Luke Ford

Mark Krikorian, Maia Lazar, Luke Ford, Heather Mac Donald, Cathy Seipp Maia Lazar, Heather Mac Donald (Photos by Sunana Batra) Cathy Seipp Reports

I awake at 7:41am. At 8am, I arrive at the corner of Beverly Dr and Cashio and park. I then walk over a mile (in my suit in the heat) to the Beverly Regent to save on the $29 all-day valet parking fee.

I arrive at 8:20 and get stuck into the free breakfast - a pastry and fruit and coffee.

The audience of about 100 people is virtually all white.

I hear there are going to be protests outside the hotel. I spot several security guards. David Horowitz doesn't mind tackling the controversial (with the elites only, regular folks are dead-set against illegal immigration).

David introduces California congressman Ed Royce who then introduces the first speaker -- the Rush Limbaugh of Arizona is the first speaker, Congressman J.D. Hayworth (more info). A tall, strapping former sports anchor, Hayworth's powerful voice projects to the back of the room and into my digital tape recorder.

"To secure America's future, we must secure America's border."

Widespread applause.

"What we confront now is not a problem but an invasion."

Hayworth holds up The LA Times which has this Page One story:

In a State of Emergency, City's Relaxed

Arizona's immigration declaration has one border hub wondering where the crisis is.

Encounters with illegal border crossers are so frequent that even Mayor Ray Borane hardly noticed the group of Mexicans hiding in the bushes recently outside the home he is building.

"I have seen illegal immigration all my life," he said, shrugging. "Illegal immigration has a life of its own. You can't stop it."

"I take issue with those who would surrender in the face of an invasion.

"This is not a political problem to be managed. It is a threat which must be met."

Hayworth mentions these stories:

Patrol agent fired on near border; officer coming to aid of deputy attacked by rock-throwing illegals

And this:

Rocks thrown by immigrants damage Border Patrol helicopter

YUMA - A rock allegedly thrown by an illegal immigrant forced a Border Patrol helicopter to make an emergency landing after a rotor was damaged.

Hayworth quotes somebody on the Mexican side who says "Borders are scars on the face of the Earth."

Hayworth: "Borders are necessary political divisions for soverignty and security.

"[Illegal immigration] costs us at least $70 billion annually."

After his speech, Hayworth leaves. I hear him yelling at someone in the corridor.

Janet Levy moderates the first panel (Otis Graham, Heather Mac Donald, James Edwards, Glynn Custred) on social issues. She quotes a poll that 40% of Mexicans would like to move to the US and 20% of Mexicans would do it even if it was illegal. "Far from stemming the tide the of illegal immigrants coming across our borders, the Mexican goverment actively encourages it. In fact they have staging areas that help illegal aliens get across. They even publish a booklet to help illegal aliens dodge border patrols."

Otis Graham notes that many employers say that without illegal labor, the economy will collapse. "Mill owners said the same thing about child labor legislation. Southern plantation owners said the same thing about ending slavery. During WWII, Americans did their own work."

Graham recommends Robert Suro's 1999 book Strangers Among Us: Latino Lives in a Changing America.

Heather Mac Donald speaks:

I want to take as my text an August 10th Washington Post editorial called 'The Reality of Gangs.' This article could be called, 'The Unreality Of Media Coverage Of The Illegal Alien Crime Wave.' The editorial describes the unending series of maimings, stabbings, killings in the Norther Virginia area...by the Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha, which has spread from Los Angeles across the country.

Predictably the Washington Post calls for more social uplift programs to persuade young Hispanics from joining gangs.

It completely ignored the most salient feature of Mara Salvatrucha, which is its staggeringly high number of illegals. The Justice Department estimates that 50% of Mara Salvatrucha are illegal. Talk to an LAPD officer who deals with this gang daily will put the figure...at 100%.

There seems to be a taboo against talking about the contributions illegal aliens make to illegal activity. When I first started writing about this, I talked to people in LAPD...and I found it was a subject that polite people do not express. How many stories have you read...about the percentage of people committing crimes who are illegal immigrants. Reporters don't bother to ask.

