Horrible observation at Nogales crossing - "...agent with a Russian sounding accent..."

Opinion letter echo : Appalled at the port in Nogales (International)

I just saw something I had never before seen happen at the border in my 69 years of crossing.

International crossing - horrible observation of a child abandoned by border officer

I was at the pedestrian crossing at the Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry and the border officer did not allow a little girl (a minor) go up to her with her mother. She made the little girl go through alone and then sent her outside the building – alone, at night. If the mother had been detained, that child would be on her own and end up with Child Protective Services for being on her own.

I asked the officer, who spoke with a Russian-like accent, how she could send that child outside alone. She responded that the child would be on federal property and that there were many border police outside. There was nobody outside. The officers were on the other side of a 15-foot iron fence, across the street, across a four-foot cement wall, with their backs towards the exit of the port of entry. They would be oblivious if a child was distraught at the exit and the child would not have known what to do.

I fear for all children who are crossing legally with their parents. They are being separated from them and being placed in danger. The president of the United States has told the officers he has their back. This is institutional child abuse, putting children in traumatizing situations.

On another occasion, I witnessed Central Americans walk up to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer at the border to request asylum. I was next in line to drive into the border check and already in U.S. territory with the officer right next to me, so the asylum-seekers were on U.S. soil.

Asylum is a protection granted to foreign nationals already in the United States or at the border who meet the international legal definition of a “refugee.” (The Refugee Act established two paths to obtain refugee status — either from abroad as a resettled refugee, or in the United States as an asylum-seeker.) But the Central Americans were turned away. The CBP officer lied to the Central Americans and sent them away.

I ask the Nogales community to be vigilant! Whether you cross the border or not, if friends and family share problems they are having at the border, please report them to your , in my case I will be reporting this to Rep. Raul Grijalva (520) 622-6788, Senator Kristen Sinema (602) 598-7327 or Senator Martha McSally (520) 670-6334. If you can get the officer’s name, it is even better.

If these federal agents can lie like this and create their own international laws, who have we become as a community and as a nation?

Anne Doan, Nogales (International crossing)

"...closing of the border would lead to immediate layoffs" - Trump's height of folly

Republican alert- Food prices are already causing budget stress in many homes, but the cost of groceries was removed from the index used to determine the rate of inflation. Shutting down the Mexico border will have immediate negative economic impact. In my opinion, closing the Mexico border is a stupid Trumposity and will cause food prices to soar, may even cause hording. 

"60 percent of all Mexican winter produce consumed in the U.S. crosses into the country at Nogales, Arizona"- Associated Press published in the Ohio newspaper, The Independent.

EL PASO, Texas — Donald Trump’s threat to shut down the southern border raised fears Monday of dire economic consequences in the U.S. and an upheaval of daily life in a stretch of the country that relies on the international flow of not just goods and services but also students, families and workers.

Politicians, business leaders and economists warned that such a move would block incoming shipments of fruits and vegetables, TVs, medical devices and other products and cut off people who commute to their jobs or school or come across to go shopping.

“Let’s hope the threat is nothing but a bad April Fools’ joke,” said economist Dan Griswold at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia. He said Trump’s threat would be the “height of folly,” noting that an average of 15,000 trucks and $1.6 billion in goods cross the border every day.

“If trade were interrupted, U.S. producers would suffer crippling disruptions of their supply chains, American families would see prices spike for food and cars, and U.S. exporters would be cut off from their third-largest market,” he said.

Trump brought up the possibility of closing ports of entry along the southern border Friday and revisited it in tweets over the weekend because of a surge of Central Americans migrants who are seeking asylum. Trump administration officials have said the influx is straining the immigration system to the breaking point.

Elected leaders from border communities stretching from San Diego to cities across Texas warned that havoc would ensue on both sides of the international boundary if the ports were closed. They were joined by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which said such a step would inflict “severe economic harm.”

In California’s Imperial Valley, across from Mexicali, Mexico, farmers rely on workers who come across every day from Mexico to harvest fields of lettuce, carrots, onions and other winter vegetables. Shopping mall parking lots in the region are filled with cars with Mexican plates.

More than 60 percent of all Mexican winter produce consumed in the U.S. crosses into the country at Nogales, Arizona. The winter produce season is especially heavy right now, with the import of Mexican-grown watermelons, grapes and squash, said Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas.

Nogales border crossing

He said 11,000 to 12,000 commercial trucks cross the border at Nogales daily, laden with about 50 million pounds of produce such as eggplants, tomatoes, bell peppers, lettuce, cucumbers and berries.

He said a closing of the border would lead to immediate layoffs and result in shortages and price increases at grocery stores and restaurants.

“If this happens — and I certainly hope it doesn’t — I’d hate to go into a grocery store four or five days later and see what it looks like,” Jungmeyer said.

Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition, said a closure would be catastrophic.

“Closing the border would cause an immediate depression in border state communities and, depending on the duration, a recession in the rest of the country,” he said.

“Our business would end,” said Marta Salas, an employee at an El Paso shop near the border that sells plastic flowers that are used on the Mexican side by families holding quinceañeras, the traditional coming-of-age celebrations.

Salas said her whole family, including relatives who attend the University of Texas at El Paso, would be affected if the border were closed.

“There are Americans who live there. I have nephews who come to UTEP, to grade school, to high school every day,” Salas said.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration said Monday as many as 2,000 U.S. inspectors who screen cargo and vehicles at ports of entry along the Mexican border may be reassigned to help handle the surge of migrants. Currently, about 750 inspectors are being reassigned.

That, too, could slow the movement of trucks and people across the border.

The effects were evident Monday: Sergio Amaya, a 24-year-old American citizen who lives in Juarez, Mexico, and attends UTEP, said it normally takes him two minutes to cross the bridge. It took an hour this time.

