April 11, 2005

Back Up The Medborgargarden!

By Juan Mann

Although less than two weeks old, the Minuteman Project along the Mexican border in Arizona is a resounding success. And I’ve got the proof right here—an e-mail I received on April 5 from Michael Ståhlberg in Tyreso, Sweden:

"Hola Juan,

"As an avid reader of VDARE.COM I have just read your article du jour, while having a very late breakfast over here in Sweden (ain't the Internet wonderful!), and it was fun to take part of your email correspondence with the Tejanos.

"The other day a Swedish friend sent me an article on the Minutemen from Svenska Dagbladet (‘conservative"), since he knew of my interest in your Mexican border problem.  In it you could read of monitoring ‘vigilantes’ (in Swedish ‘medborgargarden’) by civil rights groups.  Otherwise it was a fairly neutral, but somewhat short article.

"Still, it may have raised an eyebrow or two amongst its Swedish readers, who for the most part probably favor less immigration to their country, but at the same time are under the erroneous impression that U.S. immigration policies could serve as a role model for our own. Because they've been told so.  They've seen on TV, new U.S. citizens raising their hands to take an oath of allegiance to their new country. Well, little do they know, obviously.  They probably think it's pre-1965 immigration-wise!

"So the Minutemen are raising not only hell in the good old U.S. of A., but awareness around the world of its illegal immigration problem, as well."

It’s probably obvious even to the Treason Lobby, that the influence of the Minutemen extends far beyond the number of illegal aliens they might have actually stopped. 

As of April 8, the Minutemen’s website reports that

"in the 23-mile area that MMP is observing, Border Patrol apprehensions have dropped from approximately 1,000 per day to less than 20 per day during this past week,"

Apprehensions are a proxy for attempted crossings, of which they are a fraction.

Of course, the missing estimated 980 illegal aliens apprehended per day in Minuteman territory, multiplied by their unapprehended fellow-invaders, will still probably try to cross the border—somewhere where there are no Border Patrol agents or Minute Men (yet). 

But the real achievement of the citizen volunteers of the Minuteman Project is the enormous worldwide media attention they have brought to bear on the free-for-all of illegal immigration to the United States.

And the real scandal: the aliens spotted by the volunteers and caught by the Border Patrol will probably be released on the pretext of attending future Immigration Court hearings before the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).

The American system for deporting illegal aliens and criminal alien residents–especially the discredited EOIR—is certainly NOT a model for the world.

The ongoing catch-and-release game of agent-and-alien (read: cat-and-mouse) along the border continues because of the benign neglect of Congress and the executive branch.  The existence of the EOIR hearing process, as well as the perennial lack of immigration detention space in the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division are a disastrous recipe for de facto open borders.

If few illegal aliens ever actually leave, or if they can just walk back anytime they want if deported, immigration law enforcement in the U.S. is nothing more than a silly charade.

As I’ve been writing, the real problem is using a failed litigation model and a briar patch of immigration bureaucracy to decide the physical deportation of every illegal alien and criminal alien resident in the country.

So here’s to the sacrifices of the vilified medborgargarden!—our undocumented Border Patrol Agents.

But their efforts must be backed up—by

1. abolition of the litigation model and
2. summary removal of all apprehended illegals.

You read it here first—repeatedly!