Those of you who live in LA may have been following the recent debacle to hit the LAPD -- the shooting of Jose Raul Pena and his 19-month-old daughter on July 10.

Michelle Malkin writes:

On July 10, Jose Raul Pena, an illegal Salvadoran previously deported for cocaine possession, engaged in an hours-long shooting attack on Los Angeles police officers, during which he used his abducted 19-month-old daughter as a shield against the return fire. Finally, after unloading endless fusillades at the police and wounding one officer, Pena was fatally shot by a SWAT officer. Not surprisingly, his toddler-shield was killed, too.

Heather says:

There are protests about police brutality. Nobody talks about Pena's role in this. In all its stories, The LAT has mentioned once that Pena was here illegally.

The prohibition on mentioning the contributions of illegals to crime has a policy counterpart and that is the prohibition on local police on taking any hand in getting rid of illegal gangbangers.

If the Washington Post was serious about getting rid of this gang, it would've called for the immediate involvement of every policeman in D.C. to get these guys off the street. Instead, police are prohibiting from noticing a person's immigration status.

The only category of crime going up is gang crime. This is driven by one fact only -- immigration.

I want to contrast the squeamishness in the Washington Post editorial to discussing the role of illegals in crime with a more typical example of media zealousness. This is from The LA Times in June 2004...about the brouhaha of the Border Patrol making arrests in the Inland cities like Riverside...At the time, the Border Patrol said it had been working with local police officers to find out where the illegal problem was the heaviest.

The Los Angeles Times, in conjunction with the ACLU, decided to check these claims. They went to police agencies who of course denied offering the Border Patrol help. The LA Times concluded that the BP agents had "scoped out the areas on their own."

Petit Bourgeois blogs:

Today's Dog Trainer has an article in defense of the enemies of the United States:

But hundreds of pages of documents about the raids, released by federal officials in response to a lawsuit from the ACLU, show no specific evidence of such tips, and several police agencies told The Times last week that they did not inform Border Patrol agents of the whereabouts of suspected illegal immigrants before the sweeps.

The documents suggest that the team of a dozen agents may have scoped out the areas on their own, targeting day laborer sites and other locations where large numbers of undocumented immigrants gather.

The sweeps raised protests among politicians, church leaders and the Mexican government because they extended well beyond the border and caused fear in immigrant neighborhoods, even among people in the U.S. legally.

Besides using the term "undocumented" to define criminals, what is wrong with that?

"If they are saying they are acting on intelligence, then they didn't get it from us," said Ontario Police Det. Alfredo Parra. "We've never done anything like that…. We don't get involved in their sweeps or activities."

Ontario: Of course you don't get involved, you treasonous sons-of-bitches.

"We were absolutely not involved," said William Lansdowne, police chief of San Diego, where some sweeps occurred. "The only time we work with the Border Patrol is if there is a criminal nexus."

San Diego: So, violation of Federal immigration laws does not rise to the level of "criminal" activity? You are also guilty of treason. May you die a slow, painful death for turning your back on this country.

The Escondido Police Department was the only one of seven agencies contacted by The Times not to dispute the Border Patrol's claims.

"We have an ongoing problem with day workers congregating in specific areas around town," said Lt. Mark Wrisley. "We pass that information to the Border Patrol all the time."

Escondido: You set a good example. Hooray for you!

The sweeps raised protests among politicians, church leaders and the Mexican government because they extended well beyond the border and caused fear in immigrant neighborhoods, even among people in the U.S. legally.

Yes, and we all know the Mexican government dictates our immigration policies, and also dictates their enforcement. One phone calls and the cops go away. "Extended well beyond the border" is phrase designed to confuse the public into believing that interior enforcement is not allowed. See what happens when you have two reporteers who hate this country write an article? If someone is here legally, what do they have to be afraid of? As for the illegals: they should fear "la migra," and such fear should be a enough to make them go home voluntarily.

