Entertainment

‘Border Wars’ opens honest dialogue

It always seems that our TV newscasts and news-related programming exclude the most pertinent people from the most important debates.

For example, America’s immigration reform issues seem to be the exclusive domain of political commentators and politicians — the latter, by definition, often eager to be elected or re-elected.

I have a better idea. I think.

Immigration might be best debated and discussed if those closest to the realities were given a steady seat on the panels. Specifically, border patrol law enforcement folks — for practical purposes, those most needed to be heard from, but rarely, if ever, included.

I don’t think there’d be more important televised immigration reform debates than those that regularly include the experiences, thoughts and advice of randomly selected border police.

The Nat Geo Channel’s “Border Wars” documents U.S. border patrol officers who 24/7 work the ground, waters and skies between Mexico and the US. They’re boots-down, hands-on folks, genuine “activists.”

Of no small significance is that the majority of the US officers seen and heard from have Hispanic names. Fluency in Spanish, naturally, helps.

And from what I can gather, few of these Hispanic-American law enforcement officers would be particularly embracing of warmer, cozier immigration laws.

They realize, far more than large-constituency congressmen and congresswomen, that our Southern border, from both directions, and then back, gushes crime. Violent, drug and drug-money crimes that only benefit the economic welfare of Spanish-speaking funeral home directors on both sides of the line.

Such crimes need no further stimulation package as an American import.

A recent episode got into a brief soul-search with a uniformed Mexican-American border cop who acknowledged that illegals often appeal to their shared ethnicity to avoid arrest or a return to Mexico, or to be allowed illegal passage into the US.

The officer raised his eyebrows and smiled the smile of those who know better, then said, “There’s a right way to enter and a wrong way.” He knew the score. Mexican-American border patrolmen are no less likely to be shot.

The show has also focused on nearby TV news crews. Angela Kocherga is the border bureau chief for Austin’s KVUE-TV. She’s assigned to cover news around the El Paso and Juarez border.

In other words, she’s essentially assigned to cover the daily and nightly drug murders and shipment movements as ordered by Mexico’s bi-country drug cartels.

Threats on her life? Of course, her and her crew’s lives. Why should she be treated better than a border patrol officer?

I don’t know Kocherga’s thoughts on immigration reform. But I’d like to.

Another person I’d like invited to the debate is Laredo, Texas, KGNS-TV anchor/ investigative reporter Tim Gutierrez. He recently reported on “Border Wars” how US-Mexican drug operators now appear in uniforms worn by Mexican police, Mexican military and US border police.

The bad guys already had their own guns, all they could load.

Gutierrez said that such confusion creates total mistrust of anyone wearing any law enforcement uniform.

Death threats? Naturally. But that’s something Gutierrez, his co-workers and their families have to live with.

Gutierrez is living and working in the United States, not in Islamabad. Yet he fears that he will be murdered for exposing the endless work of drug, gun and cash carriers, back and forth across our border.

Another “Border Wars” included the seizure of hundreds of thousands in US cash from drug couriers. Two of the runners fled and began to swim back across the Rio Grande. Their heads were all that could be seen as the current took them away.

A Hispanic-American border patrolmen said he kinda felt sorry for them because if the river doesn’t kill them, returning without the cash will.

You wouldn’t want to hear from such folks on immigration reform?