WE CAN'T SAVE OUR COUNTRY UNTIL WE RID OURSELVES OF BIDEN!
A Border Sheriff's Reality
Mark Dannels is the well-known and respected sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, a large jurisdiction that put its first county seat in the iconic frontier town of Tombstone and took its name from one of the most famous and feared war chiefs of the Chiricahua Apache. He is the chair of the Border Security Committee of the National Sheriff’s Association and was a member of the select DHS Homeland Security Advisory Council until removed by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a sweeping political purge of its membership. Dannels’ department patrols eighty-three miles of the state’s four hundred mile boundary with Sonora, Mexico, halfway down a narrow ribbon of thirty-one counties stretching from California to Texas.
Border sheriffs in Arizona have long reckoned with illegal immigration, trodden for decades over the same sagebrush routes now used by the Sinaloa Cartel to ensure its majority share of the American drug trade. Unlawful waves of migration have waxed and waned over the years, contingent upon the party in power. Bush 43 wrestled with it, leaving it to flourish under Obama. Trump brought it to an all-time low behind hundreds of miles of new and replacement wall fortified by Title 42 and Migrant Protection Protocols that kept the phalanxes of border crashers inside Mexico. The Biden doctrine on unlawful migration has been to put a match to all things Trump while continuing to chip away at any regulatory headwinds that might slow the invasion.
For years Dannels and his fellow sheriffs have relied heavily on federal grants and state support to hold the line. Operation Stone Garden represented a longstanding bipartisan funding effort to enhance police presence in embattled border towns. Strong opposition to the effort arose in the Democrat stronghold of Tucson. Police Chief Chris Magnus, an Obama acolyte who took every opportunity to editorialize against Trump’s denunciation of sanctuary cities, withdrew from the grant program when the government denied his request to repurpose monies from enforcement to funding room and board for illegals. Magnus’s immigration activism and coddling up to anti-police groups are the right stuff for another calamitous Biden appointment. Over the objections of the sheriff’s associations, his nomination to head the Customs and Border Patrol now sits before the Senate.
If elections have consequences, 2020 predetermined a retreating American frontline both domestically and abroad. Biden’s Inauguration Day executive actions wrenched the reins of public safety from the hands of the border sheriffs. One of those fiats declared the southwest border a non-emergency, giving pretext to stop border wall construction and swing open America’s back door to huge pedestrian caravans pushing hordes of sick and abused migrants from more than 150 countries through gaps in the bollards.
In early 2020, things were looking up for cops and beleaguered residents in Cochise County. CBP was set to put up 32 miles of wall, filling in the open spaces and replacing worn and ineffective fencing. The wall was only the first line of defense. An installed network of fiber optics, hidden cameras, sensors, and lighting would allow federal and local authorities to sense and respond promptly to breaches along the line.
No sooner had he secured the nomination than Biden began spurring illicit migration into America. Dannels saw illegal immigration numbers jump from three hundred per month to 1,500 over the summer and topping 2,500 by year’s end. To many, those were the good ‘ol days. To date in 2021, enforcement in the Tucson sector have arrested 183,000 illegals, eighty-five percent of whom were single adult males. More than 115,000 are estimated to have evaded capture.
On Inauguration Day, pressure by wildlife conservation groups and Democrat activists to halt wall construction was relieved by a single stroke of Biden’s pen. Alternatively, Biden promised to invest in drones and smart technology. Eleven months later, the Biden administration has yet to install a single light fixture or flip the switch on the high-tech equipment already installed by the Trump administration. A quarter-billion in leftover border funds have been redirected to military projects, such as overseas schools, housing, and shops.
For Dannels, small gaps in the wall next to idled construction equipment and unassembled bollards quickly turned into express lanes for a year-to-year increase of two hundred percent in illegal migration. Instead of facilitating vehicle patrols, unfinished dirt roadways on the American side offer migrants smooth passage into the arms of border agents handcuffed by presidential proclamation to do anything but catch and release.