So I conclude with this declaration:

1. Death to the LA Times for aiding and abetting the enemies of this country;

2. Death to the ACLU. I hope you all rot in hell;

3. Death to the police departments who do not enforce our immigration laws. You are a disgrace;

4. Death to Joe Baca. Treason is punishable by death.

5. Death to the DHS, who directed its agents away from the criminals. Y'all should be strung up by your toenails and have legal residents of this country throw rotten food at you before being led to the firing squad.

Be sure to write your congressmen, your police chiefs, the ACLU and the editor of the Los Angeles Dog Trainer calling for thier heads. And when a judge grants legal status to criminals represented by the ACLU, call for his head too.

Heather says:

A lot of kids who were born here are getting swept up in gang culture. Out-of-wedlock births and drop-out rates among Hispanics have passed those of Blacks. The lesson I draw from this is not only the crucial need to start enforcing laws against illegal gangbangers but our current open-borders policy is folly. Until we persuade immigrants to go up the social ladder, as so many have, a significant portion of second, third and fourth-generation kids are going down. This is going to impose social costs in the long run that will dwarf the costs of illegal immigration.

Heather Mac Donald testified April 13, 2005, to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims:

Sanctuary laws are a serious impediment to stemming gang violence and other crime. Moreover, they are a perfect symbol of this country’s topsy-turvy stance towards illegal immigration.

Sanctuary laws, present in such cities as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston, and San Francisco, generally forbid local police officers from inquiring into a suspect’s immigration status or reporting it to federal authorities. Such laws place a higher priority on protecting illegal aliens from deportation than on protecting legal immigrants and citizens from assault, rape, arson, and other crimes.

Let’s say a Los Angeles police officer sees a member of Mara Salvatrucha hanging out at Hollywood and Vine. The gang member has previously been deported for aggravated assault; his mere presence back in the country following deportation is a federal felony. Under the prevailing understanding of Los Angeles’s sanctuary law (special order 40), if that officer merely inquires into the gangbanger’s immigration status, the officer will face departmental punishment.

-- The L.A. County Sheriff reported in 2000 that 23% of inmates in county jails were deportable, according to the New York Times.

--The leadership of the Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.

-- In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide in the first half of 2004 (which totaled 1,200 to 1,500) targeted illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) were for illegal aliens.

Heather published an essay called "The Immigrant Gang Plague."

Hispanic youths, whether recent arrivals or birthright American citizens, are developing an underclass culture. (By “Hispanic” here, I mean the population originating in Latin America—above all, in Mexico—as distinct from America’s much smaller Puerto Rican and Dominican communities of Caribbean descent, which have themselves long shown elevated crime and welfare rates.) Hispanic school dropout rates and teen birthrates are now the highest in the nation. Gang crime is exploding nationally—rising 50 percent from 1999 to 2002—driven by the march of Hispanic immigration east and north across the country. Most worrisome, underclass indicators like crime and single parenthood do not improve over successive generations of Hispanics—they worsen.

Debate has recently heated up over whether Mexican immigration—unique in its scale and in other important ways—will defeat the American tradition of assimilation. The rise of underclass behavior among the progeny of Mexicans and other Central Americans must be part of that debate. There may be assimilation going on, but a significant portion of it is assimilation downward to the worst elements of American life. To be sure, most Hispanics are hardworking, law-abiding residents; they have reclaimed squalid neighborhoods in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere. Among the dozens of Hispanic youths I interviewed, several expressed gratitude for the United States, a sentiment that would be hard to find among the ordinary run of teenagers. But given the magnitude of present immigration levels, if only a portion of those from south of the border goes bad, the costs to society will be enormous.

James Edwards says that immigrants (legal and illegal, people born overseas) make up 11% of our population but 30% of prisoners. He talks a lot about illegal aliens who gang rape, citing specific instances from around the country.

"Legal immigrations feeds illegal immigration. They are two sides of the same coin. When you have high legal immigration, you have high illegal immigration. The reverse is true. Mass immigration leads to an entitlement mentality so that relatives [of those who've immigrated to America feel entitled to come here]."

Glynn Custred castigizes Catholic, Protestant and Jewish "churches" who provide sanctuary to illegal aliens.

