A PERILOUS BORDER

The sad irony in the chaos of illegal drug running and immigration along
Arizona's southern border is that the fragile lands where border crossers
die by the hundreds are imperiled, too.

Nothing along the 372-mile border with Mexico is safe - not the plants, not
the people, not the wildlife and certainly not the delicate areas set aside
as desert parks.

When wave upon wave of people rush the border to find work, or when they
skulk along remote areas ferrying illegal drugs, they cause many more
problems than simply eluding law enforcement.

The Star's Mitch Tobin, in a two-day series called "Our Perilous Public
Lands," documented the damage to the environment caused by the thousands of
illegal border crossers.

It is truly a page out of the Old West. Arizona's border is where a park
ranger died when he was caught in a gunfight that originated in Mexico. And
where the number of dead illegal entrants approaches 150 - killed by the
heat of summer that routinely claims the foolishly brave.

Illegal entrants are believed responsible for the disappearance of the
endangered pygmy owl in Organ Pipe National Monument. They threaten the
endangered Pima pineapple cactus, trample the endangered Huachuca water
umbel at the Leslie Canyon Wildlife Refuge near Douglas. And they start
wildfires.

The wildlife refuge is so sensitive that the public is not allowed to
enter. Border crossers, though, trample, urinate and defecate there with
impunity.

And they think nothing of cutting their own roads through desert lands that
will take decades to heal.

Neither the border crossers, law enforcement personnel nor the recreational
users of the land dare consider themselves safe in this lawless climate.

These scenarios are very much like the complaints of the residents of
Douglas a few years back. When night settled on the town, scores of people
crossing the border illegally so frightened residents that they refused to
leave their homes. Ranchers took to policing their grazing lands when the
garbage left by the border crossers accumulated to unbearable levels.

We residents of the state have to ask ourselves if we have been forgotten
by the very government that created most of the problems. Surely our
elected representatives have had the dots connected for them. That is, they
must know that the policies enacted in Washington have a direct effect
right here in our deserts. They must understand that squeezing borders in
Texas and California does not eliminate the numbers of crossers, but
intensifies their numbers in our merciless deserts. And that shortchanging
the public lands personnel puts them in danger as well.

This newspaper has long called for a guest-worker program to lessen the
numbers of illegal crossers who defile the desert and drop dead in the
heat. It's an economic as well as a humane argument.

The solution can come only from Congress and the president. Yet neither
have shown any hurry to alleviate the border dangers. There is no political
return in acting as advocate for a porous border or illegal entrants.

As for drug runners, there should be no mercy for the kingpins who smuggle
drugs. That said, this country must come to terms with the insatiable
appetite for drugs that fuel the illegal crossings, make criminals of
public servants and increase crime rates on our streets. And it must
understand that if drugs cross easily, surely terrorism can, too.

As long as border crossers endanger themselves, law enforcement and the
land, Congress will have to find solutions to allow their legal and safe entry.