In Search of Intelligent Latin Policy: To Sleep, Perchance to Dream….

You’re on the wrong state, dumbass. I said Arizona.
And everything I wrote was either from personal observation or observations of friends and neighbors or, finally, from reading. The Leesburg one was merely exaggeration of an actual policy-they minimize charges to any extent possible to avoid felonies, which would eat away at their All American City image. You may not know the NOVA region, so you can be forgiven for your ignorance. Judging by your kneejerk hothead comments, I touched a nerve. And yes, if you go into the ghetto, like I routinely did, you would see both shitty white panel vans and mercedes, escalades, navigators, and other expensive vehicles. For people who are ostensibly in dire straits and need govt money and other forms of aid, some of them are doing quite well. I used to make a point to ask the cashiers at my grocery store and walmart what % of people paid with EBT. Estimates ran from 75-95%. Make of it what you will. And suck it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Pedro_River_(Arizona)
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San Pedro River (Arizona)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

San Pedro River is a northward-flowing stream originating about 10 miles (16 km) south of the international border south of Sierra Vista, Arizona, in Cananea Municipality, Sonora, Mexico. The river starts at the confluence of other streams (Las Nutrias and El Sauz) just east of Sauceda, Cananea.[3] Within Arizona, the river flows 140 miles (230 km) north through Cochise County, Pima County, Graham County, and Pinal County to its confluence with the Gila River, at Winkelman, Arizona. It is the last major, free-flowing undammed river in the American Southwest,[4] it is of major ecological importance as it hosts two-thirds of the avian diversity in the United States, including 100 species of breeding birds and 300 species of migrating birds.[5]

History

The first people to enter the San Pedro Valley were the Clovis people who hunted mammoth here from 10,000 years ago. The San Pedro Valley has the highest concentration of Clovis sites in North America.[6] Some Clovis sites of note are the Lehner Mammoth-Kill Site, the Murray Springs Clovis Site and the Naco Mammoth-Kill Site.

The hunter-gatherer, Cochise Culture next made this area home between about 5000 to 200 BC. Followed by the more advanced Mogollon, Hohokam and Salado cultures who built permanent homes and engaged in agriculture here. By the time the first Europeans arrived these cultures had disappeared and the San Pedro River was home to the Sobaipuri people.

The first Europeans to visit the San Pedro River may have been the parties of Cabeza de Vaca, Fray Marcos de Niza or the Coronado expedition, and while no archeological evidence as yet exists of the passing of these groups, it has been fairly firmly established that the upper San Pedro was a widely recognized and utilized leg of the “Cibola Trail.”[7] The Jesuit priest Eusebio Kino visited the villages along the San Pedro and Babocomari Rivers in 1692 and soon after introduced the first livestock to this area (if we assume that Coronado’s livestock did not survive/breed).[8]

It is widely believed that by 1762 Apache depredation drove the Sobaipuri and Spanish out of the San Pedro Valley which then remained largely uninhabited until the early 1800s.[9] This, however, is not true as a recent study has shown.[10] In fact, documents state that not all the Sobaipuri left and in the 1780s Sobaipuri were noted still living along the river. Archaeology has confirmed additional Sobaipuri settlements along the middle San Pedro not mentioned in the documentary record throughout the 1800s.

Early American exploration of the San Pedro River, like most rivers in western North America, was driven by the pursuit of beaver pelts. James Ohio Pattie and his father led a party of fur trappers down the Gila River and then down the San Pedro River in 1826 which was so successful that he called the San Pedro the Beaver River.[2] The party was attacked by Apache Indians (probably the Aravaipa Band) at “Battle Hill” (probably Modern-day Malpais Hill) where they subsequently stashed and lost over 200 beaver pelts.[11] In the 19th century the river was a meandering stream with fluvial marshlands, riparian forest, Sporobolus grasslands and extensive beaver ponds. As the region experienced a rapid climate warming and drying,[12] (coincident with beaver removal and large-scale cattle introduction; correlation not directly established) the river down-cut and then widened in a process of arroyo formation observed on many rivers in the Southwest.[13] In 1895, J. A. Allen described a mammal collection from southeastern Arizona, “On the headwaters of the San Pedro, in Sonora, a colony of a dozen or more had their lodges up to 1893, when a trapper nearly exterminated them. All the streams in the White Mountains have beaver dams in them, although most of the animals have been trapped.”[14] The beaver were finally extirpated by 1920s dynamiting of the beaver dams from soldiers from Fort Huachuca to prevent malaria.(citation?) By the mid-20th century the once perennial river only flowed during the rainy season and beaver, fluvial marshlands and Sporobolus grasslands were uncommon.[13][15] Physician naturalist Edgar Alexander Mearns’ 1907 Mammals of the Mexican boundary of the United States reported beaver (Castor canadensis) on the San Pedro River and the Babocomari River.[16] Mearns claimed that the San Pedro River beaver represented a new subspecies Castor canadensis frondator or “Sonora beaver” that ranged from Mexico up to Wyoming and Montana.[17]
Ecology

