SOF was in Yuma Arizona on the Marine Corps Air base and in San Diego when some of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history, including 500,000 demonstrators in Los Angeles and Chicago, erupted.
"In my opinion, the illegal immigrants stream through the Marine bases and jeopardize the security here. Some could die accidentally when they wander onto the shooting ranges during live fi re exersizes or simply from the horrible heat and no water," a Marine Sergeant told us as we gazed over the vast barren desert to the Mexican border in April.
Marines Loose Over Six Months Training in One Year
Marines lost over 1,100 hours of training time in 2004 because illegal immigrants wandered onto a bombing test range in Arizona Col James J. Cooney, the base's commanding offi cer told the Boston Globe.
‘'That's equivalent to almost 46 days of training. We're getting overrun here," he said in an interview. ‘'Any moment we take away from a Marine's experience base could cost him his life in combat."
Marines intercepted more than 1,500 undocumented immigrants on the training range in 2004, and more than 1,100 the fi rst three months of 2005.
The Marines told us that they worry about the safety of the illegal aliens. Col. Clooney told the Globe ‘'We just don't want them to come here, because we're fi ring lasers, we're shooting machine guns, we're shooting 209–millimeter cannons, and we're dropping practice bombs, and we don't want to hurt anyone."
Illegal Trespassers Could Cost Life Saving Training Time
‘'My overall concern is that we'd have an unfortunate incident out there where we'd inadvertently harm an illegal entrant that we did not spot or see, and that in turn would cause a moratorium on training until we sorted out what exactly happened," Cooney told the paper.
The street protests became front page news in all the local journals and a major topic of conversation for the locals.
Arizona and California have been hit hard by the illegal immigration problem.
The fi nancing for the border offi cials, jails, other law enforcement and health care triggered a fi nancial crisis for the border counties, USA Today reports.
Federal reimbursement, including an increase of federal detention cells from 18,000 to 20,000 doesn't even begin to pay the cost to the states.
Arizona's four border counties asked the federal government for $23.2 million last year to cover the cost of jailing thousands of illegal immigrants. They were reimbursed $731,000.
State offi cials under enormous pressure from their constituency had to act while politicians were wringing their hands over the last few years as illegal immigrants fl ooded their states. The governors of California and Arizona declared emergencies and ordered more National Guardsmen to patrol the border.
Congress did approve a fence for San Diego County in 1996. San Diego residents told us that they thought that the fence had done some good, but so many Mexicans had already streamed in that they didn't notice too much difference.
Although the fence did reduce the traffi cking of migrants and drugs, the smuggling and migrating simply shifted to Texas and other border states. How surprising.
In San Diego in 2005 126,910 illegal immigrants were apprehended in this sector, according to the border patrol, compared with a peak of 629,650 in 1986, according to USA Today.
Still, San Diego County, California spends $50 million a year to arrest, jail, prosecute and defend illegal immigrants, and is reimbursed about $2 million, Supervisor Greg Cox, president of the Border Counties Coalition told USA Today. That is a $48 million dollar hit that takes funds from libraries, parks and public safety.
Border Patrol agents have doubled to over 600 in the last few years. Border Patrol stations are prevalent on the highway from San Diego to Yuma and the surrounding area.
But the illegal immigrants keep on streaming through the vast unmanned desert border.
The opinions expressed above do not necessarily represent the views of Soldier of Fortune.