38 u December 2017 January 2018The authorities beli.docx

38 u December 2017 / January 2018
T
he authorities believe he slipped across the United States-
Mexico
border sometime during the summer of 2016, likely deep in the
night. He carried no papers. The crossing happened in the
rugged
backcountry of southeastern Arizona, where the main deterrent
to
trespassers is the challenging nature of the terrain—not the
metal
walls, checkpoints, and aerial surveillance that dominate much
of the border.
But the border crosser was des-
ert-hardy and something of an expert
at camouflage. No one knows for cer-
tain how long he’d been in the United
States before a motion-activated cam-
era caught him walking a trail in the
Dos Cabezas Mountains on the night
of November 16. When a government
agency retrieved the photo in late Feb-
ruary, the image was plastered across
Arizona newspapers, causing an imme-
diate sensation.
The border crosser was a jaguar.
Jaguars once roamed throughout

the southwestern United States, but
are now quite rare. A core population
resides in the mountains of northern
Mexico, and occasionally an adventur-
ous jaguar will venture north of the bor-
der. When one of these elusive, graceful
cats makes an appearance stateside,
Mrill Ingram is The Progressive’s online media editor.
‘The Border Is
a Beautiful Place’
For Many, Both Sides of the
Arizona-Mexico Border Are Home
B
O
R
D
ER
A
R
TS
C
O
R
R
ID

O
R
By Mrill Ingram
Artists Ana Teresa Fernández in Agua Prieta, Mexico, and Jenea
Sanchez in Douglas, Arizona, worked with dozens of
community members to paint sections
of the border fence sky blue, “erasing” it as a symbolic act of
resistance against increasing violence and oppression of human
rights along the border.
https://apnews.com/79c83219af724016b8cfa2c505018ac4/agenc
y-reports-rare-jaguar-sighting-mountains-arizona
The Progressive u 39
usually via a motion-triggered camera,
it may get celebrity status.
“We’ve had positive identifications
of seven cats, alive and well, in the last
twenty years in the United States,” says
Diana Hadley of the Mexico-based
Northern Jaguar Project, which works
with people in both countries to pro-
tect the big cat. One of those cats be-
came known as El Jefe, after he took
up residence in 2011 in the Santa Rita
Mountains south of Tucson, Arizona.
His presence was proof that the United
States still had enough wild habitat to
support a jaguar.

The new cat was especially excit-
ing because, based on size and shape,
observers initially thought it might
be female. “A lot of people in Arizona
would be very happy to have jaguars
from Mexico breeding in Arizona,” re-
marks Hadley.
In September 2017, the Arizo-
na-based Center for Biological Di-
versity released new video of the cat,
apparently a male, caught on a mo-
tion-triggered camera ambling through
the oak scrub forest in the Chiricahua
Mountains. He’s been named Sombra,
or Shadow, by schoolkids in Tucson.
Such things will no longer happen if
Donald Trump builds his border wall. If
constructed the way Trump envisions—
thirty feet high and two feet thick with
deep footings—it would “obstruct all
mammals from crossing the border,”
says Hadley. It would block not just jag-
uars but many mammals, toads, and
other small animals and birds that can’t
fly up and over, including roadrunners
and quail. Even bats and insects could
be dissuaded by sudden encounters
with the massive concrete barrier, she
notes. “If he were to construct that wall,
[animal] crossing would stop. Period.”
You could be forgiven, in the wake of Donald Trump’s zeal for
a “great,
great wall” between Mexico and the

United States (and dividing tribal To-
hono O’odham land), for perceiving
irony in the excitement over feline
border crossers.
People who live in the borderlands
celebrate the jaguar as a symbol of pos-
sibility for a region with a shared histo-
ry and culture. Viewed from a distance,
the border might seem like a hard edge,
the outer limit of a nation. But many
people who live there call both sides of
the border home, harboring relation-
ships that become all the more dear
amid the vehemence with which they
are denied.
In the border town of Douglas, Ari-
zona, images of jaguars were projected
onto the metal slats of the border fence
this past summer as part of a multicul-
tural and binational celebration with its
sister city Agua Prieta, Mexico. Similar
events took place at the annual Concert
Without Borders, featuring musicians
(and chess players) arranged on either
side of the iron fence. For her project
Borrando la Frontera, or Erasing the
Border, which took place in the spring
of 2016, artist Ana Teresa Fernández
worked with Douglas and Agua Prieta
community members to paint the fence
blue, so that it blended with the color of
the sky and could almost be imagined
to disappear.

