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August 23, 2005
Marines Who Run the Bombing Ranges at MCAS Yuma...
...find corpses all the time. The coyotes who get the illegals over the border then tell them to head for the 'lights in the night'. The numbers are staggering.
But the incursion is relentless. Since Oct. 1, Border Patrol agents have caught more than 500,000 "undocumented aliens" in the agency's Tucson and Yuma sectors, which include all of Arizona and a 16-mile stretch of California's border. No one knows how many got through.
Those lights are, depending upon where you cross unfortunately, either the beacons on the range towers or the superstructures on base.
The problem stems from federal border policies dating to the late 1990s. First, the government moved to stop illegal immigration in California and Texas. Next, Border Patrol agents clamped down in urban areas along the nation's 1,951-mile border with Mexico.
As a result, smugglers and their human clients have been funneled to a deadly passageway - Arizona's remote desert.
If you luck out and head toward MCAS Yuma, you might actually make it to civilization. There're farm houses and little oasises on the way in where you can steal something to eat or, at least, livestock troughs to drink out of. But if you head out and chase automated range beacons, you're led deeper and deeper into either the desert or the Chocolate Mountains, and further from any hope of ever seeing another human being. Or getting out alive. It's as desolate out there as any of those TV shots of Afghanistan. And there's no way to know which light to choose, or that there even is a choice. A life or death choice. The Marines who go out to change the range beacons might only come to that particular section of range once a month. Less, if it hasn't been used in a while ~ they'll do routine access/tower maintenance. The base SAR (Search and Rescue) crew has stories to tell about who and what they've found. They'll point spots out when you're in the Huey with them in the Chocolates. (As I was lucky enough to be.) The SAR crew will call in location reports of illegals on the move, but they're in no position and have no authority to apprehend them. All they can do is call it in and hope they're caught before the environment gets them. Both groups have told me that the bodies they find often look like Egyptian mummies. It's unforgiving out there.
Posted by tree hugging sister at August 23, 2005 11:48 AM
Comments
Half a friggin' million?
Can we make this a 24-hour-a-day live fire range?
Hell, since we can't use Vieques anymore...
Posted by: Mr. Bingley at August 23, 2005 11:55 AM
When I stationed at Fort Huachuca, we used to stop hundreds a month. And our guys weren't even looking for them -- just happened to get alerted to their movements. Scary stuff.
Remember Michael McKean's electrified fence idea - doesn't seem like such a bad idea these days. As I recall, I didn't think it was such a bad idea then either.
Posted by: Cullen at August 23, 2005 12:11 PM
In many ways, you'd be saving them from themselves. That would be the humanitarian thing to do in many ways. Of course, Vicente would be put out, since his troubled children would be forced to stay at home then. he'd have to deal with the problems in Mexico instead of send them to us.
And it would be the coyotes trying to tear up a fence like that, since their revenue stream would be impacted. To them, who cares who dies once you get them across? There's a gazillion more lined up with cash in their hands behind those bodies.
Posted by: tree hugging sister at August 23, 2005 12:37 PM
A little bit o' Chocolate.
Posted by: tree hugging sister at August 23, 2005 12:46 PM
Good article this week from the weekly standard
Posted by: nobrainer at August 23, 2005 01:43 PM