Ira Mehlman (from FAIR - Federation for American Immigration Reform) moderates a panel on political considerations (CA Assemblyman Ray Haynes, John Eastman from Chapman Law School, Mike Hethmon (from FAIR), CA Senator William Morrow and former congressman Brian Bilbray).

Ira: Immigration is often referred to as controversial. Few issues are less controversial, yet we have a political system that is incalcitrant.

Ray Haynes says that half of the cost of illegal immigration is borne by California. He wants to start California Border Police and a petition is circulated to put this initiative on the ballot. Everyone I see in the room signs it.

Haynes notes that Corona gangs often target illegal aliens for theft and other crimes because they know that illegals are unlikely to report a crime. "Employers who abuse [illegals] know that they won't report them."

John Eastman is dynamic. "Illegal immigration creates an underclass who cannot claim constutional rights.

"There are memos from the IRS instructing [illegals on how to file a tax return with a fake social security number]."

Eastman says his Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence is fighting to restore Proposition 187. "If you want to help, go to Claremont.org [and donate]. For obvious reasons, the website is not touting this litigation..."

Eastman says we have to get rid of the doctrine that if you are born here, you automatically become a citizen.

Brian Bilbray says: "When I was a lifeguard in 1970, I rescued illegal aliens and recovered their bodies. I grew up in a neighborhood that was overrun by illegals. I remember one day when my wife said, 'Honey, there's someone in the backyard.' There were 23 illegals in the backyard."

"I started off as the mayor of a city overrun by illegal aliens."

"First illegal aliens in this country were slaves (1808)."

"There are 3,000 dead Americans [on 9/11] because Virginia didn't think it was a big deal to give nine illegal aliens drivers licenses."

"Every president who owns slaves, except for George Washington, was a Democrat. Abraham Lincoln happened to be a Republican.

"Republicans worry that there's a whole ethnic group that won't vote for them unless they pander."

Lunch. The woman next to me says she saw Heather Mac Donald "on line."

Heather was on the internet?

Cathy Seipp explains that people from the East Coast say "on line" to mean what West Coasters describe as "in line."

Congressman Tom Tancredo gets a standing ovation before he speaks. He says Mexico got $18 billion last year from its nationals overseas, exceeding the income the country got from oil, foreign investment, and all other sources. "We should reduce foreign aid to any country [by the amount its nationals send back to it]."

He says we should put the National Guard on the Mexican border.

"They [American political elites] know we're winning the battle, so now they're thinking how do we massage this thing. Seventy five percent of Americans agree with us. What can we do to mollify the base but not stop the invasion.

"Wells Fargo Bank is a prime example of why we've got a problem. They were responsible for getting the rules changed in the Patriot Act that had required banks to know who the people were who were opening an account. Valid IDs. Wells Fargo wanted to open accounts with millions of illegal immigrants."

Tancredo criticizes amnesty programs with fancy names such as "regularization" and "earned legalization."

"You should never do anything in public policy that rewards people for breaking the law."

Tancredo says the enemy is multiculturalism. He asked a highschool class if they believed America was the greatest country in the world. Maybe ten percent raised their hands. The congressman says we haven't taught our kids to be proud of America and why.

"The enemy knows who they are but we don't know who we are.

"Our war is not with terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic used by people with whom you are at war."

President Bush in his last State of the Union says we are at war with extremists. "No. We are at war with Islamo-fascists."

Tancredo says the Bishop Gomez of Denver told him: "Congressman, I don't know why you are so upset about immigration. Most Mexicans who come here don't want to be Americans."

A Mexican official (Juan Hernandez, who was in charge of the ministry for Mexicans living in the US) told him: "Congressman, it's not two countries. It's a region."

“Mexico’s Illegal-Alien ID Card: Should It Be Valid in the United States?”

A Panel Discussion at Nixoncenter.org

June 12, 2003
The Nixon Center, Washington, DC

Speakers in a recent panel discussion co-sponsored by the Nixon Center and the Center for Immigration Studies expressed considerable concern about the use of Mexico’s “matricula consular” card by illegal immigrants. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO), Marti Dinerstein, president of Immigration Matters and fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, and Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, argued that the cards undermine U.S. national security, the American economy, and U.S. citizenship and sovereignty. Mark Krikorian moderated the discussion.