“The majority of our communi-
ty along the border see themselves as
one,” M. Jenea Sanchez, an artist and
wife of the mayor of Douglas, Arizona,
attests. “Our binational connections are
not only economically driven. We are
interconnected by our ecology, family,
and culture.” Sanchez, like many others
in the region, is committed to celebrat-
ing and sustaining border culture. She
relies on her professional counterparts
just over the border in Agua Prie-
ta, Mexico, a booming town of more
than 77,000 inhabitants. Douglas, an
old mining center, is a quiet town of
16,600 people.
“Douglas would disappear if Agua
Prieta wasn’t there and we weren’t open
to them,” she says. “We always try to
talk about that connection.”
As a child, Sanchez remembers
simply running across the border from
Mexico to visit her aunt. “I guess it was
illegal,” she shrugs. But while she was
in high school, she says, the border un-
derwent major changes. President Bill
Clinton, building his tough-on-drugs-
and-immigration program, passed the
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immi-
grant Responsibility Act of 1996.
Along the Arizona-Mexico bor-
der, miles of new steel fencing were

extended out into the desert from the
urban centers of towns like Douglas,
Nogales, and Naco, along with almost
eighty miles of high-intensity lighting.
The number of border patrol agents in-
creased more than sixfold from 1993 to
2004, to a total of about 1,770. Undoc-
umented border crossers were forced
to seek passage in more remote areas,
and the desert became a lethal deter-
rent. Deaths along the Arizona border
alone, according to official U.S. Border
Patrol numbers, went from 104 in 2001
to 271 in 2005.
Sanchez remembers a third wave of
border fortification after the attacks of
September 11, 2001. George W. Bush
more than doubled border security
funding, from $4.6 billion in 2001 to
$10.4 billion in 2006. That’s when he
signed the Secure Fence Act, which
called for 700 miles of pedestrian and
vehicle barrier fencing. Fence con-
struction and fortification continued
under the REAL ID Act of 2005—the
Department of Homeland Security
waived the Endangered Species Act, the
Wilderness Act, the Archaeological and
Historic Preservation Act, and dozens
of other environmental and cultural
protections constituting the largest
dismissal of law in U.S. history.
The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement and fears of
drugs and crime created another kind

of fence. After NAFTA, Mexican bor-
der towns like Nogales, Ciudad Juárez,
and Agua Prieta boomed with factory
https://www.northernjaguarproject.org/
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-
environment/2017/09/14/jaguar-caught-video-could-first-
female-arizona-50-years/667038001/
https://www.facebook.com/CenterforBioDiv/videos/1015553399
4380460/
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/9204250699643494
45
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2017/live-
updates/trump-white-house/real-time-fact-checking-and-
analysis-of-trumps-address-to-congress/trump-one-ups-china-
promises-great-great-wall-on-the-southern-
border/?utm_term=.9146e959a7a6
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2017/live-
updates/trump-white-house/real-time-fact-checking-and-
analysis-of-trumps-address-to-congress/trump-one-ups-china-
promises-great-great-wall-on-the-southern-
border/?utm_term=.9146e959a7a6
https://www.usatoday.com/border-wall/story/tohono-oodham-
nation-arizona-tribe/582487001/?for-guid=441ed1ad-10b5-
e711-88f6-90b11c3bc1f2
https://nyti.ms/2vk9Cty
https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2017/05/03/concert-port-of-
entry-aims-unify-both-sides-border-break-down-barriers/
https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2017/05/03/concert-port-of-
entry-aims-unify-both-sides-border-break-down-barriers/
http://anateresafernandez.com/borrando-la-barda-tijuana-
mexico/
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/illegal_immigration_reform_a
nd_immigration_responsibility_act
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/illegal_immigration_reform_a
nd_immigration_responsibility_act

http://www.gao.gov/assets/250/243053.pdf
http://www.gao.gov/assets/250/243053.pdf
https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2016-
Oct/BP%20Southwest%20Border%20Sector%20Deaths%20FY1
998%20-%20FY2016.pdf
https://georgewbush-
whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061026-
1.html
http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/2017/embattled-
borderlands/index.html
40 u December 2017 / January 2018
jobs but struggled with lack of infra-
structure, including everything from
drinking water to security. Small busi-
nesses on both sides of the border suf-
fered. Tourists from the United States
became reluctant to cross to shop for
Mexican services and crafts, and a weak
peso meant that even the lure of U.S.
department stores faced challenges in
enticing Mexicans to take on an in-
creasingly burdensome
border crossing.
Ben Aceves, a grad-
uate student at the Uni-
versity of Arizona, is
what many call a “bor-
der kid.” He grew up in
Southern California,
about two hours from
the border. “My family
is from Mexicali, on the

