EXCLUSIVE: Arizona's Closed Federal Parkland is a No-Man's Land

[Pepper]

Fox News:

EXCLUSIVE: Arizona's Closed Federal Parkland is a No-Man's Land

EXCLUSIVE: Arizona's Closed Federal Parkland is a No-Man's Land

By Joshua Rhett Miller

Published July 02, 2010

| FoxNews.com



BUENOS AIRES NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Arizona – The number of illegal immigrants and drug smugglers crossing through this magnificent national parkland in southern Arizona has "decreased significantly" in the last four years, park officials say.

But there's a dark cloud to this silver lining: To make it happen, the refuge had to close a sliver of this slice of heaven to the quarter-billion American taxpayers who own it -- essentially creating a no-man's-land on which only drug smugglers, gun-runners, human traffickers and the Border Patrol agents who track them down dare to tread.


But the 3,500 acres will remain off-limits for the foreseeable future, she said – despite what she calls an “incredible response” of negative feedback that followed recent reports surrounding the closure. The 3,500-acre parcel is only 3 percent of the entire refuge, Gall said, so she prefers to err on the side of caution.

“It doesn’t have a great impact to visitor use on the refuge,” she said. “Is it something worth opening? We don’t feel like it is right now.” “There isn’t a timeline,” she said. “With the fluctuations of border activity, with immigrants coming through, as well as Border Patrol activity and now the proposed National Guard, it makes sense to wait this out and see what happens.”

That doesn't sit well with Zack Taylor, a retired U.S. Border Patrol agent with more than 26 years on the job, who said he considered the closure a concession of U.S. land to Mexican drug cartels and human smuggling operations. If you're going to close down 3,500 acres inside America, he said, you might as well close down the entire border.

“They’ve known for years that this was an escalating problem and that it was going to grow and become a larger problem,” Taylor, a member of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, told FoxNews.com. “The anger is that [federal authorities] have intentionally made it more dangerous by not putting enough people down there to do the job.”

He said U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials were essentially creating an “ad hoc amnesty” by not closing the entire U.S.-Mexico border, including the 3,500-acre parcel on the Buenos Aires refuge. “The United States government is giving it away,” he said. “They’re intentionally not doing their job and not enforcing the law. It becomes a crime.”

Another retired U.S. Border Patrol agent who asked not to be identified due to consulting work he does in the area, questioned the accuracy of the sharp decline in immigrant activity in the area.

“They’re painting a picture that the border is under control,” said the former agent, who retired in 2007 after 30 years along the border. “And it’s not ... not at all.”



How's that Hope and Change Workin' out for you Folks who voted for Obama?

[Pepper]

 

From the National Park Service

 

Obama at your service

[Argyle58]

 

From the National Park Service

 

Obama at your service

 

If anything shows that THE ONE has no sense of shame, this is it. Just yesterday he was claiming that the border was safer now than at any point in the last 20 years.

 

At least Holder has been too busy with his inept handling of islamofacists to prosecute Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement officers for doing their jobs.