Border security takes center stage

By Ilana Freedman / Local Columnist

Friday, August 26, 2005

A little over a year ago, I wrote about the dangerous situation on our southern border, a porous boundary that separates the United States from Mexico and across which millions of illegal immigrants have made their way.

The border, which runs through some very rugged and dangerous terrain, is compromised so regularly that the US Border Patrol is overwhelmed by the sheer number of people racing across it.

A year ago, this was a little known issue. In fact, the subject was so obscure that I only happened to read about it when I was researching something else and came across an article by chance on the Russian website "Pravda."

There were no "Minutemen" then, volunteering to come to Arizona from all over the country to help patrol the Mexican border. Few people were even willing to talk about the problem, no less admit that it was a serious concern. It was a subject that the savvy avoided as "politically incorrect."

Much has changed over the last year. Border communities now openly admit that they are overwhelmed by the flood of illegal immigrants that rush largely unchecked across the southern border. The communities that lie along that border are wracked with the violent crime that has come to be associated with this torrent of humanity.

It has gotten so bad that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano have declared a state of emergency in the regions of their states lying along the Mexican border. And Texas Governor Rick Perry has given permission to the once disdained "Minuteman Project" and will allow their volunteers to begin border patrols in October.

This week, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, acknowledged for the first time the seriousness of the situation and announced that his department would be taking steps to provide "better enforcement strategies all across the operations spectrum."

What has changed in the last year that has brought this problem from an editorial footnote to the front page? For one thing, the situation has gotten much worse. The audacity of some of the immigrants as they pass through the towns is beyond shocking. Governor Richardson declares that areas of his state that lie along the Mexican border have been "devastated by the ravages and terror of human smuggling, drug smuggling, kidnapping, murder, destruction of property and the death of livestock."

Immigration officials admit that they apprehend only a quarter of those illegally crossing the 2,000 mile border between Mexico and the United States. Since the government claims that 1.1 million illegal immigrants were apprehended at the border in 2004, the arithmetic is simple. It means that well over four million people crossed the border last year and three quarters of them disappeared into our national population.

Overall, the government estimates that there are nearly 12 million illegal immigrants in the country today, with an average of 11,000 more streaming in every day.

The issues relating to illegal immigration are complex, and range from health concerns to national security. The health issues are significant. When people enter the country illegally, they sidestep the necessary health screening that is required of legal immigrants.

Imported strains of diseases, once thought banished from the United States as the result of our advanced medicine and healthcare systems, have begun to reappear, to the alarm of such organizations as the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. The CDC's Division of TB Elimination has reported that "immigration is a major force that sustains the incidence of tuberculosis in the United States."

In March 2005, another report, this one in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, spelled out the way illegal immigration is threatening the fundamental structure of America's health-care system. In this report, Madeleine Pelner Cosman wrote, "Many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue, and Chagas disease."

Moreover, the report says, healthcare systems are strained to the point of breaking from the burden of the uninsured illegal immigrants who use the healthcare facilities, such as hospital emergency rooms, for free healthcare. This has such a significant impact that it raises healthcare premiums for those who subscribe to health insurance plans and raises taxes for everyone in order to pay for the uncompensated healthcare that is madated by law.

The consequences are serious. In California alone, 84 hospitals will be closed this year because of the rapidly rising number of illegal aliens and the high cost of their uncompensated medical care.

But for someone like me, who spends my time studying and analyzing the growing threat of terrorism against a wide range of American interests, illegal immigration represents another problem.

An alarming number of immigrants who cross our borders illegally come from what our government calls "countries of interest" -- Syria, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, among others -- countries who support and fund terrorism.

They come across the border and, if apprehended they are usually released -- in the United States. After that, they just melt away, disappearing into communities of compatriots across the country. Add to that the fact that al Qaeda is known to be actively recruiting Hispanics in South and Central America, training them, and sending them into the United States through Mexico. The uncontrolled and unmonitored flow of these illegals into the country represents a clear and present danger to our national security.

The growth of the Minutemen is a sign that the American people are beginning to find the situation intolerable. That the Department of Homeland Security is now addressing this issue with a seriousness not seen before is also significant. The Minutemen focused the spotlight on the problem. Then, the attacks in London and the rapidly increasing space that the terrorist threat commands in our daily news captured our attention. The specter of tens of thousands of potential terrorists entering our country illegally and disappearing into our communities from coast to coast should give us pause.

We can no longer afford the luxury of a political correctness that overlooks the blatant disregard of our immigration laws and poses a real and dangerous threat to our safety and national security. Our nation has shown a kindness to millions of illegal immigrants that no other nation would have considered. But now it is time to close the floodgates and protect our country from the economic, health, and security risks that millions of illegal immigrants among us pose. Our future depends on it.

(Ilana Freedman is a specialist in homeland security. She welcomes your comments and questions at ilana@gerardgroup.com.)

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