SIERRA VISTA, Arizona — Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels doesn’t mince words. He’s angry that local law enforcement and the citizens who call the Southwest border home have been left out of the decision making process when it comes to security and immigration reform.
ARRIAGA, MEXICO – AUGUST 04: Central American migrants run to board a freight train headed north early on August 4, 2013 in Arriaga, Mexico. Thousands of immigrants ride the trains, known as ‘la bestia,’ or the beast, during their long and perilous journey through Mexico to the U.S. border. Credit: Getty Images
Dannels has lived along the border since 1984. He remembers when the dangers from smugglers circumventing the rocky, mountainous terrain were few and far between. Now, he says, a different breed of narcotics traffickers has amassed weapons, technology and small armies of death; threatening not only the stability of Mexico but U.S. national security as well. He works closely with DEA, FBI, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement but the system is not perfect.
Sitting at a local eatery under the shadow of the Huachuca Mountains, he questioned how much time, if any, the law makers who drafted SB 774 – known as the ”Gang of Eight” bill — had actually spent on the border. Dannels, along with residents living on the Southwest border and local senior law enforcement officials told TheBlaze on a recent trip to Arizona that they were left out of the decision making process on border security. They say the Gang of Eight bill just isn’t good enough when it comes to addressing the complex security issues they deal with every day.
“Look at (Sen. Marco) Rubio out of Florida — have you been down here, Rubio?” he said, noting that drug cartels had just replaced a radio relay station on the mountain that the sheriff’s team had taken down less than three weeks earlier.
The Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug organizations, uses the ”receiver/transmitter to extend their communication footprint between Mexico and the Huachuca mountains,” a U.S. Intelligence official, familiar with the terrain, told TheBlaze. It’s how they stay ahead of law enforcement and keep track of their contraband, the official added.
Home invasions, burglary, theft, destruction of private property — and a constant fear that it’s only going to get worse — is something Cochise County border residents live with daily.
“I say to myself, ‘Rubio, you’re making decisions for me, for my state, for my county, my city when you haven’t even been here – what an insult, what do you know about our border? You know nothing about our border. Yet you’re making those decisions without even speaking to us.’”
Rubio’s office did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The Senate’s Gang of Eight bill, drafted this year by a bipartisan group of well-known lawmakers, was supposed to be the answer to the nation’s 11 million plus illegal immigrants. Or at least that’s what these senators hoped. Instead, it has left many lawmakers, local law enforcement officers and American residents living along the nearly 2,000 mile Southwest border scratching their heads.
A majority of House Republicans say it is nothing more than amnesty for illegal residents, worsens entitlement spending, overrides the more than 4 million people trying to enter the U.S. legally. Critics say the border measures in the bill do not provide any guarantees for the billions of dollars allocated for security and give enormous power to the Department of Homeland Security.
Ranchers and law enforcement agents in Arizona told TheBlaze they don’t trust that anyone in Washington understands how serious the security issues are, especially with the growing power of Mexican drug cartels operating on the border.
‘It’s very frustrating…we can’t stop the cartels’
In 1984, Cochise County had 50 U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents working along it’s 83 mile border. Today, it’s increased to 1,300 agents and 200 Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement officers.
A local police officer and agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration patrol a fence line east of Naco, Ariz., after a Border Patrol agent was killed Oct. 2, 2012. The shooting occurred after an alarm was triggered on one of the thousands of sensors placed by the U.S. government along the border, and the agents went to investigate, said Cochise County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Carol Capas. Photo Credit: AP
The Gang of Eight bill will add 20,000 more Border Patrol agents and an additional 700 miles of border fence.
“The men and women working for the federal government have a very dangerous job out there which I respect,” Dannels said. “They do the best with what they’ve been given…It’s very frustrating. Even with 1500 federal agents and I have only 83 miles of Southwest border – we can ‘t stop the (cartels) the drugs and human trafficking.”
During the 1990s, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol implemented Operation Gatekeeper, whereby agents built a strong three-tier line of defense to stop the flow of contraband and people, in urban Southwest border cities. Dannels said that policy helped the big cities but “sent the bad guys ballooning to use crossings in rural communities like Cochise County.”
He said the Gang of Eight bill doesn’t deal with the real problem. Along with Rubio, the other seven members who drafted the new immigration bill are Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.); Chuck Schemer (D-N.Y.); Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.); Dick Durbin (D-Ill.); Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.); Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).
The bill passed 68 to 32 in the Senate with 14 Republicans onboard. It has been rejected by some House Republicans openly and others have avoided it all-together. Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, promised that he would not bring the bill to a vote on the floor because much of his party opposes it.
“You can understand why the citizens of Cochise county are upset, they detoured the drug cartels right into their backyards,” Dannels said. ”I say it everyday…on the federal side- you created it, you solve it. You need to redefine your plan of the 90s, and don’t put a maintenance key on border security until that’s done and I stand strongly on that.”
Dannels isn’t giving up on the federal government. He and nearly a dozen other border sheriff’s held several conference calls over the past month with Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) regarding different border security legislation he’s drafted.
‘Border Security is not one size fits all’
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter flies overhead near the scene where a Border Patrol agent was killed Oct. 2, 2012, near Naco, Ariz. Photo Credit: AP
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