Bordering on insanity: Bush Republicans and Clinton Democrats are united in supporting immigration policies giving thugs and terrorists easy access into America.

Rookie police officer Tony Zeppetella was making a routine traffic stop in Oceanside, California, on June 13th. According to court reports, Officer Zeppetella was walking back toward his patrol car when the driver of the vehicle he had stopped opened fire on him. The driver, Adrian George Camacho, reportedly then got out of the car and continued to shoot at the wounded officer. Camacho approached the downed policeman, pistol-whipped him, then executed Zeppetella with the officer's own handgun.

Officer Zeppetella, age 27, had served on the Oceanside Police Department just 13 months before being murdered. He had previously served six years in the U.S. Navy. He leaves behind a wife and a six-month-old son.

Adrian George Camacho, the accused murderer, is a Mexican national who has been repeatedly deported and has a long arrest and prison history. He was 16 when he was charged with attempted murder in a 1991 drive-by gang shooting. He was released from prison last year after serving time for drug offenses. After murdering Zeppetella, Camacho stole the officer's gun and patrol car and fled to the home of relatives in nearby Via Isidro. He was arrested at the home a few hours later and charged with heroin possession, in addition to first-degree murder.

A few months earlier in Las Vegas, Nevada, a similarly routine traffic stop also ended tragically. Rookie police officer Enrique Hernandez stopped Saul Morales-Garcia on the evening of December 12th. Morales-Garcia, a 24-year-old illegal alien from Mexico, was convicted in 1997 of auto burglary and was later deported to Mexico. However, he later returned illegally. After being stopped by Officer Hernandez, Morales-Garcia sped off in his vehicle. Losing control of his car, the fugitive crashed into a light pole and fled on foot into a nearby apartment. When Officer Hernandez pursued the suspect into the building, Morales-Garcia opened fire, shooting Hernandez six times. Officer Hernandez, age 24, survived the shooting, but Morales-Garcia was killed when he refused to surrender and aimed his weapon at members of the police SWAT Team.

Adrian Camacho and Saul Morales-Garcia are but two of the thousands of foreign violent felons who have entered the United States illegally and are contributing immensely to our ongoing crime crisis. According to a recent report in the San Diego Union Tribune, "nearly 10,000 criminal immigrants were returned to Mexico" from San Diego in 2002, including felons who had completed jail or prison sentences in other parts of California. Like Camacho and Morales-Garcia, many of these thugs have undoubtedly violated our still-porous borders and re-entered the U.S.

Following are a few other examples of the illegal immigrant crime waves resulting largely because we have neglected our borders:

* On December 19, 2002, a 42-year-old Queens woman and her boyfriend were walking in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park near Shea Stadium when a gang of Mexican illegals surrounded and severely beat them. The woman was dragged to a shanty, brutalized, sodomized, and repeatedly gang-raped for several hours. Her assailants told her that they would have to kill her since she could identify them. Undoubtedly, these miscreants would have carried out that threat if New York Police had not arrived to rescue her and arrest the assailants.

* On June 27, 2003, a U.S. Border Patrol agent was nearly run down by drug runners at the Naco port of entry along the Arizona-Mexico border. The agent fired repeatedly at the charging vehicle, which crossed back into Mexico. The van, recovered by Mexican authorities, was loaded with marijuana.

* On June 21, 2003, an alien-smuggling vehicle rolled over near Tucson, Arizona, killing a two-year-old girl from Chiapas, Mexico, and a 24-year-old man from Veracruz, Mexico. At least 20 other illegals were in the truck: Some were hospitalized; 10 were taken into custody; and some escaped.

* On May 13, 2003, 17 illegal aliens died from heat and suffocation locked inside a truck trailer near Victoria, Texas. A federal grand jury in Houston has indicted 14 people in connection with the smuggling ring and the deaths of the immigrants.