The Matricula Card: Mexico’s Answer to Heightened Border Security

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, amnesty to illegal immigrants abruptly ended, as U.S. borders became an acute security concern. According to Ms. Dinerstein, Mexico adapted to this change in U.S. border security by crafting a new migration policy centering on the use of the matricula card, which she described as a vehicle to achieve at least quasi-legal status for its undocumented population in the U.S.

Dinerstein said that Mexico had to include security features on the card and enhance the authentication process in order for the matricula to be accepted in the United States. She added that recently, Mexico made the card bilingual, included a local U.S. address, and added anti-counterfeiting technology, all of which have increased the reliability of the card. Still, she argued, though these new safeguards certainly help, the matricula still falls short of being a secure identity document.

Dinerstein explained that breeder documents (documents used to obtain matricula cards) are not being accurately crosschecked and corroborated with records in Mexico. Moreover, she said, same day issuance, often from remote locations with no sophisticated communications equipment, creates security weaknesses in the authentication process.

Ms. Dinerstein suggested that these security weaknesses have led to the growth of matricula card fraud, such as a case in Denver in which the INS picked up a man carrying three matricula cards bearing his photograph but showing three separate names. In her view, the Mexican government must invest tens of millions of dollars in order to secure the authentication process. Mexico says that it is building a databases system that will corroborate breeder documents, but is unable to estimate when that system will be operational. In the meantime, she said, Mexican consulates continue to issue unsecured matricula cards to illegal Mexican immigrants.

According to Dinerstein, Mexico continues to claim that the matricula is a secure identification document, and has initiated a grassroots lobbying campaign to win acceptance at the local level in the United States. “They do not in any way try to keep this a secret,” she said. “In fact, in a recent trip to Washington, Mexico’s foreign minister himself confirmed that this was their strategy. Mexico’s lobbying has born fruit. As of December 30, 2002, an official Mexican document announced that 74 banks accepted the matricula, as did 13 states to obtain a driver’s license, and more than 800 law enforcement agencies.”

More broadly, Dinerstein asserted, the matricula is transforming the lives of illegal immigrants, making it far easier for them to remain in the United States and continue to send a large portion of their earnings back home. She reported that remittances to Mexico totaled $10 billion in 2002, and has become an essential part of Mexico’s economy.

While Mexico has stated that the matricula does not change the immigration status of the immigrant, Ms. Dinerstein warned that it comes close to achieving the functional equivalent. In localities where the matricula is accepted, she said, it has reduced the chances that an illegal Mexican immigrant will be arrested, jailed or deported. Ms. Dinerstein emphasized the fact that Mexico does not confer those privileges, but rather local governments.

Ms. Dinerstein concluded that local police and communities have become more willing to accept the matricula because they believe that some identification is better than none. However, because arrests are very rarely made for minor incidents, no background checks are run and no criminal databases are checked. As a result, she stated, “The matricula has become a shield that hides any past criminal activity.”

Attack on U.S. Citizenship and Sovereignty

Rep. Tancredo expressed concern that the matricula allows illegal immigrants to obtain almost all of the rights bestowed upon a U.S. citizen, including, in some states, a driver’s license, the ability to vote in local elections, access to social services and public housing, and state funding for college. With these services available to illegal immigrants, Rep. Tancredo asked what makes citizenship distinct from illegal status. In his view, the matricula card is a tactic to kill the concept of U.S. citizenship.

Rep. Tancredo noted that the issuance of identification cards by foreign consulates is not a specifically Mexican policy. In fact, he said, the United States has issued similar cards in the past to citizens that had lost their identification papers while abroad. However, he pointed out that these cards have never been used to the extent that the Mexican government is using them now.

Rep. Tancredo explained Mexico’s policy by referencing a discussion he had with Juan Hernandez, head of the government ministry for Mexicans living in the United States. In his discussion with Minister Hernandez, Rep. Tancredo was told that the ministry’s purpose was to maintain and increase the flow of people from Mexico into the United States while preserving the cultural and social identity of Mexican emigrants. Rep. Tancredo highlighted the Mexican government’s benefit in sending illegal immigrants to the United States by pointing out that 20 to 30 percent of Mexico’s GDP comes from remittances from Mexicans abroad.

