IMAGE: Pinal County Sheriffs and DHS in Arizona (Photo: Patrick Henningsen)
By Mark Anderson
21st Century Wire
WASHINGTON D.C.—When the U.S. House of Representatives on Sept. 25 took up pivotal legislation about homeland security, it became clear that Americans might need to rethink the border wall concept.
Why? According to Texas Republican Reps. Michael McCaul and Pete Sessions, among others, law enforcement authorities are finding tunnels—lots of tunnels—crossing from Mexico into the U.S. These tunnels vary in length, depth and sophistication.
During periodic Congressional coverage on Capitol Hill by this Stop the Presses News editor, McCaul recalled that, earlier in September, a tunnel 600 feet long was found, connecting Mexican territory with an abandoned Arizona restaurant. He also recalled that in 2010, a tunnel that reportedly went under the Rio Grande River was found near El Paso, Texas.
About 200 cross-border tunnels have been discovered since 1990, and that’s just the ones the government says it knows about, said McCaul, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee.
ANOTHER CARAVAN?
McCaul and Sessions addressed fellow House members about three weeks before reports surfaced that another “Caravan,” said to consist of 7,000 mainly Honduran refugees (some reports suggest this number has shrunk to approximately 3,500 this week), is apparently “marching” nearly 2,000 miles toward the Texas border—mainly “on foot”—a highly unrealistic prospect, given the distance (equal to walking from New York City to the Colorado border) and the hazards that could arise, ranging from wild animals, to the weather, to the dangers posed by human traffickers who exploit the “asylum-seekers” no matter regardless of their mode of travel, subjecting them to new dangers that replace the original dangers the caravanners say they escaped from in the first place in their home nations.
It’s also worth noting that the roughly 80% of people in the initial Caravan came from Honduras and are being organized by Chicago-based ardent left-wing Catholic NGO, Pueblo Sin Fronteras which received its funding from a group of progressive foundations led by George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, and others. More crucial, however, is Hillary Clinton’s own admitted personal role in meddling in Honduras’ democracy, via Washington’s backing of a disastrous coup d’etat during her time as Secretary of State. This has led many to question the uncanny timing of this larger-than-usual Caravan right before the 2018 US Midterm Elections.
TUNNELS—AND DRONES
In the House chamber, where this writer was the only reporter in attendance for the nearly hour-long border discussion, Rep. Sessions remarked: “Drugs, crime and gangs have been streaming in” through these invisible passageways, referring to the lengths that MS-13 Salvadoran gang members and drug cartel operatives will go to enter the U.S.
Sessions added: “No part of the U.S. is safe if the southern border is not effectively taken care of.”
Of the bipartisan bills under consideration pertaining to different aspects of border security, the Border Tunnel Task Force Act, H.R. 6740, is key. The bill passed the House Sept. 26 and was forwarded to the Senate, where it’s in committee.
Across the aisle, strong support for that and related legislation came from Democrat Cedric Richmond of Louisiana. He spoke eloquently on the House floor in support of Sessions and McCaul, exhibiting an unusually cooperative attitude, given the sharp partisan differences that had been further aggravated by the controversy over conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for the Supreme Court.
Richmond, echoing his Republican colleagues, stressed that not only marijuana, but also cocaine, heroin, people, and other contraband are being found in these tunnels—some of which have functional water and sewer systems.
Richmond, who noted that adding fence and wall sections may incentivize transnational gangs and cartels to dig even more tunnels, also has sponsored H.R.6620, a bill called the Protecting Critical Infrastructure Against Drones and Emerging Threats Act.
Thus, Congress is now confronting the specter of the drug cartels using drones, officially called “unmanned aerial systems,” to fly drugs and other contraband over the U.S. border—given the increasing availability and sophistication of drones…
Continue this article at The Truth Hound
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