From field interviews, Cochise deputies learned that many are headed to New Jersey, a deep blue state with lax immigration policies, hamstrung enforcement, and run by a progressive Wall Street type with a fondness for mixing business attire with lounge footwear and a conviction to put his half million undocumented residents on the taxpayer’s dole.
In early March, Biden further obstructed county enforcement efforts in Cochise County by shutting down three federal checkpoints near Wilcox and reassigning the three hundred border agents to immigrant childcare and processing duties. Dannels was now on his own, increasingly dependent upon a principal deputy, Tim Williams, who commands the county’s Southeast Arizona Border Region Enforcement (SABRE) task force. Singlehandedly, SABRE has labored long hours to stem the migrant flood, bolstered by a few state troopers and several dozen national guard personnel sent by the governor.
Success in suppressing Cochise border migration doesn’t account for the getaways. With the help of hundreds of county-installed cameras in the desert, Dannels estimates that out of five thousand alien border crossings in October 2021, more than 3500 aliens may have eluded his thinned patrol ranks. During 2021 to date, SABRE has encountered 33,000 aliens, arresting forty-seven drug mules and seizing more than eight hundred pounds of marijuana and other drugs such as methamphetamine and heroin. Across the whole southwest border, authorities estimated 300,000 getaways in 2021, 100,000 of which occurred in the four Arizona counties comprising the Tucson sector.
Crime and trespassing complaints in the border towns have skyrocketed. Ranchers walkabout their property well-armed, often bumping into small groups of migrants and drug couriers dressed in military-style camo and sporting heavy backpacks laden with belongings or narcotics. SABRE’s covert cameras dispersed across the desert terrain have recorded taildraggers flying under American radar and conducting daytime drug drops.
Rampant COVID infection rates and other diseases picked up along the northward trek soon take their toll. Cartel coyotes, who view delay as lost profit, abandon the sick or overheated to die in the desert. Dannels’s deputies often make rescues of forsaken migrants. Ranchers stumble over dead bodies, sometimes huddled in groups of three or four. Since Biden took office, the Tucson sector has seen 162 migrant deaths, ninety-one in the past couple of months.
It is Democrat wordsmithing to imply that the Biden’s border strategy is humanitarian. To claim that moral high ground is antithetical to its true purpose, to expand the blue electorate at the terrible cost of enriching the drug cartels, endorsing human trafficking and child abuse, killing hundreds for their efforts, and putting thousands more into forced labor, poverty, and crime on America’s streets. It is a willful crisis of humanity and an insult to all Americans if the Biden regime believes it can varnish it over with a few teleprompted speeches and scripted pressers.
If you’re in Cochise County, those ramifications are existential. You can just watch from your doorstep or talk to your local sheriff.
Image: Pixnio
EXCLUSIVE: Border Patrol Migrant Got-Away Count Reaches 75K in 47 Days
A law enforcement source within Customs and Border Protection revealed the number of migrants escaping apprehension reached 75,000 in Fiscal Year 2022, which began in October. The source says between 1,800 and 2,000 migrants are managing to elude apprehension daily along the southwest border.
On Tuesday, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) questioned Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the issue. In a tense exchange, Mayorkas failed to provide the number.
Sen. Cruz: Now, you told another Senator, you don’t know how many ‘got-aways’ there have been?
Sec. Mayorkas: I will have to circle back, Senator, with that information.”
Cruz: So, that wasn’t a fact that you thought was relevant to this hearing?
Mayorkas: Oh, it is absolutely relevant. I understand why the question is posed. It’s a fact of great—
Cruz: But you’re not prepared to answer it. How about this — how many deaths? How many illegal aliens have died crossing illegally into the United States under Joe Biden’s Administration?
Mayorkas: I don’t have that data.
The known got-away count is updated daily by the Border Patrol, according to the source. The data is entered into a system of record easily accessible to agency leaders.
