Fox News reports that 13 illegal aliens tried to cross the border dressed in Marine uniforms, each wearing a “Perez” name tag and riding in what appeared to be a government van with government plates;
The illegal immigrants were clad in Marine uniforms when they were apprehended at the Campo Border Patrol Westbound I-8 checkpoint at 11 p.m. on March 14 near Pine Valley, Calif., border officials said. Two U.S. citizens in the van also were arrested.
After the suspicious white van was subjected to secondary inspection, it was determined that the driver of the vehicle and its front seat passenger were U.S. citizens who were attempting to smuggle 13 illegal immigrants into the United States.
Nice try, guys. Less luck next time.
TSO Adds: This is sort of a “no shit there I was” that may implicate me in the Perez-swarm. Back in like 1999 or so my battalion did a rotation as OPFOR augmentees at NTC in Barstow. So we fought in the box for like 10 days or so, then were given a day pass, with explicit instructions not to leave a 80 mile radius. Not being geography experts, we assumed that Tijuana was inside that margin. So my platoon sergeant rented a van, we got a Mormon kid to be DD, and we headed off in search of a donkey show.
Well, one thing led to another, and we didn’t make it to the bingo parlor…anyway, we got trashed. Really trashed. Still couldn’t find a donkey show. My most vivid memory was a buddy giving a stripper $20 to put her clothes back on. As the night was winding down we were headed back to our car when one of my troops (now a 1SG) took a leak on a building. The Federales were on us in seconds, confiscated all of our ID’s and told us it was $200 fine for each of us. Having imbibed the last of our cash, we huddled off to the side.
Now, one of the guys was COMPLETELY passed out. We were carrying him. His name was O—– Perez. Scout Sniper (used to be with SF in Colorado) and of some Hispanic origin. Not kinda drunk, I mean completely incapacitated. After our quick huddle, we buddy lifted him and ran like hell for the border, with Federales yelling at us to stop. So we hit the border at a full sprint, and the border guards just waved us through. We told them we had our IDs taken, and they said “Yeah, that’s what happens in Tijuana.”
The next day in formation the colonel was just chewing our asses. At some point our Platoon Sergeant responded to something about us being total dumbasses by saying “Hooah.” Wrong answer. The colonel, in words I can still hear said, “No sergeant Mathews, this is SO not Hooah.”
We always wondered what happened to our IDs. And now at last we know what happened to SGT Perez’s.
According to the Washington Times, illegal immigrants are marching at the White House to demand representation in the meetings there to discuss fixing the crisis along the border.
“We are among the millions of people who will either benefit or be harmed by the decisions the President makes, and we are here to represent ourselves in any future negotiations,” said Rosi Carrasco, one of organizers, in a statement announcing the action.
Billing themselves “undocumented immigrant leaders,” the organizers said they will erect a picket line to symbolize their demand.
The groups are fighting to keep momentum in the immigration debate, which has seemingly turned against them in recent weeks as Mr. Obama tries to deal with the surge of illegal immigrant children and families across the border.
I suppose that ICE can just scoop them all up in paddy wagons and move the protesters to processing centers. They can call themselves anything they want using a mix of convoluted terms, they’re still here in this country contrary to the laws of this country – they’re illegal immigrants.
Besides, it seems that all of President Obama’s blood relatives living in this country were here illegally at some time and none have been sent home, so I guess illegal immigrants already have an advocate in those meetings.
Fox News reports that some of the little dears protested at the White House yesterday without much fear of repercussion;
“Unless the individuals meet ICE’s enforcement priorities, it’s unlikely that the agency would get involved in the case,” the official told FoxNews.com.
Under a policy that’s been in effect for several years, ICE focuses deportation mostly on serious criminals and – in some cases — those caught in the act of crossing the border. The agency prioritizes deportation for felons, repeat offenders, gang members and others with a serious criminal record. But the agency largely gives a pass to other undocumented residents.
This is why illegal immigrant activists can protest outside the White House without worrying too much about ICE.
Like I said, they already have representation in those meetings.
