Wampum

Policing the Borders

Medcine Lines

One of the major beefs in Indian Country since the budgetary reshuffling post-9/11 has been that this particular Republican Administration isn't putting increases in law enforcement and border control monies into the hands of tribal governments that abut the US-Canada and US-Mexcio borders. This is a special case of this particular Republican Administration not putting increases in State-targeted federal spending into the hands of tribal governments. The generic modern Republican approach to the Federal-State relationship (block grants, reserved powers, etc.) is present, but the average modern Republican approach to the Federal-Tribal relationship, since Nixon, has been much, much better than this.

The poster-child for the problem are the complaints by the Tohono O’odham Nation that it spends 60% of its law enforcement budget doing work along its 70 mile jurisdiction over the US-Mexico border the INS should either do, or pay for. About 1,500 undocumented immigrants, most from Mexico, cross the reservation every day. The Tohono O’odham Nation Tribal Police can't catch them all, and couldn't take care of them if they could catch them all, for lack of funding by, and cooperation with, the INS.

Now it is well-known that the government of Iran participated in the US Afgan War, providing support to the Northern Alliance against the Talibans, and after the fall of the Taliban Government interdicting large groups of Taliban and al Qaeda cadres crossing the Afgan-Iran border, and now holds over 500 al Qaeda cadres, some of them quite senior in that apparatus, in its prisions. As I mentioned in a recent post, one that caught the eye the spokesman of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (see comments), the US could effect the transfer of those senior al Qaeda cadres from Iranian to some other jurisdiction, say Cuban (or whatever Gitmo passes for) with ease. The US need simply shop the 4,000+ Mujahedin-e Khalq it holds at Camp Ashraf, all but about 70 of whom are already guaranteed amnesty by Iran, the rest are guaranteed that the death penalty will not be sought, regardless of the offenses charged (and there are offenses), off to the Iranian border. However, it choses not to, which sort of makes Iran's bothering to arrest and detain al Qaeda cadres of limited utility to the Iranian state.

There have been individuals and groups of individuals associated with al Qaeda which have committed criminal or quasi-military ("terrorist") acts against Iranian persons and institutions. Naturally, there are a lot more individuals and groups of individuals associated with al Qaeda which are innocent, at least of attacking Iranians an Iraninan institutions.

Finally, it is really, really, well-known that the Afgan-Iran border is about as hospitable as the Sonora Desert that the Tohono O’odham Nation Tribal Police attempt to control.

Except by the editors of Time magazine. The Tehran Times has the following from Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi, on the extent of Iran's borders and the problem of monitoring border crossings:

"It is reasonable that five or six people crossing the border illegally over a period of five or six months may evade our attention. The same happens on the border between Mexico and the United States." "It happened before Sept. 11 and who knew that Sept. 11 was going to happen?"

The good news is that the INS has illegal immigration down to a dozen people crossing from Mexico per year.

Posted by at July 19, 2004 01:46 PM | TrackBack