I have been reading newspapers for as long as I can remember. Within the past decade the concern for our southern border grew, but, it wasn't because of illegals taking jobs; it was because people crossing the desert were dying.
This is an article about a man reformed from hate to compassion and the desire to be legal rather than vigilante.
...“I decided I wanted to go down to the border and kick some ass,” Gilbert says. “I’m your typical angry white male. I’m conservative. I’m pissed off at the double-standard in the media. I’m that guy.”...
...Over the next three years, he invested at least $10,000 in equipment. His girlfriend’s garage is filled with the stuff: camo gear, two-way HAM radios, $3,000 worth of night-vision equipment, a camo Polaris ATV, a Yeti cooler with a bumper-sticker reading “Extremely Right-Wing,” books on tracking and avoiding ambushes. He’s still got his handguns and his long guns. He’s still got his vest with the LED flashlights, the first aid kit and the pockets with extra ammo. At first the experience was exhilarating; the sense of mission very real.
“It reminded me of the camaraderie in Afghanistan,” he says. “The sense that we were making a positive contribution.”...
...But as Gilbert (click here) became more deeply invested in hunting immigrants, some things he saw started gnawing at him.
“You get down there and you begin to see humanity,” he says. “You can set up here and watch Fox News and say ‘these alien bastards, we need to shut the border down.’ But what I saw coming through Brooks County was humanity.” Once, he says they rescued a pregnant woman in her 20s—tired and desperate—who gave birth hours later while she was in a detention center....
...And there were the dead bodies—some 300 corpses have been reported in Brooks County in the last three years alone. Once, Gilbert found a man in his late 20s or early 30s limply resting against a tree. His eyes had been plucked out by vultures. The sight shook him.
“Apparently this country was worth dying for,” he remembers thinking. “I had a hard time not feeling profoundly upset by that.”...
Charles Gilbert (third from left, standing) and another man with holstered firearms.
...“Taking people into custody like that, it’s against the law,” he says. “These people have done it and gotten away with it for so long they think nobody’s gonna ever call them on it.”...
...“There’s something wrong here with the fact that the Border Patrol is using TBV as an interdiction force,” Cottrell says. “I witnessed that from the very first time I went out from the time that I left the group. They are essentially unlawfully detaining people. That is part of the reason I left.”
Over the summer, new militia groups—much less organized than TBV—began cropping up in the Rio Grande Valley in response to the influx of Central American children and families. After a Border Patrol agent opened fire on a militiaman with a group called Camp Lonestar in Brownsville, the agency put out a statement distancing itself from militia activity. The Border Patrol’s position was fairly unequivocal: “Forced detention can be viewed as a criminal offense and violators will be referred to local, state or federal prosecutors for possible legal action.”...
My experience in reading about the USA southern border was never about illegal people coming to the USA to take American jobs. It was always about the humanity and the lack of it even when 'wet backs' made their way into Texas or California or Arizona farmlands.
The issue to me was always about why are they coming here if Mexico was a decent place to live. It was our southern neighbor and it's citizens were leaving their homes and families and traveling a very rough and dangerous journey to work for pennies.
These folks were never going to displace me or anyone I knew. They didn't have a trade and for the most part didn't read or write. These people were in abject poverty and looking to find a way out. Even for the small pay they received in the USA and the horrid working conditions they still believed their lives were improved.
That focus has never changed for me and Catholic priests were known to take them into shelter providing a place to be healthy and hopefully functionally literate. The argument in California has always been about providing help and not about punishment for their efforts to be in the USA.
Since, the year 2000 with the assignment of Bush to the Presidency, the southern border has become a political scapegoat and the USA has spent billions in fences and adding Border Patrol and even placing National Guard in Texas.
Sure there are bad guys and Mexico would like to stop them as they sell drugs illegally in the USA. But, they aren't the majority of the people who come to the USA. The drug cartels will make it into the country no matter what anyway.
While reading this article I was reminded of how completely out of touch this man was. I believed he was sucked into his angry state by right wing media. He never bothered to read the articles and reports I read. He knew all he needed to know by listening to right wing media that carved out this caricature of an American ending any border crossings.
Now, Ebola is crossing the southern border through the invasion of the Islamic State according to right wing talkers.
This story about Charles Gilbert and his experience with the southern border of the USA is so very typical of the political right wing that leaps at opportunistic rhetoric that drives the naive to the polls. They think they are voting for a moral right to be angry when all they are voting for in reality is air; right wing media air. Don't they ever get angry about that? Or is it so embarrassing when the truth is known they simply slink away into their own neighborhoods and friends and pretend to be relevant for all the wrong reasons.
