A recent article in the SF Chronicle goes into a disturbing statistic.  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has concluded that over 90 percent of weapons confiscated by Mexican authorities originated from dealers in the United States.

Last year, 2,455 weapons traces requested by Mexico showed that guns had been purchased in the United States, according to ATF. Texas, Arizona and California accounted for 1,803 of the traces submitted by Mexican authorities.

The U.S. hosts 5000 gun shows every year in 32 states, in some, customers can skip the background check and still walk out the door with an AK-47, a .50 caliber sniper rifle, and a case of hand grenades.  Along the border, the demand for weapons can be measured by the 6,700 licensed U.S. gun dealers in business near Mexico.  It has become common practice for the cartels to hire buyers in the U.S. to attend gun shows or to procure from the multitude of legitimate dealers the weapons needed to take the fight to the Mexican police, and now, the Mexican military.

Some have wondered if the current level of violence in the border region could cause the failure of the Mexican state, and that soon after the same level of violence will be felt in nearby communities in the U.S.  Felipe Calderon’s soldiers are 18 months into a nationwide offensive on the cartels, who have responded with unprecedented violence.

We are debating sending $1.5 billion aid package to the Mexican military, a third of that amount has already been appropriated.  The Merida Initiative, as it is known, has been compared to Plan Columbia.  Critics argue, that like in Columbia, the aid is too focused on military solutions and dosen’t do enough to curb the consumption of drugs in the U.S. which could be considered the primary cause of strife in both Columbia and Mexico.

As our government is arming the Mexican military, our gun laws are maintaining the arsenals of the cartels.  The U.S. appetite for intoxication is a virtually endless source of revenue.  Unless we are willing to look at realistic solutions, we are merely allowing a dangerous stalemate to shoot itself out on our southern border.

We’re finalists for the Online Video Presentation award given by the Online News Association - ONA. We’ll find out the final results in mid September.

Welcome Crooks and Liars readers.  Though we blog, we are primarily a video site.  Please reserve a few minutes to watch some of the stories.

One of the reasons why Border Stories chose the web as its primary content distribution vehicle is the internet’s capacity to bring people and ideas closer together. The border itself is a division among two very different nations but when you travel along it and listen to people on either side of the boundary, you often hear a common tune: that the people that transit across the line do not do so without good reason. Now, when we shared this perspective with Brit or Glenn, and Tom and Dena Kay, their response was one of empathy and understanding. In Tom and Dena’s case, they deal with the consequences of having up to 1000 migrants cross through their cattle ranch a night, and yet, they don’t wag their fingers at these strangers. Instead, they blame the government and the country’s failure to address a more systemic problem. Glenn and Britt do too, and in both their cases, they have become so frustrated by the country’s systemic immigration failures that they have taken matters into their own hands.

When I saw who the latest person to register with our website is, I felt compelled to share this information with other members of the Border Stories community precisely because of the internet’s capacity to bring us closer together. Until this morning, I did not know who Federico Baradello is but after googling his name (as I do with every person that joins our website), I suddenly found myself reading about immigration in a way I wish Barack Obama or John McCain would talk about it.

As Baradello puts it:

“…the ‘migration problem’ facing American and European governments is more accurately labeled a ‘migration paradox’. Migration presents a paradox to governments forced to balance an economic logic of open borders with a sociopolitical logic of closed borders. In other words, migrants are both needed by domestic economies and unwanted by those same societies. Migrants are needed because of a declining domestic labor force unable to meet the increased demand for workers. Migrants are unwanted because of xenophobia, heightened by a mass media that characterizes migration as a threat and a drain on public resources, with no mention or explanation of the causes behind their presence.”

Migration is the most human manifestation of globalization and until we, as a society, find a way to elect and hold accountable a government that will actually take genuine leadership on this issue (i.e.: what is it about the world economy that makes these people come here in the first place?), “the metaphorical border between the South and North: between unemployment and employment, between a life of poverty and a life of economic and educational opportunity” will remain, and the migration, mired in tragedy, will persist.

An interesting article at the OCRegister shows Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist in a more reflective mode than one might usually find him. His views on the first 4 years of his civilian border defense project, and those that have come to assist him with his mission seem to have soured:

After seeing online videos that encouraged border violence amid calls to crack down on illegal immigration, the 59-year-old Aliso Viejo resident said he feels responsible for what started out as a publicity campaign and has since fallen prey to internal divisions and to influence by people he believed had “Saddam Hussein mentalities.”

“In retrospect, had I seen this, had I had a crystal ball to see what is going to happen… Am I happy? No,” Gilchrist said in a phone conversation late last week. “Am I happy at the outcome of this whole movement? I am very, very sad, very disappointed.”

