The Border War
William Norman Grigg
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The New American, July 1, 2002
Mexico is quietly waging war on our southern border with the complicity of elements in our government who seek to meld the nations of this hemisphere into a regional superstate. |
Robert Maupin and his daughter Denise share an unwanted distinction: They are probably the only American citizens to be detained and forcibly disarmed, at gunpoint, on U.S. soil, by Mexican soldiers. The incident, which took place in 1985, is not the only time the Mexican military illegally entered our country. Such incursions, like the one that took place near Ajo, Arizona, on May 17th of this year, are becoming increasingly common and breathtakingly brazen.
In the summer of 1985, Maupin recalled to The New American, “I mentioned to a friend who used to be a narcotics agent that I could smell ether on my property [near Tierra del Sol, California]. He pointed out that ether is used to make methamphetamine. The only neighbor we had was a small building about a half-mile south of the border, which was usually empty. However, sometimes a Mexican flag would be flying over it, there would be activity inside, and it would be guarded by guys in plain clothes carrying military weapons. I noticed that the ether smell would be really strong when the prevailing breeze came from that direction.”
Maupin’s friend told him that he was going to give the information “to our [drug enforcement] counterparts in Mexico.” “I’m pretty sure that’s where my problems began,” Maupin comments.
On the following Sunday, Robert and Denise went out for some afternoon target practice in a shooting range improvised from “an old dry dam right on the border.” While they were shooting, Maupin and his daughter saw what appeared to be “a bunch of kids wearing toy helmets” perilously close to their line of fire. When they went to investigate, Maupin and his daughter suddenly found themselves surrounded by “seven Mexican soldiers toting FN/FAL rifles” — fully automatic, .308 caliber rifles used by NATO troops.
The sergeant in charge of the squad “told me in fairly good English that they were ‘looking for illegal guns and drugs,’” Maupin recounted to The New American. “He also said specifically that they were looking for ‘Señor Maupin,’ which made it pretty clear to me that I had made somebody in the Mexican government angry by sticking my nose into their drug business.”
“I told the sergeant, ‘We’re in the U.S.A. The guns that I and my daughter are carrying are legal, but yours aren’t.’ But the sergeant told one of his guys to disarm us.” When the soldier reached to confiscate Denise’s holstered .357 Magnum, “she backhanded him and just about knocked him flat,” relates Maupin. “Several of the other soldiers started working the bolts on their rifles. We were outnumbered and outgunned, so I emptied my rifle, handed it to them, and told Denise to do the same with her gun.”
Telling the sergeant that he had the proper paperwork for his guns back at his home, Robert led the squad back to his ranch house. As they walked with him, Robert told Denise that he would stall the soldiers at the corral long enough for her to get to a telephone and call the Border Patrol. It was to the ambivalent good fortune of Maupin and his family that these particular Mexican soldiers weren’t particularly professional. “They didn’t notice Denise was gone until they heard the door closing,” Maupin notes. “But when they realized that she had gone into the house, they dropped the bipods on their rifles and aimed them at the house.”
By this time Denise had contacted the Border Patrol, which set up a roadblock and sent three agents to the Maupin ranch. Meanwhile, the Mexican soldiers had calmed down. Maupin got them some icewater to drink and amused his uninvited guests with his broken Spanish. Eventually Maupin casually remarked that he had called for “an official interpreter” to come help out. “The guy in charge got an ‘uh-oh’ expression on his face, and ordered one of his men to scribble out a receipt for our guns,” declared Maupin. “He got really agitated and yelled at his men to move out. When they got to our fence line they took off.” A short time later they were caught and disarmed by Border Patrol agents, who retrieved Robert and Denise’s firearms. After being informed that he “would have to be in court for 90-120 days straight” if he chose to pursue legal redress, Maupin decided to let the matter drop — even though he and his family had been detained by a foreign army invading our sovereign territory.
“When we grabbed those guys [involved in the border incursion], they were decked out in full combat gear, carrying fully automatic rifles, and they claimed that they had ‘gotten lost,’” former Border Patrol agent Bob Stille recalled to The New American. But Stille and his Border Patrol colleagues weren’t buying the story: “Even back then we had dealt with border incursions of this sort, which were usually connected in some way to drug smuggling.”
