Border issues still being ignored
Here is an article written by Mercedes Maharis, who filmed a documentry called: "Cochise County USA: Cries From the Border, which tells the story of Americans who live along the border who deal with the day in an day out fear of being attacked, murdered, raped and robbed by drug smugglers, human traffikers, illegal aliens and crimals running from the Mexican authorities. This documentary has been mainly ignored by the liberal-controlled media because it shows what is really going on along the border.
HEREFORD, AZ - The thundering whir of a U.S. Border Patrol helicopter brought me to my door on a summer night in 2005, where I saw the hovering craft herd illegal immigrants on foot toward waiting Border Patrol trucks. It wasn't enough to just watch, I had to get my camera and film. Their screams and yells are forever imprinted on my mind.
This is how the immigration issue looks when you live here in Cochise County,AZ on the cusp of the U.S.-Mexican border. I had to record it so people would believe what we deal with in our daily lives.
Here in southern Arizona, we live in small and secluded towns but have little sense of the safety and security of rural life. We witness the constant movement of migrants, drug smugglers and human traffickers literally in our backyards.
As neighbor Carey Hess put it in my film about the border dilemma, "I don't feel safe. I just don't feel safe."
They say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and these everyday pictures have shaped my view, albeit a heartbroken and now negative one, of what has become an urgent national matter. In my film "Cochise County USA: Cries From the Border, now out on DVD," I tell the story of the border with the perspective of one who lives it every day.
Just over the Memorial Day weekend, a 2,000-plus-acre fire broke out in the same area where the Minutemen civilian surveillance group had begun building a border fence. The blaze began the very day the fence started going up. A week later, a remnant haze from the fire still hung over our valley.
Here is what we know about that fire. It was apparently started by humans. And it began in a heavily trafficked smuggling area. That is what Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever wrote to me. Hundreds of firefighters battled the blaze at a cost of nearly $2 million.
In the past three weeks, Dever and his officers have begun to see wandering groups of migrants trying to cross on their own without paying smugglers enormous fees.
"That translates into more intrusions onto private lands and contact with local residents vs. crossing in more remote areas at night," he wrote. "Basically, after a steady decline in activity in Cochise County the past couple of years, we are seeing a creep upward."
Illegal immigration siphons off our local taxes through services like emergency health care and law enforcement, while federal authorities reimburse us but a fraction of what our governments must spend.
We in Cochise County need all our limited resources for schools, health services for our elderly and mentally ill, irrigation and flood control, fire districts, highway and road maintenance, and for paving our many dirt roads. We need that money for lighting and a litany of other community necessities that have fallen by the wayside amid the chaos on our border.
As seen in my film, we lost our local Copper Queen Hospital obstetrics and gynecological services because the uncompensated care of so many illegal immigrants squeezed hospital finances. By law, the hospital has to provide emergency care to anyone who enters the emergency room. And with inadequate federal compensation, it can recoup only a fraction of its expenses. This unfairly forces many of us to drive long distances for the OB/GYN care we need.
In our area we enjoy the Huachuca Mountains, one of the most unique and diverse mountain chains in the United States. It is creased with deep paths favored by the massive numbers of illegal immigrants who cross through our county.
They come down the paths onto two roads to a pickup spot near Arizona 92 right in front of our house. There they have trampled and destroyed the desert vegetation.
The confluence of Americans living on the border with illegal crossers has not been a happy one. Our people have experienced many run-ins with drug smugglers, forcing us to assume that all illegal immigrants we meet may be armed and dangerous. This creates a constant state of inner turmoil.
We are a nation of laws. Entering the U.S. without permission is illegal. We, the people who live here, need and deserve respect, as do our borders. Immigrants need papers to enter legally and with dignity.
The illegal-immigration issue is a burden that is too heavy for us shoulder much longer here in Cochise County. With a population of about 130,000 on 6,215 square miles, we have only 71 sworn officers in the Sheriff's Office to deal with local problems. Unlike most American counties, cities and towns, a large portion of our problems are created by outsiders, by the unending flow of illegal immigration.
The problems are not ours alone. Many of the illegal immigrants who try to cross our deserts die here. We bury illegal immigrants in paupers' graves in Douglas, where their families will never know what happened to them. To appreciate the human toll, you need to see the photos the Sheriff's Office provided us. They are shocking and should wake us from our slumber. Crossing the U.S.-Mexican border should not only be controlled through legal means, it should be humane.
By not speaking out, I felt I would be giving silent approval to this alarming, uncivilized disorder on our border. I've worked diligently with my camera to document firsthand accounts of the social, economic and environmental degradation of our dear Cochise County.
Residents, state and federal officials, activists and pacifists and the illegal immigrants help tell our story.
Although the national spotlight is on our border right now, border towns throughout our country have always been focused on this issue.
Hopefully, my film will help keep the border issue center stage.
We need a solution. If no solution emerges soon, more cries will be heard, not only in Cochise County USA, but also throughout our great nation and beyond.
My message is a positive one. We can and must do better!
Here's to order on our border.
Mercedes Maharis is a former educator living in Hereford with her husband, Robert. She founded her own video production company, Mercedes Maharis Productions, in Santa Monica, Calif.
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