POLITICS - Border fence in limbo

[Charles]

was the front page headline of today's Brownsville Herald. DHS has run out of money already being 400 million dollars over budget. To take more money from the DHS budget would mean stopping the hiring of new Border Patrol agents. The plan was to put 670 miles of fence along the 2,000 miles US/Mexico border. 341 miles has been completed or is nearing completion.

Construction has ground to a halt until the funding issue is resolved. DHS will have to go back to Congress and ask for additional funding. It is not likely there will be any more construction in 2008 (the deadline) if ever.

Submitted without comment...Charles Graff

[mescalero1]

Perhaps this will pause for reflection if the monies could not be better spent on another solution.

[Duff L Bagg]

Perhaps this will pause for reflection if the monies could not be better spent on another solution.

Possibly............I'm thinking Machine gun nests.

[mescalero1]

Something a little less drastic, the ballon at Columbus has been effective from what I hear, but I have no empirical data to verify.

[Charles]

I lived in Deming NM about twenty miles north of Columbus and the ballon was called the Aerostat. It's purpose, at that time, was to detect airplanes flying below the ordinary radar. It was very wind sensative, and could only be flown on good days. That was 11 years ago and it's task may have changed.

[mescalero1]

Charles,
It is still up there, doing whatever it does.
Palomas got real heated a couple months ago, a lot of shootings; but it has calmed down.
Some of the braver Deming locals have retuned, but buisiness is real down.

[mescalero1]

PS,
One of the Deming locals told me the drug guys tried flying the bigger remote control airplanes with dope on them across the border but the ballon detected them.
Whether that is true or not , I can not verify.

[Charles]

Palomas has always been a wild and woolly place with shooting, cuttings so so on. On Friday afternoon the folks start to drift in from the outlying ranches. By nine or ten many of them are drunk and the games begin. Throw in the drug cowboys and it can get very woolly indeed.

There is one nice place to eat there called "La Tienda Rosa" (The Pink Store) and we used to go there to eat every friday with friends. We made it a point to get out of town before sundown before all the fun began. The place is full of hole-in-the-wall cantinas and other assorted low life places. Not a paved street in the town. For all of that, we have some real fond memories of Palomas Mexico.

[mescalero1]

Of all the things I miss about Mexico, the thing I miss the most are the really great meals and times had by Gringos & Mexicans who were friends in the border towns.
When I was young, the border was a line on a map somewhere; cetainly the local people paid NO attention to it.

[J35]

A good read on the border fence and drug smuggling ,wetbacks , corruption on both sides of the border and other border related topics is The REAPERS LINE by Lee Morgan.

He says in S AZ at Naco the Mexicans have already cut the steel from the Mexico side and installed gates that they lock and open when the coast is clear to run a load of dope thru.

He is a recently retired US Custom agent. 525 pages of border facts .

Some really eye opening stuff on how our government has let us down, it will make you sick.

One story he relates is how after his Dept was absorbed by DHS, they received a cry for help from a AZ State trooper who was in a high speed pursuit, (running gun battle) just E. of Douglas so his crew set up a road block at a bridge and took the bad guy out. Later he was reprimanded by his boss who is a DHS REMF and told that DHS is not in the PUBLIC SAFTY BUISSNESS!

Good reading