RUTHFULLY YOURS

The term “The thin blue line” is associated with law enforcement, especially the police. The phrase is based on the usual color of the police uniform and the fact that the relatively small numbers of sworn police officers is all that stands between the citizenry of towns, cities and states and criminals.

The uniforms that the members of the United States Border Patrol wear is green. Sometimes the Border Patrol has been referred to as the “Green Machine.” The mission of the United States Border Patrol is to secure America’s borders between ports of entry against the illegal entry of aliens whose presence would be harmful or dangerous to America and Americans. The idea is to make certain that aliens seeking entry into the United States are subjected to the inspections process conducted by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) Inspectors.

The guiding principle behind the inspections process is to make certain that aliens who should be excluded from the United States are prevented from entering the United States. One of the sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182, enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded and includes aliens who suffer dangerous contagious diseases, severe mental illness and are violent, aliens who are convicted felons, human and/or narcotics traffickers, human rights violators, war criminals, spies, terrorists and aliens who would likely become public charges or work illegally therefore displacing American workers or driving down the wages and/or working conditions of American workers.

The law, incidentally, is utterly and totally blind as to race, religion and ethnicity.

While the advocates for open borders describe aliens who evade the inspections process as being “Undocumented,” in point of fact, these aliens are Un-Inspected. In fact, my colleagues and I at the former INS referred to the method of entry of aliens who evaded the vital inspections process as being EWI (Entry Without Inspection).

This is hardly inconsequential. To draw a comparison- would you, or any reasonable person be willing to board an airliner if you observed several passengers sneak past the TSA inspectors and get on the airliner you were about to board? I am very confident you would not.

Why then are we being forced, by our own government, to live among unknown millions of foreign nationals (aliens) whose true identities- including their country of citizenship, possible criminal histories and possible affiliation with criminal or terrorist organizations or medical or mental well-being is unknown and unknowable?

You should also consider that an alien who is “undocumented” has no official and reliable identity document to provide clear evidence about his (her) true identity. It may, in fact, be that this individual has such an identity document but has decided to conceal or destroy it, knowing that his name is on terror watch lists or is a wanted fugitive. The term “undocumented” is hardly as innocuous or inconsequential as the immigration anarchists would have us believe.

In addition to preventing the entry of aliens whose presence would be problematic for America and Americans, the Border Patrol is also charged with preventing the entry of contraband.

The valiant men and women of the United States Border Patrol constitutes that “Thin green line” that is all that stands between America and its citizens and international terrorists, transnational criminals and contraband and including narcotics and possibly, God forbid, a weapon of mass destruction.

Today with tens of thousands of illegal aliens charging our southwest border, Border Patrol agents have been taken off of their usual duties relating to securing our already extremely porous borders and assigned to providing concierge service to these illegal aliens, many of whom are reportedly unaccompanied minors.

I wrote about this outrageous situation in my previous commentary for Front Page Magazine that was published on June 11, 2014, “Obama’s Manufactured Crisis at the Border.”

The reassignment of these Border Patrol agents endangers national security and public safety as well as public health. It also makes it far more likely that aliens who evade the inspections process will succeed in covertly entering the United States. As more aliens succeed in evading detection and apprehension, more aspiring illegal aliens will become encouraged and emboldened to charge our borders.

The mission of the United States Border Patrol, as noted on the official website of CBP (Customs and Border Protection) the parent agency of the Border Patrol, is as follows:

MISSION

We are the guardians of our nation’s borders.
We are America’s frontline.
We safeguard the American homeland at and beyond our borders.
We protect the American public against terrorists and the instruments of terror.
We steadfastly enforce the laws of the United States while fostering our nation’s economic security through lawful international trade and travel.
We serve the American public with vigilance, integrity and professionalism.

Considering the critical significance of securing the borders of the United States, the question that has not been raised by our political leaders from either political party, however, is why on earth are Border Patrol agents being used (misused) this way?

