The President's Sham Request for National Guards at the US - Mexico Border

Last Saturday, my husband, daughter and I were in San Diego, about 80 miles south of our home, attending a college graduation. We returned early that evening via highway 5 (the Santa Ana freeway, in SoCal lingo).

Halfway on our drive home is Homeland Security's US Customs & Border Protection station in San Clemente. To our astonishment, the sizable checkpoint station, holding areas and office complex were closed. Entirely closed, with nary a light flickering in a window, nor a single car in a parking lot.

Given recent ferocious rhetoric by the Bush Administration about porous borders and illegal-immigrants-as-criminals-and-evil-scourge, we fully expected to be delayed by routine car-checking by uniformed Border Patrol agents.

I've been driving this route for more than 20 years. My parents lived in San Diego County for a while, and I still have relatives in the area. Over the years, we've passed through the San Clemente border check hundreds of time.

Until five years ago, when the Bush Administration took office, normal procedure at the San Clemente station was for Border Patrol agents (then INS agents) to stand between each lane of cars, and visually inspect passengers and car contents, waving most cars to proceed ahead.

Some cars were pulled over for further inspection, and occupants were occasionally asked to exit the car. It wasn't unusual, night or day, to see the green Border Patrol buses loaded with illegals, readying to be returned to Mexico.

That station is now often closed. Cars are rarely stopped, and enforcement of border security laws occurs only at predictable hours. We haven't seen a green Border Patrol bus there for years.

Before the November 2004 election, Los Angeles talk radio filled the airwaves with chatter that all border security had been halted in a Republican effort to court the Latino vote. Local talk radio jocks John and Ken once got former Congressman Asa Hutchinson, then Homeland Security under-secretary, on a pre-election phone call in which he begrudgingly acknowledged that yes, area border enforcement activites had been temporarily halted.
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"The law signed by President Bush less than two months ago to add thousands of border patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border has crashed into the reality of Bush's austere federal budget proposal, officials said Tuesday," reported the San Francisco Chronicle on February 9, 2005.

The Chonicle continued, "....the National Intelligence Reform Act included the requirement to add 10,000 border patrol agents in the five years beginning with 2006. Roughly 80 percent of the agents were to patrol the southern U.S. border from Texas to California, along which thousands of people cross into the United States illegally every year. But Bush's proposed 2006 budget, revealed Monday, funds only 210 new border agents."

And so its consistently gone under the Bush Administration.....radically cutting US-Mexico border security while saber-rattling about illegal immigrants, and while failing to enforce laws prohibiting US businesses from hiring undocumented workers.

Congress has ignored President Bush, and often provided generously to beef-up Border Patrol agent ranks, but Mr. Bush has steadfastly refused to spend the allocated funds. The Border Patrol has been neutered and rendered impotent by the Bush Administration. Think of the catastrophic crippling of FEMA...then double the damage.

Last night, George Bush grandly proclaimed that "up to 6,000 Guard members will be deployed to our southern border. "

Huh? Bush neuters the border patrol, then laments the lack of Border Patrol agents......and then militarizes the US-Mexico border with National Guard troops? Huh?

Here are my questions: What Border Patrol will the National Guard be supporting? Will the National Guard be armed? What does Bush want..... a Kent State-like killing of innocents at the border? Does Bush aim to run the US-Mexico border like an ultra-dangerous, bullet-ridden Iraqi checkpoint?

If President Bush and House Republicans want adequate border security, we don't need billion-dollar walls built by Halliburton or armed warriors or chaotic Presidential orders or meaningless political gestures .

Just enforce existing laws. Hire (or rehire) Border Patrol agents and let them do their jobs without interference for political expediency or sweat-shop business profits.

My family and I don't mind stopping for a few extra minutes at Homeland Security's US Customs & Border Protection station in San Clemente if it means that our borders are secure.
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