Mexican side as well as
El Centro on the Unit-
ed States side,” he says.
“My great-grandpa
worked on the railroad
in San Diego, and both
my parents grew up
there. We go to Mexico
every summer for fam-
ily holidays.”
But traversing the
border has changed for
Aceves, who works on public health
projects in the border region. “Some-
times, it feels like a crime to cross,” he
says about his recent interactions with
customs officials. “I feel intimidated. I
was born here, was educated in a U.S.
university, I pay taxes—you don’t get
more American,” he says. “But even I
feel intimidated, like even I could be
deported.”
Celina Valencia also grew up along
the United States-Mexico border, in
Ambos Nogales, or Both Nogales—No-
gales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona. “I
didn’t realize they were two different
spaces until I was older, like twelve or
thirteen,” says Valencia, now an epide-
miologist at the University of Arizona.
“I grew up poor and we moved a lot.
One house would be in Nogales, Ar-
izona, and the next would be in No-

gales, Mexico.” Food and haircuts were
cheaper in Mexico, she explains, “so we
moved back and forth almost daily.”
“People from the United States have
always gone to towns in Mexico for
their health care,” says Jill de Zapien,
associate dean at the University of Ar-
izona’s Rural Health Office. “It’s a cash
economy of people buying medical care
because of affordability, or some tech-
nology that they might have access to
in one place but not the other.”
While NAFTA has ensured a mas-
sive stream of produce and other Mex-
ican products into the United States,
however, the more informal traffic—
people on a day of shopping, or seeking
a manicure, dentist visit, or other ser-
vice, or just hopping over to see rela-
tives—has dropped steadily. In October
2006, according to U.S. Department of
Transportation data, 1,370,816 person-
al vehicles, passengers, and pedestrians
crossed from Nogales, Mexico. In 2016,
that total dropped to that 851,713.
Bracker’s Department Store, in No-
gales, Arizona, is one of the most recent
losses, shutting its doors in October
after ninety-three years of operation.
“Physically we are in the United States,
economically we are in Mexico,” Bruce
Bracker told a local TV station. “At least

80 percent of our customers come from
northern Mexico.” They had stopped
coming.
These losses are
the prices local bor-
der dwellers have paid
for the country’s fight
against illegal immi-
gration, and its em-
brace of free trade. How
much more damage
can Trump’s proposed
border wall do to these
communities that have
already lost so much?
“¡Michelle Acosta G on z a l e z ! ¡ Pre -
sente!”
“¡Mujer Desconoci-
da! ¡Presente!”
“¡Roberto Bautis-
ta-Lopez! ¡Presente!”
Each member of the
small group takes turns
holding aloft a small
wooden cross and announcing the
name written on it. Many crosses state
simply “Desconocido” for a body never
identified. After pronouncing the name
on the cross, the speaker then lays it
along the edge of the road leading to the

border customs checkpoint in Douglas.
It’s part of a weekly commemoration,
led by the binational group Frontera de
Cristo, of those who lost their lives in
the deserts around the border.
Although border apprehensions
have been dropping, deaths are not.
Hundreds of people are continuing to
die along this border from exposure
and other migration-related threats as
border control continues to push mi-
grants to attempt ever more treacher-
“Un-Fragmenting / Des-Fragmentando: An evening of wildlife
illuminations on the
United States-Mexico border” brings attention to how these
barriers impede the flow
of life. Larger-than-life photographs of jaguars and other
species from the Northern
Jaguar Reserve were projected onto the border’s metal barrier,
momentarily reopening
a critical wildlife corridor.
K
EN
D
R
A
S
O
LL