Some will probably not take these words seriously, and perhaps Gilchrist earned that lack of trust himself. One wonders how he would take stock of his own missteps in leading the organization, i.e. hiring members of the National Alliance, a white nationalist organization, to run phone banks and computer networks. Or making “not so” subtly veiled threats, such as this one in 2006:

“I’m not going to promote insurrection, but if it happens, it will be on the conscience of the members of Congress who are doing this,” he said. “I will not promote violence in resolving this, but I will not stop others who might pursue that.” Link

I won’t say that Gilchrist is calling for an armed insurrection on the border, but if people want to make that assessment based on what he says (or nearly says), I’m not going to stop them. This and many many more statements and actions call into question the reasoning for his more recent ruminations.

“I have found, after four years in this movement (…) I very well may have been fighting for people with less character and less integrity than the ‘open border fanatics’ I have been fighting against,” he said. “And that is a phenomenal indictment of something I have created.”

For an organization such as the Minuteman Project to put the blame on its adherents not for how they are led, but how they are, says much of why the group has grown increasingly fractional and decreasingly functional over its short history. It is a crisis of leadership when those at the top cannot answer to their own failures.

As a fan of George Carlin and inappropriate language it pains me to say that if you can’t keep your fingers from befouling our comments section, your contributions will be deleted.  If you must find a way to express your outrage and are at a loss to find a word longer than 4 letters, please consult a thesaurus, or just take a few short breaths, calm down and keep writing.  We will never delete a comment simply because we don’t agree with it, ever.  We would like to display the variety of opinions on the issues that the border engenders, but if you can’t keep it clean, you can’t play, it’s that simple.

The removal of the footbridge between Candelaria, TX and San Antonio Del Bravo, Chihuahua happened quietly, last night or early this morning.  According to Glenn Justice, a Texas historian who drove south to the Rio Grande to take some photos this morning.

Shortly after we posted the video which features the bridge in April, we received an e-mail directing us to an article on the website. Glenn Willeford (Glenn no.2) had written an extensive history of the bridge and about plans within the Department of Homeland Security to remove it. Sadly, it seems that this has come to pass.

A search for information on the towns on either side of the former bridge yields very little. You might stumble onto a Dallas Morning News article written about a year ago.

“We need each other to survive,” said Dr. Maribel Aquino, who treats both Mexicans and Americans in the town of San Antonio del Bravo. “If not we risk becoming a giant ghost town.”

Residents here say efforts to seal the border have made the region less secure, with anecdotal evidence that drug smugglers are taking up residence in some abandoned areas. Apprehensions of illegal immigrants around Marfa are relatively low when compared with other areas along the border.

“The government took a one-size-fits-all approach to secure the border,” said Tyrus Fain, president of the Rio Grande Institute in Marathon, which promotes eco-tourism development. “But the Big Bend isn’t a major entry point for drugs or illegal immigrants.

“There are no terrorists crossing here,” he said. “Just people.”

This area, when compared to other places along the border, is not a highly trafficked spot for drugs or people. The surrounding dry and mountainous landscape makes inland checkpoints effective. The river is more a trickle than an actual obstacle here, so traffic that really wants to get across (i.e. drugs) will continue to do so. The only people that the removal of this bridge hurts are the people of Candelaria and San Antonio Del Bravo, it has not made the United States more secure.

On one occasion recently a man suffered a heart attack on the Texas side in Candelaria. He was rushed over to Dr. Aquino’s clinic in Mexico where she stabilized him and saved his life. Children are now sitting on one of two sides, either going to school and not seeing one or both of their parents, or living with their families and not going to class. Difficult decisions are being made in those towns at this moment, and our hearts go out to the families in Texas and in Mexico.

San Antonio Del Bravo: La Doctora

A last ditch effort by environmental groups to block the Department of Homeland Security from waiving federal laws to build the border fence faltered today. The Supreme Court won’t take the case.

I’m a law student to be, and I find it difficult to find support for the legal reasoning behind the Justices’ decision. The organizations bringing the appeal - the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife - were claiming that Chertoff’s waiver unconstitutionally undermined the separation of power by depending on the REAL ID act, which claims executive power to override federal laws in the interest of national security. Under the REAL ID act, the executive branch can essentially tell the Congress to go stuff it. Their laws don’t matter in national security situations.

There is certainly a valid argument for an executive powers that can provide for national security, but the Supremes have not yet examined the powers vested in the executive branch by the REAL ID act. It’s time to do so, and this case was a great opportunity.

Disappointing.

