Where will you find Guard dogs throats cut, piles
of human feces, discarded Muslim prayer rugs
I've been a reporter in Arizona for 30 years. As the border story has heated up, I get
calls from out-of-town reporters wanting me to hook them up with angry border residents.
If I mentioned in a story that a particular rancher carries a gun, that's the rancher the
reporters want to see. They're less interested in understanding his problems than getting
film of him and his six-shooter.
These border residents are routinely snickered at and called racist vigilantes. But most
are decent folks caught up in the daily invasion of illegals who tramp across their land.
Ranchers in hard-hit areas spend the first hours of every day repairing damage done the
night before. They find fences knocked down and water spigots left on, draining
thousands of precious gallons. And then there's the trash: pill bottles, syringes, used
needles, and pile after pile of human feces.
Sometimes illegals hammer on residents' windows in the middle of the night, demanding to
use the phone. Some even walk right into the ranch house and refuse to leave until the
rancher pulls a gun and forces the issue. One rancher told me about illegals who rustled
one of her newborn calves. The intruders beat the 12-hour-old animal to death with a fence
post, then barbecued it on the spot.
How bad is it? In the Tucson Sector alone in January 2005, the Border Patrol arrested
35,704 people, seized 34,864 pounds of marijuana, and impounded 557 smuggling
vehicles. In one month. High-speed chases and accidents on our back-roads are now common.
Residents know to stay off certain roads at night because the smugglers-- of people and
drugs-- own them, and if you're not careful they'll come around a bend at 100 mph and run
you into a ditch or worse.
In some hilltop spots near Douglas, you can unfold a lawn chair and watch the invasion
happen. As dusk falls, they come, hundreds of headlights from Mexican cabs streaming
north, each filled to the windows with soon-to-be illegals. Are they good folks? Are they
carrying biological agents? We have no idea. They could be the worst terrorists and thugs.
If that sounds alarmist, consider that some ranchers have found Muslim prayer rugs
and Arabic dictionaries on their property. And the feds confirm that the
ultraviolent Mara Salvatrucha street gang is using Arizona as a gateway into this country.
But you haven't heard much about these problems nationally, because the media soft-pedal
them. Why? It's politically incorrect. We've built a new third rail in American life.
Leave the harmless illegals alone and go after their victims instead.
I've interviewed a fellow named Bud Strom, a retired Marine and a pretty fair cowboy poet
who has a ranch south of Sierra Vista. He tells about a reporter for the New York Times
coming out to his place and doing a story on what it's like to live on the border.
"The story made it sound like I was out there helping them, giving them water and
such," says Bud laughing. In fact, when he sees a group, he wheels his horse and gets
out of there fast, then calls the Border Patrol.
Bud knows what he's dealing with. He has had a truck stolen, found bales of drugs on his
land, and routinely has illegals approach him demanding beer. It used to be that one or
two would ask a local resident for water and a sandwich, and, once fed, be on their way
with a polite "Gracias, Seņorita." The new breed now comes in groups of 50.
They demand to be driven to their pickup spot, and if you refuse they flip you off. Sometimes
they poison barking ranch dogs or cut their throats to quiet them. How long do
you suppose such outrages would go on in Fairfield, Conn.? Or Greenwich? It'd be a day and
a half before some kumbaya-liberal flipped sides and founded the Merritt Parkway
Minutemen. Or the BlackBerry Brigade.
The best part of this story is that while the elite media's agenda on the Minutemen played
well on the coasts, Arizonans weren't buying it. A poll found that 57% of the state's
residents supported the border-watch project, which sent the editorial page of Tucson's
Arizona Daily Star into a stammering fit, calling the number alarming. Of course, this is
a paper so politically correct it can't even bring itself to call illegals... illegals.
Its writers refer to them as migrants or, my favorite, border crossers. But as the
Minutemen plan to expand operations to five more states--and a new citizen group, the Yuma
Patriots, begins patrolling--that 57% heartens me. It looks to me like the rednecks won.
Mr. Banks is a writer in Tucson.
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