Chief Tango sends us a link to an article from the Washington Post in which Josh Hicks wonders where the Obama Administration has sequestered the tens of thousands of Immigrants flooding across our Southern border.
The Obama administration has estimated that the U.S. will pick up 60,000 unaccompanied children at the Southwest border by the end of September, although revised Border Patrol estimates now put the figure closer to 90,000. Either way, the numbers have been doubling since at least 2012…
[…]
In Congress, GOP lawmakers have questioned the administration’s decision to house thousands of the unaccompanied children at military bases. The plan has been in effect since May, but Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel expanded it last week by approving a request to house an additional 5,000 children, in addition to the 3,600 already already held at military facilities.
Oklahoma’s congressional delegation, consisting of seven Republicans, called on the administration to reconsider the plan on Monday, saying it could impede the mission of Fort Sill, an Army base in the state.
The administration is also holding children at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland in Texas and at Naval Base Ventura County-Port Hueneme in California, according to the HHS fact sheet.
We thought the 90’s were bad when the military held the hands of third world shit holes while they joined the rest of the world, now we’ve gone to opening day care centers for the third world in our own country. I guess the Joint Training Center deployments will be cycling around and the troops will train in diaper-changing and formula preparation.
Democrat governors like Hickenlooper and O’Malley are turning away illegals, sensing how unpopular that would be among voters, while Hagel keeps taking on more and more. I’ve read that the invasion was started by coyotes trying to drum business, and the Obama Administration is more than happy to make the rumor come true so the coyotes can get paid.
Pew Research says that the number of children younger than 12 years old who are apprehended at the border has increased 117% since last year.
The Associated Press reports that the feds arrested 192 people yesterday who were involved in coyote business;
The arrests, which took place under a crackdown called “Operation Coyote,” took place over the last month and were part of a 90-day effort targeting smuggling groups.
The White House has complained that smugglers are exploiting U.S. policies that, in practice, allow Central American kids to stay for years or indefinitely once they arrive, and it has proposed increasing penalties for smugglers.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it also took into custody 501 immigrants in the country illegally. It said it seized the money from 228 bank accounts held by suspected human- and drug-smuggling groups.
Good start, but it’s all just a drop in the bucket if you’re not turning them back at the border.
The Washington Post reports that Texas Governor Rick Perry isn’t waiting for the President to secure his state’s southern border. Perry is planning to announce today that he’ll fortify the frontier with a thousand National Guard troops;
Perry is among Republicans who have been calling the border situation Obama’s “Katrina,” a reference to the political beating taken by President George W. Bush after federal authorities botched the post-hurricane operation in New Orleans in 2005. It’s a clear signal Republicans will use the border crisis against any Democratic contender in 2016.
“If the federal government does not do its constitutional duty to secure the Southern border of the United States, the state of Texas will do it,” Perry said Sunday at a Republican barbecue in Iowa.
[…]
Perry, who has been asking Obama to make the call, recently told Fox News Sunday that mobilizing the troops now is important “because this flood of children is pulling away the border patrol from their normal duties of keeping bad people, keeping the drug cartels, they’re being distracted, so that I would suggest is a very obvious reason that those National Guard troops should come play an important role.”
The Associated Press tells the story of the lives of the coyotes who smuggle the illegals into the country;
Many of the children and teenagers who travelled to the United States recently said they did so after hearing they would be allowed to stay. The U.S. generally releases unaccompanied children to parents, relatives or family friends while their cases take years to wend through overwhelmed immigration courts. That reality gave rise to rumors of a new law or amnesty for children.
Some say coyotes helped spread those rumors to drum up new business following a huge drop in Mexicans migrating to the United States
Fox News reports that Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert has told them that Border Patrol agents came under fire from a .50 caliber rifle along the frontier last night;
The weapons were fired at the U.S. side of the riverbank in the area of the Rincon Peninsula across the Rio Grande from Reynosa, Mexico, at about 8:30 p.m., sources said. Bullets ricocheted into an area where Border Patrol agents were positioned, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, told FoxNews.com.
