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Truth at the Border - America Is Dead
By: Joe Tittiger

Living on the Mexican border for the past five months has been an eye opening experience. I live a few hundred yards from the Andrade California border crossing, 7 miles from Yuma AZ.

My first night camping on the Queshan Indian reservation was as close to what I imagined a war zone would be like without having personally experienced one. Toward evening Border Patrol Trucks began dragging the dirt roads around my camp with chained arrays of 4 tires. All night long they drove by with only their parking lights on, at too high a rate of speed for me to feel safe in my tent.

Everything in my tent was covered with a film of dust and grit. It became hard for me to breathe from the dust kicked up from the tire dragging and the Border Patrol Vehicles speeding by much too fast in an area populated by people camping. There are two other people camped close to me that along with myself also have breathing problems and have to put up with Border Patrol creating all sorts of dust. They say that they are just doing their jobs and that the roads must be drug so that they can see the foot prints of any illegal's that walk through during the night. I would like to pose the question to them: Since when does doing ones job entail endangering the health and safety of American citizens? Would anyone seriously entertain the thought that they would use the same methodology in the Hamptons or Martha's Vineyard regardless of how many illegal's might be coming through?

Much of the rest of that first night there seemed to be an endless supply of helicopters flying low and illuminating the ground with powerful spotlights. I later learned this was a night of exceptional activity. In the morning there was a large Wackenhut bus parked nearby which was packed full of detained people often referred to simply as illegal's. Since that first night I have heard and seen literally dozens of people passing by my camp in the night. I don't loose any sleep due to this fact. I do not feel endangered. These people are engaged in finding work to feed their families not in risking discovery by interacting with me.

On the other hand I have experienced plenty of negative interactions with Border Patrol and U.S. Customs. (Both are under the Homeland Security Umbrella) Recently a friend at a local coffee shop in Yuma related to me how he and his wife had gone to Mexico for the day and that it was such a bad experience that he never planned to return. His bad experience was not with Mexicans or the Mexican government. What he did was to come back to the US and present his drivers license as identification just as you or I would do. He license had been suspended and he knew this. He was not trying to drive on the license. Border patrol drug him into a back room, handcuffed him, had his wife fearful and in tears all because he complied with their requirement to provide identification as to who he was. His license being suspended made it no less a valid piece of identification than is the expired license that I use on a daily basis to come back into the US. It surely did not make him a criminal.

On another occasion a border patrol agent was seen in the Salt Cedar grove where I live. Upon inspection I discovered that my home had been entered, without probable cause, without a warrant and without any notification. The fact that my home was a tent and not a 2000 square foot English Tutor in a fashionable neighbor hood makes not an iota of difference from a Constitutional perspective. If I were to act likewise and enter the home of one of these government agents I am sure they would be jumping up and down mad and prosecute me for any number of things.

It is a very common occurrence for people to be pulled over, especially on California Hwy. 186 leading up to the Andrade crossing, with absolutely no probable cause nor any pretense of probable cause other than wanting to look into your vehicle for either drugs or illegal's. Today, April 5th 2007 I had the pleasure of being the occupant in a van that was the object of one of these fishing expeditions. Border patrol chose a low spot along the American Canal that was out of sight from anyone that might happen to be observing and could witness any misconduct. There they sat and waited for us. This was somewhat disconcerting because they have the reputation of using inferred use of force in order to get one to submit to illegal searches. As soon as one refuses to submit their hand is placed on their gun and back up is called. They get in your face and try to verbally intimidate you, while at the same time intimating with body language, tone of voice and other actions, that things might get bad for you if you don't see the light. Well in this case there was no problem with permission to search the vehicle as the driver unfortunately conceded permission to search but we were a location where it would be unlikely that a citizen might be able to video tape us if they observed inappropriate behavior and border patrol choose this spot for that reason.

