By Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq.
Yet another manifestation of the troublesome impact the inundation of unlawful immigrants, mostly crossing the Mexican Border, now is felt by our Federal Judiciary. The negative impact, of course, not only inundates Federal Judges and their staffs but also United States Attorneys and their entire prosecutorial staffs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, litigants before the affected Courts - and many businesses and citizens situate in the bordering States of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, particularly Arizona and Texas.
Statistics reveal some of the growing, and very dangerous, trouble. Here are only a few.
United States Border Patrol agents cover about two-thirds of the huge geographic area constituting the State of Arizona. Illegal drugs are smuggled over, under and around the southwest portion of the Border to the point at which the quantum is estimated to be a majority of all drugs smuggled into the United States of America. In the first half of this year more than 1.2 million pounds of marijuana were seized. During the same six months felony - not misdemeanor but felony - prosecutions filed in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona increased 42%. The United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, also covering part of the Border, is expected to have 3,800 criminal cases this year; there were 400 in 1994.
The Mexican Border is about 2,000 miles long. All kinds of unlawful, often very dangerous, people and instruments of destruction - explosives, for example - manage to sneak into our country. Their crimes often are committed far away from the Border. The fence, counting both vehicular and pedestrian, covers less than one-third of the Border. It is evaluated as very valuable even though by tunneling and otherwise criminals to some extent surmount it. Many experts believe it should be vastly extended.
Two means of attempting to curtail illegal entry are very different from a fence. One is sniffer dogs. (That reminds me of one of my favorite cartoons. An irritated dog looks up at a human being. The dog thinks: “No, I can’t speak words but I can smell smells you didn’t even know existed.”) The other is technology. A technology example: A truck with a portable x-ray can drive beside an incoming vehicle and often detect spaces in the vehicle in which are hidden illegal immigrants, narcotics and/or explosives.
So much for some examples. No wonder it is that the United States District Courts for the Western District of Texas and for the District of Arizona are inundated. No wonder also it is that no one accurately can count the number of unlawful immigrants in this country although there appears to be general agreement that there are at least 11 million.
If one can stand reading more misery on this subject, this commentary has addressed it on June 25, May 26 and March 5, 2009; June 24 and April 9, 2008; each available on the Free Congress Foundation website, www.freecongress.org.
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.
