State and local politicians sing the sorrow of border and immigration issues.
***image3***The line in the sand has been drawn.
Gov. Bill Richardson made sure of that when he declared-on Aug. 12-a state of emergency on New Mexico's southern border with Mexico.
The extraordinary maneuver drew New Mexico national attention in the growing discourse over illegal immigration.
That tension already had made headlines when the then-nascent Minuteman Civil Defense Corps launched its initial border-watch operation in Arizona in April.
"It took the 800-pound gorilla in the room that nobody was talking about and brought it to the front burner of American politics," says Bob Wright, president of the New Mexico MCDC chapter.
Wright directed the MCDC in New Mexico during its October campaign [Cover story, Oct. 12:
] and considers the operation a success despite the rigors of conducting maneuvers in the remote New Mexico bootheel.
The MCDC came to New Mexico following the ***image2***violence and vandalism in border towns that provoked Richardson's emergency declaration.
Richardson's declaration, which allocated emergency funds to law-enforcement on and near the border, also earned the governor fresh criticism for his immigration policy and unlikely supporters within the MCDC ranks [Outtakes, Aug. 17:
].
"There were a lot of people who were sniping at the governor, saying that he made that declaration for political reasons," Wright says. "Well, duh. But whatever his motivations were, it was something that needed to be done and taken even further."
One of the people sniping at the governor is Santa Fe City Councilor David Pfeffer, now a candidate for US Senate.
Pfeffer took a "fact-finding" trip to Arizona to monitor the Minuteman operations and now, eight months later, has outlined a five-step plan for securing the borders.
"It doesn't matter what part of the state I'm in," Pfeffer says. "Last Saturday I had breakfast in Taos and dinner in Las Cruces and in both places the border issue is a hot area."
Five days after the MCDC had vacated its ***image1***field headquarters in Hachita, New Mex., Pfeffer arrived in Hachita with Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo at his side. Pfeffer says he heard "horror stories" from area residents ranging from an assault by illegal immigrants on a pre-teen girl to sustained acts of violence, crime and vandalism. During a town hall meeting in Hachita, Pfeffer says the governor's declaration-which he calls "a joke that isn't funny anymore" on his campaign Web site-was met with derision among the people living with the border problems every day.
"When that was brought up at our town hall meeting, the people sort of grunted and laughed," Pfeffer says. "They know that Bill Richardson is waving people in with one hand and-for the sake of media consumption-holding up his other hand and saying 'Stop, we have an emergency.'"
The emergency is nonetheless very real, Pfeffer says. Which is why-if he becomes the junior senator from New Mexico-Pfeffer intends to do something about it.
"I would do whatever it takes to control the flow of people, goods and services across our borders," Pfeffer says. "That includes fences, military and enforcing the laws already in place. There is no country in the world that would allow the completely free flow of goods, services, people and terrorists without check. It is an intolerable situation and it has to change."
The hard-line stance of Pfeffer and the MCDC flies in the face of immigration rights groups. "That doesn't get to the root of the problem," Eric Gutierrez from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), a national immigrant-rights organization, says. "Those enforcement policies of building a fence, putting more people on the border, are easy-fix ideas. But that doesn't really deter people from crossing the border, it just forces them into the desert to more remote areas where many of them will die."
The MCDC does plan to mount new operations on the country's interior to highlight day labor centers trafficking in an illegal workforce. That doesn't mean the MCDC hasn't given up on patrolling the New Mexico border.
"There
will
be future operations," Wright says. "We'll be back in April, probably for the whole month, and we're going to keep coming back until the president and the Congress decide to fulfill their constitutional obligation to protect this country."