A recent report by Middle American News of Raleigh, North Carolina, noted that a study commissioned by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now part of the new Department of Homeland Security) "found as many as 5.45 million aliens illegally enter the country at border checkpoints by simply fooling INS inspectors with fake or doctored travel documents such as passports and visas." That number did not include the millions of illegal aliens who sneak into the U.S. undetected along the thousands of miles of unmanned border areas.

According to the Middle American News, which closely monitors immigration matters:

   The [INS] study said overworked
   U.S. personnel at border entry points
   are able to spend only a minute or two
   glancing at a passport, visa, or a border-crossing
   card as they grant admission
   to a foreigner. Random backup
   checks designed to test inspector's
   efficiency show a very low rate of
   success in spotting illegals.

      Computer background checks of
   foreigners admitted at border checkpoints
   found "several million" foreigners
   whose backgrounds should
   have triggered a denial of entry.

      More than 500 million foreign
   travelers enter the U.S. each year. The
   study found that 47 of
   every 5,614 travelers are
   erroneously allowed to
   enter, and that border
   personnel are able to stop
   only 9 to 16 percent of
   those ineligible for legal
   entry.

      The U.S. relies on just
   9,000 Border Patrol
   agents to protect a nation's
   estimated 4,000
   miles of borders. A recent
   study by the University of Texas
   found that nearly twice that many,
   16,000 agents, are needed to adequately
   patrol the southwest border
   alone. The Association of Chief Patrol
   Agents says the U.S. needs
   20,000 border agents.

While the situation on our southern border has been in a state of crisis for several decades, the status of our northern border is serious as well. Vast areas of our unpopulated and heavily forested border with Canada are wide open to any and all who care to cross. That is what the U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded when it audited the U.S. Forest Service recently.

"About 1,000 miles of national forest land bordering Canada and Mexico go virtually unpatrolled by the U.S. Forest Service, creating wide swaths for terrorists and criminals to enter the country undetected," reported the Associated Press in a May 1st article on the USDA audit.

The inspector general reported that the Forest Service administers large areas "that are potentially vulnerable to infiltration by terrorists, smugglers, and other criminal agents." The Forest Service supervises 460 miles of land along the 3,000-mile border between the continental U.S. and Canada, as well as 450 miles between Alaska and Canada, and 60 miles along the border with Mexico. How does the Forest Service patrol nearly 1,000 miles of border and monitor the nearly 200 million acres under its jurisdiction with only 620 officers? It doesn't. According to the audit, a "relatively small number" of Forest Service personnel patrol 520 miles of forest land along the borders. And the remaining 450 border miles? They aren't patrolled at all, the auditors said.

Because of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, American citizens are being subjected to increasingly intrusive, inconvenient, costly, and humiliating searches and controls. The new federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA) became, virtually overnight, one of the world's largest police agencies, with more than 58,000 officers. The White House and Congress seem to have no problem with TSA agents regularly subjecting millions of American citizens to intensive searches. But for some reason they balk at implementing measures to protect our borders and to search out and deport the illegal aliens in our midst.

Matricula Consular Card Deception

In fact, the president and the Congress seem united in a bipartisan effort to blast open the security breaches on our borders still wider, even as they clamp down ever tighter domestic controls on citizens.

Like Bill Clinton, George Bush favors granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens now residing in the United States. Like Bill Clinton, he also favors creating a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) that would eventually merge the U.S. with Mexico, Canada, and the other countries of the hemisphere, ultimately eliminating national borders altogether. The Bush White House is still going full tilt for the FTAA, but it has temporarily dropped the illegal alien amnesty issue due to public outcry after the 9-11 attacks and the requisite bows to national security concerns. *

The Bush administration, however, continues to wink at the Mexican government's blatant attempts to effect a piecemeal amnesty by other means. Mexican President Vicente Fox is issuing "matricula consular" identification cards that he insists should be officially recognized within the United States. Since the beginning of the year, the Fox government has launched an aggressive lobbying campaign within the U.S. to win acceptance of the matricula consular by banks, and state and municipal agencies.

