On May 11, two days after President Barack Obama declared that the U.S.-Mexico border is as safe as it’s ever been, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued this statement:
“It is with great sadness that I learned this morning that U.S. Customs and Border Protection border patrol agents Eduardo Rojas Jr. and Hector Clark were killed earlier today in an accident near Gila Bend, Ariz. The agents were based out of CBP’s Yuma Sector and were on duty at the time of the accident.”
What Rojas and Clark were doing at the time of their deaths is inconsistent with how Obama portrays the border. The two agents were pursuing suspected illegal alien drug dealers when a 90-car, mile-long freight car traveling 70 miles per hour struck their SUV and instantly killed them.
For more than a year, Napolitano has been adamant that the border is secure and that, accordingly, the nation should get about the business of “legalizing” more than 10 million aliens. In the face of significant evidence to the contrary, Obama and Napolitano deny that the border is dangerous.
For example, less than a week before Obama’s speech, a Tucson U.S. District Court magistrate arraigned Mexican national Manuel Osorio-Arellanes on second-degree murder charges and 13 other criminal counts, including two for illegally possessing a firearm, three for assaulting a federal officer, three for deported alien re-entry and four for using a firearm to commit a violent crime. Osorio-Arellanes is among those accused of killing “with malice” U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry last December. His alleged co-conspirators fled the scene and remain at large.
Even El Paso, where Obama spoke, is precarious. Last year, in two separate incidents, stray bullets hit the University of Texas at El Paso campus and the El Paso mayor’s office in what authorities claim was violence related to a Juarez drug shoot-up.
Americans should listen to Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever, a more believable authority on border safety than Obama, who treats border issues as a political football. In his New York Times op-ed titled “Abandoned on the Border,” Dever wrote in defense of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, which he insists would help reduce crime. In his editorial, Dever questioned whether lawyers, judges and politicians understand the inherent perils of border defense.
Dever noted that he and his 86 deputies are responsible for patrolling 83.5 miles of border as well as the 6,200 square miles of territory to the north of it. When illegal aliens sneak in, as they easily do, murder and mayhem often follow. According to Dever, Arizonans who have had the immigration crisis ignored for years are, as he delicately put it, “frustrated and disappointed.”
If Obama refuses to acknowledge the truth, then recent polling might prompt him to be more forthright.
According to a recent Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, 64 percent of Americans disagree with Obama regarding border security, only 23 percent view Napolitano favorably and, most importantly, 51 percent disapprove of the president’s overall job performance. Napolitano’s rating is the lowest of any Cabinet member.
Given those results, Obama should heed the message from Americans who want enforcement and pay less attention to his pro-immigration advisers who pressure him to use his bully pulpit to demand amnesty. But so far, Obama has given no indication that he’s willing to do that.
— Joe Guzzardi has written editorial columns — mostly about immigration and related social issues — since 1990 and is a senior writing fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS). After 25 years as an English as a Second Language teacher in the Lodi Unified School District, Guzzardi has retired to Pittsburgh. He can be reached at joeguzzardi@capsweb.org.