La Linea

Back in 2005, right-wing media seized on a sketchy account of “terrorist garb” found near the small town of Hebbronville in South Texas. Border Patrol agents had found a ski jacket with three unusual patches attached: One featured a lion’s head, a parachute and Arabic script, another an airplane flying toward a tower and the words “Midnight Mission.” The third patch read “Daiwa.”

One of the most ardent spreaders of the story, Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez, told the Cybercast News Service that these “military badges in Arabic” were proof that “Arabic-speaking individuals are learning Spanish and integrating into Mexican culture before paying smugglers to sneak them into the United States.”

The “terror patch” story bolstered the case for building a border wall and ratcheting up “border security” funding as essential to homeland security. But was there anything to it?

Agent Mark Qualia, a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told the Observer in a recent email message that it was highly probable that an “illegal alien” wore the coat and left it behind. “We see a lot of clothing that is procured at the ‘pulgas’ [flea markets] just before crossing before the border,” Qualia wrote. “Though we can’t speculate on the individual’s nationality or intent, we have not seen any threat or other concern arise from this incident.”

But wait: What did the Arabic script say? What country did that patch come from?

In a second email, Qualia was more expansive: “Agents called a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) translator,” he wrote of the patches’ discovery. “During contact with the translator via phone and facsimile transmission, the investigation concluded that the Arabic script patch read, ‘Defense Center,’ ‘Ministry of Defense,’ or ‘Defense Headquarters.’ The bottom of the patch read ‘Martyr,’ ‘Way to Eternal Life,’ or “Way to Immortality.’ “

As for Daiwa, that’s a well-known international sport fishing company.

The “Midnight Mission” patch was inside the jacket. While the logo appears to show an airplane flying over a building and headed toward a tower—9-11 all over again—a closer look reveals the airplane is flying over an airport with terminal ramps and airplanes on taxiways.

Qualia said that the jacket was determined to have been manufactured in Mexico.

“No link was established to Al Qaida,” he wrote.

Still not satisfied, the Observer reached out to Leah Caldwell, a graduate student in Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin. The patch came from a branch of the Syrian Armed Forces, she wrote after consulting friends in Syria. The Syrian Armed Forces was established by former President Hafez al-Assad’s brother Rifa’t al-Assad. The literal translation, she said, is “Defense Brigades/Martyrdom is the Path to Immortality.”

Rifa’t's defense brigades took a leading role in a 1982 massacre of Hamas partisans in Syria—making the “terrorist” claims attached to the patches ironic as well as overblown.

And so, finally, a mystery is apparently solved. All that fuss was over a military patch from a defunct air brigade in Syria that was anti-Islamist, and another advertising a popular fishing company. But what a fine story it was.

Landowners in Brownsville have already had to endure the destruction of their property to build an 18-foot border wall. Now all they are asking for are gates so that they can access the south side of their properties.

The Brownsville Herald has a story about the Loop Family today. This family has been farming in Brownsville for several generations. They have a beautiful piece of property along the Rio Grande where they grow citrus, sorghum, cotton, corn, soybeans, okra, and sunflowers.

Homeland Security is bulldozing their grapefruit orchards to build the wall. The wall cuts their farm in half. Not only are they cut off from half of their crops, but also half of their family lives on the south side of the wall.

The Herald reports that the Loop Family has been dealing with Homeland Security for 18 months now. Leonard Loop, the patriarch of the family, still hasn’t been told whether they will get a gate to access the south side of their property.

“They (government officials) have said something and then changed their minds,” he said. “At one point they said they would close the gates after 6 p.m.; then they said they wouldn’t. Its almost 2010 and I still don’t know what kind of gate they are going to put there…

The difficult access to the property worries Loop’s wife, Deborah, because not only will her family and workers farm land to the south side of the wall, but some of her family members live there, too.

“I’m worried about the safety of my son, (Frank). His house is on the south side of the fence (which is near completion),” said Deborah Loop. “What happens if we need emergency assistance? How long will it take for help to get there and what happens if they can’t get through the gate? Now I don’t feel so free in my own country.”