Border Patrol sources confirmed Gohmert’s account, and said the shots may have been fired by .50-caliber weapons.
“We don’t have any armor that can stop a .50-caliber round, so our Border Patrol agents had to take cover when the rounds were richocheting around them,” said Gohmert, who has been in the area for the last week to get a first-hand look at the border situation.
When the shooting stopped, a couple of dozen illegal immigrants surrendered to the agents. Gohmert says that the gunfire was meant to suppress any effort to stop the illegals from crossing the border.
“I don’t know why we’re out here like sitting ducks,” one Border Patrol source said. “We need help.”
Help, like some A-10s or Apache helicopters. Or some armed drones.
Politico reports that Marty O’Malley, the guy who taxes residents of Maryland for the amount of rain that falls on their homes, has criticized the Obama Administration for their plan to import some of those immigrants from the southern border to a facility in Carroll County;
Hours after the Maryland governor and prospective 2016 presidential candidate became the most prominent Democrat to criticize the White House on the issue, Domestic Policy Director Cecilia Muñoz called O’Malley to complain.
But before they hung up, O’Malley told Muñoz not to send any of the children to the facility in Westminster, Md., that the White House was looking at. It’s a conservative part of the state, he warned. The children were at risk of getting harassed, or worse, he said.
He probably remembers how Bill Clinton lost the governorship of Arkansas in 1980 when he allowed the Carter Administration to house Cuban immigrants at Fort Chaffee and O’Malley has designs on the White House (God forbid). But he blames Conservatives, of course, for endangering the immigrants. If they’re being held in a secure facility, how will they be harassed? There are so many illegal immigrants in Maryland already, so how would anyone notice a few thousand more.
O’Malley has already said that sending the immigrants back where they came from is sending them to “certain death” somehow. We all die, Marty, stop being so dramatic.
I recently put forth a rudimentary plan for utilization of existing military resources in stanching the flow of illegal trespassers across our southern border with Mexico. Many were the commenters who were quick to tell me that such a thing is impossible because it is proscribed by the Posse Comitatus Act. This is one of those issues that naysayers like to throw up as roadblocks to any attempts to settle the problem of rampant illegal immigration. “We can’t use the military to patrol our borders because of the Posse Comitatus Act,” they protest breathlessly with a reverence for that act that hints of constitutional origins, and therefore, sacrosanct. Well hold on, all you legal buckaroos, while we take a closer look at this statutory critter that so many profess to know and understand and are even quicker to invoke. Here it is in all its sanctity:
Sec. 1385. Use of Army and Air Force as posse comitatus
Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
Now that’s not really all that complicated, is it? What’s not to understand? The simple legislative act says that the federal government cannot use our military forces to execute or enforce laws. The law was originally enacted by a Republican Congress as a quid pro quo to Southern Democratic congressmen whose backing was needed to decide the presidential election of Rutherford B. Hayes. Southerners were sick of the Union Army’s occupying forces’ interference in matters of local law and their representatives in Congress saw an opportunity for some horse trading. Republican supporters of Hayes agreed to the removal of federal troops from the occupied Southern states and sealed the deal with this brief bit of legislation that prohibited the use of federal troops for the purpose of enforcing civil and criminal statutes.
So the hallowed Posse Comitatus Act was really nothing more than a clever legislative gambit by southern congressmen to get the heavy boot of northern forces off the necks of their southern constituents, a rather ignominious birth for a minor piece of legislation that is now foolishly considered Holy Writ by too many of the uninformed.
But let’s get down to specifics; Congress, as always, covered its butt with the insertion of the weasel words:
“…except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress,”
Thus, in an act of Congress requiring no more than fifty-two words, that august body let itself off future hooks with that excepting phrase. And do not delude yourself into believing that was by accident. Quite obviously, the lawmaking body of this country wanted to reserve unto itself the power to use federal forces in domestic crises. It would appear then that the Posse Comitatus Act says whatever the Congress says it does. And if that Congress determines that the massive incursions on our border from Mexico constitute an exceptional threat, there is nothing in the law to prevent this nation from defending that border with the military forces necessary to do so.
