Hi Gang:
The disturbing news report (at http://www.examiner.com/x-5919-Norfolk-Crime-Examiner~y2009m8d20-Mexican-drug-cartels-now-recruiting-hit-men-from-US-military) is worthy not only of your attention but of our nation’s leaders as well.
This is why you need to not only read this news article and my commentary, but forward it to as many of your friends and especially as many of your elected officials as possible.
This article also illustrates why I believe that it is a mistake to insist that illegal aliens be allowed to serve in our military as a means of proving “loyalty to our nation” as some have suggested.
The current situation in Mexico in which more than 500 people are killed in Mexico in an average month is largely the result of the training that our government furnished “Los Zetas” elite members of Mexico’s federal police force and military, to enable them to combat the drug cartels. Many of these highly trained personnel then began working for the cartels as “enforcers” and have now taken to supplanting the cartels through a level of brutality that up until now has been associated with terrorists.
Now a similar pattern appears to be emerging as military recruiters attempt to meet quotas in recruiting new enlistees for the various armed forces in the United States.
This disturbing development is not without precedent in the United States. In the late 1970’s as a new special agent of the INS, I was contacted by members of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in a particularly tough police precinct, the 71st Precinct. This precinct, not unlike many others in New York, the city of great diversity, had a particularly difficult situation. A relatively large number of criminal aliens from Jamaica, Trinidad and Panama had set up shop in that neighborhood. Their specialty was drug trafficking and related crimes, often involving firearms and violence. Several streets in particular became the “hub” for the drug trafficking activities. The street that seemed most involved was Union Street in which there were a large number of tenement buildings that had been abandoned and in some of these buildings, packs of dogs actually moved in and roamed throughout these vertical crime zones.
When the police would seek to arrest the drug dealers who were plying their trade openly, on the street, young kids, often no more than 12 years old, would act as “look-outs” continuously riding their bikes up and down the block and blowing whistles attached to chains around their necks when a cop car would appear. They would actually blow a different tune depending on whether or not the cop car was a marked car or an undercover vehicle.
One day I had lunch with the commander of the precinct, a gentleman by the name of Arthur Katz who held the rank of Police Captain. Joining us for lunch were a number of the detectives and the sergeant of the “Anti Crime Unit” Barney Conners, a street-wise cop with whom I worked for a number of years in an unofficial working relationship that presaged all of the various task forces that would be established in the years to come. When I think back to those days, it reminds me of the movie “The Untouchables” in which Kevin Costner played a famous federal agent, Elliot Ness and Sean Connery played the part of a Chicago cop who was assigned to work with Ness and his men. As Connery’s character became Costner’s (Ness’) mentor in the film, Barney and his men became my mentors.
During the lunch I was told about the drug trafficking activities on Union Street and in order to show me how extensive a problem they had, we decided that I would use my unmarked government car to drive the cops down the block, figuring that the “lookouts” would not recognize my car and not tip off the drug dealers.
Our ploy worked. You should have seen the shocked looks on the faces of the drug dealers when, to their horror they realized that my car contained a number of “New York’s Finest!”
The cops and I sprang from my car and we arrested a number of drug dealers that day. We seized narcotics and weapons and found that a number of the dealers we arrested had outstanding warrants for serious crimes.
Virtually every one we arrested had something in common other than the fact that they were all engaged in drug trafficking crimes- they were all criminal aliens- mostly from Jamaica.
In the weeks that followed I began working in close cooperation with the cops of that precinct with the blessings of my bosses.
During one of my meetings with the cops we found a new and worrisome trend. Banks were being robbed by individuals who, during the commission of the robberies, demonstrated strategies and discipline that would usually be associated with a military operation. These robbers were extremely violent and a number of these robberies resulted in people in the bank at the time of the robberies being shot.