Rep. Tancredo emphasized the inconsistency within the U.S. government over the use of the matricula card. For example, he said, the U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua sent a memo to the State Department asking for advice on how to help the Nicaraguan government develop its own matricula card. At the same time, a Homeland Security Department position paper argues that the federal government should not accept the matricula card due to its many inherent problems and security risks.

The Broader Assault

Mark Krikorian concurred with Rep. Tancredo that the matricula is part of the broader attack on the concept of citizenship. In effect, he said, it is a challenge by the Mexican government to American sovereignty. “What we’re seeing is actually a quite conscious effort to establish a condominium, a kind off joint sovereignty, over a large part of the United States population shared by the United States government and the Mexican government.”

Krikorian warned that this effort is not confined to immigration policy. For instance, he said, the Labor Department is now funding a program to offer safety training to illegal aliens at Mexican consulates.

Finally, Krikorian stressed that Mexico thinks of itself as the vanguard in this fight for matricula acceptance and is also pushing for wider U.S. acceptance of matricula cards from other countries. He contended that this trend will not stop in Central and South America, and may even broaden to countries form which terrorists are known to come.

This program brief was prepared by Nixon Center intern Wylie Clark.

Panel on economic impact is moderated by Michael Finch.

Economist Dr. William Hawkins says that 51% of new workers in the U.S. are foreign born (who make up 14% of the American work force).

I spot such media as Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, KABC TV, KFI radio.

1:25pm. First black person enters the room.

Congressman Mark Wyland says the number one issue for his constituents is illegal aliens.

Minuteman Jim Gilchrist's intensity reminds me of the George C. Scott character in Dr. Strangelove:

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Gilchrist says there are 18,000 gang members in the US from El Salvador. He says there are 30 million illegals in the US and they cost the US $400 billion.

Brenda Gazzar writes:

Keynote Speaker Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who has flirted with the idea of running for president, said he believes that the nation is winning the war on illegal immigration.

"We have to be aware that this war on the border was started inside this country by the same radicals who are sabotaging the war in Iraq," he said. "They are communists. They are Anti-American."

He called two recent events "seismic shifts" in the immigration debate, the passage of Prop. 200 in Arizona, which denies social service benefits and the ability to vote to illegal immigrants, and the the creation of the Minuteman Project, a civilian border watch group that called attention to the flow of illegal immigration.

Outside the event, about 20 protesters from the "La Tierra es de Todos" coalition, or the Land is for Everyone, chanted, "Minutemen, KKK, Nazi scum, go away."

National Security Implications Of Illegal Immigration

Mark Krikorian moderates the panel discussion (Frank Gaffney, Kris Kobach, Janice Kephart, and Erin Anderson).

Erin Anderson, the final panel speaker (a tall bonde lady around 50), stole the show. Her family owns land next to the Arizona/Mexico border. She's been a U.S. House and Senate staffer. She worked for Barry Goldwater.

Erin begins with a reference to this Page One LAT story on Douglas, Arizona (opposite the Mexican city Agua Prieta).

It got my blood boiling. The main person interviewed in the article was mayor [Ray] Borane.

Mayor Borane is better known in Cochise County as "Cocaine Borane." His brother Joe Borane was the justice of the peace before he went to jail. The initial charges were money laundering and drug smuggling. He served time for lesser charges. The Boranes are well known in Cochise County. They do very well. If they want to make you disappear, you will.

In 1990, there was a tunnel discovered in Douglas [connected to] Agua Prieta. We had to enlist the United States military to help us locate that tunnel. It took us over a month. The Boranes owned the land above which that tunnel was built. Fortuituously for them, they managed to transfer title...

The tunnel was a major architectural [feat].

