Border Patrol Ordered to Not Capture Illegals In Order to Downplay Minutemen Success

Our Federal government has long been shirking its duty to protect our borders. As a result, the Minutemen volunteers came to the border and for all practical purposes stopped illegal border crossing in the area they guarded. Now that the Minutemen have proven their effectiveness, the government is in a bind. The people of this nation are demanding increased border security, but the government doesn't want to comply. Thus, they came up with the following scheme, as reported by the Washington Times:

U.S. Border Patrol agents have been ordered not to arrest illegal aliens along the section of the Arizona border where protesters patrolled last month because an increase in apprehensions there would prove the effectiveness of Minuteman volunteers...

Over a dozen agents reported this info the Washington Times. Here are two quotes from them:

The apprehensions were not to increase after the Minuteman volunteers left. It was as simple as that."

...

supervisors "were clear in their intention" to keep new arrests to an "absolute minimum" to offset the effect of the Minuteman vigil, adding that patrols along the border have been severely limited.

It is obvious that our Federal government, under the leadership of President Bush, is unwilling to close our borders and will even resort to sabotaging our national security just to discredit the Minutemen Project and lull our nation into a false sense of security.

According the Washington Times:

Several field agents credited the volunteers with cutting the flow of illegal aliens in the targeted Naco area, saying the number of apprehended illegals dropped from an average of 500 a day to less than 15 a day.

...

Area residents, in a half-page ad in the Sunday edition of the Sierra Vista Herald, told the volunteers: "Thanks for doing what our government won't -- close the border to illegal aliens. It was the quietest month we've had in many years ... You made us feel safe because the border was closed."

Who will you believe once this gets picked up by most of the press and the government starts trying to cover this up? On one hand you have local border patrol agents, residents of border cities, the governor of CA and the chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus all praising the success of the Minutemen Project and demanding that we secure our borders. On the other hand, you will soon see a flurry of middle and upper level Border Patrol bureaucrats that are dependent upon the goodwill of the Bush administration all protesting that they would never hinder the efforts of the field agents and swearing that our borders are already pretty secure.

Hats off to The Washington Times, The John and Ken Show, The Immigration Blog and The Blogonomicon for all reporting this issue.