The Border Patrol And The Minutemen
11/15/2007
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This from Jerry Seper who will have more on it later:

Border violence rising against authorities

November 14, 2007

By Jerry Seper - For more on this story, check tomorrow's editions of The Washington Times.

Alien and drug smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico border have spawned a rise in violence against federal, state and local law enforcement authorities, who say they are outmanned and outgunned.

"They've got weapons, high-tech radios, computers, cell phones, Global Positioning Systems, spotters and can react faster than we are able to," said Shawn P. Moran, a 10-year U.S. Border Patrol veteran who serves as vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1613 in San Diego.

"And they have no hesitancy to attack the agents on the line, with anything from assault rifles and improvised Molotov cocktails to rocks, concrete slabs and bottles," he said. "There are so many agent 'rockings' that few are even reported anymore. If we wrote them all up, that's all we would be doing."

Assaults against Border Patrol agents have more than doubled over the past two years, many by Mexico-based alien and drug gangs more inclined than ever to use violence as a means of ensuring success in the smuggling of people and contraband.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff acknowledges that although the department has begun to make progress against "the criminals and thugs" operating along the U.S.-Mexico border, "we are beginning to see more violence in some border communities and against our Border Patrol agents as these traffickers … seek to protect their turf.

"We must provide the manpower and resources they need to carry out their duties, and we are working hard to make sure they get them," Mr. Chertoff said during a speech in Houston this month.

Of course, what they need is to mobilize volunteers from the local citizenry, the same way you do in a natural disaster. There may only be as many Border Patrolmen as Congress has funded, which is not enough, but there's the American people themselves, who have their own weapons, GPS devices, cellphones, pickup trucks, horses and whatever's needful to protect the border. They're even organized into a variety of groups known as the Minutemen. (See our Minutemen Map for more information.)

But so far, Secretary Chertoff, President Bush, and the Border Patrol have acted like they don't want help.

 

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