A
R
S
http://tucson.com/business/popular-nogales-son-eateries-among-
wave-of-businesses-closing/article_bb8358b6-0255-5372-b54b-
2a4dae4b0242.html
http://www.bordering110.com/economic-insecurity-hampers-
growth-in-border-towns-north-and-south/
http://www.bordering110.com/economic-insecurity-hampers-
growth-in-border-towns-north-and-south/
https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-
business/openforum/videos/main-street-usa-welcome-to-
nogales-az/
https://data.transportation.gov/Research-and-Statistics/Border-
Crossing-Entry-Data/keg4-3bc2/data#column-menu
http://www.kvoa.com/story/36406999/historic-nogales-
businesses-closing-doors
http://www.kgun9.com/news/local-news/nogales-store-closing-
after-more-than-90-years-in-business
http://fronteradecristo.org/
http://fronteradecristo.org/
The Progressive u 41
ous crossings. According to the Missing
Migrants Project, more than 300 mi-
grants have died crossing the border
just this year, about a third in the Tuc-
son-Douglas area.

Jocabed Gallegos, who coordinates
the Mexican programs for Frontera de
Cristo, has helped make crosses for
thousands of the migrants who have
died along the border. Gallegos trundles
out a different wag-
onload of 180 crosses
each week, rotating
them to commemo-
rate each of the dead.
She says 6,000 people
have died along the
border since 2000.
Passersby give the
small group curious
glances, but few stop
to ask questions. Per-
haps many of them
already know. The
Douglas community
was deeply affected
by the 1997 drowning
of six undocumented
immigrants who had
been caught by a flash
flood in a storm drain
after crawling underground for blocks
from Agua Prieta. The town created a
memorial, which is where Frontera de
Cristo begins its ceremony every week.
“Frontera de Cristo is always in
motion, responding to what is happen-
ing,” Gallegos explains. And recently

that has meant creating programs that
help people in the border region believe
their lives have meaning and value. Of
particular concern, she says, are young
people in Agua Prieta who are being
targeted by drug cartels as both drug
runners and users.
Frontera de Cristo started a com-
munity center in Agua Prieta, offering
youth classes on conflict resolution,
self-esteem, and hygiene. The center
serves coffee grown and roasted by Café
Justo, a cooperative started by Frontera
in 2002. “We are creating economic
opportunities so people don’t have to
migrate,” Gallegos says. “The first year
we sold 400 pounds of coffee. Last year
it was 30,000.”
Frontera also runs a cooperative
teaching “sustainability skills”—how
to grow food, harvest water, and raise
livestock in the desert—to women
who arrive in the borderlands from
elsewhere. “All I knew is how to work
in a factory. Here I learn how to work
for us and not just for others,” one par-
ticipant told Gallegos.
Jenea Sanchez, working on a mural
project with Frontera de Cristo, met
several of the women who were part
of the cooperative, and was inspired

by the women and their work.
She created seven-foot-tall por-
traits of several of the women, and is
using their stories to create what she’s
titled, “The Mexican Woman’s Post
Apocalyptic Survival Guide in the
Southwest.”
“It’s about food, shelter, livestock,
but also surviving la migra,” she ex-
plains. “It celebrates the women’s
stories and their survival skills in the
desert. My work makes visible their
survival, and asks: At what point do
you decide that, because of hunger or
violence, you are going to attempt to
cross the border? We need to consider,
as fellow human beings, what drives a
person to make that decision?”
According to the Migration Poli-cy Institute, the number of bor-
der walls worldwide has exploded
re cent ly, g rowing
from around fifteen
when the Berlin Wall
fell in 1989 to nearly
seventy today. Large
numbers of people are
fleeing terrorism, war,
and climate change.
Neoliberal econom-
ic policies, like “free
trade” and austerity

budgeting, are cre-
ating wealth dispari-
ties that force people
to uproot. While
walls may temporar-
ily block these flows,
history indicates that
people will search for
other ways of crossing
when they have to—
even if they might die trying.
And border walls erase border
culture. Listening to the stories from
border kids like Sanchez, Aceves, and
Valencia, and hearing the dedication
of people like Hadley and Gallegos,
you feel their pride in border culture,
and hear their belief that it can yet be
a welcoming place for people and an-
imals. Those who live on the border
are working to stitch it together with
every trip they make, every conver-
sation they have with people on the
“other side.” Each crossing is a small
act of resistance.
“It’s saddening to see people who’ve
never been on the border try to pass
policy about it,” Aceves says. “I don’t
even know what they see. I wish they’d
Jocabed Gallegos is Mexican coordinator for Frontera de Cristo.
She helped make crosses for