When other countries around the world experience humanitarian crises, members of our armed forces are generally sent to those countries to lend assistance. Why then is the administration not similarly using members of the armed forces including the National Guard to deal with the humanitarian component of this crisis along our Southwest Border, thus freeing up our beleaguered Border Patrol agents?

There is an expression that says, “You can never be too safe!” Considering that our borders (and our immigration laws) is our first line of defense and last line of defense, the corollary of that statement is that our borders can never be made secure enough.

Indeed, our borders are far from secure. While the administration may try to “spin” arrest statistics of the Border Patrol to bolster claims that our borders are secure, the best metric has nothing to do with the numbers of illegal aliens claimed to have been arrested by the Border Patrol. The best metric to determine the true state of U.S. border security can be found in the price and availability of cocaine and heroin, two substances that are not produced in the United States but are smuggled into the United States from foreign countries.

Today our nation is awash in those illegal substances as evidenced by the undeniable fact that police departments across the United States are providing their members as well as other first responders with the antidote to heroin overdoses which are currently at historically high levels. Every gram of these drugs represents a failure of border security.

How much more contraband will be successfully smuggled into the United States as our Border Patrol agents are diverted from their essential mission of securing our border to change diapers and act as baby sitters and chauffeuring illegal aliens to bus terminals and airports, arguably acting in violation of the laws contained in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

Under the provisions of one of the sections of law contained in INA, Title 8 USC § 1324 – Bringing in and harboring certain aliens, it is a felony to aid, abet, encourage or induce aliens to enter our country illegally or remain in our country illegally. It is also a felony to harbor, shield from detection or transport such illegal aliens.

So-called “Sanctuary Cities” would certainly appear to be in violation of this section of law, but that is an issue for another day and another commentary.

Out of stated concerns about public safety, politicians from a number of cities and states have enacted laws to tighten up on the issuance of carry permits for personally owned weapons and concealed carry permits as well as limiting the number of rounds of ammunition that magazines used in semi-automatic handguns can hold.

The theory offered in conjunction with these laws and regulations is to keep high-capacity magazines out of the hands of those who might engage in acts of violence as we have seen in the horrific images and reports of mass shootings. Of course, this presumes that the mentally unbalanced, criminals and terrorists will carefully count the number of bullets they place in their magazines and not seek to purchase or manufacture large capacity magazines. What is never discussed is that the great majority of crimes, especially violent crimes, have a direct nexus with use of illegal drugs and violent gangs which, coincidentally, receive much of their funding from drug trafficking and related crimes. Terror organizations also derive huge sums of money from the sale of illicit drugs.

Once again, these crimes and activities are the direct result of failures of border security.

On June 11, 2014 FrontPage Magazine posted my article, “Obama’s Manufactured Crisis at the Border.”

In that article I provided this paragraph from the conclusion of my prepared testimony for the March 20, 2013 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the topic of “Building an Immigration System Worthy of American Values.”

Law enforcement is at its best when it creates a climate of deterrence to convince those who might be contemplating violating the law that such an effort is likely to be discovered and that if discovered, adverse consequences will result for the law violators. Current policies and statements by the administration, in my view, encourages aspiring illegal aliens around the world to head for the United States. In effect the starter’s pistol has been fired and for these folks, the finish line to this race is the border of the United States.

Of course when I testified before that hearing more than one year ago, no one could have imagined just how bad things would get along the Southwest border, with reverberations being felt from coast to coast and border to border.

While local, state and the federal government generally all ramp up enforcement when laws are violated, creating a deterrence against those violations of law, where violations of our borders and our immigration laws are concerned, many of our “leaders” from both political parties trip over themselves to create more incentives for aliens to violate our borders and our immigration laws. They use uncharacteristic creativity to find ways to exacerbate the situation, thereby imperiling the safety and well-being of America and Americans.

This must stop before America suffers yet another catastrophe. The clock is ticking and time, most certainly, is not on our side.