THE BORDER REPORT

Assuming everyone was in on the job, you can imagine the back-end dealings that went into this quiet negotiation. The Space Shuttle Discovery that’s set to launch will be carrying at least two flags onboard, the green, blue and yellow of the U.S. Border Patrol and the red, white and green of México.

The Border Patrol, that golden-haired child of the American federal law enforcement agencies, is riding high, shipping its colors off into outer space onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, then sending the returning flag to the Border Patrol museum.

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THE BORDER REPORT

The Associated Press has a wrap-up story on corruption within the border law enforcement agencies that is billed as an investigation but does little more than touch on spot cases of rot within the ranks of border cops. On a closer inspection, the numbers The AP uses actually make agencies like the Homeland Security Department look pretty good.

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THE BORDER REPORT

As far as border enforcement ideas, it was amongst the most hare-brained; set up web-cams along the Texas border and let citizens log in and report any illegal activity they saw.

It reduced what should have been a serious issue, monitoring a border gone awry, into a perversion of Neighborhood Watch; a fine mess we’d all be in if they’d pointed those damned things north.

And now, like so many other intervention programs by governments that should have had little say anyway, I want to know where the money went.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Out on a totally unrelated assignment down on the Ambos Nogales border when a friend suggested I take a drive down the federal border road that runs east of the twin cities.

I hadn’t been out here in some time, not enough reason to justify the road-trip really, but I’m glad I listened because the engineering that went into the wall is astonishing.

Myself, I’ve never believed that the United States’ mandate to slap steel down along the border is ever going to change a thing – though not for the reasons that are usually given as why it won’t work.

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THE BORDER REPORT

A 41-year-old woman involved with the Minuteman vigilante groups that hunt illegal migrants through the Arizona desert has been arrested for pulling a home invasion and murdering a father and his nine year old daughter last month.

Then it gets ugly and weird. According to the Pima County Sheriff’s Office, Shawna Forde, 43, was arrested south of Sierra Vista, Ariz. today. Her accomplices, Albert Gaxiola and Jason Eugene Bush, were also arrested. Bush was picked up in Kingman on June 11 and Gaxiola in Tucson. The father and daughter, Raul and Brisenia Flores, were murdered May 30.

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