The Mexican campaign has been very effective. According to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), "the matricula is now accepted by 800 local law enforcement agencies and 74 banks, as well as by 13 states for purposes of obtaining a driver's license."

"Not only does the matricula subvert U.S. immigration law," notes the CIS, "it is not even a secure identity document. Mexico is not authenticating the documents used to obtain the matricula against computerized data files in Mexico."A CIS backgrounder on the matricula consular notes that the Bush Treasury Department "has given its approval to banks to accept the matricula for opening bank accounts."

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) has taken the lead in exposing and opposing the matricula scheme. In a June 23rd appearance on MSNBC, Congressman Tancredo denounced the matricula as an "attempt by--on the part of the Mexican government to obtain what it could not get through the Congress of the United States. And that is amnesty for all of those Mexicans living here illegally." And, he pointed out, the scheme is not confined to Mexico. "Mexico started it," he said. "But now there are at least six other countries that are following suit. And there will be many more in a very short period of time."

From all appearances the Bush State Department, presided over by Secretary Colin Powell, is smiling benignly on this dagger pointed at the heart of American security. In a January 10th letter, Rep. Tancredo warned Secretary Powell that unless the State Department acted to discourage acceptance of the Mexican matricula, other governments would follow suit. That is now happening. On June 12th, Rep. Tan credo again wrote to Secretary Powell asking him to explain a State Department memo to our embassy in Managua that appears to approve a Nicaraguan I.D. document similar to the Mexican matricula.

"How can this memo from Managua (attached) be interpreted as anything but aiding and abetting attempts by foreign governments to provide their nationals living illegally in the U.S. with documentation that would ease their entrance into American society?" Rep. Tancredo asked, noting that "this is an issue of enormous significance that has massive implications for our nation."

The congressman pointed out in his letter that the State Department's actions are directly contrary to the administration's draft policy on the matter:

   In mid-May the Department of
   Homeland Security sent to the White
   House a Draft Policy Statement on
   the matricula consular cards. That
   Draft Policy Statement, which was
   the product of an interagency working
   group that included the State Department,
   expressly prohibits all federal
   agencies from accepting the
   cards or cooperating in their use by
   foreign nationals.

There are two very good reasons for opposing these identification cards, Rep. Tancredo observed. "First, our acceptance of the cards, or our cooperation in their manufacture or distribution, provides tacit approval and encouragement for increased illegal immigration into the United States," he noted. Persons residing here on legal visas have no need of the document; it will only serve those here in violation of our laws. "The second reason for rejecting these documents," Rep. Tancredo said, "is that the process for verification of identity of the individual obtaining the card is very questionable. The only identification document issued by a foreign government our government should accept is a valid passport."

"The State Department's current policy of ambiguity on this matter is interpreted as tacit approval by foreign governments," Mr. Tancredo's letter charged. "This will very likely have disastrous consequences for our nation. If the Administration has agreed to cooperate with this activity, the American people have a right to know. If it has not, please advise us of the steps being taken to halt it."

The congressman's office told THE NEW AMERICAN on July 1st that he had received no response from Secretary Powell's office to either the January or June letters.

While the Bush administration is providing sub rosa support for Mexico's matricula consular attack on our borders, radical Democrats are openly defending the program. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson are two of the matricula's outspoken advocates.

Following a meeting in Mexico City with President Vicente Fox, Gov. Richardson called for a U.S.-Mexican immigration accord and urged border states to recognize the matricula cards. Richardson, a former U.S. Representative and Bill Clinton's UN ambassador and energy secretary, pointed out that New Mexico was the first state to accept the cards. "I'd like it if other states did the same," he said.

The Mexican matricula consular card and its imitations from other countries constitute a serious attack on America's sovereignty and security. That public officials--federal, state, and local--charged with upholding and defending the Constitution and our laws can support this brazen assault is astounding. Constituents must hold them accountable, before our security, our liberty, and our political landscape are utterly decimated.

* For more information about the FTAA threat, go to www.thenewamerican.com/focus/ftaa/.