each of the thousands of migrants who have died along the
border. Supporters meet in the
McDonald’s parking lot before each weekly ceremony.
M
R
IL
L
IN
G
R
A
M
https://missingmigrants.iom.int/region/americas?region=1422
https://missingmigrants.iom.int/region/americas?region=1422
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nearly-6000-
migrants-have-died-along-mexico-us-border-2000-
180952904/?no-ist
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nearly-6000-
migrants-have-died-along-mexico-us-border-2000-
180952904/?no-ist
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/2017/07/17/arizona-flash-
floods-deaths/483391001/
http://www.justcoffee.org/
http://www.justcoffee.org/
http://mjeneasanchez.com/#/the-mexican-womans-post-
apocalyptic-survival-guide-in-the-southwest/

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/borders-and-walls-do-
barriers-deter-unauthorized-migration
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PANORAMA
IMMIGRATION
A Minuteman
volunteer guards
Arizona's border.
Eyes Vo unteer Help
T he U.S. Border Patrol is exploring ways to use citizen
volunteers to help it pro-tect the border, Customs and Border
Protection Commissioner Robert C. Bonner
announced this summer. In April, hundreds of volunteers spread
across a 23-mile
stretch of the Arizono-Mexico border to keep migrants from
illegally crossing the

border. The scxalled Minuteman Project attracted international
attention and criti-
cism, even from the Border Patrol- The effort also spav/ned
other similar campaigns
along the U.S.-Mexico border.
POLITICS
A New Black-
Hispanic A liance?
In an effort to unite Hispanic and black
Americans, Rev. Al Sharpton and Christine
Chavez, the granddaughter of activist
Cesar Chavez, have joined forces to create
the Latino & African-American Leadership
Alliance. The group aims to bring more
attention ta the groups' shared interests.
10
For seven seasons, she has dished it outas Rosario, the feisty
maid on NBC's
Wills. Grace. Recently, HISPANIC caught
up with the woman behind the wisecracks.
HISPANIC: Who was your inspiraHon for
the role of Rosario?
M o r r i s o n : Rosario reminds me a lot of my
mother. She would take o bullet for those
four [Will, Grace, Jack and Karen]. She's a

highly educated tough oi' broad (laughs).
H : Has there ever been a role you turned
down and kicked yourself later?
M : No. My instincfs are pretty good. But I
won't do anything that'll pollute [the air-
waves]. What we do does influence and
we have o responsibility. I don't believe in
censorship but I believe in self-awareness.
H : What's something people
would be surprised to learn about you?
M : Gosh, there's a lot of things. Well, I can
do all ethnic ranges of diaiects and I want-
ed to be the first female professional base-
ball player (laughs).
H: What advice would you give aspiring
Hispanic actors and actresses?
M : It's the work that's important, not the
celebrity. The work is where you'll derive
your true fulfillment. This is an excellent

time right now for Hispanics because the
industry is just breaking wide open and
opportunities are going to be coming fast
and furious.
l<iy Fernandez
HISPANIC • SEPTEMBER 2005
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formatting and punctuation guidelines.
Works Cited
Doug Ducey. “National Guard Call-up Is Needed and
Welcome.” USA Today. EBSCOhost,
login.ezp.mesacc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/log
in.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=J0E024178997318&site=ehos
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National Guard call-up is needed and welcome
Section: News, Pg. 05a
The most fundamental responsibility of government is to protect
its citizens. This is an issue for all governors, but it has added
meaning and complexity for border governors.
For those living with the consequences of Washington's failures,
border security isn't a political issue, it's a personal one. I've
grieved with the widow of a rancher slain by an illegal
immigrant and with the family members of agent Brian Terry,
who was gunned down by cartel members 10 miles north of the
Arizona-Mexico border. I've spent time with parents whose
children's lives were ruined by the drugs smuggled across our
border.
The majority of illegal drugs in this country come through our
southern border. If you know someone impacted by drug
addiction, there's a good chance their last "hit" came from drugs
that flowed through Arizona.
For years, Americans, particularly in border states such as
Arizona, have been calling on the federal government to secure
our border.
It is frustrating to hear the rhetoric from the talking heads on
cable news on this issue. Despite what some may say, our
southern border is not secure. That is the truth, plain and
simple.
That is why I am grateful for this administration's actions to
address border security. The announcement by President Trump
to call up the National Guard to support the mission of the
Border Patrol is needed and welcomed.
Unfortunately, there are those who like to play politics with the
issue. Those of us on the border don't have that luxury. Instead,
while the politicos and pundits are busy shouting at each other,
we are addressing the challenges of managing a state on the
border.