Eloisa Tamez, another Brownsville landowner, is also getting the run around from Homeland Security about whether she will receive a gate. A good portion of her land is on the south side of the wall. Without a gate, she will have to drive a few miles down the road until she can find an access point then drive back down the levee to her land.

At least Tamez can access the levee. In the Loop Family’s case, it sounds like DHS may prevent them from driving down the levee to get to their property if they don’t get a gate.

So let’s get this straight: We have a wall with huge gaps that doesn’t go through golf resorts or rich people’s properties. If you don’t have the political connections or the cash you get an 18-foot wall with no gate to access your property on the other side. It’s just jaw gaping stupid and outrageous what DHS is doing to landowners in Brownsville.

The Department of Homeland Security has been rolling out its radiation scanning technology on the northern and southern borders for the past several years. The scanners are meant to pick up on any radioactive material being smuggled through an immigration checkpoint. Apparently, they are very very sensitive.Just ask Fred Gossien who lives in Terlingua near Big Bend National Park. Mr. Gossien, 63, is being treated for prostate cancer. Every few months he goes to the VA hospital for blood tests. Doctors have also inserted radioactive pellets near the tumor to fight the cancerous cells. On October 31, Border Patrol agents detained Gossien at an immigration checkpoint south of Alpine for more than an hour. Gossien was told to pull into a secondary inspection lane. He was then taken out of the car and his body scanned with a radiation monitor as he was asked a series of questions.Here’s Gossien’s account:

During the first couple of minutes of the radioactivity checking, I think one of the agents actually asked if I had had related medical treatment, but by that time I was a bit floored by what was happening and can’t say for sure.  It was nevertheless soon established that I had ‘seed’ implants on June 23, 2009.  In the ensuing 5-10 minutes one agent said something about calling my doctor, to which I replied something like “It’s Saturday morning and my doctor is at the VA hospital in Seattle…”  Kind of like Are you nuts?  Anyway, to this I produced a card from the Radiation Therapy Clinic of the VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle, where all the VA seed implants are done for people in the Western half of the country (I think).  Someone took the card inside and made a copy of it.  That is about the time “protocol” came into the conversation.  I was told they “had to call Washington, D.C.” then they had to use the second instrument which, as explained, recorded some type of radioactivity identification information which then had to be sent to their “scientist” who examined the info and responded that it was indeed a medical isotope and that I was probably not a terrorist.  Of course, they botched the first set of readings so it had to be rerecorded and, I should note, each of these functions took 5-15 minutes.  Finally after something over an hour they told us we could go.”

Gossien says he felt humiliated:

During and shortly after my indoctrination I kept telling myself the agents involved were just doing their jobs.  But something kept nagging at my subconscious and after a few days I finally figured out what it was – humiliation.  I realized I felt less like a lab rat and more like the star attraction of a carnival freak show, with an audience of BP agents gawking both at me and at their little Geiger-gadgets.”

Since then, however, Gossien has channeled his embarrassment into humor. He jokes that he has been officially indoctrinated into the Big Bend Old Fogies Suspected Terrorist Cell. “Most of us are somewhat elderly…and have had some type of radiation treatment for some form of cancer,” he writes in an email. “In other words, we are radioactive. Some of us are virtually on our deathbeds while others, myself included, are hoping for a complete cure.”He notes that the radiation treatments, while extremely draining, are working and he is feeling stronger. If he had been subjected to the search in July or August, he says “It would have totally wiped me out.”Gossien said he knows of at least three other men who also have been detained and searched because of their radiation treatments.Bill Brooks, public affairs officer for Customs and Border Protection in the Marfa sector, says that normally the inspection for someone receiving radiation treatments shouldn’t take longer than 15 to 20 minutes.”We have equipment to analyze the isotope and if we can’t identify it, we have to send it to Washington D.C.” he says.Brooks says that an inspection “will get everyone’s attention, but we try to make that individual comfortable and we certainly don’t want them to be humiliated.”