More than 300 species of birds, 200 species of butterflies and 20 species of bats use this corridor as they migrate between South, Central and North America, including the imperiled yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus). More than 80 species of mammals, including jaguar (Panthera onca), coatimundi (Nasua narica), bats, beaver (Castor canadensis frontador), mountain lion, and many rodents; more than 65 species of reptiles and amphibians, including Sonoran tiger salamander (Ambystoma mavortium stebbinsi) and western barking frog (Eleutherodactylus augusti). Remaining native fish species include the Gila chub (Gila intermedia) which is proposed for federal listing as endangered, and the longfin dace, desert sucker, roundtail chub, Sonora sucker, and speckled dace. The flora includes Fremont cottonwood (Populus fremontii), Goodding willow (Salix gracilistyla), velvet mesquite, sacaton, and the Federally endangered Huachuca water umbel (Lilaeopsis schaffneriana spp. recurva).[5]

In recent decades, rapid growth and population increases in southern Arizona has caused concern with this river. Several non-profit organizations have risen in recent years to raise awareness of this problem. The San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area (SPRNCA) was established in 1988 to protect some forty miles of the upper San Pedro valley.[19] The Nature Conservancy also owns several preserves in the watershed, including the San Pedro River Preserve, Aravaipa Canyon Preserve, Muleshoe Ranch Preserve, Ramsey Canyon Preserve, and most recently, Rancho Los Fresnos. Rancho Los Fresnos, near the river’s source, is the largest ciénega, an isolated desert spring or marsh, remaining in the San Pedro River watershed. Its protection is important as 99% of the ciénegas in the Southwest have been drained and destroyed.[20]

With large portions of the river dry much of the year, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wildlife biologist Mark Fredlake proposed restoring beaver to the watershed to retain water flows into the dry season and to support re-growth of the historic riparian vegetation.[15] Riparian habitat covers only 1% of the Southwest but supports 50% of breeding bird species and is vital as a food source for migrating avifauna.[21] Fredlake reasoned that beaver dams would raise the water table, allowing groundwater to recharge the river’s flow in the dry season. From 1999 to 2002, 19 beavers were released into the SPRNCA, a 40-mile (64 km) stretch of the river, in Cochise County. By 2006 there were more than 30 dams. The beavers also dispersed widely and rapidly. One beaver migrated to Aravaipa Canyon, more than 100 rivermiles away; another to the river’s terminus at the Gila River, earning itself the moniker “the surfing beaver”; and others up into Mexico, building several dams along the river’s upper tributaries. The program was successful with measurable increases in bird diversity and formation of deep pools and lasting flows.[22] In 2008, flooding destroyed all the beaver dams and this was followed by a long drought. However, as in historic times the beaver seems well adapted to the San Pedro River, and the 2009 dam count is back above 30 with a current population between 30 and 120 beavers.[15] A

The San Pedro drains an area of approximately 4,720 square miles (12,200 km2) in Cochise, Graham, Pima, and Pinal Counties. Its course traverses deep sedimentary basins flanked by the Huachuca, Mule, Whetstone, Dragoon, Rincon, Little Rincon, Winchester, Galiuro, Tortilla, and Santa Catalina Mountains. The San Pedro is fed by numerous tributaries, which in general, drain relatively short and steep catchments oriented more or less perpendicular to the mainstem.[25] For most of its length the San Pedro flows over sedimentary basin fill deposits, although it is bound by bedrock at the Tombstone Hills at Charleston and near Fairbank, “the Narrows” south of Cascabel, near Redington, and again at Dudleyville (Heindl, 1952). Two major tributaries, Babocomari River and Aravaipa Creek, each have extensive bedrock-lined stretches. Historically the San Pedro has been divided into upper and lower reaches at the Narrows.[26]

On May 27, 2011, a U.S. District judge ruled that Fort Huachaca’s plan to pump 6,100 acre feet (7,500,000 m3) of groundwater without mitigation plans to replenish the San Pedro River flows failed to protect the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii) and the Huachuca water umbel so they could recover from their imperiled status. [27] The ruling was in response to a second lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Maricopa Audubon Society. In 2002, in response to an earlier suit filed by the center, another judge tossed out an earlier Wildlife Service biological opinion that the water pumping could be mitigated.[4]
Mormon Battalion

