Redstate

By Paul J Cella Posted in Elections — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

The current American Spectator features a fine piece of reporting by one Judd Slivka, who has spent some time on the southern border and heard a lot of strange, chilling, and shocking things. Spectator Executive Editor Quin Hillyer introduces this article with a cogent observation: Slivka’s report is relevant “because too many lawmakers fail to understand that the question of what to do with immigration is only a proxy, at least for many Americans, for the issues of national sovereignty and of law-and-order.” (Neither article, alas, is available online.)

Slivka tells the story of R. D. Ayers, a rancher near Arivaca, Arizona, and his frightening encounter with a strange helicopter and the masked men.

Ayers rounds a corner. The six men in the helicopter have deployed. All have masks over their faces. Five of them are in full assault body armor, arrayed in a defensive position — rifles out — around the sixth man. Ayers sees the word “MEXICO” on their sleeves.

“Habla ingles?” Ayers asks in his border Spanish. Does anyone speak English?

“No.”

“Quienes son usted?” Who are you?

“Policia Mexicano.” Mexican police.

“Usted est en los Estados Unidos, no en Mexico. Usted tiene que irse.” You're in the United States, not Mexico. You have to leave.

The man in charge ignores Ayers. He points at the fuel truck and starts walking towards it.

Ayers positions himself between the men and truck, walking backwards.

The leader of the men in black tells Ayers the ranch is owned by someone that Ayers has never heard of. Ayers tells him the name of the ranch's owner, the veterinarian, and tells him again that the man, his troops, and his helicopter have to leave. This is the United States.

Twice more, the man in black asks Ayers about the truck. Twice more, Ayers gives the same answer.

Finally, the man in black turns around and motions to his men. Ayers sees a name on the back of their tactical vests: AFI. The men get back in their helicopter and fly off to the south. Ayers is left standing on Tres Belottas with the fuel truck driver, heart pounding, wondering what just happened.

AFI is the Spanish acronym for Mexico’s anti-drug trafficking unit, Federal Investigative Agency. Incursions into American territory, accidental or otherwise, by Mexican military and police are a frighteningly routine event. “A confidential Department of Homeland Security study found 261 crossings by suspected military or police organizations between fiscal years 1996 and 2005. In at least three cases since 2000, the crossers have been confirmed to be in the employ of the Mexican government. In two of those cases, the soldiers fired on Border Patrol agents.” The Mexican army is notoriously debased by corruption, and thus ripe for penetration by various powers and interests. As a U.S. Army report in the 1990s puts it: “Bribery and other forms of corruption are widespread through Mexico, giving foreign intelligence services numerous opportunities to recruit sources.” There have been several reports of U.S.-trained Mexican anti-drug paramilitary agents defecting to the large drug cartels. Several times in recent years, American law enforcement has been confronted by uniformed men assisting drug smugglers. The smugglers are often better-equipped than our Border Patrol agents, and Slivka relates a number of cases where the latter — or local law enforcement — found themselves perilously out-gunned. Last December, on the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. John Culberson of Texas presented photographs of stockpiles of weapons captured after a firefight on the Texas-Mexico border: automatic rifles, pistols, a dozen grenade launchers and ammunition.

I encourage the reader to acquire a copy of the Spectator and read Slivka’s article. The sort of cross-border lawlessness related in it has the air about of a nascent chaos, which the more romantic among us might compare to the Old West of legend but which the more prudent will compare, rather, to those “bloody borders” of Islam from whence many of our Islamic enemies come. In other words, by the studied neglect of our government, we have cultivated a region ominously reminiscent of those areas of the world where what is called “fourth-generation warfare” finds its most comfortable abode. The union between drug trafficking, organized crime and terrorism is well documented; the former two we most certainly have already — how long before the latter makes its appearance? And to those immigration enthusiasts with a particular apprehension about nativism, I ask this: What sort of passions do you think will follow the day when a dramatic terror attack is traced to the lawlessness on the border? Perhaps (please God) that day will never dawn; but only brassbound folly could lead one to trust in good fortune, in a special providence, when the following two forecasts are as near certainty as prediction can be: (1) the problems on our southern border are not going away and (2) the problems associated with totalitarian Islam are not going away. It is, in short, almost certainly the case that these two problems will be even more pervasive in political climate that confronts our children than they are in that which confronts us.