When the driver asked as to why we were being stopped he first told us it was because the vehicle did not have a license plate. When confronted with the fact that he stopped us before he had seen the vehicle from the rear he admitted his lie and changed his reason to that he didn't know what we were up to. I guess that substitutes as probable cause these days. The fact was that we were on private property and the vehicle did not require a license plate. Then he kept referring to the fact that a lot of drug running and criminal activity occurred in the area as if that somehow by inference gave him probable cause to stop us and that we were really dumb not to see that blatant truth.

The van driver requested to see the officer's identification. It is my understanding that it is required by statue that any federal officer show identification when requested by a citizen. This officer choose to ignore the request but demanded to see both of our identifications. He never did get to see mine as I declined asking if there were a law requiring me to produce identification. Perhaps there is a secret law  *  (http://www.papersplease.org/gilmore/ http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2005/12/69774) requiring identification similar to the one the TSA claims to be in existence for the flying public, but if so this officer never even alluded to a secret law.

Backup soon arrived and he asked me if I "would like to step from the vehicle?" To which I responded that "No I would not like to step from the vehicle. He hesitated for a moment and then asked me if I knew what he could do to me. Yes, I responded you could probably take your gun there, shoot me in the head, throw my body into the canal and with the patriot act probably get away with it. His backup sort of chuckled at this as if my statement was the ranting of a madman. I then asked them if either of them were familiar with Ruby Ridge ID when government agents shot a boy in the back, and a woman holding a baby in the head. I was dead serious about my appraisal of what I thought these two were capable of. Things sort of deescalated at this point and we were told that we could go. (Note: I later discovered one of the BP supervisors here at Andrade brags about being at Ruby Ridge)

Have you ever had moments of lucidity where you feel that you have taken the red pill and slipped down the rabbit hole in Wonderland? Yesterday I did: There I was talking to federal officers that are sworn to uphold the constitution. They have ignored a lawful request to identify themselves, they outright lied to us about their probable cause, which is a crime if the situation were reversed, they rant about having to arrest people with drugs, the power to do so I see nowhere delegated to them in the constitution. They stop and illegally detain ** two United States citizens that are not under arrest and they have no probable cause other than that they want to know what we are doing, the prohibition against doing this plainly laid out in the 4th Amendment to the Constitution to which they both have sworn to uphold. (Note: BP has discontinued constitutional law training of recruits. I guess the consider it frivolous. )

What of the circumvention of at least the spirit of Posse Comitatus Act by the National Guard? I have seen NG blatantly violate Mexican airspace on numerous occasions, on another occasion hover a Black Hawk Helicopter so low over people of unidentified nationality as to cause water spouts through the rotors, and they frequently drive around in civilian cloths and vehicles acting as look outs for BP. (Note: Don't they shoot troops as spies for doing this to citizens in other countries? Why do we have to tolerate it here in the U.S. then?)

Additionally BP believes that they may enter my home at will and that they can create conditions deleterious to my health in the performance of their duties.

And what may those duties be? Part Two to the fishing expedition that I was being subjected to is what I refer to as "catch and release". The catch and release of Illegal aliens that is. Homeland Security deems it so important to apprehend illegal aliens, so vital to the interests of national security that they run roughshod over the rights of American Citizens so that they can apprehend these so called criminals and then immediately bus them back to Mexico with a belly full of food and not even a slap on the wrist. I call them so called criminals because in my mind their is confusion as to who the criminals really are. I think it instructive to that end to look at the definition of terrorism on the CIA's web site:

The Intelligence Community is guided by the definition of terrorism contained in Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d):

—The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience

Did you observe that the definition of what our government does and terrorists do is precisely the same? The ONLY difference being that they exclude themselves from the definition not based on what they do but because of who they are! Even if one were delusional to concede that our governments' actions were lawful let us never forget that the National Socialist Party of the Third Reich never broke a single German Law. Yet we still hung many of them at Nuremberg trials.

