I have just returned from my trip Cochise County, Arizona sits roughly in the middle of the Mexican state of Sonora and the Grand Canyon state on the southwestern border, directly across from the cities of Naco and Agua Prieta. Beautiful, but most memorable is where the “wall” ends and anarchy begins, a place called Federal Park. Coronado National Monument.

Cochise County. Cochise County is vast. 6,219 square miles, the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.Still just finished 126,000 residentssparsely populated, the majority (60%) of which is state or federal land.

Whether you realize it or not, it’s what comes to mind when you hear “Old West.” tombstone, “Town Too Tough to Die” and the scene of the shootout at the OK Ranch.So do old mining towns Bisbee. John Wayne threw Lee Marvin out the window of the Copper Queen Hotel in a town once visited by Teddy Roosevelt as well.

Mining has largely disappeared and industry has shifted to agriculture and the military.

Militaryly, Fort Huachuca The Sierra Vista, “a product of the Indian wars of the 1870s and 1880s,” was once home to legendary African-American cavalry units, buffalo soldiersThe fort now houses the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and the Army’s Network Enterprise Technology Command, as cyber has replaced the saber.

As for agriculture, there were over 1,000 farms in the county. 2017), with a total value of about $145 million, including $82 million in crops (including grains and nuts) and over $62 million in livestock and poultry.

The Border. About 84 miles of Cochise County lies on the U.S. border with Mexico and is almost completely open range on both sides. This is the view looking east from the Montezuma Gap at the Coronado National Memorial.

And this is the view looking west from the cape.

If you look closely at the scenery to the east, you can see a dark line where various government agencies have erected border fences. Looking west, there are no such fences.

This is how the fence looks to the west from the ground.

As you can see, the fence runs up the mountain and snaps to a stop. The end of the wall was where construction stopped just days after President Biden took office, and the panels on the right were to be installed on top of the mountain. It’s just dangerous.

Looking west along the fence line, there are two notable landmarks. The first is zigzag cut into the hill. It was a switchback road that was supposed to provide all-weather access for Border Patrol agents and local authorities.

There’s a reason why we say “it was a switchback road” or “it was supposed to provide all-weather access” in the past perfect tense. When Biden stopped building the “Wall,” all construction stopped, including roads. Due to the unfinished road surface, seasonal rains washed away much of the road surface, and DHS blocked access to the road as a hazard.

Another landmark is also visible in this photo, but you need to know where to look.

Since the mountain is sloping, there is a single tree on the upper left of the point. Beneath the tree is a small stone shelter that houses the Sinaloa Cartel spotters. You’ll need binoculars to spot the spotter, so you’ll have to trust me, but I was told that he (or she) is available 24/7.

Local police and border patrol agents have to hike up the mountain now that the roads are washed out and they can see well-prepared spotters, but there is nothing they can do. No – the tree is on the Mexican side and the US authorities have no jurisdiction there.

From that point on, the cartel’s allies could monitor US authorities for dozens of miles in either direction and relay that information to drug and human smugglers.

For those interested in the environment, the spotter at the time of the place also June 2011burned more than 32,000 acres and destroyed 84 homes and other structures. can be seen in

The danger of poor policies. Rusty fence panels aren’t the only sign of the Biden administration’s ill-considered and knee-jerk decision to stop building border barriers.

Piles of ground rock intended as pavement litter the dirt roads along the border and were shipped to the scene when Biden called for a stop, as was the Jersey wall left there. is.

These piles of discarded building materials create a hazard because smugglers can use them to hide, evade, or attack the corresponding Border Patrol agents and local police. But since the border wall system is an “all-in-one package,” those materials cannot be removed more than they can be used.

Speaking of that “all-in-one package,” the precincts of Coronado National Monument are dotted with lampposts and lamppost bases. But the lights themselves have never been hooked up, and although the infrastructure to complete and power them is largely in place, the foundations remain unfinished, so they All useless.

It still gets worse. Roads are prone to erosion in areas hit by flash floods from the south, as fence roads have never been completed. Drainage should have allowed the water to flow freely, but the incomplete drainage pushes debris to the south side of the fence, weakening the completed fence section and threatening it to collapse.

Fences have sluices, but in places they are more of a hindrance than an improvement.

The desert “monsoon season” lasts from late spring through summer, and we were told that these locks are open from May.

With enough Border Patrol agents and cameras to monitor this section of the fence, access could be controlled through that open gate, but these cameras are part of the (imperfect) wall system. was intended to be Some agents stationed there.

at the end of 2020Cochise County and the Tucson Division of the Border Patrol, which includes Monuments, has 3,615 agents, 262 miles Rugged, wide-open borders. These agents stretch the handling, care, transportation, and (often) release of trespassers so thinly that local highway checkpoints have been closed and manned for months. Not.

Saber. In the few days I spent in Monument and Cochise County, I had never seen a uniformed Border Patrol officer, but the “Southeast Arizona Border Area Enforcement (Saber)”.

SABER is the brainchild of County Sheriff Mark Dannels, and as part of that initiative, local legislators are jerry-equipped and operating hundreds of “Buckeye” game cameras at strategic locations along the border. . Afterwards, cops and agents participating in the program can be dispatched to arrest those crossing the border illegally.

SABER has been effective in deterring cross-border drug smuggling in Cochise County, but human smuggling is another matter. Most of the migrants crossing there are not ‘give-ups’, i.e. migrants trying to turn themselves in to Border Patrol, but rather ‘fugitives’, trying to evade detection and unrest and move inside.

They are mostly men of military age, mostly dressed in camouflage from head to toe. An interesting anecdote was that smugglers were sending out so many immigrants that they were facing a shortage of supplies south of the border.

More than two-thirds of these illegal crossers successfully enter the United States, although their intentions are usually unknown. And because local cops can only detain immigrants for a “reasonable period of time,” they should begrudgingly release arrestees with no U.S. criminal record, not drug traffickers, when Border Patrol is unable to respond. .

That’s never acceptable, but the locals I spoke with are nonetheless grateful to the Sheriff’s Office for taking the ultimate and ultimate responsibility of the federal government. You may not care about property, but Sheriff Dunnells and his team of MacGyver do.

immeasurable waste. How much of the border infrastructure at Coronado National Monument was wasted by the president’s hardline stance? Good question. The White House, of course, said nothing, but I quoted figures of up to $125 million in washed roads and rotting materials.

As exasperating as the financial costs are, the lost opportunities are even worse. Biden, a self-described border wall supporter during his previous White House campaign, mocked the border wall and contested the immigration issue in his campaign during his 2020 presidential run. website“Building a wall will do little to stop criminals and cartels from using our borders.”

Biden’s claim that border fences “do little to deter criminals and cartels” is plainly false in Cochise County, Arizona. Instead of securing the border there, his administration’s policies have created obstacles that foster crime and endanger local police and border guards alike. Americans have millions of dollars. We are all going to pay the price in the years to come.