Since the mid-1980s, continues Stille, “Drug enforcement people have discovered tunnels running under the border in the area by Tierra del Sol, which have been used to smuggle multiple tons of cocaine and every other kind of narcotics into this country. And a few years ago the Mexican government started some kind of homestead program on their side of the border, where they’ve built a small city out of cardboard shacks. It’s basically a jumping-off point for smuggling illegal aliens and drugs into the U.S.”
Robert Maupin and his wife still live on their ranch in Tierra del Sol. “We’ve had a couple more skirmishes since then,” he commented to The New American. One episode in the mid-1990s involved an abortive effort by drug smugglers to cross the border in a Chevy Suburban loaded down with contraband. “They tried to do a ‘Dukes of Hazzard’-style stunt jump at a border crossing, and ended up high-centered on a rock,” recalls Maupin. “They ended up with the bumper in the U.S. and the rest of the Suburban in Mexico. The people got out and scurried back across the border, just abandoning a very nice, late-model vehicle — which, as it happened, had been stolen in Texas and re-registered in Baja, California. And when our [law enforcement] people got a close look at it, they found that it was just crammed full of illegal drugs.”
“We’ve been living here for over 50 years, and they haven’t driven us out yet,” continues Maupin. “Sometimes it doesn’t seem as if we live in the United States, but we’ve learned firsthand about a reality that most American citizens ignore. A lot of people in this country simply don’t understand that our nation is under assault from our supposed friend to the south. There’s an invasion going on, and it has potential consequences for all of us, not just those of us living down here on the border.”
Tancredo Takes Tough Stance
The May 17th Mexican military incursion near Ajo, Arizona, illustrated anew that the invasion Maupin refers to consists not only of an unremitting flood of illegal immigrants and drug smugglers, but also occasionally takes the form of a brazen armed border violation by elements of the Mexican military.
As described by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) spokeswoman Lori Haley, a Border Patrol agent spotted three Mexican soldiers in a Humvee on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation, approximately five miles inside U.S. territory. In keeping with established policy, the agent did a quick U-turn, to avoid a confrontation in which he would be outnumbered and outgunned. Nonetheless, shots were fired at the Border Patrol vehicle, shattering the rear window and endangering the agent’s life.
According to Representative Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who was en route to a meeting in Mexico to discuss border-related issues at the time of the incident, U.S. officials said that the Mexican soldiers “had interdicted a huge shipment of drugs. Therefore everyone was antsy.” While the congressman is convinced that a drug shipment was involved in the incident, he disputes the claim that the Mexican soldiers had “interdicted” it.
“I have spent a lot of time talking with Border Patrol and counter-narcotics people about these incursions,” Rep. Tancredo told The New American. “What I have learned is that they are apparently staged, most of the time, to provide cover or a diversion when there’s a big, big shipment. They’re used to draw away our agents from a targeted border zone, which is pretty easy to do, since they’re already so badly over-stretched. And in some cases the soldiers are actually protecting the shipments themselves.”
While Tancredo specifies that he doesn’t believe that “these incursions and drug shipments represent the official policy of the Vicente Fox government,” he points out that “they are getting official help from elements of the Mexican government, obviously, since the Army is involved. We may be dealing with a rogue element of some kind. I just don’t know how far up it goes. The State Department assured me that they are discussing these incursions ‘at the highest levels,’ but they’re not displaying any particular urgency.”
Nor are such incursions rare, continues the congressman. “Since 2001, there have been 23 incursions — 19 by the Mexican Army, and four by the Federal Police. Since 1996, there have been at least 118 documented and confirmed incursions by armed Mexican military and law enforcement personnel,” he told The New American. “These figures don’t represent every reported incident, just those that have been officially tallied by our bureaucracy. The actual number of border violations by armed Mexican personnel may be three or four times higher.”
The May 17th incident in Arizona would likely be among the unconfirmed incidents had a Border Patrol captain not leaked the story to the congressman. Shortly after the incident took place, Tancredo received an e-mail from the captain informing him of what was, in effect, an attempted assassination of a fellow Border Patrol officer by Mexican soldiers. “Here we had a federal law enforcement officer, in a clearly marked federal vehicle, shot at by members of a foreign military who had invaded our nation — and we probably wouldn’t even know about it if the captain of his unit hadn’t e-mailed me,” comments Tancredo.
