Analyst's note: DHS wants so much to tell us that things are getting better on our borders - especially in AZ - that Janet Napolitano tells us out of one side of her mouth that everything is better, then precedes to provide statistics to the contrary. Gang activity and murder is up, but illegal-immigration is down according to DHS. I suggest there is a bigger picture for those who know what to look for.
To Ms. Napolitano, this means everything is only getting better in AZ. What kind of glasses did she bring down with her from Washington, D.C.? It is just a guess on my part, but those who must deal with the problems on a daily basis disagree that "...the border as safer and more secure than it has been in years."
Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, US Army (Ret) provides a different insight into observations regarding our southern border:
"[....] The number of arrests made by Border Patrol agents is one of the few reliable measurements of the rising influx. That number dropped right after 9/11, but it has since been climbing. In fact, the cost of protecting the nation's borders has increased 58 percent since 9/11, but in three of the four years since the attacks, the number of people nabbed by the Border Patrol still increased. In the fiscal year that ended in September, the Border Patrol reported 1.19 million arrests, compared with 932,000 in fiscal year 2003. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that the number of illegal invaders in the United States has grown from 8.4 million in 2000 to 15 million today. [....]"
You be the judge, just do two internal searches within this site using the words "Arizona" and "Vallely" -- you will come to a conclusion that differs with Napolitano. Some actually make the case that on our southern borders the cartels and Islamist terrorists are winning.
"An elite Border Patrol squad was pursuing a gang that preyed on drug smugglers when Agent Brian Terry was shot and killed Tuesday night in a remote canyon near Rio Rico, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday.
"They were seeking to apprehend what's called a 'rip crew,' which is a name given to a crew that is organized to seek to rip off people who are drug mules or traversing the border illegally," she said during a meeting with The Arizona Republic's editorial board. "That's why they were in that area."
[....] "Here's the message that I gave to our Border Patrol agents down there, which is that the work they are doing is producing very, very strong results," she said. "And you can see that in every metric. . . . There is no doubt that that border, which I know very well, having dealt with it since '93 when I became U.S. attorney here, is a very different place than it was five years ago, six years ago."
Napolitano cited FBI crime statistics showing that violent crime in Arizona, Texas, California and New Mexico has declined sharply in recent years. She said that agents have been, and still are, surging into the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector in Arizona and that the National Guard will continue to maintain a border presence.
"We're seizing more currency, we're seizing more drugs, we're seizing more guns, and so those numbers are going up," she said. "And the illegal-immigrant apprehensions are down, which, again, is a measure that overall illegal immigration is down. So the numbers that need to be going up are going up, and the numbers that need to be going down are going down, and substantially so."
[....] Terry's death this week has rekindled concerns about Mexico's bloody drug war spilling across the border into the United States.But Napolitano said it would be wrong to conclude from Terry's death, as well as the killing of longtime southern Arizona rancher Robert Krentz, that drug violence is on the rise or rampant along the border. Krentz's March slaying in Cochise County remains unsolved. The Krentz killing became an issue in this year's congressional midterm elections and contributed to the Arizona Legislature's passage of the state's controversial immigration-enforcement law known as Senate Bill 1070.[....]"
