No Justification At All for Closing Nine Border Patrol Stattions

Just when you think things cannot get worse, our government proves us wrong!

I was sent the disturbing information about the administration’s proposed closing of nine Border Patrol stations with an additional 4 stations being reviewed with an eye to closing them as well, by a former colleague and old friend who served in the U.S. Border Patrol as well as an INS Special Agent.

It is impossible to imagine justification for closing Border Patrol stations. The further apart stations are located, the more agents will have to travel when they make arrests and the more that our beleaguered agents will have to travel to get to their assigned sectors when they are on duty. This also has serious safety implications for our agents!

Clearly the administration is determined to make it increasingly difficult for our Border Patrol agents to carry out their duties to secure our nation’s borders. The efforts of the valiant Border Patrol agents is also, of course, being undermined by the policy statements issued by the President and members of the administration to terminate removal (deportation) hearings involving hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and providing employment authorization to many of those illegal aliens. These decisions amount to the firing of a starter’s pistol along our nation’s borders to encourage many more aliens to run our borders and head to cities across this nation, from coast to coast and border to border!

Meanwhile yesterday, the President went before an unusual joint session of Congress that, as the reporters noted, resembled a State of the Union Address to advocate the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars to create new jobs! Nearly every unemployed American could have a job to go to without having a single new job created if the administration enforced the immigration laws and conducted investigations into fraud and abuses in the various categories of “temporary” work visa programs such as the H1b visas that enable foreign high-tech workers such as computer programmers to come to the United States to take jobs as programmers even while large numbers of American programmers are unemployed or underemployed doing jobs that have no relationship to programming- a profession for which they attended college and developed a high level of experience and expertise.

Yet not a single GOP candidate for the Presidency has talked about this. Incredibly, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, talked about the lessons learned by the Amnesty of 1986 but limited his remarks to the failure to aggressively implement worksite enforcement to go after illegal aliens and their employers. Mr. Gingrich did not talk about the rampant fraud that permeated that ill-conceived amnesty program and joined the most of the other candidates who said that if an illegal alien was present in the United States for a number of years that he should be provided with lawful status. He should certainly know better! There is no quick or easy way to determine how long an illegal alien who ran our borders has been present in the United States. It becomes even more difficult if the alien in question uses multiple false identities- and I can tell you from my 30 years of experience with the INS that the majority of illegal aliens routinely use many false names!

The policies of the administration and the speeches made by so many politicians, including those who would replace President Obama in the Oval Office in 2012 provide clear incentives and encouragement to people around the world who are contemplating entering the United States in violation of law that if they can run our borders they will be treated as lawful immigrants!

This also provides terrorists who desire to enter the United States to attack our nation and our citizens with a strategy to enter our country and easily embed themselves in our country provided that they can make their way into the interior of the United States. Furthermore, if an alien is granted employment authorization, that alien would likely be able to obtain a driver’s license and a Social Security card along with credit cards and bank accounts in whatever false name they provide ICE enforcement personnel.

By eliminating Border Patrol stations, in my judgement, it will make it easier for illegal aliens to succeed in running our nation’s borders as agents are being made to waste more time getting to their assigned sectors and back to their stations when they go off duty or make arrests.

This is lunacy!

Meanwhile here we are, just two days before the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 with New York and Washington, DC on high alert over credible information about a possible imminent terrorist attack!

Once again I am compelled to say that the DHS should henceforth be known as the Department of Homeland *Surrender! *

A country without secure borders can no more stand than can a house without walls!

If our country is to survive and if our children and their children are to get their share of the “American Dream” the citizens of this nation must take their citizenship seriously!

We the People must be the best citizens we can be, citizens who are worthy of the gallantry demonstrated by our valiant men and women in the military, law enforcement and firefighters, who routinely go in harm’s way in defense of this nation and our citizens.

My goal in writing this and other commentaries is to point out our nations many failings before more victims pay the ultimate price for the incompetence and ineptitude of our government.

The first step in problem-solving is to first identify the problems and vulnerabilities and then devise strategies to overcome them.

If you find yourself to be in agreement with this commentary, I ask that you forward it to as many of your friends and family members as possible and encourage them to do the same. We need to create a “Bucket Brigade of Truth!”

The practice of good citizenship does not end in the voting booth, it only begins there.

The large scale apathy demonstrated by citizens of this nation has emboldened elected representatives to all but ignore the needs of the average American citizen in a quest for massive campaign funds and the promises of votes to be ostensibly delivered by special interest groups. There is much that we cannot do but there is one thing that We the People absolutely must do- we must stop sitting on the sidelines!

The collective failure of We the People to get involved in make our concerns known to our politicians have nearly made the concerns of the great majority of the citizens of this nation all but irrelevant to the politicians. I implore you to get involved!

I believe our nation’s is greatly benefited by the rich diversity of our people which is why I could never imagine living anywhere except New York City, arguably the most diverse city in our nation if not, in fact, the world. However, my idea of diversity most certainly does not include members of MS-13, the Mexican drug cartels or members of other transnational gangs or members of al-Qaeda!

If our government’s failures to secure our nation’s borders and effectively enforce our immigration laws concerns you or especially if it angers you, I ask you to call your Senators and Congressional “Representative. This is not only your right- it is your obligation!

All I ask is that you make it clear to our politicians that we are not as dumb as they hope we are!

We live in a perilous world and in a perilous era. The survival of our nation and the lives of our citizens hang in the balance.

This is neither a Conservative issue, nor is it a Liberal issue- simply stated, this is most certainly an AMERICAN issue!

You are either part of the solution or you are a part of the problem!

Democracy is not a spectator sport!

Lead, follow or get out of the way!

Michael Cutler
Michael Cutler, a former Senior INS Investigator, an expert witness in more than a dozen Congressional Hearings is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and an advisor to the '911 Families for a Secure America.' He writes about the nexus between immigration and national security.