With Friends Like These…

There is a well known expression that asks, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”

Today there are organizations that are described as being “pro-immigrant.”  These groups demand that immigration laws not be enforced and that illegal aliens should be entitled to a pathway to lawful status and even United States citizenship.  Often the members of these groups use vile accusations to describe anyone who would dare call for the enforcement of our nation's immigration laws as being racists, bigots and xenophobes.  What they conveniently ignore is the fundamental fact that illegal aliens who violate our nation’s immigration laws by running our nation’s borders leave no record of their entry and may well have evaded the inspections process that is supposed to prevent the entry of aliens into our country whose presence would pose a problem or threat to the safety and well being of our nation and our citizens.

These open borders advocates, whom I have come to refer to as immigration anarchists, attempt to convince politicians that the only way to entice Latino voters into voting for them is to provide pathways to United States citizenship to millions of illegal aliens whose true identities, backgrounds, intentions and potential affiliation with criminals and terrorists is unknown and unknowable.  They also attempt to convince politicians to not enforce immigration laws, to provide instate tuition for illegal aliens.

These immigration anarchists also do their best to convince members of the immigrant communities that anyone who wants our nation's borders secured has taken that position out of bigotry and hatred for ethnic and racial minorities.

This is a divisive approach that is aimed at providing these purveyors of false claims and accusations with money and political power.  Regardless of what they say, most of these people understand that illegal aliens will face unspeakable exploitation and that the most likely workers to lose their jobs to illegal aliens are members of America's ethnic and racial minority communities.  It must be presumed that they also know that the most likely victims of ethnic organized crime that is perpetrated by transnational criminals are the members of the same ethnicity, especially within the immigrant communities.

The December 30^th edition of the Huffington Post "Latino Voices" ran an article with a disconcerting title: "Mexican Drug Cartels Recruit Young Latinos In Southern California"

Here are the first few paragraphs from that report:

Mexican drug cartels, in a disturbing new trend, are luring young people from Southern California to smuggle drugs across the border and carry out other illicit work for the criminal enterprises, according to law enforcement officials and youth activists.

The result: More than 5,000 young people, most of them Latinos, have been held in San Diego County jails over the last two years, according to KPBS San Diego.

Many of the young people were involved in street gangs, making them easier to recruit, and the crimes that landed them behind bars included assaults, robbery, drug trafficking or consumption. Their proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border made it easier for them to fall prey to the advances of the Mexican drug cartels.

Many times, children as young as 11 years old, who are referred to as the "The expendables," according to The National Post, are recruited to smuggle drugs across the border because it is believed they'll attract less law enforcement attention than adults.

Here is yet another disturbing paragraph from the report:

"Children are involved in various forms including drug trafficking, kidnappings, extortions, smuggling, piracy, corruptions, etc…The youngest ones work as vigilantes and the older ones work with the drug trafficking. Once they are 16 years old, they are usually hired as paid assassins. Girls are usually involved with the drug packaging."

I can tell you from my own experiences as a member of the DEA Unified Intelligence Division in New York City and then when I was promoted to the position of Senior Special Agent and assigned to the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force for approximately a decade, beginning in 1991, that transnational drug trafficking organizations operating in the New York area also used young children as well as adults by extorting cooperation from the members of the immigrant communities through a number of tactics.  One of those tactics involved threatening to do harm to family members of immigrants back in their home countries.  This was not limited to the Mexican immigrant community, nor was it limited to the Latino immigrant community but was, in fact, a tactic that was often employed- to great advantage by a wide variety of transnational gangs and criminal organizations from nearly every country on earth!

The exploitation of vulnerable people, especially children is vile and reprehensible, yet failures to secure our nation borders and failures to enforce our nation's immigration laws don't help immigrants as the immigration anarchists would claim, but, in reality, imperil their safety and the safety of their family members, even back in their home countries!