We're working to save lives threatened by the hands of cartel
members or by drug addiction -- and the lives of those trying to
cross Arizona's unforgiving desert. States such as Arizona have
stepped up when Washington has failed and spent tens of
millions of our state's taxpayer dollars to supplement the great
work of an understaffed Customs and Border Protection.
But with a border nearly 373 miles -- longer than the entire
length of Pennsylvania -- we can't do this on our own.
Doug Ducey is governor of Arizona.
(c) USA TODAY, 2018
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Assoc.):
Works Cited
Dennis Wagner. “U.S., Mexico Join Forces to Stem Tide of
Illegal Crossings.” USA Today. EBSCOhost,
in.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=J0E238617439211&site=ehos
t-live. Accessed 27 July 2019.

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U.S., Mexico join forces to stem tide of illegal crossings
Alliance has curbed both undocumented workers and drugs
Section: News, Pg. 06a
TUCSON -- A little-known coalition of U.S. and Mexican
police agencies has played a major part in cracking down on
smuggling and illegal immigration along the Arizona-Mexico
border, top Homeland Security officials say.
The joint operation among the U.S. Border Patrol, Mexican
federal police and about 60 U.S. state, federal, tribal and local
police agencies has had dramatic success making drug seizures
and arresting undocumented immigrants, says Alan Bersin,
director of Customs and Border Protection.
Since the Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats launched
quietly in September 2009 with coordinated training,
intelligence-sharing and patrols, the program has resulted in the
arrests of 270,000 illegal border crossers, the seizure of 1.6
million pounds of marijuana and the recovery of $13 million in
cash in the border's Tucson sector.
The area became a funnel point when officials clamped down in
other states along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Bersin said that as the program continues, it will be another
factor in the efforts to help stem the flow of illegal immigrants
and drug smugglers into the United States.
Bersin said this alliance is unique because it includes
cooperative policing from the Mexican side.
David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the
University of San Diego, said collaborating more closely with
Mexico to battle drug trafficking and human smuggling
represents a welcome shift in the way the United States handles

border issues.
"The traditional U.S. approach has been one that focuses on
unilateral solutions," he said. "The result is you can't do much
from one side of the border."
Although working more closely with Mexican law enforcement
officials will help the U.S. tackle drug trafficking and human
smuggling, those problems can't be solved through cross-border
enforcement alone.
More emphasis has to be put on reducing drug consumption in
the U.S. and creating jobs in Mexico, Shirk said.
On Tuesday, Bersin said the alliance is part of an overall
campaign to plug the last corridor for contraband and illegal
immigration. He predicted that the cartels "will make a stand
here to try to preserve their smuggling routes."
Bersin said the goal of the alliance and other initiatives is to
manage the border and make it safe.
"Border safety and security does not mean sealing the border to
a point where not one single illegal alien comes across," he
said. "This is perfection to which we do not aspire."
Wagner also reports for The Arizona Republic.
Contributing: Daniel Gonzalez, The Arizona Republic.
TEXT OF INFO BOX BEGINS HERE
Action on the border
A by-the-numbers look at efforts to patrol the U.S.-Mexican
border:
20,700
Border Patrol agents today, more than double the number in
2004.
1,200
National Guard troops deployed on border assignments.
779,000
Illegal immigrants that Immigration and Customs Enforcement
removed in fiscal years 2009 and 2010, more than half of them
convicted criminals.
16%
Increase in border drug seizures. Weapons seizures rose 28%

and illicit-currency seizures were up 35% in fiscal 2009 and
2010.
3,500
Employers suspected of hiring illegal immigrants since January
2009 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has audited;
235 businesses were debarred (prohibited from receiving federal
contracts).
Source: Department of Homeland Security
(c) USA TODAY, 2011
800-758-5995.
Thank you for the articles.
Thanks for all this.
Thank you very much for this.
Are the suggestions above helpful?
Assoc.):
Works Cited
Cattan, Nacha. “Arizona Immigration Law: Will It Hurt