“The Border Patrol agent said it’s going to get worse,” Amaya said.

Instead of ensuring the flow of goods across the border, the inspectors are being put to work processing migrants, taking their applications for asylum and transporting them to holding centers.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the reassignments are necessary to help manage the huge influx that is overloading the system.

“The crisis at our border is worsening, and DHS will do everything in its power to end it,” Nielsen said.

In addition to reassigning inspectors, Nielsen has asked for volunteers from non-immigration agencies within her department and sent a letter to Congress requesting resources and broader authority to deport families faster. The administration is also ramping up efforts to return asylum seekers to Mexico.

Apprehensions all along the southern border have soared in recent months, with border agents on track to make 100,000 arrests and denials of entry there in March, more than half of them families with children.

Republican Representative Will Hurd tells Trump the border wall won't work

The Republican Rep. Hurd, who represents more of the border than anyone in Congress, has an idea to secure the border, and it's not a wall.

Rep. Will Hurd serves Texas Congressional District 23

Obviously, Mexico is never going to pay for the wall Donald Trump said would be built with Mexican money. Instead, he wants US taxpayers to fund his concoction because Mexico refuses to do so. Unfortunately, Donald Trump doesn't use common sense or listen to anyone who happens to disagree with him. 

US border officials in Nogales make biggest fentanyl seizure in history

Republican Congressman Will Hurd of Texas is representing a district where a border wall won't work. 

This letter to the editor of the Idaho Post Register newspaper should be read by Donald Trump and the advice given would have certainly saved the White House and 800,000 hard working federal employees the weeks of anguish while arguing over a wall that will never be constructed.

In the Jan. 18 issue of Business Insider, Republican Rep. (Congressman) Will Hurd states that a physical wall is "the most expensive and least effective" form of border security. Rep. Hurd is a former CIA agent and has been described as a leading Congressional voice on technology issues. His Texas 23rd Congressional District includes 800 miles of border which covers over 40 percent of the length of the wall our (stupid!) president demands be built for border security.

The media excludes the reporting of bipartisan voting by a Texas Republican for “no” wall funding. Rep. Hurd votes with Democrats on this issue and does not want this expensive wall built in his district.

Rep. Hurd suggests running fiber optics the length of the border to provide internet service to remote areas.

The fiber optic cable would also include border surveillance with both surface and “underground” detection. Border Agents can then respond to that detection quickly.

The United States used similar surveillance techniques in Vietnam 50 years ago. Why can't we do the same on our US southern border? Physical barriers work in areas of urban to urban contact but not in remote locations where an underground tunnel can go undetected.

Border Patrol Agents using technology and dogs found a large amount of drugs at the Nogales Port of Entry this past week. It is unfathomable to think of a semi-truck driving through sagebrush and fording the Rio Grande to avoid a port of entry. The border requires several technologies to be used. I agree with Rep. Hurd.

Beverly Beach  Blackfoot, Idaho

• Rep. Will Hurd of Texas told The New York Times' "The Daily" podcast that a wall is "the most expensive and least effective" form of border security.
• Instead, a fiber-optic cable would provide new sensory tools to help Border Patrol monitor the border, while also providing high-speed internet access to rural communities.
• The only GOP congressman who represents a district along the US-Mexico border opposes President Donald Trump's wall — instead, he wants a fiber-optic cable.

Cardinal Sean leading compassion for our immigrant friends

Right to Life advocates have a moral leader in Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston. His leadership for pro-life humanitarianism was evident when he celebrated Mass on the US-Mexico border at Nogales Arizona.    
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/bishops-seek-immigration-reform-during-border-trip#

NOGALES, Ariz. (AP) — Roman Catholic leaders made a rare visit to the border and celebrated Mass (Tuesday, April 1, 2014) in the shadow of the fence separating the U.S. and Mexico, offering Holy Communion through the steel barrier to people on the Mexican side as they sought to bring attention to the plight of immigrants.


Unfortunately, many pro-life zealots who block access to women who need health care because they're poor, but might be desperately seeking pregnancy termination (aka "abortion"), aren't necessarily in line with extending compassion to people who are immigrants.  Abortion is always an act of desperation or sometimes a medically necessary procedure. On the other hand, treating immigrants like they're criminals, in my mind, is like aborting them from society. Abortion of a fetus is just as moral an issue as aborting immigrants. Abortion of immigrants means denying them health care, deporting them and, worst of all, separating them from their families.

Of course, I apologize in advance to Cardinal Sean for blending the concept of compassion for immigrants with protecting a woman's access to reproductive health.  I'm a registered nurse, therefore, comfortable making the correlation.

My exemplary admiration for Cardinal Sean's extension of compassion to the immigrants who gathered along the horrible wall in Nogales, in Arizona and Mexico is meteoric. 

In September 2015, Pope Francis will visit the US to celebrate at a family conference in Philadelphia. Among the people who will be invited to meet and greet Pope Francis will, no doubt, be many immigrant families of diverse religious affiliations.

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

New York — Pope Francis, the first pontiff ever to hail from the Western hemisphere, will be making his first official visit to the United States at a critical time for his progressive pastoral agenda, which has included promoting a more inclusive ministerial tone for divorced and gay Catholics.

“Pope Francis's upcoming visit to the US is of crucial importance for his papacy,” says Andrew Chesnut, chair of Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “It’ll be interesting to see how much further he can move with his agenda on US soil, given that so many of the primary conservative opponents have been housed with the US bishops.”

During a speech on family values at the Vatican Monday morning, the pope announced that he planned to attend the 8th World Meeting of Families, which will be held in Philadelphia next September. The conference, first established by Pope John Paul II in 1994 to provide a forum for the challenges contemporary families face, was last held in Milan in 2012.