numbers didn’t surprise her. She recalled that nearly 20 years ago, in 1999, she’d hear figures ranging from eight million to 11 million illegal aliens already in the U.S., and that was before large groups of 10,000 people a night were crossing northward in 2000.
Mrs. Smith became an activist against illegal immigration because the scope of the border violations forced the role on her, she said during a September 24 phone interview. “I never chose to go out and do this damn border thing. . . . I was forced into it. . . . I don’t think this border will ever be secured.”
But that doesn’t mean she’ll give up trying. She recommended following the “Desert Visions” page at Facebook for information.
Asked for her opinion of Trump’s performance regarding the border, Mrs. Smith said, “I believe he is an answer to prayer,” but the president needs to ask himself, “Why so many children are pushed across the border from their homelands?. . . There’s got to be accountability. I believe Donald Trump needs to look into this.”
She told of seeing large white buses on the highway “usually in the dead of night, and they’re not prison buses.” She speculated that the buses are used by contractors to bring in unaccompanied minors for immigration hearings, and “I don’t know who else they’re transporting.”
Mrs. Smith added, “Everything, it seems, is kept away from the public eye. . . . There’s still plenty of illegals coming over,” but less evidence of them. “It doesn’t matter if it’s 500 or one, you just need that one who’s desperate enough to attack you. . . . These people are cash cows for the contractors.”
Wake Up
We’ll call the other southern Arizona woman who asked not to be identified Mrs. Jones. She sent The Wanderer an email citing the September 19 head-on collision that killed eight people near the town of Florence. She said it “is one of many which have been happening regularly for decades on the highways and interstates in the border states.”
The rest of this article simply quotes directly from Mrs. Jones’ lightly edited email.
“The Florence one betrays some of the underbelly of illegal immigration understood by those who have long watched the invasion of illegal immigrants and their traffickers, helped by some of our own.
“For instance, the driver and his partner in the van full of illegal immigrants were a couple from Sells, Ariz., a town on the Tohono O’odham Indian reservation. That couple both had prior convictions of aiding illegal entrants to America. The reservation is a huge area of desert land which shares some 60 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border. . . . This geography is a perfect area for illegal immigrants and drug cartels to use as entry points.
“The Indians oppose any border wall and have disputes with Border Patrol regarding interdiction of illegal entrants.
“The path of the deceased traffickers and their passengers likely started on the reservation, headed to Tucson, then north on a narrow state highway toward Florence and beyond to Interstate 60, which can be taken into the Phoenix metro area’s drop houses and beyond.
“This invasion and the accident are reproduced all across the border states. It has exploded recently with people from Central America claiming asylum in a manner that they have been coached about. This is a dangerous invasion of crisis proportions.
“Two thousand people at once were caught in Granjeno, Texas, around September 24. Granjeno is right on the Rio Grande, where the foliage on both sides gives cover to traffickers and their illegal customers, who pay $3,500 to $50,000 each for help.
“August 2018 has seen some 47,000 illegal entrants arrested at the border, up from 40,000 in July 2018, and up from 30,000 in July 2017.
“Americans had better wake up. Catholics better do their part. Our Catholic duties and demands do not include welcoming fake asylum seekers or poor immigrants of any kind. Our duty is to help those people in their own countries. It is the bishops’ duty to encourage such help.”
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