The Mormon Battalion marched through the river valley in 1846, and the only battle the battalion fought in their journey to California occurred near the river. The battalion’s presence had aroused curiosity among a number of wild cattle, and the bulls of these herds damaged wagons and injured mules. In response, the men shot dozens of the charging bulls.[28] Mormon settlers later returned to this area in 1877 to found a settlement that became St. David, and logged the Huachuca Mountains to provide lumber for building Fort Huachuca and Tombstone.[29]
Geology, paleontology

In recent decades, the Arizona Geological Society has focused on the region, as well as researchers. Development pressures, recreation, and groundwater harvesting have led to recent concerns of protecting the region. A recent floodplain study focused on the Holocene floodplain alluvium and its history, over a 125-mile (201 km) stretch of the river to understand subground waterflow resources.[26]

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http://www.desertinvasion.us/invasion_pictures/pics_naco4.html

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This is from Naco, near where I used to live.

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This is similar to what the illegals have done to the wildlife sanctuary.
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http://www.desertinvasion.us/reports/hull_border_env_damage.html

Desert Invasion – U.S.
Environmental Damage at the Arizona-Mexico Border and Intrusion into the Lives of Americans Living There, by Diana Hull, Ph.D., 2002

This inadequately protected area in and around the small ranching towns of Bisbee and Douglas were inundated last year by 1 to 3 million illegal aliens most of whom escaped into the interior of the United States.
Intense and successful operations by the Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas and San Diego has funneled illegals and drug smugglers through Cochise County in southern Arizona. This inadequately protected area in and around the small ranching towns of Bisbee and Douglas were inundated last year by 1 to 3 million illegal aliens most of whom escaped into the interior of the United States. Only one half million were apprehended by border patrol agents.

Environmental groups ignore the damage this is causing to our National Forests, and recently a revived Sanctuary Movement wants to rescue the immigrants and help transport them north. The Border Patrol in what is called the “Tucson sector” has been increased from 287 agents in 1994, to 1400 today. But they are unable to guard the entire 83 miles of border [in the Tucson Sector] that Arizona shares with Mexico. Yet because of the increased personnel here, other parts of the southern border and the border with Canada have become more vulnerable.

Bisbee has a population of 125,000 people. Cocaine smuggling has been rampant since the 1980’s, but now this small county has become the major corridor for drugs in the United States. It has also become a center for the smuggling of people. Like drugs, people smuggling is a multi-million dollar business. Reliable local observers say one large truck can hold about 70 illegal aliens and that gives the smuggler a $70,000 profit for the two hour drive from the border to Tucson.

Larry Dever, the Sheriff of Cochise County… was particularly critical of the federal government because they have “not only failed to protect our properties and our people,” but, at the same time, “claim a propriety and sole authority to do so.”
Last June 27th [2002] Larry Dever, the Sheriff of Cochise County, talked about what he called “the emergency situation in Arizona” in his testimony before a Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, chaired by Senator Jon Kyl. He called it “a challenge of unprecedented proportions.” He told the Subcommittee that on his visits to Mexico, he has seen the building of enormous new infrastructure designed to support alien smuggling operations. Cochise County is a target, he said, because there is lots of water in the San Pedro River, in wells, ponds and stock tanks and lots of remote places where aliens can find cover and hide. There is also access to rural roads that lead to highways that connect with all major US cities.

Sheriff Dever said that the surge of illegal immigrants through his county has damaged or destroyed water resources, that fences are routinely cut on private and public property, and that the land is now littered with tons of garbage, clothing and human waste. He was particularly critical of the federal government because they have “not only failed to protect our properties and our people,” but, at the same time, “claim a propriety and sole authority to do so.”

He was talking about how private individuals were criticized as vigilantes when they tried to defend themselves. Rancher-business man Roger Barnett, for example, who has received some national publicity, reports constant vandalism on his ranch and describes how little is done about it by law enforcement. Mr. Barnett says that the people who live in his area are very much on their own as smugglers march illegal immigrants for miles through private ranches and suburban back yards. They do this, he says, mainly at night. Once these groups get about 20 miles from the border, there is almost no chance they will be apprehended.

Attempts to detain immigrants on your property, while you wait for the Border Patrol, are often investigated by the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to see if any law has been broken. Then the Mexican Consulate must be advised so it can ensure the rights of their citizens and provide them with legal counsel if needed.

Americans have fewer protections. Chris M. Roll, the Cochise County Attorney, told the Senate Subcommittee about the increase of border predators-robbers, rapists and kidnappers who prey on both US residents and illegal aliens.

