BORDER CHAOS: ARIZONA IS WEAK LINK IN STOPPING SMUGGLING

Many people don't remember the lawlessness on the border in San Ysidro,
Otay Mesa and the Tijuana River Valley about a decade ago.

Every night, the understaffed and outnumbered Border Patrol engaged in a
losing battle of cat-and-mouse with thousands of illegal immigrants being
led by ruthless smugglers. Police fought firefights with gangs of bandits
in canyons and dense underbrush. Illegal immigrants were robbed and
sometimes killed by thieves who preyed upon them.

San Ysidro residents locked themselves in at night as smugglers and
immigrants traipsed through their yards. Caches of drugs were carried
across the border by smugglers and the people they were leading. Hundreds
of illegal immigrants lingered in the median strip of Interstate 5 waiting
for rides northward. Immigrants running across freeways were hit and killed
by motorists.

Then came Operation Gatekeeper, and the chaos stopped. Those bad old days
are almost forgotten.

Unless, that is, you live in or around the Tohono O'odham Indian
Reservation in southern Arizona, where the smuggling of immigrants and
drugs has created chaos reminiscent - and perhaps worse - than San Ysidro
of the late 1980s. Even Border Patrol agents have been fired upon in
southern Arizona, and a carload of border-crossers was recently shot up,
wounding eight people. According to a story Sunday in the Union-Tribune by
Copley News Service reporter Jerry Kammer, many Border Patrol agents and
officials believe that members of the Mexican army, working for smugglers,
are behind the shootings and much of the mayhem at the border.

The worst of it, however, is that the Tohono Nation has been turned into a
war zone and the adjacent Organ Pipe National Monument is being irreparably
damaged. Burglaries, car wrecks, car thefts, armed smugglers and huge drug
busts mar the rural desert area that has become the busiest cross-border
smuggling route in North America.

Some critics of Operation Gatekeeper say that the Border Patrol enforcement
operation is responsible for moving the chaos eastward from San Diego, and
has forced illegal immigrants to risk traveling through the desert, where
some die in the extreme heat. The truth is, however, that the border mayhem
existed before Operation Gatekeeper. The blame for the border mayhem and
deaths of illegal immigrants can only be borne by the smugglers themselves.

If Gatekeeper ceased, the chaos might simply move back to San Ysidro; it
certainly wouldn't disappear, not unless we opened our borders to all
immigrants and drug smugglers.

Instead of less Gatekeeper, we need more Gatekeeper. The Tohono Nation
desperately needs it. In these days when homeland security is the No. 1
topic in Washington, it's unbelievable that such a lawless situation is
allowed to exist on our borders. If smugglers can come and go with ease
through the Tohono Nation, then terrorists could, too. With all the money
we're throwing at security, the federal government can afford to extend
Gatekeeper eastward.