Along the Southern Border, the New York Times Is 'Disconnected from Reality'

For the last 14 years as the elected Sheriff of Cochise County Arizona, which shares 83 miles of border with Mexico, I have kept a listed phone number. For about the last 18 years or so the calls I receive at home, at night, would be infrequent and usually about a domestic squabble or some animal turned loose.

Then, in 1998 that all changed. Now I don’t sleep, as my residents call each night sometimes panicky, sometimes resigned to this as a way of life, but always with a shaky voice: “they are at my door.” This is not a weekend activity. This is every single night. Cochise County is a gateway to tens of thousands of illegal aliens entering the U.S. to provide the rest of our country with drugs. If my deputies and I are prohibited from enforcing the law to stop these border jumpers, your families in Plainsville, Ohio, or Charlotte, North Carolina, are going to continue to be in harm’s way and see the percentage of crimes by illegal aliens rise.

The New York Times September 4th editorial entitled “Border News” claims we in southern Arizona are “disconnected from reality” over the issue of border violence.

As we patrol the border and watch the traffic night after night – and believe me, you cannot turn off what appears sometimes to be a bad movie with an endless reel of crossers — I would respectfully suggest the editorial writer is disconnected from reality.

And lest you think we are mainly apprehending a workforce eager to come work illegally for our residents, it’s not about people anymore, it’s about drug smugglers and other criminal aliens. My deputies and I keep watch on the border each night, doing our best to apprehend the dozens of men with 75-pound backpacks filled with marijuana who hop the fence, usually when the Federal Border Patrol Agents have their official shift changes. Sadly, Border Patrol agents working this problem are more often than not limited in their capacity to cope by inept policy making in Washington, D.C. Our government is supposed to be making tactical decisions about a situation that worsens by the day and is truly chaotic and frankly, war-like.

The editorial cites the Pew Research Center study as evidence that the illegal population has declined. Pew even admits their numbers are not precise, that their population totals “differ somewhat from the ones the government uses.” In fact, Pew admits to adjusting the unauthorized immigrant population upwards by 10-15%, saying, “Our method of analysis does not permit a precise estimation of how many in this population emigrate, achieve legal status or die.” I would challenge these wizards of statistical manipulation to conduct a study of the total number of crimes committed by illegal aliens nationwide and then justify their open borders position.

When you are thousands of miles away from the problem, it’s easy to imagine this part of the country as a land of easygoing westerners with a carefree lifestyle. That may be the ideal, but the reality is my residents sleep lightly in anticipation of the knocking they will inevitably hear on their front doors and the constant fear of what will result if they are forced to answer.