At the current pace, the source says the migrant got-away count this year is likely to exceed the more than 400,000 as reported in Fiscal Year 2021.
The metric is usually not released by DHS. It is achieved by counting migrants who ultimately escape apprehension after being observed by aircraft and camera systems. Agents also use traditional sign-cutting techniques to identify footprints.
Sources report the got-away count is usually lower than reality. Another issue impacting the accuracy of the got-away count, according to the source, is the number of Border Patrol agents relegated to processing, transport and humanitarian care for the thousands of migrants apprehended daily.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.
How Long before Mexican Cartels Set Up Their Own States in the USA?
A few days ago, The Daily Caller released its first investigative documentary: Cartelville USA. The film is short — only 36 minutes — and you can watch it here with a subscription or free trial. There is also an interview on the Federalist Radio Hour with the director, Jorge Ventura, which is nearly as long as the documentary itself.
In case the title doesn't give it away, the topic of Cartelville USA is a string of communities in the California desert that have been taken over by drug cartels. The cartels grow marijuana in hoop houses on land that may or may not be theirs, using slave labor and stolen water. They pack heavy weapons and gun down whoever looks too much like a rival or a threat, and they generally do as they wish.
"These drug cartels are wreaking havoc on the entire antelope valley, and nobody is talking about it," says the narrator near the beginning of the film. "This is the cartels. We are very, very close to driving down the freeway, and seeing bodies hanging from the overpasses. That is what's coming."
Ventura's disturbing look into the growing power of drug cartels on this side of the border caught my interest because it has two important political ramifications, one short-term and the other long-term. But before I discuss those in detail, a summary of what I learned from the documentary is in order.
The setting is, for the most part, in rural Los Angeles County, though it extends into neighboring counties as well. The inhabitants are, for the most part, old, working-class conservatives who settled there in their twilight years to get away from the bustle of city life, only to be rudely surprised by what is going on. And you can tell that something is deeply wrong from the get-go by the fact that most of the people Ventura interviews (the sheriff and Congressman Mike Garcia being notable exceptions) have their faces blurred to avoid recognition.
Ventura and his crew reveal how a combination of Mexican, Chinese, and Armenian organized crime syndicates are growing marijuana in hoop houses in the California desert. Some growers own the land or are in league with absentee landlords, while others are just squatters. The hoop houses, complete with lights and irrigation systems, can be set up in just a day or two, and even when police get a search warrant, the law usually allows them to take only the marijuana plants, while leaving everything else, so the whole enterprise carries surprisingly little risk.
Labor is provided by illegal aliens brought from Mexico or China and forced to work by their traffickers; water is simply stolen, often from fire hydrants.
Most Californians are unaware of the severity of the problem: in their minds, since their state already legalized marijuana, they shouldn't have to worry about this kind of thing anymore. "People just shrug their shoulders," says Ventura. "Who cares, it's just pot, like, why are we even wasting our tax dollars fighting this issue?"
Yet Proposition 64, which passed in 2016, was in many ways a half-measure. While Californians can now legally grow weed under some circumstances, there are enough licensing requirements, regulatory requirements, and production limits to ensure that it's still much more profitable to do it illegally — and that's before you add in the fact that, due to federal law still frowning on everyone involved in the cannabis trade, no money earned by selling the stuff can be deposited into a bank account. Then tally up the costs saved by using stolen water and forced labor, and it's easy to see why working outside the law is still the most profitable option.
The ultimate takeaway from all this is that things that Americans are used to hearing about on the other side of the border are going to start happening on our own side, too, if enough people don't wake up to the gravity of the situation.
Or, as an interviewer from The Federalist put it when he began querying Ventura: "The Cartels generally know you can kill as many Mexicans as you want in Mexico, you can slave-trade as many humans as you want from foreign countries, but you don't mess with Americans, [or] Americans start to freak out. It seems to be one of the very few remaining ideas of Pax Americana in the world as cartels know that's bad for business. But you worry that might be changing?"