The former mayor Agua Prieta (Vincent Teran Uribe aka Vicente Terán Uribe) is well to do also. He's gone on to higher office. He reported in our media that the number one entry point for drugs from Mexico into the U.S. was from his town. The DEA listed him as one of the top twenty narcotics traffickers in Mexico. It helped him acquire votes. He was more popular in Agua Prieta and the Mexican state of Sonora... That's how Mexico operates.

I got involved in illegal immigration directly as a result of an act of war -- 9/11. I was in the parking lot of the Pentagon and I unhappily watched several hundred of our colleagues burn to death.

The man (Hani Hanjour) who put the plane into the Pentagon came from the Al Qaeda cell in Tucson, Arizona.

There are three Islamic centers in Tucson, Arizona. The roommate of Hani Hanjour was involved in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

In the first World Trade Center bombing, two of the men involved came from Tucson, Arizona.

Osama Bin Laden purchased his aircraft out of Tucson, Arizona. There's a major airforce base there. We mothball airplanes there. We also guillotine them and some of them we sell to the highest bidder, even Muslims.

Documents and analysis by terrorism investigators suggest that Tucson was one of the first points of contact in the United States for the jihadist group that evolved into al Qaeda. Two group members who preceded Hanjour later became al Qaeda leaders, according to authorities. The city's principal mosque, the Islamic Center of Tucson, held "basically the first cell of al Qaeda in the United States; that is where it all started," said Rita Katz, a Washington-based terrorism expert.

Imams at the three major Islamic centers (Tucson, New York, Pakhistan) were knocked off in the 1980s and replaced by Osama Bin Laden's men.

Douglas, Arizona, averages over 3,000 illegal aliens coming across the border every day. Border farms average three phone calls per day to Border Patrol [about illegal aliens coming through].

Some of us have had to become our own 911. When you have an incident, all of us have put together a radio system so that if you get into trouble, you can notify the next rancher.

Nothing can be more frightening than a woman calling on one of these radios saying, 'They're coming through the door and I'm alone.'

At one time or another, all of us in Cochise County have been ambushed by illegal aliens. It's gotten to the point where you have to carry three items with you at all times -- a cell phone, a two-way radio, and a weapon. You need a weapon to get from the kitchen door to the barn door.

For children going to school, it's the same thing. A mother taking her daughter to school was ambushed by illegal aliens who took their vehicle. As a result of that incident, the Cochise County Sheriff arranged for deputies to escort school buses.

Mothers will stay at the bus stop until the bus comes and they will carry a gun.

Susy Buchanan writes on the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report:

...McInnish introduced Erin Anderson, a self-professed "illegal immigration expert," a regular on the "Russ and Dee Show," and one scary speaker.

Anderson said she grew up near the Mexican border in Cochise Country, Ariz., where her ranching family settled in the late 1880s. Now, she splits her time between the family spread and Washington, D.C., where she works as an anti-immigration lobbyist.

Like Moore, she is a popular speaker on the far-right-wing conference circuit. Anderson is scheduled to appear in early September 2005 at the National Federation of Republican Assemblies' "Turn up the Heat on the Left!" national convention in Scottsdale, Ariz., and is booked to appear later that month back in Birmingham before the Mid Alabama Republican Club.

A professional alarmist with a baby-doll voice, Anderson fires up audiences with wild claims about Mexican immigrants, portraying them as disease-ridden, child-molesting "invaders" bearing down on an unsuspecting and hapless America. Transcripts of her speeches are regularly posted to widespread acclaim on white supremacist and neo-Nazi Web sites like the Vanguard News Network.

Anderson opened her presentation at the Alabama Tea Party with images of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in flames. She then told the startled crowd that 2,000 to 3,000 illegal aliens tromp through her family's valley every night, claiming that "children trying to go to school risk being ambushed by illegal aliens. Every one of us has been ambushed at one time or another."

That certainly wasn't the end of it.

Anderson said there are schools in Latin America where Middle Eastern terrorists are training to pass as Mexicans once they infiltrate America. She said pedophiles from Mexico are flocking to the United States in droves to escape death at the hands of Mexican law enforcement.