The United States Attorney for the District of Arizona, Jose de Jesus Riviera, described to the Senate Subcommittee the problems with home invasion burglaries, slaughter of livestock, the draining of water systems and the huge quantities of refuse left in the immigrant’s wake. He also warned about increasing bands of “drug backpackers” who cross private property in groups, usually carrying firearms. Just considering the environmental damage alone, we can wonder why those dedicated to the protection of the land and its resources have not intervened forcefully in the way they have done, for example, in my home county of Santa Barbara, California, with lawyers representing environmental groups ever ready to go to court on behalf of possible damage to oaks, endangered species, habitat or wetlands if they are disturbed in any way by the actions of California ranchers or farmers on their own property. If there are similar organizations in Arizona, the vast environmental damage being done by hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants does not seem to disturb them.

Here are examples of what the immigration invasion has wrought in publicly owned resources like the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the Coronado National Forest and the San Pedro Riparian Conservation Area. Jesse Juen, the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) Field Representative in Tuscon told the Senate Subcommittee that, over the past two years wildfires caused by immigrants smoking cigarettes or building fires to warm themselves at night have destroyed about 20% of the riparian vegetation along the San Pedro River in Cochise County. Plastic water bottles, food wrappers, toilet paper and human feces cover large areas where fences have been cut for the passage of human coyotes. Mr. Juen said the off-road vehicles of alien smugglers often go down steep embankments and motor oil and fuel leaks into streams and endangered species habitat.

The Bureau of Land Management’s own facilities, living quarters, storage sheds and workshops are regularly broken into and vandalized. Concern for individual safety now require these employees to travel in pairs. Mr. Juen said regretfully that the environmental damage in the Riparian National Conservation area is stripping away the natural resources that the RNC was created to conserve.

James K. Bellamy is Superintendent of the Coronado National Memorial in southeastern Arizona, a unit of the National Park System consisting of 4,750 acres of oak woodland and grassland with 3.5 miles bordering Mexico. His testimony to the Senate Subcommittee emphasized the 300% escalation in illegal immigrant traffic this year and how his rangers no longer apprehend illegal border crossers because of the sheer numbers of entrants compared to the size of the combined force of the Border Patrol and the Park Rangers.

Mr. Bellamy told the Senate Subcommittee that human foot traffic through the park has created trails the width of roads. Vegetation is trampled to such an extent that steep hillsides have been eroded and much ground laid bare-with litter widespread-like discarded clothing, blankets, food containers, toilet paper and human excrement.

The plight of Cochise County is California’s plight too because 40% of all. illegal immigrants are heading our way. So what, if anything, will the United States Senate, awash in contributions from the cheap labor lobby, do about this, if anything, and will our new President give more than lip service to protecting our borders? Ten years after the cold war, U.S. military forces are still stationed in 100 different countries all over the world.

Now added to decades of political paralysis comes another dysfunctional response to this violation of our boundaries and our laws. Here come the rescuers–not of our land, but of those who invade us, acting with the blessing and encouragement of the Mexican government. Catholic, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches in Arizona are reviving the Sanctuary movement of the 1980’s and actively helping illegal aliens avoid detection–giving them aid and encouragement and even transporting them north.

We have not heard even the mildest of “peeps” from the Sierra Club. With environmental groups these days, “Social Justice” in the form of “immigrants rights” trumps concern about overpopulation, damage to plants, land and wildlife, and the quality of life in the United States.
While valuing every human life is a religious and moral ideal, practical ethics is rarely so simple. Thoughtless compassion is like saving the tree while ignoring the health of the woodland environment and the human and animal creatures who need it for sustenance. A nation is easily as complicated as a forest and the righteous often only see the very few trees right in front of their eyes.

Even if the Americans who live in Southern Arizona are of little consequence to the US Congress and to the sanctimonious Sanctuary Movement, surely someone, some group must be willing to defend our threatened environment! We have not heard even the mildest of “peeps” from the Sierra Club. Their silence is deafening, so what can that mean?

Evidently political correctness demands that you first consider who is destroying the environment–not the extent of the destruction itself nor whether it should be stopped. With environmental groups these days, “Social Justice” in the form of “immigrants rights” trumps concern about overpopulation, damage to plants, land and wildlife, and the quality of life in the United States. These priorities mirror those of the Ford and associated major charitable foundations from whom both the National Counsel of La Raza and the Sierra Club get financial support.

Makers of public policy might consider the concerns of Professor Samuel P. Huntington, the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University and founder of Foreign Policy quarterly. In an address last July he said, “Mexican immigration is a unique, disturbing and looming challenge to our cultural integrity, our national identity, and potentially to our future as a country.”

Diana Hull, Ph.D. is President of CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization). a non profit, public interest organization that works to protect California’s environment and quality of life.