Secretary of Homeland Defense and former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano said confidently on Friday that the US-Mexico border is
"a civilian border" - expressing her reservations about sending troops to the region to counter the unprecedented levels of violence spilling over from Mexico. Cartels have been battling it out south of the border, resulting in over 28,000 deaths this year.
Strangely enough, a man in the former governor's state who has his "boots on the ground" begs to differ. On Wednesday, I attended a press conference held by Pinal county, Arizona sheriff Paul Babeu, who countered that there are large areas of desert in his county where his own deputies enter at their peril - outgunned by Mexican outlaws who effectively control those areas.
Babeu has been an outspoken advocate for sending troops to the border, calling on president Obama to send 3,000 soldiers to take back the remote areas in his county which are veritable highways of illegal drugs and human trafficking. Some of his deputies took me to one such area, littered with the remains of hundreds of backpacks - some of them constructed of grain sacks marked with US flags - courtesy of USAID. The sacks were used to make makeshift backpacks, each carrying about forty pounds of marijuana across from Mexico. The "backpackers" elude law enforcement by traveling through areas controlled by the cartels, walking three to five days across the south Arizona desert until they reach Interstate 10 in Pinal county. There they are met by trucks at night, the backpackers jettison everything but the dope, leaving mounds of clothing, water bottles and sun-scorched backpacks along the highway.
Sheriff Babeu welcomes any and all help from the government, but criticizes the Obama administration for placing signs along the areas controlled by the cartels warning US citizens to stay out.
"This is an outrage!" he thundered during the press conference. "This is America. We should not simply give over parts of our country to armed criminals."
From the shout of agreement that went up from the locals in the audience, it is clear that many here in Pinal county couldn't agree more that perhaps it is time to reclaim our "civilian border" from the narcotraffickers.