As Ben said in the last post, we’re away from the border for the first time in the three months. Look for new stories every two weeks, instead of each week. Tomorrow, we’ll debut one of my personal favorites in the Border Stories series: a profile of a lone Minuteman near Campo, CA.

Hi blog readers, the following is an email I sent out to the mailing list today:

During the last three months, the Border Stories crew could be found somewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border. At this very moment, we find ourselves apart from one another for the first time in quite a while. Clara is in her car heading north along Interstate 5 and will be in India by the end of the week. John and Rocky are navigating the bus back to upstate New York. Sophia came back to us for our last days and is now headed back to Houston, and we wish her the best of luck on her upcoming job interviews. I’m sitting in the terminal of the San Diego airport awaiting my plane back to Nashville. It’s hard to find words for moments like these. We’ve all been so profoundly affected by this experience. I think Clara said it best the other night when she said, “at its best times, it’s made me feel like I can do anything.” I couldn’t agree more.

We have been releasing stories on a weekly basis so far, now we will be moving to putting one out every two weeks. So next Wednesday, you can look forward to an intimate look inside the mind of a Minuteman.

We are far from finished with this adventure, but we have arrived at a new phase. In addition to finishing and releasing all of our stories from the San Diego area, we will be focused on doing outreach to help make this little website more a part of the national conversation about the U.S.’s southern border.

We couldn’t have done this project without our network, and if you’re reading this, then you’re a part of that group. Even the smallest messages of encouragement have given us the fuel to push onward. You have helped us keep our focus, and in the moments we have needed it most, have been a light bright enough to cut through the fog. That said, and please understand how hard this is for us to do, we are asking you to visit the donate portion of the website and contribute in any way you can to power us through this next period. Your support will speed our return to the U.S.-Mexico border, and help us to continue our work to further develop a dynamic and active web presence that fights for a reasoned and human portrayal of this deeply divided frontier.

http://www.borderstories.org/index.php/donate-.html

Had I not called out to him, he would have kept walking, perhaps directly into the town of Arivaca, only a few miles away. A day ago he had left Mexico with a group of 20 but after a narrow escape from the border patrol, his group had diminished to three and then again to only one, which is why he now walked alone. It was about 9 am when we spotted him but he had been walking through the Arizona desert with only a basic sense of north for hours.

I mentioned breakfast and water and he came over to us quietly. I was nervous for him to be so exposed so I moved our camping chairs on the other side of the van, hidden from the road. The border patrol had driven by only a short while ago. As long as we didn’t offer to take him anywhere, it seemed appropriate to offer him a little food and some water. You could see that he welcomed the gesture.

Ricardo had left the impoverished agricultural state of Guanajuato a week ago. He’s come north like so many do in search of work, and a small piece of the sueño Americano. What Ricardo didn’t seem to realize however, was how far he was from reaching his goal. I pulled out the map and showed him where we were.  When I asked him where he was going he said Stockton. That’s in California.

I pointed to Tucson and asked him if that might be where he would head next. I don’t think he knew. It seemed that without the coyote, Ricardo had very little to go on, which is why he appeared to be walking towards a town where he would almost certainly be apprehended. More than anything, he referred to Dios and that with God’s help, he would make it. The more I talked with him though, the more I had this sense that Ricardo’s odds of reaching Tucson, much less Phoenix or California were slim. When he understood his next destination to be Tucson and not LA or Stockton, he asked me how far I thought he would have to walk. I looked at the map and then back at him and murmured, “pues, tres dias.”

More than two weeks have past since this exchange and I’m now safely in San Diego, staring out at the Pacific Ocean, watching surfers catch waves and beach goers enjoy the first days of southern California summer. With 2000 miles of borderland at our back, slinking my own two feet into the sand of such a free and open space, I can’t help but wonder where Ricardo is now.

Recent news of a shortage of jail beds in border towns that are implementing Operation Streamline begs the question: is Ricardo in jail? Given the reputation of certain detention centers in border states, the move to criminalize illegal immigration may very well become an effective form of deterrence but if Tucson judges have already imposed 3,700 sentences for Operation Streamline-related minor offenses this year, which is just 1000 shy of the petty and misdemeanor cases documented in all of 2007, one must also ask: who is paying for these beds? Secondly: are private enterprises running these facilities and if so, should there be concern that increased arrests of undocumented migrants is equating to higher profits for some?

As an American, I have never been forced to contend with the notion that I might have to migrate to another country to survive or feed my family. Here in California, where the state GDP ranks ninth in the world and extreme wealth is so glaring, the thought of perverse incentives for increased profits seems particularly depraved, as if America’s manifest destiny is exactly that: profit over people.