The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.
The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.
They warn travelers that they are entering an “active drug and human smuggling area” and they may encounter “armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.” Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to “use public lands north of Interstate 8″ and to call 911 if they “see suspicious activity.”
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.
“Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona,” he said. “They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.
I’ve driven that route to Tucson a few times but don’t know if I’d want to do it today.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer demanded Friday that a reference to the state’s controversial immigration law be removed from a State Department report to the United Nations’ human rights commissioner.
The U.S. included its legal challenge to the law on a list of ways the federal government is protecting human rights.
In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Brewer says it is “downright offensive” that a state law would be included in the report, which was drafted as part of a UN review of human rights in all member nations every four years.
“The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to ‘review’ by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional,” Brewer wrote.
If I were president America wouldn’t be making reports to the Human Rights Commission of the UN. I’d send them a letter reminding them that America has done more for human rights around the world than any 50 countries they want to name…combined. And when the world catches up to our record on human rights, then we’ll consider sending in a report.
And by the way, we’re cutting our dues to the UN to be equal to our percentage of the world’s population. If that’s not enough to keep the diplomats in their limousines, tough.
The rapid break-up of the Gulf Oil Spill should have been a sign to the Obama administration that continuing the offshore drilling ban was a bad idea. However, they preferred not to learn anything from the experience, so Texas is acting on their own to remedy the situation:
The Texas attorney general sued the Obama administration Wendesday over its new deep-water offshore drilling moratorium, claiming it is unjustified and federal officials did not contact the state before issuing the ban.
Attorney General Greg Abbott filed the 18-page suit in federal court in Houston against Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The ban halted the approval of any new permits for deep-water projects and shut down drilling at 33 exploratory ocean wells in the wake of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
In his lawsuit, Abbott called the ban “an unjustified, arbitrary and capricious policy that will inflict harm upon coastal communities.”
Challenges to Obama will start coming fast and furious. The same day Texas filed their suit Florida announced plans for a new immigration law that promises to be tougher than Arizona’s law. This could make for some interesting times for Obama, because if this law passes you have to wonder if he’ll be willing to sue Florida like he did Arizona. Arizona was not going to vote for him in 2012 no matter what, but he really needs to win Florida to win another term in office. Is he willing to take on a state he needs so badly? We’ll see.
Somehow I doubt the founders ever considered the possibility of a pregnant women coming into the country illegally and the giving birth to a baby which is automatically granted citizenship and access to welfare dollars.
And while we’re on the subject of illegal immigration, here’s the latest from Ray Stevens whose political activism is certainly on the rise:
I’m busy helping my daughter move in to a new apartment, but I had a few minutes and a hotel computer so I thought I’d post this story:
Two men carrying Mexican flags in protest of Arizona’s immigration law ran into the outfield during the seventh inning of the New York Mets’ game against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday night at Citi Field.
The men were apprehended by security fairly quickly without much incident.
Prior to the game, about 40 people across the street from the ballpark chanted “Oppose racism!” and “Boycott Arizona!”
Others stationed closer to the subway exit handed out leaflets that requested Major League Baseball move next year’s All-Star game out of Phoenix.
“It’s not going to distract me. I’m here to play baseball,” Diamondbacks interim manager Kirk Gibson said after his team’s 9-6 victory over the Mets. “You have an opinion, I have an opinion. They have the right to say what they want, but it’s no distraction.”
As the trespassers were taken from the field people in the stands started chanting “USA, USA.”
Apparently this guy never heard about the damage the immigration protesters in California did to their cause when they showed up for a huge Los Angeles rally waving their Mexican flags. Public approval of their cause plummeted, and the same will be true of these idiots in New York who just gave a whole lot of people who may not have been paying a lot of attention a reason to back Arizona.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has denied the State of Arizona’s motion to expedite the appeal from thepreliminary injunction enjoining key provisions of S.B. 1070. (h/t Michelle Malkin) The Department of Justice hasobjected to an expedited briefing schedule.
The case now will be argued the week of November 1.
That may make DOJ lawyers happy, because they will have more time to put together their brief.
But it will not make Democratic politicians happy to have the Arizona case on the front page as voters are walking into the voting booth on November 2.
Democrats wished too hard for something, and they got it.
That will be a nice little reminder of why Democrats should not be trusted with the majorities for another session of Congress.
Don’t ever doubt that the real objective in the Arizona immigration fight is amnesty for illegal aliens, followed soon thereafter by voter registration cards pre-marked for Democrats. Obama and his cronies in the federal courts do not want America’s immigration laws enforced.
