Crossings have not stopped, only the ability for agents to arrest anyone. Napolitano sent a direct order to NOT arrest anyone crossing the border, just stop them and turn them back to Mexico. What a misleading piece of non-journalism I’ve read this week. You can read his piece of waste here: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-border-boredom-20110421,0,2700894.story
Plunge in border crossings leaves agents fighting boredom
Arrests of illegal crossers along the Southwest border dropped more than two-thirds from 2000 to 2010, from 1.6 million to 448,000.
EXCLUSIVE: Federal Agents Told to Reduce Border Arrests, Arizona Sheriff Says
AP
Nov. 1, 2010: Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever, left, speaks about illegal immigration at an event in Arizona also attended by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu.
An Arizona sheriff says U.S. Border Patrol officials have repeatedly told him they have been ordered to reduce — at times even stop — arrests of illegal immigrants caught trying to cross the U.S. border.
Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever told FoxNews.com that a supervisor with the U.S. Border Patrol told him as recently as this month that the federal agency’s office on Arizona’s southern border was under orders to keep apprehension numbers down during specific reporting time periods.
“The senior supervisor agent is telling me about how their mission is now to scare people back,” Dever said in an interview with FoxNews.com. “He said, ‘I had to go back to my guys and tell them not to catch anybody, that their job is to chase people away. … They were not to catch anyone, arrest anyone. Their job was to set up posture, to intimidate people, to get them to go back.”
Dever said his recent conversation with the Border Patrol supervisor was the latest in a series of communications on the subject that he has had with various federal agents over the last two years. Dever said he plans to relay the substance of these conversations when he testifies under oath next month before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
“I will raise my hand to tell the truth and swear to God, and nothing is more serious or important than that,” he said. “I’m going to tell them that, here’s what I hear and see every day: I had conversation with agent A, B, C, D and this is what they told me.”
Border Sheriff: Napolitano’s claims are laughable
April 21, 2011
Border Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County Arizona has a message for Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, who claims the U.S. – Mexico border is safer than ever – “that is an outright laugh!”
Last month, Janet Napolitano told an audience in El Paso, Texas that the security on the southern boarder “is better now than it ever has been” and that Mexican violence has not had a serious effect on neighboring towns.
“These are foreign-born criminals that are here in our country,” Babeu said, “That’s what we’re finding is going on here, and not only is it unacceptable, it has created a situation where now, there are as few as 75, as many as 100 lookout posts from drug cartels just for this one smuggling corner- drug cartels hold high positions on terrain features or mountains to provide safe passage for their drug cartels. That a cartel from Mexico can have this mature an organization in our country is outrageous.”
Cartels derive much of their power by violence and instilling fear into the law enforcement officials. Indeed, Babeu and his team of deputies have had numerous threats on their lives. Babeu says he never is unarmed.
“They kill police chiefs, they kill judges, they kill journalists, and mayors of small communities. That violence clearly is coming to America,” he said. “ We’ve had people that have been kidnapped, people that have been murdered, largely illegals. We’ve had, in Chandler, Arizona, a beheading that is now confirmed…. So the violence isn’t coming here, the violence is here. It’s not going to get better; it’s going to get worse until we secure this border..”
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