The two links below relate to the FBI's newest gang threat assessment (inexplicably, the full length FBI Gang Threat Assessment report has been removed from the internet):

http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/2011-national-gang-threat-assessment-issued

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/october/gangs_102011

Here is a worthwhile quote from this website:

The key findings from the 2011 assessment:

• There are approximately 1.4 million active street, prison, and outlaw motorcycle gang members in more than 33,000 gangs operating in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. (Those numbers reflect an increase from 2009 figures, due primarily to more comprehensive reporting from law enforcement and enhanced gang recruiting efforts.) Gangs are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions and up to 90 percent in several others.
• Gangs are increasingly engaging in non-traditional gang-related crimes like alien smuggling, human trafficking, and prostitution, as well as white-collar crimes like counterfeiting, identity theft, and mortgage fraud… primarily due to the high profitability and much lower visibility and risk of detection and punishment than drug and weapons trafficking.
• Gang members are acquiring high-powered, military-style weapons and equipment, which poses a significant threat because of the potential to engage in lethal encounters with law enforcement and citizens alike.
• Gangs are becoming increasingly adaptable and sophisticated, employing new and advanced technology—including social networking websites—to carry out criminal activity discreetly and connect with other gang members, criminal organizations, and potential recruits around the country and around the world.

Gang growth. Law enforcement officials nationwide have reported an expansion of African, Asian, Eurasian, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern gangs. The so-called Sureno gangs—Mexican-American street gangs that originated in the barrios of Southern California—are also expanding, and faster than other national-level gangs, both geographically and in terms of membership. Those gangs include Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), 18th Street, and Florencia 13.

Law enforcement agencies also noted the growing problem of hybrid gangs—non-traditional gangs with multiple affiliations that are present in at least 25 states. Because of their multiple affiliations, as well as different ethnicities, migratory nature, and nebulous structure, hybrid gangs are tough for law enforcement to identify and target.

Gangs along the border. Along the Southwest border, U.S.-based gangs assist in the smuggling of drugs, arms, and illegal immigrants and serve as enforcers for Mexican drug trafficking organizations’ interests on the U.S. side of the border. Gangs also pose a growing problem for law enforcement along the U.S.-Canada border—smuggling drugs, cigarettes, firearms, and immigrants.

Law enforcement response. Local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies—working with international partners as appropriate—remain committed to disrupting and dismantling illegal gang activities through intelligence-driven investigations. The FBI’s 168 violent crime “Safe Streets” task forces around the country are a prime example of law enforcement cooperation at its best—during the past 10 years, task force investigations have resulted in convictions of more than 23,000 gang members, associates, and other criminals.

 

Meanwhile on December 16, 2011 Yahoo News posted a worrying news report with the troubling title: FBI Says Gang Infiltrators Stealing Military Weapons For Sale On U.S. Streets

While not all gang members are aliens, the FBI now estimates that some 1.4 million active gang members are now plying their “trades” in all 50 states.  While there are no readily available statistics that provide information as to how many of those 1.4 million active gang members are aliens 10% of the total number of gang members would represent some 140,000 violent criminals!  It must be presumed that far more than 10% of the gang members are aliens!

The bottom line is that there are likely hundreds of thousands of transnational alien gang members operating throughout the United States, yet Janet Napolitano seeks to assuage the understandably grave concerns many Americans have about the lack of security to be found along the borders of the United States, when, in fact, those borders serve as little more than “speed bumps” to the transnational gangs who smuggle aliens, narcotics and God knows what else across the borders into the United States!

Imagine what military training would mean for sociopathic and extremely violent gang members- also consider what this would mean for law enforcement officials or civilians who cross paths with such pernicious criminals- especially if those criminals have managed to acquire high-powered military weapons!

For so-called pro-immigrant groups to advocate for open borders and a cessation of immigration law enforcement in this perilous era shows that they could not care less about the well being of those they claim to be looking out for!  In fact, anyone who thinks that these “Pro-Immigrant” organizations are working on behalf of the best interests of the lawful immigrants living in the United States would likely be gullible enough to believe that the person who places cheese on a mousetrap is being compassionate and simply feeding hungry mice!