Minutemen watching?—who cares!
Nowadays,
alien smugglers are so brazen in plying their
lucrative trade in what President Bush calls “good-hearted
people”—illegal aliens to the rest of us—that they
don’t even care if
Customs and Border Protection (CPB) inspectors or
U.S.
Border Patrol agents are watching.
Meet the “Raft Man” of
the Rio Grande.
A VDARE.com reader emailed the
story of the Raft Man in response to my recent
column which described illegal aliens crossing in a
highly visible yellow launch.
Subject: The Raft Man
Date: Sun, 8 May 2005
“It
seems CBP cannot figure out what to do with this guy.
He crosses the Rio Grande River several times a day with
his human cargo. Some trips are just one passenger;
others are as many as three passengers. But this guy is
really smart. He will not let his raft touch the
shoreline on the U.S. side of the river.
“CBP
tells the
Border Patrol agents that they are not allowed to
get their
feet wet in the river. They must stay on dry land at
all times. So the Raft Man stops about 5-10 feet from
shore and tells his passengers to wade the rest of the
way to shore.
“He
even lets the Border Patrol agents waiting for his
passengers know what
country the people are from. [So
that some may not be summarily
deported, see below].
Sometimes he will tell them how long before he returns
with the next load.
“The
Raft Man has told the agents that if they do not let the
passengers wade from his raft to shore that
he will drown a few of them.
“Now,
you might be asking what the
Mexican authorities are doing about this problem.
“The
answer, of course, is nothing.
“The
Raft Man charges an average of $100 U.S. to make the
crossing . . . a pretty lucrative business.”
So there you have it. The
Mexico-based Raft Man apparently has no fear of being
nabbed on U.S. soil. And the illegal aliens he crosses
over have no fear of apprehension.
Raft Man knows that if his
non-Mexican customers say the
magic word “asylum,” they won’t be removed
summarily under Immigration Act
section 235(b).
And even if his Mexican customers
are sent back, they can always try again another day.
As readers of
my articles already know, non-Mexican
illegal aliens most likely
will be briefly
detained and RELEASED from an Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE)
detention center—on the theory that they will attend a
future U.S.
Immigration Court hearing before the Department of
Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).
With
rare exception, only aliens falling under the
mandatory detention provisions of Immigration Act
section 236(c) remain in immigration custody for any
length of time during the futile EOIR immigration
litigation process.
And once newly-arrived illegal
aliens are officially tagged by the immigration
bureaucracy—and
released from immigration custody near the
border—they are free to continue their
briefly-interrupted journey
deep into the United States.
And even Mexicans, if they can get
past the border, are virtually safe from deportation in
the
interior—even if caught, they can shelter
almost indefinitely in the EOIR swamp.
No
doubt many years from now, after
long lives in the United States, the American-born
children and grandchildren of aliens ferried by Raft Man
will be writing
songs about him someday.
Why? Because as a champion of
Vicente Fox’s “heroes,” he has little to lose
and everything to gain for both himself and his illegal
alien charges.
And though he may not know it, Raft
Man is actually working hand-in-hand (for the benefit of
his clients, of course) with the federal immigration
bureaucracy of the EOIR and the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS).
He’s bringing more customers for
the Treason Lobby’s cadre of
immigration lawyers all across the country too.
As long as a
rights-obsessed,
litigation-based bureaucracy paralyzes the
deportation of illegal aliens and criminal aliens,
smugglers like Raft Man will be free to
operate—literally in broad daylight.
Juan Mann [send him
email] is a lawyer and the proprietor of
DeportAliens.com.