He says people being sent for secondary inspection because of medical radiation treatments is not out of the ordinary. “I don’t want to say it happens often, but it’s not unusual.”

Gossien says he won’t allow himself to be searched again. “If I am again subjected to roadside humiliation, I will not cooperate. Period. Should that non-cooperation result in arrest or detention, so be it. That would make great newspaper headlines: ‘West Texas Border Patrol Target Cancer Victims.’”

 

Sterry Butcher’s got some more excellent coverage in the Big Bend Sentinel of the mass deportations going on in Presidio. Just about everyone thinks it’s a bad idea to bus 700 men a week to Presidio except for Homeland Security.

Presidio County Judge Jerry Agan a retired Border Patrol Assistant Chief called it “… one of the worst policies I’ve ever seen. It astounds me they would do this. It’s not well thought out.”

The Mexican men ages 20 to 60 are being bused from Tucson, Arizona in order to break up the smuggling cycle in the Sonoran desert region. In this case, DHS has swapped the Sonoran desert for the Chihuahuan desert — that should save some lives.

Because of the remoteness of Presidio and its Mexican sister city Ojinaga, the Mexican government has been trying to dissuade Homeland Security from sending immigrants there.

“Mexican authorities through my embassy in Washington, D.C. have been trying to negotiate,” the Mexican Consul in Presidio Hector Raul Acosta Flores told the Sentinel. “We were not agreeing that repatriation take place through this port of exit due to the conditions of the region on both sides of the border. Nevertheless, they’ve started the program. And we have to coordinate for the benefit of our nationals and provide them with assistance.”

The Mexican government has been providing the immigrants with bus tickets home. The bus company Transportes Chihuahuenses is offering a 50 percent discount for the detainee program.

“Everybody has left from the border,” Acosta reported on Tuesday to the Sentinel. “Up to now, no one has decided to remain behind.”

Probably the scariest thing about Butcher’s article is the statement from Border Patrol that “The program will continue until the smuggling cycle is broken.”  Do they really think this will prevent people from trying to cross?

One big question is how long can the small Mexican Consulate office in Presidio keep up with bus tickets for 700 immigrants a week? It’s only a matter of time before the slow gears of bureaucracy come to a halt, then people are really going to suffer on both sides of the border.

(From time to time I stray from border topics. This is one of those times…)

A new report illustrates what people have been saying for years in Galveston and East Texas: if you’ve got no health insurance and you are sick don’t count on hospital charity programs to help you.

A subcommittee of the Cancer Coalition of Galveston County found that despite a law requiring medical providers to provide written policies on their charity and reduced-fee care, they neglect to do so and often their employees tell patients that no “charity care” is available. The surveyors looked at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Galveston County’s 4 C’s Clinics and the Mainland Medical Center.

They surveyors in the study repeatedly visited the hospitals and clinics from November 2007 to January 2008 to inquire whether they offered free or reduced care programs. Each time they were told by employees that there was no charity care.

In a September article I outlined how someone who is critically ill and uninsured becomes a hot potato passed from medical facility to medical facility.

On October 2007, a 27-year-old man showed up at the Port Arthur clinic. The young man—because of federal health privacy laws, we’ll call him Sam—had been urinating blood. Sam was diagnosed with a kidney tumor at the local Christus St. Mary’s Hospital ER. Normally, Sam’s kidney would have been removed, and he likely would have survived. Because he didn’t have health insurance, Christus St. Mary’s referred him to UTMB. From there, his case became a classic illustration of how uninsured patients with serious and costly illnesses are bounced from ER to ER—triaged, as required by federal law, then sent on their way with life-threatening conditions.

Doctors at UTMB did some tests and sent Sam back to Port Arthur. He didn’t know where to turn. Several months passed. Sam’s tumor grew to the size of a grapefruit. Finally, at another local ER, he was told about the county’s indigent program. By the time he got to the Port Arthur clinic, the tumor took up half his abdomen.