According to Tancredo, the Bush administration “should tell Mexico that we won’t allow any more uncontested violations of our border, which are acts of aggression — indeed, when they involve shots being fired on federal personnel, they could be considered acts of war. I don’t want these incidents to escalate into tragedies in which anybody, American or Mexican, gets shot or killed. But we have to make it plain to Mexico that we won’t put up with this any longer, and that the next Mexican Army Humvee they send across our border might return with some bullet holes in it.”
Unfortunately, Tancredo predicts, “We’re not going to see anything done about these outrages anytime soon, because Washington wants to maintain the fiction that Mexico is a good ‘partner’ in policing our border.”
Immigration vs. Migration
During a visit to Arizona’s Coronado National Forest near the border, Tancredo examined some of the damage wrought by the Mexican invasion. “The Forest Service supervisor has a staff of seven people to police a 60-mile stretch of border,” the congressman points out. “So it’s hardly a surprise that the forest is being torn apart. We have hundreds of thousands of people coming through that area every year, many of them transporting drugs. They’ve left behind mountains of garbage and human waste. And they often start small campfires at night that are left unattended when they leave — which helps explain why so far this year there have been more than 50,000 acres burned in the Coronado Forest, which is one of our nation’s oldest national forests.”
Since arriving in Congress, Tancredo has taken a high-profile position favoring drastic immigration reform. Predictably, he has had less than amicable relations with officials in the Fox regime in Mexico and in the Bush administration — both of which support the effective abolition of the U.S.-Mexican border.
“During a visit to Mexico, a group of us from Congress met with Juan Hernandez, who has a very interesting title: He heads the Ministry for ‘Mexicans living abroad,’ ” recalls Rep. Tancredo. “To put it bluntly, this guy’s job is to ensure that as many Mexicans are sent north to the United States as possible, by any means necessary. And in the course of our meeting, he kept using the term ‘migration’ to describe the movement of Mexicans across our border, whether legally or illegally. I pointed out to him that this was an improper use of the term. When referring to movement of people within borders, I reminded him, the proper term is ‘migration’; when that movement takes place across borders, it’s ‘emigration’ or ‘immigration.’ And when it happens in a way that violates our laws, it’s by definition illegal immigration.”
According to Tancredo, Señor Hernandez reacted by smiling and insisting: “Congressman, we’re not talking about two countries — it’s just one single region.”
Observes Tancredo: “This is the whole point of the issue — the question of the existence of borders, whether we have them or not. There are people in the [Bush] administration, and in Mexico, and in Congress, who believe that we should do away with borders entirely. Their ultimate goal is to create this hemispheric ‘free trade’ area consolidating all of North and South America into some kind of ‘United States of the Americas.’ Sometimes, as was the case with Mr. Hernandez, they’re very candid about the matter. But for the most part they’re simply creating facts on the ground, thereby merging the U.S. and Mexico in practice, if not in terms of actual legal status.”
“This is a legitimate political issue, and it should be discussed and debated openly,” he continues. “Americans — the public at large as much as some of our policymakers — are letting this take place without a frank discussion. We are undergoing a radical change in our national character and social structure, and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen without at very least the informed consent of the public. I’m among those who believe that it shouldn’t be allowed to happen, period — and I believe that this remains a majority view, which is probably why it’s being done by stealth and misdirection.”
Fox Unmasked
In remarks made for public consumption in this country, Mexican President Vicente Fox, hailed by the Bush administration and many conservative Republicans as a pro-American reformer, has said little about abolishing the border. However, he was breathtakingly candid in a recent address before the “Club XXI” at the Hotel Eurobuilding in Madrid, Spain.
Speaking on May 16th, Fox proudly outlined his government’s involvement in what he called the “nueva agenda global” — “new global agenda,” or, in more familiar phraseology, new world order. He referred to the “harmonization of Mexican legislation with international norms” and Mexico’s more assertive role in “using its voice and its vote [in the United Nations] to promote … fundamental rights throughout the world.” One example of this activism cited by Fox was Mexico’s prominent role at the UN’s World Summit on Racism in Durban, South Africa — an orgy of America-bashing and anti-Semitism that climaxed with the demand that the West, led by the U.S., pay “reparations” for slavery (a proposal energetically supported by Gilberto Rincon Gallardo, Mexico’s delegate at Durban).
