Originally posted at American Thinker. blog
For those who refuse to address the volatile border issue and do whatever is necessary to protect the citizens of the United States from invasion, there is nothing more annoying than a lucid person who does their job and asks logical questions that make legitimate points.
Once again, outspoken Arizona Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu wins the award for the most rational individual currently calling attention to President Obama’s ongoing refusal to adequately address the problem of lax border security.
Babeu, recently named Sheriff of the Year by the National Sheriff’s Association, is a sheriff in southern Arizona. This particular law enforcement official works every day on the “frontlines against illegal immigration, human traffickers, drug smugglers, and potential terrorists.”
Seeing as Paul Babeu’s command is the “number one pass through county nationwide for smuggling people and drugs,” he’s not one to mince words when it comes to the grave problem of illegals streaming over the border. In a letter written to three border city mayors earlier this year in response to their request for him to “tone down his comments on border security problems,” Sheriff Babeu responded by telling his three critics to “feel free to ‘drink’” the Obama administration’s “‘Kool-Aid’.”
Babeu reminded the mayors that, regardless of what a White House determined to push immigration reform says, “The threat from an unsecured border is real…241,000 illegals were apprehended last year by the border patrol and an additional 400,000 got away just in Arizona alone.” Babeu maintains those are “failing grades by anyone’s score card.”
In other words, President Obama’s troops-on-the-border policy can be likened to trying to stop termites from eating an old house by placing one brick in its wood structure or, better yet, building a three-mile levee to hold back a tsunami rushing toward 1,933 miles of coastline.
Sheriff Paul Babeu is fighting what he calls “The gravest national security risk that we face,” which he says “is right here with the unsecure border with Mexico.” At present, in response to the Obama administration’s recent “decision to extend the deployment of 1,200 U.S. National Guard troops along the U.S. border with Mexico until Sept. 30, which he calls ‘pandering,’” Sheriff Paul Babeu is speaking out.
The Sheriff feels “that those numbers ‘fall far short’ of what military power is needed to keep the country safe.” Moreover, why for only three months? Could it be that one year prior to the presidential election and with dipping poll numbers, warm bodies will be needed on the premises to pull levers?
Either way, for starters, to adequately boost security and assist Border Patrol agents, the Sheriff feels “6,000 troops should be deployed along the U.S.-Mexico border: 3,000 in Arizona and 1,000 in each of the three other Border States for a two-year period.”
One option would be to consider reassigning 6,000 of the 65,000 TSA agents the government presently employs. The President could recruit the burliest among them, train them, and send them south. The enthusiastic group could bring to the U.S.-Mexico border the same level of gusto with which they grope Granny and teach six-year-olds it’s okay to let strangers touch you sometimes.
In all seriousness, Babeu points out that presently “only 520 guardsmen are deployed in Arizona, a state with a 276-mile border with Mexico and a state that has, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the greatest influx of illegal aliens.” That equation works out to be 1.8 National Guardsmen per mile, which could be one of the reasons in 2010, “approximately 212,000 illegal aliens were seized in the Tucson sector of Arizona – or 47 percent of all illegal aliens taken into custody.”
The Sheriff emphasized his point by posing a valid question: “Why [are there] more troops at Korean border than U.S. border?” Citing “ 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea,” Clearly, Paul Babeu is perplexed as to why the South Koreans need 27,300 more soldiers’ worth of protection to “help defend it against North Korean aggression,” while back home Arizonans are being murdered at the hands of illegals sneaking over the border.
As U.S. troops continue to secure the Korean DMZ, it seems President Obama is somewhat oblivious to what Paul Babeu knows to be true: “Homeland Security starts at home.” Crying out for sanity, a frustrated Sheriff Babeu asked, “What are we doing?” and then responded to his own question.
As for Sheriff Babeu and his dedicated team of law enforcement agents, what they’re doing is this: “Standing up for America, standing up for the rule of law and not being shouted down by the president and his men trying to make like somehow we’re being un-American for enforcing the law and wanting a secure border.”
As for what the Obama administration is doing, the Sheriff said he thinks he has a pretty good idea: “President Barack Obama has made race the issue instead of fulfilling his job of protecting the American people by enforcing immigration laws.”
When it comes to border security, because Paul Babeu is a man who actually does his job he possesses the moral authority to suggest to men who don’t do their job what they could be doing better. Thus, Arizona’s Pinal County Sheriff “Border Hawk” Babeu, a general on the front line of an ever-growing war, took it upon himself to admonish Barack Obama by reminding him yet again that “It’s not about race, color or national origin. It’s about enforcing the law, Mr. President. That’s our job.”
