Rancher Sued By Illegals On Civil Rights Grounds

The GOP just had another winning issue drop right into their laps:

An Arizona man who has waged a 10-year campaign to stop a flood of illegal immigrants from crossing his property is being sued by 16 Mexican nationals who accuse him of conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Roger Barnett, 64, began rounding up illegal immigrants in 1998 and turning them over to the U.S. Border Patrol, he said, after they destroyed his property, killed his calves and broke into his home.

Oh baby, this is an issue I'd push incredibly hard and make it the next stimulus bill-type battle. We've managed to regain our footing in the House and almost in the Senate (thank you Senator Specter).

This guy was protecting his property, stopped those who entered it at gunpoint, turned in criminals and is now being sued because of it. There's no one in America outside San Francisco or New York City who couldn't understand that this guy was protecting his property.

If I were Rep. Cantor I'd highlight this issue and make it stay in the news for weeks. Make Obama comment on it and then hammer him if he took the side of illegals. It's golden.

Quoth Allah:

If only the stimulus bill wasn’t so well thought out and efficient, we could have directed a billion or two of that trillion to beefing up security and hiring new BP agents. I guess that’s the price we pay for perfection.

No word on Sen. McCain's stance on this issue.

Obama's Open Flank

One of the dirty little secrets that has not been fully addressed by the Obama campaign nor the media is Obama's problem with Latinos--a bloc that could be easily exploited over the illegal immigrant issue (a major reason McCain is on the fence on border control).

The estrangement was on display earlier this week:

While Senator Obama worked a warm audience at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Miami this week-end, protesting Bush and Mc Cain's “tax-cuts for the wealthy” and promising billions in federal hand-outs, a small group of Cuban-Americans stood outside the Intercontinental protesting Obama himself.

More specifically, they protested some of Obama's top advisers: Gregory Craig, who serves as Obama's chief advisor on Latin America, and Erich Holder, who heads Obama's vice-presidential selection team. Both of these gentlemen had key roles in “legally” perfuming the shanghaiing of Elian Gonzalez. At the time, Craig served as lawyer for Elain's (sic) father, (i.e Fidel Castro), and Holder served as Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno.

"That was eight years ago,” Obama responded when plans for the Cuban-American protest were announced last week. “Obviously it was a wrenching situation for the families, but I'm running for president in 2008 and my focus is: how do we create a Cuba policy that will create political freedom on that island and allow the people who live there to prosper?"

Granted, that was eight years ago but it still is an open wound to many in the Cuban community. A child was sent to an island prison run by a despot against the wishes of his dead mother and her living family. He was sent with a gun to his head and he was sent because of the actions of two of Obama's advisers. That's not very appealing to the Cuban-Americans in Miami. Besides, exactly what timeframe are we allowed to re-visit, five years, seven years? That would leave McCain's history with the Keating Five off-limits, would it not?

But that's just one case of Hispanics challenging the Obama campaign. The secret that no one speaks about yet is a known fact for those who live in areas of large Hispanic populations is that many Hispanics just plain don't like African-Americans and vice-versa. They've been living in the inner cities with one another for decades but have never quite learned to trust each other.

Without the Hispanic-American vote, Obama will have a difficult time in battleground states such as New Mexico and Colorado and having two major players in the Elian Gonzalez tragedy working for you probably isn't going to help.

I leave you with this, an incident that shouldn't have happened that Craig and Holder were directly responsible for. I would say an incident that did much harm to our international standing:

Bordering on a Quagmire

A Border Patrol agent was killed by suspected drug dealers in southern California near the Arizona border:

IMPERIAL SAND DUNES -- The off-road enthusiasts were revving their dune buggies and all-terrain vehicles Saturday morning when a brown Hummer suddenly cut into the campground.

The man at the wheel, a suspected drug smuggler, was heading to Mexico, fast. U.S. Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar, the only person in the way, threw a spike strip in front of the car. The Hummer sped up. "It looked like the man swerved and hit the agent intentionally," said one witness.

...Nationwide, assaults against Border Patrol agents rose from 752 in 2006 to 987 in 2007. Authorities say clashes are likely to continue as smugglers respond to beefed-up border security with more aggressive measures.

"I think it was just a matter of time. Agents are getting assaulted every day," said Jeremy Schappell, a Border Patrol spokesman.

That's BS and the LA Times knows it. The Times is shilling for the open borders types and using to the typical liberal reflex paradigm of blame America first. It is our fault you see, we secure the border ergo, drug dealers run over agents. It doesn't have to make sense when you can twist something to blame America and not the actual people who are killing Americans.

If we had the political and moral guts to truly secure the border, Hummers wouldn't be traversing it. We have the ability to erect massive skyscrapers, probes that reach the edge of the Solar System and subs that can go to unbelievable depths in the ocean yet we can't build a secure fence?

This is an issue that has to be dealt with immediately but because of the feel-good policies on both sides, we have agents dying and lawlessness in a fast-growing area of the nation.

It's a quagmire.

Dunes pictured below to give perspective. More here. Map here. Update: More.