Mexico’s Drug War, as US Lawsuit Says?” Christian Science
Monitor, 7 July 2010, p. N.PAG. EBSCOhost,
in.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=51984173&site=ehost-live.
h.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=5198417
3&site=ehost-live
End of citation-->
Arizona immigration law: Will it hurt Mexico's drug war, as US
lawsuit says?
Mexico's government applauded an Obama administration
lawsuit brought Tuesday against the Arizona immigration law.
Some analysts here agree with the lawsuit that argues the
Arizona law undermines the drug war. But others say the suit
diverts attention away from a more important goal for most
Mexicans: US immigration reform.
"Mexico expresses its approval of the United States government
decision to try and prevent the SB 1070 law from taking effect,"
said President Felipe Calderon's government, which has been
highly vocal in opposing the Arizona law.
Filed by the US Justice Department in a federal district court in
Arizona, the lawsuit demonstrates President Barack Obama's
commitment to civil and human rights, Mexico's Senate Foreign
Affairs Committee said Tuesday.
The Arizona law makes it a crime to be an illegal immigrant in
the state. It also requires police to determine the immigration
status of a person stopped for other infractions when there is
"reasonable suspicion" the person is an undocumented migrant.
IN PICTURES: The US/Mexico border
While immigrant and human rights groups also expressed
content with the Justice Department's case against Arizona,
some ordinary Mexicans and academics were not enamored.
They saw the suit as mere pre-election maneuvering for the

Hispanic vote while a more politically costly immigration
reform stalls indefinitely.
"Immigration is not one of [Obama]'s priorities next to the
recession or the elections," says Pedro Isnardo, presidential
policy analyst at the UNAM university in Mexico City.
"Although he is not minimizing immigration he is now giving it
legal attention because he knows he doesn't have greater
influence in other realms."
The lawsuit comes on the heels of Obama's urgent request to
Congress last week to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
Some security experts in Mexico also said that an argument in
the federal lawsuit claiming the Arizona law will undermine the
drug war by diverting resources away from targeting "drug
smuggling and gang activity" misses the point.
"The priority has always been going after big [criminal] groups.
But without discussing prevention, the [drug] problem will
continue for years to come," says Jose Maria Ramos, public
security expert at the College of the Northern Border in Tijuana
(COLEF).
The lawsuit's argument that a blanket immigration law hurts the
fight against traffickers makes sense to other analysts, however.
"It's easy to understand the legitimate concerns of people in
Arizona about border security, but the measure actually makes
the border far less secure," says Andrew Selee, director of the
Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
It will "create fear and distrust of authorities in the minds of
legal foreign nationals and good citizens with illegal status in
Arizona who might be very useful in helping to stop the traffic
of illegal drugs through their contacts in foreigner networks,"
says Malcolm Beith, a freelance journalist and author of a
forthcoming book on the drug war, "The Last Narco."
The suit also argues that only the federal government, and not a
"patchwork" of local entities, can set immigration policy – an
apparent reference to other states looking to pass similar laws.
In addition, the U.S. government says that the law will cause
legal immigrants and visitors to be harassed, and requests an

injunction to stop the law from taking effect July 29.
Mexico has strongly condemned the law, filing an amicus brief
last month in a lawsuit brought by major civil rights groups.
Also in June, governors of Mexican border states said they
would not attend this year's Border Governors Conference
unless it was moved from the scheduled location in Arizona.
The boycott led Gov. Jan Brewer last week to cancel the
September meeting, which has reportedly caused a split among
US governors over whether to hold the conference in another
state.
For some Mexicans, the US lawsuit is not a defense of civil
rights, but merely a step the Obama administration is taking to
restrain a state that is overstepping its authority.
"It's not good or bad; it's what they should be doing," said
Francisco Adrian Martinez, a 24-year-old engineering student in
Mexico City.
IN PICTURES: The US/Mexico border
RELATED STORIES:
Immigration law in Arizona targeted in Department of Justice
lawsuit
Obama's immigration reform plans
Mexico news coverage
~~~~~~~~
By Nacha Cattan, Correspondent
800-758-5995.

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