A group of Republican senators has written to top immigration officials in the Obama administration asking them to reveal whether large-scale plans are under way to provide a so-called non-legislative version of amnesty.
The lawmakers cite an 11-page draft document written by staff to the director of the Citizenship and Immigration Service that says they are reviewing several executive orders and other mechanisms that effectively would serve as a substitute for comprehensive immigration reforms.
The objective would be to promote “family unity, foster economic growth … and reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization.”
Among the suggestions, the document offers proposals for rewriting legal opinions to allow unaccompanied minors, victims of human trafficking or extreme hardship and others who’ve overstayed their visas to remain in the U.S.
For instance, the four aides who wrote the document told Director Alejandro N. Mayorkas that general counsel at the CIS has reinterpreted legal opinions of the definition of “admission” for those entering under “temporary protected status” — in the face of war or environmental disaster — so that they can change their status to stay in the United States permanently.
“Opening this pathway will help thousands of applicants obtain lawful permanent residence without having to leave the U.S.,” reads the memo, which was provided to Fox News by the office of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
Obama has already declared a de facto amnesty by refusing to enforce existing law. In the court ruling on the Arizona case the judge set aside key parts of the law because enforcing them would place a burden on federal courts. In other words, if enforcement requires us to work harder, we just won’t do it.
Some people are already suggesting that Republicans propose a ban on Obamacare using the same rationale. If Obamacare increase the workload on the federal government – which it will – we should just ignore it. Works for me.
Ideologues like Obama will seek to pass their agenda no matter how it must be done, and if the will of the people as expressed by their representatives in Congress gets in the way, well, just bypass them.
While opponents of Arizona’s strict immigration law are claiming victory in a federal ruling Wednesday that blocked most of the crackdown hours before its enactment, there’s still plenty left in the state legislation that supporters are cheering.
As the case is litigated, Arizona will be able to block state officials from so-called “sanctuary city” policies limiting enforcement of federal law; require that state officials work with federal officials on illegal immigration; allow civil suits over sanctuary cities; and to make it a crime to pick up day laborers.
“We have a big problem with day laborers standing on the street disrupting traffic, disrupting communities, scaring people, and that part of the law withstood constitutionality,” Arizona state Rep. John Kavanagh told Fox News. “We’ll be able to clean up that mess.”
Kavanagh also praised the other sections of the law that were not blocked.
“I think it is a powerful deterrent effect and this is not going to be settled for years,” he said. “So while we might not have as strong a deterrent as we had yesterday, it is still something for illegals to think about when they are looking for places to go.”
A spokesman for Arizona Governor Jan Brewer said the state will appeal Judge Susan Bolton’s ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday, asking the appellate court to lift the injunction and allow the blocked provisions to take effect. The appeal will ask the 9th Circuit to act quickly, Paul Senseman said.
State Senator Russell Pearce, the law’s chief author, said he likes that the state will be able enforce a provision that bars local governments from limiting enforcement of federal immigration laws.
“Striking down these sanctuary city policies has always been the No. 1 priority,” he said.
It may take awhile, but Arizona will win this when it finally hits the Supreme Court. The arguments put forth by the judge in yesterday’s ruling were at best questionable. You can read Mark Levin’s take on it here.
Hopefully by the time the bill is found constitutional Obama won’t have already won amnesty for 20 million people.
Liberals are an emotional bunch. They never let facts get in the way of a good cry, and such has been the case with the Arizona immigration law which is scheduled to go into effect tomorrow.
Lately I’ve had a couple of posts about how illegals are selling their stuff and getting out of Arizona, and how the boycotts against the state seem to be backfiring. Why do you suppose that is? The law hasn’t gone into effect yet. No one has been unfairly profiled. No one has had their ice cream eating interrupted by demands for their papers (remember that one from Obama?).
The law is already very effective because the people who oppose it so badly overplayed their hand. The handwringing from the left and bizarre claims of outrages yet unseen stirred up America in ways they never anticipated. Some 70% of Americans decided they liked what they were hearing about the law, and the panic being sowed by the liberals started driving illegals out of Arizona long before the law could take effect. Though they didn’t plan it that way, the left has been the biggest booster of the Arizona law.
There’s still a chance some judge could put the whole thing on hold but the damage has already been done. Other states are lining up their own similar laws and the tide of political attitudes in the country has clearly swung against amnesty or anything else that would reward lawbreaking. Thank you liberals.