According to Fox, the nueva agenda global has already impacted the “large Mexican communities settled in [the United States], more than 20 million Mexicans.” (That figure includes American citizens of Mexican ancestry, as well as immigrants both legal and illegal.) “In the last few months we have managed to achieve an improvement in the situation of many Mexicans in [the United States], regardless of their migratory status, through schemes that have permitted them access to health and education systems, identity documents, as well as the full respect for their human rights,” asserted Fox.
What the Mexican leader describes here is his success in embedding a large, unassimilated population of illegal immigrants in our society — often with the help of various welfare benefits underwritten by U.S. taxpayers. But this is only the beginning, insisted Fox: “Eventually our long-range objective is to establish with the United States, but also with Canada, our other regional partner, an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union, with the goal of attending to future themes [such as] the future prosperity of North America, and the movement of capital, goods, services, and persons.”
Unfortunately, Fox observed, there is a large impediment to this vision, “what I dare to call the Anglo-Saxon prejudice against the establishment of supra-national organizations.” So in addition to the supposed bigotry of Americans who insist that our immigration laws be obeyed, visionaries of Fox’s ilk have to contend with the irrational prejudice of Americans who value their national independence.
Fortunately for Fox, many American activists and policymakers display none of the prejudice he criticizes. Two radical attorneys in Yuma, Arizona, recently filed a $41.25 million wrongful death lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on behalf of families of 11 illegal immigrants who died while attempting to cross the Arizona desert in May 2001. The impetus for the lawsuit came from a Tucson-based leftist group called “Humane Borders,” which has set up water stations in the desert for the benefit of illegal immigrants.
According to attorney Jim Clark, one of the litigators involved in the case, the federal government’s refusal to allow the group to set up a water station in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge east of Yuma led to the death of the illegal aliens. Of course, this assertion ignores entirely the legal concept of “assumption of risk,” under which criminals are solely responsible for injuries they sustain in the course of committing illegal acts. But under the perverted concept of “social justice” that characterizes the nueva agenda global, this utterly spurious lawsuit has a decent chance of succeeding.
Indeed, the INS has already handed a victory to the illegal immigrant lobby. The AP reported on May 24th: “Illegal immigrants lost in the vast desert near Yuma this summer will be able to summon help by pressing a button on one of six 30-foot-tall rescue beacons.” Called “disco towers” by local immigration agents, the beacons “are covered in mirrors and topped with fist-sized flashing strobe lights that blink every 10 seconds and can be seen from as far away as four miles during the day and five miles at night. The towers have instructions in Spanish and English, as well as simple pictures showing illegal migrants [sic] how to push an alarm button if they’re in trouble. They’re located in places where agents have rescued illegal immigrants before.”
Isabel Garcia of a leftist, pro-illegal immigration group called “Coalición de Derechos Humanos” scornfully dismisses the rescue beacons as an inadequate measure. “We don’t believe that the measures to beef up and militarize the border will do anything to protect [illegal immigrants],” complained Garcia. “We will see more deaths and more suffering along the border this summer.”
While it is easy to sympathize with the plight of those illegal immigrants fleeing northward to escape Mexico’s poverty and all-encompassing corruption, it should be remembered that their plight is being shamelessly exploited by cynical people on both sides of our border wishing to see that border evaporate: Elements of the Mexican ruling class seeking to export that nation’s surplus poverty to the U.S.; drug smugglers using illegals as couriers for their contraband; and members of the internationalist Power Elite in Mexico and the U.S. entertaining a grand vision of amalgamating the U.S., Canada and Mexico into an analogue of the European Union.
The Mexican military incursions are skirmishes in a very real war on our southern border, a conflict that is but one front in a larger assault on our national independence. In that struggle, the actions of groups like Humane Borders and the Coalición de Derechos Humanos are more akin to treason than anything that the notorious “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh has been accused of doing: Lindh, after all, fled halfway around the world to take up arms on behalf of one side in an Afghan civil war. Those abetting Mexico’s invasion, on the other hand, are lending aid and comfort to a foreign power whose actions are having a measurable — and growing — destructive impact on our sovereignty, social order, and standard of living.
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