When some of the robbers were captured they initially lied about many things including their names. (This is why anyone who is arrested in fingerprinted in order to determine the true identity of the person who was arrested.) They also lied about being citizens of the United States. In several instances the robbers were found to have military ID in their wallets. As it turned out, most of the robbers had joined the United States Marines. We contacted the office of Naval Intelligence (today that organization is known as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service- NCIS).
With their able assistance, it was determined that many of the robbers had enlisted in the Marine Corp and when they decided they had received enough training in weapons and tactics, they went AWOL and began staging a series of violent bank robberies. The investigation further determined that most of those bank robbers had used false identity documents in order to enlist in the United States Marines and, in a number of instances, recruiters were also implicated in providing the identity documents in an effort to meet their recruiting quotas.
Back then it took several years and the NYPD was able to identify most of the miscreants who enlisted in the Marines, falsifying their identities and immigration status. The severity of the problem was mitigated by the relatively small number of individuals we were dealing with back then.
Today, with some 230 American cities being identified as being infested by the extremely violent Mexican drug cartels with additional cities also being infested by other similarly violent gangs, the potential for extreme violence being perpetrated against our citizens and our law enforcement officials is obviously a serious threat and must be dealt with swiftly and decisively by our federal government.
It is now estimated that there are, already, more gang members in our country than sworn police officers.
The discussions about the creation of a massive amnesty program for millions of illegal aliens as we are hearing at the present is nothing short of alarming! I you add the number of alien gang members with the number of United States citizens who have been and continue to be recruited into gangs now, the numbers are truly staggering!
It is a virtual certainty that such an amnesty would provide gang members with even more opportunities to enlist in our military to receive the training that would enable them to do to the United States what Los Zetas is now doing to Mexico.
You might say that the “handwriting is on the wall” and in this case the handwriting is the gang graffiti that is used to mark off territory by gangs seeking to control their turf..
Furthermore, it is unconscionable that this issue, of gang violence, is never addressed by so-called “pro-immigrant” organizations. These folks know damned well that these threats are often used by the various ethnic gangs and that this is not limited to just Latino gangs but is used by every gang from every foreign country and ethnicity.
The outrage is that often lawful immigrants who arrive in our country expecting to live a life free of the violence and threats of violence that terrified them in their home countries quickly find that the same thugs who made their lives miserable back home have managed to come to the United States and continue to prey upon them and their families both in the United States and in their home countries as well.
This is certainly not the “American Dream” but does represent one hell of a nightmare!
Our nation must not only secure its borders against the illegal entry of illegal aliens, but must create an immigration system that has meaningful integrity if our nation is to effectively address the many challenges confronting our country and our citizens.
In less than two years each and every member of the House of Representatives is up for reelection. In less than two years more than one third of the members of the United States Senate will have to face their constituents. They need to be reminded that they work for us, We the People!
The large scale apathy demonstrated by citizens of this nation has emboldened elected representatives to all but ignore the needs of the average American citizen in a quest for massive campaign funds and the promises of votes to be ostensibly delivered by special interest groups. There is much that we cannot do but there is one thing that We the People absolutely must do- we must stop sitting on the sidelines!
The collective failure of We the People to get involved in make our concerns known to our politicians have nearly made the concerns of the great majority of the citizens of this nation all but irrelevant to the politicians.
I implore you to get involved!
If this situation concerns you or especially if it angers you, I ask you to call your Senators and Congressional “Representative. This is not only your right- it is your obligation! You need to politely but pointedly, demand to know what they are doing to protect our nation. You need to ask them how they are protecting you and your families. You can also forward this commentary to them.
All I ask is that you make it clear to our politicians that we are not as dumb as they hope we are!
We live in a perilous world and in a perilous era. The survival of our nation and the lives of our citizens hang in the balance
This is neither a Conservative issue, nor is it a Liberal issue- simply stated, this is most certainly an AMERICAN issue!
You are either part of the solution or you are a part of the problem!
Democracy is not a spectator sport!
Lead, follow or get out of the way!
-michael cutler-