April 2, 2004
By Jon E. Dougherty
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

This is the last of four excerpts featured on WorldNetDaily from "Illegals," a recent release of WND Books. Today's excerpt profiles the dangerous job of Border Patrol agent and explains how their mission is hindered by government regulations.

It was a somber scene as the blue hearse, adorned with red roses and white carnations, made its way slowly to the cemetery in Naco, Sonora, a town in Mexico. Inside, a silver casket was decorated with depictions of Mary holding Jesus in her arms after his crucifixion. Women wailed, especially the young widow, as dozens of mourners – some playing instruments from the back of a pickup truck – trailed the hearse. The casket held 23-year-old Jorge Luis Salomon, a U.S. Border Patrol agent who was killed by Mexican nationals because of his job.

According to news reports, a Sonora state prosecutor in Cananea, Saul Ballesteros, said Salomon met Francisco Javier Rosas Molina, 18, earlier in the week near the border at Naco, Ariz., where Salomon had been stationed since late 2000, shortly after Rosas Molina's release from jail in Bisbee, Ariz., on drug-trafficking charges.

"He struck up a conversation and began a friendly relationship, giving him a ride and spending several hours drinking and talking with him and some of his companions," Ballesteros said. Salomon had initially confided in Rosas Molina that he was an agent, but later, when the conversation with the young man's companions turned to their involvement in drug and people trafficking, Salomon told the group he was a construction worker.

"That's when Rosas Molina identified him to the others as a Border Patrol agent, and that appears to be the reason that they killed him," said Ballesteros.

Rosas Molina and three other suspects – Jose Arturo Arreola Lopez, Jesus Cesar Abusto Villa Villareal and Edna Yardis Montoya Medina – allegedly killed Salomon by repeatedly bashing his head with a 50-pound boulder. It was an awful, gruesome way to die – as if there is ever a good way – but one that was precipitated solely because of the line of work this young man chose.

An album by comedian Rodney Dangerfield called "I Don't Get No Respect" exemplified a line he is most famous for, but very easily, the same could be said for federal agents and other American law-enforcement personnel who risk their lives daily to guard America's borders.

For their efforts, they are killed and injured by cross-border criminals; they are constantly criticized, slandered and berated by politicians and pro-immigrant activists; they are shot at by foreign military members; they are vilified by the very citizens they are charged to protect. In particular, Border Patrol agents, like their federal law-enforcement counterparts in the U.S. Forest Service, are among the most assaulted of federal officers. Yet most are hard-working, loyal and patriotic men and women trying to do a tough job under tough, if not impossible, conditions. Nevertheless, as demonstrated by a series of events and incidents that have happened to agents in recent times, they are among the least-respected authorities.

Agents nonchalantly speak of the dangers they face as being just part of the job. But with little doubt, those dangers occur far more frequently than in many other areas of law enforcement.

"Smugglers trying to move a bumper marijuana crop across the fortified border are taking brazen risks and fighting violently with law officers – often on public roads," warned the Arizona Daily Star. "This hotter drug war in southern Arizona has put law officers on edge, rural school bus drivers on alert, and border travelers at some risk. In the last four months, smugglers facing a bigger gauntlet of law officers have shot at them, tried to run them down, sprinkled roads with spikes, and crashed vehicles through official ports of entry into the United States."

The newspaper report continued, saying that a 15-year-old boy driving a Jeep filled with 800 pounds of pot sideswiped an innocent bystander's vehicle at the Douglas port of entry in January 2001; the same teen crashed the border 11 days earlier driving a Ford Crown Victoria filled with marijuana. And at least seven times since October 2000, vehicles filled with drugs raced northbound into the U.S. using the southbound lanes of traffic, endangering lives and snarling traffic. Other smugglers running from pursuing law officers have forced the officers and other traffic off of roads. Smugglers' weapons of choice, officers say, are small, concealable weapons – often automatic weapons with pistol-like features.

Because of the realities of the terrain they must patrol, border officers often have to be creative in order to adapt to their harsh environment. They must also adapt to the violence. Park ranger Julie Horne, whose turf includes the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, packs a pistol, a shotgun and a rifle while on patrol. She says she encounters "hundreds" of illegals nightly, and she intercepts several drug loads per week as well.

As if the danger of the job weren't enough, everywhere border agents turn there are impediments to their jobs.

"The better we do, the more complaining the activists do, and the less we're able to do," says one Border Patrol agent. As an example, he said his patrol sector in California was banned from "dragging" – smoothing dirt roads to make it easier to find fresh footprints made by illegals – because, agents were told, "it created too much dust." In reality, the agent believes "it is one of our most effective detection tools. That's why the activists complained and had it banned." Some landowners have also complained about the technique, however, saying it disrupts or destroys property and is a nuisance.

But agents still maintain this low-tech method is ideal for tracking illegals.

Other agents say they are not permitted to work with local police and sheriff's departments, in part because their own supervisors prohibit it, but also because local departments, bureaucrats and politicians who take a pro-immigrant view disallow it. Border Patrol agents say despite federal rules that allow them to patrol bus stations, railways and other modes of public transportation in search of illegal aliens, cities and municipalities often pass local ordinances that prohibit such patrols; worse, many Border Patrol managers won't fight them, and, to be fair, many of Washington's bureaucrats aren't aware of such local ordinances.

Agents are also constantly harangued by official ignorance, enduring thoughtless and politically correct policy decisions made by bureaucrats with no border law-enforcement experience. In April 2001, for example, the INS adopted a policy requiring Border Patrol agents to pick up trash while on patrol and to stay out of "environmentally sensitive" areas. "We normally instruct our agents to pick up the trash once they've apprehended a group (of illegal aliens)," agent Jose Proenca said. "As they're making their trip north they begin discarding stuff."

When not on trash duty, agents have to be careful where they walk – they must stay off of land that contains endangered plant and animal species as well. This burden directly affects their ability to do their jobs and could actually put them at greater risk; Park Ranger Eggle was killed while patrolling the environmentally sensitive Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, a region virtually devoid of any Border Patrol back-up, perhaps because of this INS policy.

Bob Goldsborough of the Virginia-based American Immigration Control, summed it up well for Fox News: "If there's a bank robber and the police are called in, you don't tell the police to stay off the flower beds. This is the same thing. It is simply a misdirection of their time and their energy." Perhaps prophetically, Goldsborough predicted that smugglers and illegal aliens, upon learning of the INS' "green" policy, would simply find protected land on which to cross. They have; Organ Pipe is one of the most heavily trafficked regions along the border.

"I am sick of hearing border residents curse me for doing my job, then, in the same breath, curse me for all of the aliens that are destroying their property," said one Border Patrol agent, who posted comments to a union message board. "I am sick to death of my own agency giving more weight to the complaints of smugglers (you know who I'm talking about; the folks with the 4.78 acres of brush on the border that they threw a trailer on and a sign that says 'Rancho Del Scumbag' or 'Makin' Breakfast Ranch,' the ones that, when the dope or groups are crossing, you don't hear a peep out of them and, when the dope is past the old trailer and [USBP agents] are in pursuit, suddenly the 30 pit bulls get released, and the good citizens start a confrontation about how we are violating their property rights. Then they call the station, and the word comes down: 'Stay off of their property'). They can kiss my green a--. …"

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