At his juncture I didn't think that the government could be painted in a worse light but I was wrong. An hour or so after this incident the officer that had confronted us drove by my camp and my friend waved him down to talk. The interesting thing that came out of this discourse was that he admitted that he and his fellow border patrol officers were taught that probable cause was not needed within 25 miles of the border. That the Patriot Act, the act that was only to be used against bad and evil terrorists gave them the power to suspend the constitutional requirement for probable cause within 25 miles of the border.

Will they deny having given these instructions? They clearly act as if the Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure simply do no apply to them. I have been here for months and the evidence is clear to me that the commander in chief's belief that the US constitution is just a god damn piece of paper" is being acted upon up and down the chain of command. I guess a citizenry that have been in schools modeled after the 10th plank of the communist manifesto don't see anything wrong with King George's remarks.

If one wants to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into this country the solution is very simple. It is being done in other countries, that like the United States, people want to immigrate to. Countries like Switzerland, and Italy don't have problems with 30 million illegal workers in their midst. Why you may ask? Because of something that is becoming a foreign concept to Americans. It's called rule of law.

Italy and Switzerland have passed laws making it a serious crime for employers to hire people not eligible to work in their country and provide stiff penalties for noncompliance. Switzerland is so serious about this that one can not even work on an exchange basis where you would apprentice and provide free labor in exchange for room and board. I looked into doing just this in a program described at WWOOF's web site and found out that it was not allowed without a difficult to obtain work permit. The US quite simply has a problem with illegal labor because it chooses to have this problem. Given sufficient will to correct the problem by enforcing laws currently on the books we could have close to 100% compliance almost immediately.

Just in case you thought that the incident I just described with Homeland Security was an isolated incident let me relate to you what happened to me, April 6th 2007:

The same friend that I was with before and I were crossing back into the US on bicycle. I went first. The officer there was one that I have had dealings with in the past and chooses not to wear an identification tag so that he can remain anonymous to the citizenry.

I gave the officer there my ID, and told him, when he asked that I was a US citizen and that I was bringing nothing back. Both were legitimate questions to do his job in my opinion. He then asked me why I had come all the way from Florida to Mexico. I knew where this was going as I had endured invasive lines of questioning from customs before. This was just the beginning of it again, so to make him aware that he was not going to get anywhere with me I told him that I had come to Mexico for the popsicles, and that they were really good and well worth the trip. Which actually is not far from the truth but that is an entirely different story entirely.

That did not slow him down he continued to ask me how I earned an income, where I was staying etc. I told him that I thought his questions were invasive and that I would be happy to answer them if he showed me a law that authorized him to ask such questions. He exploded in an instant informing me that he was authorized to ask me anything! That's funny somehow I remembered something in the first amendment about a citizens right to petition the government for a redress of grievances which was precisely what I was trying to accomplish.

That tack was not going to work with this civil servant so I decided to turn the tables on him, if he could ask me anything no matter how invasive and not feel any shame I could do the same. So I calmly asked him if it was OK if I asked him about his sex life. The volume of his response went up again from the last time as he boisterously informed me that he was the one asking the questions.

This confirmed that he was not going to honor my request that he substantiate the legal basis for his prying. I was fairly sure that he would not identify himself so that I could later go to his superiors. He had in fact refused to do so just that a few weeks earlier when he was abusing a friend of mine that made that request. I had just walked by the sign posted as you walk up that informs you that "interfering with a federal officer in his duties is punishable as a felony". Our tax dollars at work, I noted, tangible results from the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind control experiments; put so much fear into the sheep that they don't dare question your authority. I didn't doubt for a minute that in the Orwellian mindset of Homeland Security that demanding ones rights could be construed to "interfering with a federal officer" and did not expect a good conclusion to this altercation.

Another officer with a drug dog heard the commotion and rushed over and came up with I heard this guy talking about fake ID yesterday, I think we need to take a closer look at him." As he escorted me into the building he warned me in an alarming manner not to touch the dog. I saw through this as mainly more psychological warfare to get me to submit to their inappropriate requests. If in fact the dog was such a danger to people would a rational person bring it around people? Then perhaps it was too far much of a leap for me to assume that I was dealing with rational people.

