🚀 go-pugleaf

On Jan 24, 6:54 pm, Steve from Colorado <gass...@hushmail.com> wrote:
> BLM trying to take on border protection
>
> By Brady McCombs Arizona Daily Star azdailysun.com | Posted: Monday,
> January 24, 2011 5:00 am
>
> TABLE TOP WILDERNESS AREA -- The landscape of saguaros, mesquite trees
> and prickly pear cactus here has a new feature -- steel railroad rails
> welded into crisscrosses and connected by flat rails.
>
> This rusting structure is a vehicle barrier designed to stop drug and
> people smugglers who barrel across the desert in trucks. The barriers
> are common at the international line -- there are more than 139 miles
> of them along Arizona's stretch of U.S.-Mexico border.
>
> But this isn't the border.
>
> This 1.3-mile stretch of "Normandy-style" vehicle barriers was
> recently erected 70 miles north of the border on the Bureau of Land
> Management's Sonoran Desert Monument, just south of Interstate 8 and
> southwest of Casa Grande.
>
> It is likely the first time border barriers have been used this far
> north, and the latest example of how managing public lands along the
> U.S.-Mexico border is now as much about dealing with trash and trails
> left behind by illegal border crossers as it is about monitoring
> endangered animals or watering holes.
>
> BLM officials put up the barrier to redirect traffic around the
> federally protected Table Top Wilderness Area, where cars are
> prohibited. They know it won't stop drugs from reaching cities across
> the United States, but they couldn't sit back and watch the beautiful
> landscape get trampled.
>
> Skinny, knee-high signs proclaim Table Top as protected wilderness.
>
> "The public might respect our little signs, but they are not an issue
> for the smugglers," said Damian Hayes, a BLM law enforcement ranger
> who patrols the area.
>
> The barrier is on the southern boundary of Table Top, which borders
> the northern edge of the Tohono O'odham Nation. Smugglers have carved
> a grid of illegal roads through the wilderness area as they cross the
> O'odham land and cut through Table Top on their way toward Phoenix,
> inflicting serious damage to the habitat.
>
> The recently completed barrier has already diverted vehicle smuggling
> around the wilderness area, and BLM crews have begun restoring the
> lands damaged by the roads, Hayes said.
>
> "It's been amazing that it's done exactly what it was intended to do,"
> said Hayes, who has patrolled the area for four years. "It's hard to
> gauge exactly where they are going, but they are definitely not using
> the wilderness area."
>
> The problem isn't unique to the Table Top Wilderness. From Organ Pipe
> Cactus National Monument in Southwestern Arizona to Buenos Aires
> National Wildlife Refuge southwest of Tucson to the multiple patches
> of Coronado National Forest across Arizona's border, land managers
> grapple with a multitude of issues related to being the busiest
> stretch of border for illegal immigration and drug smuggling.
> Including the Tohono O'odham Nation, nearly 86 percent of the Arizona-
> Mexico borderlands are federal or tribal lands.
>
> Dealing with border issues is nothing new -- Arizona has been the
> route of choice for a decade. But the national attention about how
> federal public-land managers deal with the cross-border traffic and
> work with federal law enforcement agencies has amplified in the past
> year with two high-profile killings in which suspects may have passed
> through federal lands.
>
> BLM officials put up signs south of I-8 in the Table Top Wilderness
> Area warning visitors that the area was an active human- and drug-
> smuggling corridor and that they may encounter "armed criminals and
> smuggling vehicles." The signs became political fodder in the 2010
> election and became a symbol to some that the United States had ceded
> territory to smugglers.
>
> When BLM officials took them down and replaced them in October with
> toned-down notices, they were criticized for trying to make it seem
> that the problem had gone away. The irony -- similar signs have been
> up for years across Southern Arizona.
>
> The agency is considering putting up more vehicle barriers in Ironwood
> Forest Monument just northwest of Tucson. There are already vehicle
> barriers or fences up along the international border in the Organ Pipe
> Cactus National Monument, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge,
> Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and the Coronado National
> Forest.
>
> Materials to build vehicle barriers are plentiful -- hundreds of miles
> of old barriers were uprooted in the past three years to make way for
> Department of Homeland Security border fences and walls. Some of that
> excess supply went into the Table Top barriers, which cost the BLM
> about $66,000 each, said spokesman Dennis Godfrey.
>
> Threat to employees
>
> "The United States and Mexico border is 1,969 miles long," says a
> woman narrating over vaguely Mexican-sounding music and video of
> cactus and mesquite at the border. "It is a land that is both
> beautiful and fragile with a rich diversity of plants and animals.
>
> "The management and protection of many of these areas has been
> entrusted to federal and state agencies," she says, as logos of the
> U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the BLM and the National Park Service,
> among others, flash on the screen.
>
> "The employees working for these agencies not only have to protect the
> land and serve the public, but also have to deal with a unique
> situation: a tremendous amount of drug smuggling and illegal
> immigration in a harsh desert environment. These illegal activities
> pose a very real threat to employees."
>
> This video -- titled "Working along the United States-Mexico border"
> -- is shown to federal employees and volunteers to make them aware of
> the situation and how to protect themselves.
>
> Though illegal crossings have dipped along with the economy in recent
> years, federal lands in Arizona continue to be high-risk areas for
> illegal immigration and drug smuggling, says a November report from
> the Government Accountability Office.
>
> To read more go to:
>
> http://www.azdailysun.com/news/local/state-and-regional/article_a44cf...

And our worthless government in Washington, DC flails every so
lightly.

"A good illegal alien is a dead illegal alien". No crime, no filth, no
decay, no
"anchor babies. Detain, deport, Repeat illegal crossers to be help in
work
camps for at least five years. Mission cleanup and road repair.