The border.

I don't ask much from our Federal Government. Actually, I ask LESS from it. Our Fed.gov gets up in people's business when it has no right to do so, a vast majority of the time. As such, it spends citizen's money without generating new income, without a compelling reason.

But there are a few things that our Fed.gov IS expected to do. Such as this little ditty:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence." (Art. IV, Sec. 4, USC)

Now, there are those who would claim "well, there's not an official invasion going on at our border." Okay-- it's just domestic violence, then. Hey, I don't believe that the average immigrant that illegally crosses the border into the U.S. is violent. The vast majority of the violence committed by illegal border-crossers is committed by smugglers. And, for better or worse, they're smuggling in what our Federal Government declared war on, back in 1986.

Now, we've Declared War On A Noun.

And, the Other Side (the drug dealers) are coming into our country, illegally, to sell their wares.

And, our federal government, the guys who Declared War On A Noun (that aforementioned ware that's being smuggled in), doesn't consider this an invasion?

Think about what would happen if other opponents in other wars came into our country in an organized fashion. Think about what happened the last time a semi-organized group of Mexicans came into our country to commit felonies against U.S. citizens.

Look, I'm not asking that our federal government commit to a punitive expedition. I'm just asking that we see more done to secure the borders, rather than suing the states that are trying to do it themselves.

Over at Tam's place, she's commented on the situation, and there's an interesting interaction going on in her comments. Her libertarian-minded friend Shootin' Buddy is of the mind that the folks along the border should handle the problem themselves. "If you choose to live near the bear cage, don't complain about the smell. They clean the cage, or they can whine."

Funny thing-- they're trying to do just that, and are being threatened with federal suit by the same feds that have a duty to handle this.

And U.S. border residents aren't afraid to defend their turf; they're just afraid of their own government for attacking them when they do so. My friend Art, who goes by DesertRat in those comments on Tam's post, lives in the Big Bend region of Texas. As he says in the comments about Shootin' Buddy's derision of people US Citizens along the border: "Nuthin' more helpful than someone who doesn't know sheep dip from wild honey about other folks' problems."

Art's not asking for a handout. He doesn't expect the Nanny Government to hold his hand. But he'd like to see the same government that tells him it's now a felony to drive his pickup across the Rio at a convenient crossing for an evening across the border, do something to stem the flow of illegals threatening legal citizens.

The Bureau of Land Management has put up some very helpful signs on southern AZ BLM lands, to help would-be hikers and campers stay away from the problem, though.


We cops who work in the border states have been getting notice for the past year that the cartels are putting pressure on their mules not to give up their loads without a fight. Last week, direct threats were made to the Nogales, AZ police that they would be shot at if they worked too hard at stopping smuggled shipments.

My partner and I caught an undocumented alien this weekend, who lied about who he was, where he lived, where he was from. Due to state and federal law, I couldn't even run his fingerprints to see if he was a wanted criminal. All we had him on was a simple traffic ticket: No driver license. It wasn't until I had spent 2 hours researching and calling in database searches (IAQs) that we finally identified him as a person living under an alias, which made him un-accountable for his prior offenses. This made him guilty of "Fail To Identify," it finally got us a Class B misdemeanor, which allowed us to put an ICE hold on him, so that he couldn't bond out, to change his name for the fifth time in two years. Part of living in a society of laws is being accountable for your actions. When you're here illegally, you're not.

In Arizona, their new law makes it a jailable misdemeanor for a documented alien not to carry their papers, or a state jailable misdemeanor to be an undocumented alien. This allows them to quickly and easily put an ICE hold on them, for deportation. It also allows them to run the guy's fingerprints through the state system.

I wish we had that law. It would save a lot of time. It also would be fairer to the citizens that I arrest who ARE documented, who have to actually account for their misdeeds.