I was seated on a metal bench next to an American woman and told to wait. When I started to converse with her I was firmly warned not to talk. I guess they did not consider this bench to be in one of King Georges "Free Speech Zones". I told them that I had the right to talk to this lady and they let up for the moment. Part of what they were trying to do, as I have seen this tactic used before by police, was to try and prevent two people from exchanging information and perhaps later collaborating police misconduct.

It is instructive to note that they did not even try to pretend to act upon the pretense that I was using fake ID. They did run an ID check but that in and of itself only proves that I was holding someone's ID, not mine. While this was going on the guy with the drug dog went out to further inspect my bicycle with his dog. The thought crossed my mind more than once that a person with no integrity at all as he had shown when he fabricated a story about fake ID, would show no hesitation to planting drugs on someone. He was an accomplished liar, in my opinion; he had done it so effortlessly that it must have been a skill that he honed from every day application at his job. Do you wonder, like I do why someone like this works for "us"? Why was there not an investigation where he was fired and perhaps sent to prison? Does Martha Stewart come to mind? I apologize I get delusional sometimes.

Anyhow I am told that after he looked at my bike that he went to the Customs Officer that they collaborated stories. They decided that the customs officer was asking me probing questions into my employment because he thought that my ID was fake, and then somehow telepathically transmitted this to the officer with the dog because I first heard this allegation out of the dog handlers' mouth, so he must have read the other officers mind. It is a further fact that, that line of reasoning was never followed up on and that if I was using fake ID that they had done very little to ascertain any different. When my friend came through the line next, the Customs officer made sure to tell him that he was asking those questions merely to determine who I was. Those two government agents were Good students of Joseph Goebbels I see, in believing that if you repeat a lie to the people often enough that it was very likely to be believed.

As this was going on I was sitting on the bench as a few employees were looking over a computer printout that I assume pertained to me all the while using pejorative terms like jerk and asshole to describe me in a public venue. Not exactly the purpose that was presented to congress to fund these peoples salaries. When I repeated what I had heard to the woman sitting next to me on the bench, a loud voice reprimanded me not to use that kind of language. I didn't even try to argue with him that I was merely repeating what I had just heard said about myself.

The man who presented himself as a supervisor ignored my request to file a formal complaint. He informed me that he did not have to show me any law to justify the questioning of his officer. He pointed to the shield on his chest and told me that this was the only authority that he needed. Very soon there after they told me that I could go.

In the day since this has happened I have experienced a lot of emotions. I feel violated. The same feeling that you have when you return home and find that someone has broken in and went through your belongings. Some how you feel dirty, like you need to take a shower to cleanse yourself, but something is wrong that no amount of scrubbing can remove.

I have felt anger. Self righteous indignation as to how this can happen in America? How can you and I have let this happen? Mostly today I feel a great sadness as I realize that America is dead. Sure there is a physical place referred to as America. There are certainly people that still refer to them selves as Americans. That however is not America. America to me and to the founding fathers is an idea. Maybe more correctly said America is a set of ideals that outline the creation of a limited government designed to protect the God given, inalienable rights, of everyone, most importantly even those in the minority.

I will say it again, America is dead. It has been dead for the better part of a century, slowly going though its death throes while supposedly righteous men and women watched her slowly die from the incrementalism of godless beaurocrats. We will never see a free America in our lifetimes. Things do not change that quickly. The best any of us can do now is to hope to steer her in the direction of freedom and hope that our children remain diligent in that task. In closing I would like to you consider what you are going to say to your maker when he inevitably asks to be held accountable. When he asks you: What did you do to defend my grand experiment -- the United States of America?

About the Author:
Joe Tittiger holds a bachelors degree in Information Technology and as many attention deficit individuals has held many different positions. He currently lives on the road and is working an E-book on services in Mexican border towns including dentistry, prescription drugs, and eyeglasses. He  also has  a web site devoted to learning about professional services available in Mexico:
http://mexdental.com