In its latest hidden camera video release, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) shows the continuing porousness of America’s southern border. As CIS notes:
The hidden camera footage, acquired from a variety of sources, indicates that there is an unfortunate lack of federal law enforcement presence on Arizona’s federal land on the border in Nogales, in the Coronado National Forest (15 miles inside the border), and the Casa Grande Sector (80 miles inside the border).
Also significant to the story are responses received as part of Freedom of Information Act requests made by Janice Kephart, the Center’s Director of National Security Studies, in August 2009. Featured in the film is a 2004 federal government PowerPoint showing the near-complete devastation of a borderland national park due to illegal-alien activity, highlighting the disconnect between the situation on the ground in Arizona and Washington rhetoric.
Instead of spending valuable resources trying to intimidate states from enacting laws to control illegal immigration within their borders, the federal government would better spend its resources satisfying the promise it has made to the American people that it would secure the border.
As stated in “Time to Stop the Rush for ‘Amnesty’ Immigration Reform,” instead of fighting with the states, “federal authorities need to cooperate and collaborate more with state and local law enforcement.” By focusing on appeasing interest groups, the federal government undermines its very own aim to solve the illegal immigration problem, as the American people will not entertain reforms measures until the border is really secure. The CIS video is another timely reminder that our border security remains a glaring problem. After all, if illegal immigrant workers can so easily come across the border, so can terrorists.