Yes, Jorge Ventura does worry that might be changing.
The immediate takeaway is that the leftists who govern the United States in general and California in particular are completely blind to serious national problems — even problems with high human costs borne largely by the people they claim to care about the most — when those problems don't fit into their political worldview.
If you're a Democrat, then one of the ways you prove to your party's base that you're a good Democrat is by going soft on crimes involving politically sensitive classes of people — in this case, Hispanics and illegal aliens. (And it is of no consequence that Hispanic people who have to deal with these crimes up close — like Jorge Ventura and Mike Garcia — are often vehemently opposed to your nonchalance).
The same goes for reporters in the mainstream media. If you work for the New York Times, CNN, NPR, or the like, you will not advance your career by drawing attention to the fact that the wide open border and the lenient attitude toward crime that gave rise to "Defund the Police" has nasty consequences for poor people and racial minorities.
It is rather disturbing that this has become a partisan issue; after all, in a healthy republic, defending the lives and property of one's countrymen would be something that all office-holders feel strongly about. But at the moment, it isn't, and unless more voters start supporting people like Mike Garcia instead of the rabble who talk about defunding the police, we're going to get more of the same.
One can argue, quite convincingly, that the road to Cartelville USA starts with the kind of politicians who are willing to let BLM burn down police stations, and then say the important thing is that none of the "protesters" was harmed by the cops.
As for the long-term ramifications: if the U.S. government doesn't somehow get put into the hands of people who really, really want to turn things around — and by now, a turnaround is looking increasingly unlikely — then we are looking at the beginning stages of state formation.
This is a concise way of saying that, the longer this goes on, the more and more the cartels will take on the attributes of being sovereign governments in their own right. They will hold undisputed authority over their territory and its inhabitants; they will make and enforce laws; they will collect taxes; they will wage war; and, if victorious, they will dictate the terms of the peace treaty, just as their counterparts already do in Mexico.
Perhaps you are familiar with the Battle of Culiacán, fought in October of 2019, in which 700 Sinaloa gunmen, wielding 50-calibre rifles, rocket launchers, grenades, and armored vehicles, defeated the Mexican National Guard, seized control of a city of 700,000 people, and demanded that the Mexican government release the imprisoned son of the Sinaloa Cartel's leader or else face a massacre. President López-Obrador complied, as many people expected him to; he had, after all, run for office on a platform of rapprochement with the drug cartels.
America's Culiacán moment is still a long way off — decades away, in my opinion — but the longer politicians ignore events like the ones that Jorge Ventura is trying to bring to light in Cartelville USA, the closer that moment gets.
Twilight Patriot also writes at www.twilightpatriot.com.
Image: Bureau of Land Management California via Flickr, Public Domain.
Mexico's cartels did not get AMLO's 'hugs, not bullets' memo
A couple of years ago, President Lopez-Obrador said something about promoting hugs rather than bullets as his plan for halting Mexico's notorious cartels.
Prior to becoming president, AMLO promised “hugs, not bullets,” a demilitarization of security, an end to high value targeting and a focus on social spending and anti-corruption to reduce the root causes of violence.
The hand-printed signs, in neat block letters, appeared in the Tulum marketplace the morning after two tourists were shot dead and three others wounded at a roadside eatery in the bohemian Mexican resort town.“Attention merchants of Tulum … this was a warning,” said the sign, which went on to threaten “managers and owners” of bars and restaurants on the “Mini Quinta” tourist zone. That’s where the foreigners, visiting the Malquerida Bar last month, had the bad luck of getting caught in cartel crossfire.The signs were photographed by a local citizens’ advocacy group, which posted them to social media. The message threatened death to merchants who refuse to fork over bribes to the drug trafficking gangs and was signed by Los Pelones — “the bald ones.”
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