She spoke of the deadly diseases illegal immigrants supposedly bring to America in their blood: west Nile virus, hepatitis B and C, tuberculosis. She said illegals have spawned an outbreak of leprosy near Boston, and have tainted the blood supplies in major metropolitan areas such as Houston, Miami and Los Angeles with chagas, a disease found mainly in Latin America that she claimed kills more people than AIDS and has no cure. (The truth is that chagas is only occasionally fatal).

Of all the stories Anderson told about the consequences of illegal immigration that day, it was the one about the Mara Salvatrucha that was the most chilling. Andersen said "La Mara," a violent, international gang of El Salvadoran nationals and immigrants formed in the late '80s, has left its U.S. base of Los Angeles and can now be found near large, well-established illegal alien communities. She dwelled in some detail on how La Mara likes to disembowel, dismember and scalp people.

"And yes," she told her audience to gasps, "they are here in Alabama."

Then Anderson held up her "proof" — a photograph clipped from a Birmingham newspaper story last fall about graffiti. The picture showed a building with "sureños" (Spanish for "southerners") painted on it. She did not explain how that piece of graffiti revealed the presence of the disembowelers.

For her final act, Anderson hauled out yet another piece of evidence, this one designed to prove that scary Muslim foreigners are invading the United States via our southern borders. A Muslim prayer rug, she told her audience as she displayed a shiny green rug, had been found near her family's Arizona ranch prior to 9/11.

Well, it wasn't actually the rug she was holding, she conceded. But it was "similar."

Flashbulbs popped. Frightened "oohs" and "ahhs" filled the room. This was one group of Alabamians who had been thoroughly warned.

Mark Krikorian: "We can't just stick it to the Arabs and think we'll be ok."

Cathy Seipp: "Much as we'd like to."

Krikorian: "We can't just screw Arabs..."

Half the audience applauds for constructing a fence separating the US from Mexico.

Doug McIntyre Wrap-Up Speech

The KABC talkshow host is in his forties and has white hair.

The two-party system has collapsed. The Republican party is useless. This is a populist movement.

The UN is incompetent. They can barely get their hookers to the hotel room. The General Assembly looks like the Grammy Awards.

Free trade is immoral. It's not what happened in America... We encouraged business...to have an eye towards civic responsibility.

I don't believe America is just a market. It is a nation with laws...a culture with inherent values that are different from any other country.

We're raising a generation of kids who don't value manual labor. They don't do it because the Mexicans do it for them. We're turning into veal.

KNBC has live coverage of Mexican Independance Day. What other country televises another country's independence day? We should put salt around the city limits and change the name of LA to Margaritaville.

They say they've got aerial drones up taking pictures. It's like a rafting trip where they take a picture when you make the turn. They've got photographs of you sneaking into the country that you can buy at a kiosk.

I think the multi-nationals [corporations] look at borders, language, history, culture as an impediment to the transfer of goods and services.

Before we sign our national sovereignty away, we should have a national debate.

We can't thank Lou Dobbs enough.

The CNN anchor writes August 28:

In the United States, an obscene alliance of corporate supremacists, desperate labor unions, certain ethnocentric Latino activist organizations and a majority of our elected officials in Washington works diligently to keep our borders open, wages suppressed and the American people all but helpless to resist the crushing financial and economic burden created by the millions of illegal aliens who crash our borders each year.

They work just as hard to deny the truth to the American public. That's why almost every evening on my CNN broadcast we report on this country's "Broken Borders." The truth is that U.S. immigration policy is a tragic joke at the expense of hard-working middle-class Americans.

What has been the response of the Bush administration? It proposed a guest-worker program giving legal status to millions of illegal aliens. But national opinion polls reveal an overwhelming majority of Americans are contemptuous of such cynical proposals. The latest Zogby poll shows only 35 percent of those surveyed support the president's approach. The American people want our borders secure, want our immigration laws enforced and want those who hire illegal aliens both punished and held liable for the economic and social costs of breaking our laws.

Doug Macintyre continues:

The political pendulum is swinging in our direction.

We're impervious to charges of racism. It's just a way of demagoguing the argument. We have to police ourselves. There are people who are anti-illegal-immigration are racist.

Go forth and preach the gospel and keep the heat on these people because they are weasels.