Dire Situation

The Washington Post has an article today that describes the intense pressure one small native American tribe is under because of illegal immigration and drug smuggling across its reservation. These are people caught in the middle between those breaking the law and those trying to enforce it.

As the United States ramps up its law enforcement presence on the border with Mexico, places like Alir Jegk, a village of 50 families in south-central Arizona, are enduring heightened danger, as they are squeezed between increasingly aggressive bands of immigrant and drug smugglers and increasingly numerous federal agents who, critics say, often ignore regulations as they seek to enforce the law.

Alir Jegk's experience is complicated by the fact that it is on the second-biggest Indian reservation in the United States, belonging to the Tohono O'odham, or Desert People, who hunted deer and boar and harvested wild spinach and prickly pear in this region before an international border was etched through their land in 1853. Now, the Tohono O'odham Nation occupies the front line of the fight against drug and immigrant smuggling — costing the poverty-stricken tribe millions of dollars a year and threatening what remains of its traditions.

"We have the undocumented and drug smugglers heading north and law enforcement heading south. We're smack in the middle," Vivian Juan-Saunders, chairwoman of the tribe, said in an interview at the tribal headquarters in Sells, Ariz. "We are being squeezed."

In testimony to the U.S. Senate, the tribe's vice chairman, Ned Norris Jr., described a "border security crisis that has caused shocking devastation of our land and resources."

There is only a rickety 4-foot high fence along the reservation's 75 mile border with Mexico. There are numerous holes in that fence with well established trails running through them. These are some of the poorest people living in America today and they are being crushed by this wave of criminal activity. This is a dire situation for them, they need relief.

Tell me again why we don't need a fence?

Other Links to this Post

1. Illegal Immigration: Friday Roundup | CommonSenseAmerica — Friday, 15 September , 2006 @ 8:36 am