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Illegals Are Killing Our Citizens Ed Head This morning started like any other weekday here at our little ranch in Arizona. Part of that routine is firing up the television to find out what is going on in the world. Today we were told about the arrest of a suspect in the killing of three, and attempted murder of one other, teenagers in New Jersey. Jose Carranza, an illegal alien from Peru, was pressured into turning himself in by an exhaustive manhunt. But there was more. It was reported that Carranza had an extensive criminal record, was wanted for several other violent crimes, and had been released from custody awaiting trial in the matter of having repeatedly brutally raped a young girl for four years, from the time she was five years old until she was nine. To digress, from 1977 until 2001, I was employed by the United States Border Patrol. For more than 24 years I was assigned to the busiest, most active and most violent section of the border. When I reported for duty there were 1,200 Border Patrol Agents in the entire country and an estimated 1.2 million illegal aliens. By the time I retired we had something like 12,000 Border Patrol Agents and 12-15 million illegal aliens in the United States. Put plainly, my career was a failure. We accomplished nothing. Early in my career, though we had very few agents; the Border Patrol was given free reign to arrest illegal aliens wherever we found them. We had border and internal stations and we routinely checked transportation terminals, conducted city patrols and checked businesses and job sites. Story Continues Below
Back then we were part of the Justice Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. We worked hand in hand with state and local police, other federal law enforcement agencies, and the criminal investigators of the INS. During the Clinton administration a decision was made to put the Border Patrol on the border and eliminate their ability to work the interior, conduct internal patrols and work transportation hubs. Part of the plan was somewhat successful, if only locally, as Operation Gatekeeper almost shut down the San Diego corridor while creating a huge problem in Arizona. Phoenix, instead of San Diego, became the stolen car, residential burglary, methamphetamine and smuggling capital of the United States, among other dubious distinctions. Part of the Clinton/Janet Reno/Doris Meissner (INS Commissioner) strategy was said to be the hiring of thousands of criminal investigators to replace the departed Border Patrol presence, to conduct employer sanctions, and to ferret out illegal aliens in the interior. This turned out to be a lie. The investigators were not hired and the interior of the United States was left without immigration enforcement. Despite all of the promises to hire agents, control the border and so on, not one single administration in my memory, whether Republican or Democrat, has done squat to do anything meaningful with regards to the illegal alien issue. Note the ten-fold increase (at least) in illegal aliens in the country during my career. After 9/11, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Border Patrol was combined with U.S. Customs to create Customs and Border Protection and Customs and INS Investigators were combined to create Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Unfortunately, today, once an alien gets past the Border Patrol they are all but assured of being home free. The number of ICE agents in the interior is a joke. In some states there are none at all. In many areas there are three or four ICE agents responsible for covering an entire state, or even several states. What this means is that there is no effective internal enforcement of immigration laws. Ask your local sheriff or chief of police what kind of response they get from ICE when they call to report that they have arrested an illegal alien. With few exceptions they are told to release them because ICE neither has the manpower nor the funding to respond. Which brings us back to Mr. Carranza. I don't have insider information on his previous arrests but I will bet good money this is what happened; When he was initially arrested, the local police were unable to identify him as an illegal alien, or hold him as one, because ICE was too busy or indifferent to respond. So they let him go. Even after he was identified as the brutal rapist of a child, he was let back out onto the street. What should have happened, if the system worked, was that, even if not identified as an illegal alien by the police, the fact would have been ascertained by an ICE agent doing a jail check. Said ICE agent would have placed an immigration hold on Mr. Carranza and he would not have been able to be released, even on bail, into the custody of anyone but the government. In other words, he would not have had the opportunity to commit his string of crimes, culminating in the shooting of four young people in New Jersey. The system is broken and people like Carranza are being released from jails all over the country on a daily basis. Why? Because there aren't enough ICE investigators, the government doesn't want to pay the local jails for housing aliens on holds and the investigators themselves are overworked and tired of doing many, many hours of paperwork just to try to get one more alien deported. For the past 30 years I have witnessed this sort of travesty, over and over. The government seems to have assumed that we, the citizens of the United States, are supposed to accept the cost of this negligence. Our families are slaughtered on the highways by smuggling load drivers, drugs are destroying our children, and we're supposed to accept the cost of having our homes broken into, our property and cars stolen and our children raped and murdered. We're expected to accept having our children taught in Spanish in our schools to accommodate people in the country illegally as we give up our culture to a foreign invasion. We're forced to accept increased taxes to house an enormous illegal alien prison population and to pay for free healthcare for people who have broken the laws of the United States to be here. We're just supposed to accept it. Well, I don't. I have seen too much death, too much crime and too much suffering, due to a border out of control, and a government which cares not to act. I'm tired of paying the price, both emotionally and in gold, for this outrage to continue. What's the answer? We need to eliminate the rule that only Immigration Agents can make a determination as to alienage. We need to do what every other country in the world does, which is to empower police, at all levels, to check for legal status. "Passport, please?" We need to get serious about controlling the border. It can be done. We proved it in 1994 in San Diego. All it takes is the political will. And the next time thousands of illegal aliens have the nerve to demonstrate in an American city I want to see hundreds of Border Patrol Agents rounding them up. And kicking their asses if they try to resist. And I'm sick and tired of hearing politicians and pundits declare that it is too late to remove the illegal aliens already in the country. In 1954 we conducted Operation Wetback. Something like 70,000 illegal aliens were apprehended, while an estimated 400,000 got up and left. We could do it again. I know the mind of the Border Patrol Agents on duty today and they would jump at the opportunity. Too many aliens and not enough agents, you say? Well, have you ever heard the old Texas Ranger motto of "One ranger, one riot"? We practiced this on a nightly basis, down on the border. You just have to have the will and the commitment . . . something you can't have when Border Patrol Agents are being prosecuted for defending themselves and arresting vile smugglers and murders, by the government they swore to serve. We must demand an end to government neglect and demand a forceful, effective resolution of this crisis. Enough! Ed Head is a retired field operations supervisor for the United States Border Patrol. He currently lives in Arizona. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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