One thing one discovers from searching old newspapers and website articles is that border violence is hardly something new.  It may have gotten worse of late, but there really is no excuse for our government’s failure to take effective action prior to this time.  The U.S. Government’s inaction and incompetence are materially responsible for the death recently of rancher Robert Krenz among others, not only because the Government knows about vulnerabilities in border security and has empirical evidence of violence on U.S. soil, but also because the illegal alien who murdered Krenz found easy entry and exit through U.S. public land.  The Mexican gunman entered and subsequently escaped through the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge. 

 The stupidity of all this is mind-boggling, since a large portion of the border with Mexico involves U.S. Public Lands controlled by the Department of the Interior (DOI), and the DOI actually prevents the Border Patrol from performing essential security tasks on public lands, in favor of the flora and fauna!  One can hike or have a picnic and possibly die from assault by illegals or a criminal drug gang, but the snakes and cactus are to remain quite undisturbed either by the tire tracks or noise created by U.S. Border Patrol vehicles.  If and when the Border Patrol determines it is necessary in an emergency to enter public lands and conduct operations, it has to pay millions to the DOI for the privilege to mitigate environmental damage. 

 Not only does the Federal Government extort money from the States, apparently federal agencies extort large sums of taxpayer money from each other too—regardless of priority of mission.  Even after 9/11 the Homeland Security bureaucracy has proven inept at energizing the Executive Administration or Members of Congress, to prevent the various land laws, Wilderness Act, and Endangered Species Act from essentially trumping border security operations.  The federal lands along the border—mostly in California, Arizona and New Mexico—equate to over 600 linear miles administered by some 9 different agencies.  They offer what amounts to an unpatrolled highway for criminals, smugglers, drug gangs, human traffickers and potential terrorists—some coming all the way from Mexico’s unsecured southern border with Guatemala. 

 During the Cold War, the U.S. Achilles Heel that is our southern border was at least more appreciated.  Foreign policy initiatives with South American regimes were designed to enforce internal and border security and keep violent communists and terrorists out of Mexico and the United States.  Today an increasing number of South American states have far leftwing regimes and are overtly anti-American.  Moreover, drug cartels have gained influence and so have undermined law enforcement measures in South America and Mexico.  Our border to put it bluntly is a sieve, and thousands of criminals cross over daily—doing so with impressive armed security of their own, frequently retreating to retrieve more waiting shipments of drugs, guns, and increasingly desperate people. 

 It has gotten so bad that some criminals don’t retreat but are farming vast tracks on public lands far from the border region.  Mexican drug gangs have in fact commandeered U.S. public land for growing marijuana, including at the Sequoia National Forest not far from Yosemite’s waterfalls.  Law enforcement officials have discovered similar hidden farms tied to Mexican drug gangs, on remote public lands in Texas and Nevada, and surprisingly also in Wisconsin and Michigan.  Some of these “monster gardens” are cultivated by smuggled immigrants and are also trip-wired with improvised explosives. 

 The political decay allowing this to happen is not all on the Mexican side.  The lack of attention paid to border security and to safety on public lands belies a curious kind of corruption American-style, at the heart of our own vaunted political system.  For when one examines the nature of political will—and why we don’t seem to evince any when it comes to the border, one has to look not only at the American electorate but also at the organized political parties.  The sad fact is that Democrat leaders too often dismiss the harder measures that must be done, because they see immigration—even illegal immigration, as a way to build ethnic and economic constituencies to vote for them.  Whereas Republican leaders frequently vote contrary to their grassroots supporters, instead to gain favor with corporate contributors who want a steady endless supply of cheap labor.  It seems that not only ecology, but also plain old-fashioned political power and money greed, are trumping our border security operations, compromising public safety and endangering the American people on their own public lands. 

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Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford.  Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican Primary.  Email: wes@wesriddle.com