Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is being pressed by a congressman to explain the thinking and associated costs behind sending National Park Service rangers to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Amistad National Recreation Area to help with border control.
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who is the ranking member on the House Natural Resources Committee, on Thursday wrote the Interior secretary with a series of questions pertaining to the deployments that are expected to begin next week.
As the Traveler reported earlier this week, the assignments have been ordered by the Interior Department "in support of the President's commitment to secure the Nation's borders." But they come at a time when the Park Service's law enforcement ranks are stetched thin, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and as crowds are starting to arrive at parks throughout the system for summer vacations.
Rep. Grijalva was particularly irked that though Organ Pipe is in his congressional district, he had to learn of the deployments from news reports. In his letter to Secretary Zinke the Democrat asked the following questions:
1 – How much will this deployment cost?
2 – Did (the Department of Homeland Security) ask for additional assistance with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol enforcement objectives along the border? If so, how did the DOI coordinate with DHS to determine the appropriate personnel to deploy?
3 – What specific activity will be conducted by U.S. Park Police? Will NPS personnel be responsible for arresting, detaining or holding individuals? If so, please describe the relevant training that prepares U.S. Park Police to “stop illegal border crossing.”
4 – Of the various National Park Service assets on the U.S. borer with Mexico, how were these two sites selected?
5 – The U.S. Park Police is traditionally located in three urban areas: San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C. How will this deployment impact law enforcement personnel in these locations? How will the deployment impact law enforcement capabilities at other national parks?
6 – You stated that this deployment is “the first of many steps Interior will take to secure the homeland.” What other steps does DOI plan to take?
The questions are similar to those the Traveler posed on Monday to Jeremy Barnum, the Park Service's chief spokesman. On Thursday the spokesman said in an email that he was on "official travel" but trying to round up answers.
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Comments
This policy is not well thought out. NPS Rangers have enough to do without policing the border. I thought we were going to have a fence along the border to keep out immigrants. What happened to the National Guard and increasing number of federal border agents? Leave the NPS ranger force alone to do its basic duty, working in our parks, protecting park resources and helping the visiting public have a quality visit. NPS Rangers are not trained to do the work of border agents.
I hope the question about whether the costs (& travel against the cap) come out of NPS or DHS budgets still gets asked. If the 2 week details are year round, that's a bit over $1M/yr for 7 LE rangers and managers salary & benefits. If ORPI has to pay travel & per diem for park police from DC or even LE rangers from other parks, that would be a huge hit to their budget, and could easily exceed their travel cap.
Beyond that, neither park is a great place to interdict human or drug smugglers. It can make sense to _detect_ them as they traverse those particular parks, but there are few routes away from the parks on the US side, and it is much easier to apprehend in those choke points than in the parks. If this was about effectiveness, there are a bunch of LE rangers and natural resources folks scattered across parks who would be much better at the detection task than DC Park Police. Park Police are very good at what they do, but this isn't that. Both what they do and what would be needed in these border parks is a lot more than sitting atop a big horse wearing a big hat, which is about the only thing I see in common between the tasks.
Harry: AMIS is a reservoir on the Rio Grande del Norte, so fence not so much. Organ Pipe has a large fence for much of the border around Lukeville (spoiler alert: big metal fences cause problems and fail during flash floods in desert washes), and substantial anti-vehicle barriers along the rest. No one drives a vehicle across the border there: the only vehicles seen in the wildlife cameras are Border Patrol. In theory you could cross the border on foot and hike 2 days to get to a road on the other side of the park, but with detection and then Border Patrol interdiction along that road, that is high cost low chance of success, and is now a small faction of the rate of a decade ago. Organ Pipe has reopened almost all of the park to visitors again, and reopened the campgrounds.
Just back from four weeks and 4000 miles of great travel that included a number of NPS sites. Four weeks with no news and no internet, and now I'm wondering why I bothered to come home to discover that not much has changed. trump is still here and still lying, but at least the world is intact -- at least for the moment.
This business is simply one more of the outright and outlandish lies of Rob Bishop, trump and his foolish friends, and others who seek to ways to use whatever methods they may dream up to gain support from people gullible enough to believe them.
According to people I met a few summers ago in Organ Pipe and a high-ranking officer with the Arizona Department of Public Safety's Border Protection Division, apprehensions of border crossers in places like ORPI and Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge are in the range of 80%+ while apprehensions of privately owned land along the border run around 18% to 21%. Why? Because when electronic sensors detect movement in the monument or refuge, they can easily determine whether or not it is illegal. While on private lands, movement is most likely a rancher or resident feeding cattle, mending fences, or spreading trump on fields to fertilize them.
One Border Patrol agent at the time suggested that instead of eliminating environmental protections as Rob Bishop was proposing, the government should simply turn all privately owned border lands into wilderness.
What a shock A press statement about law enforcement operations They recovered one firearm. They recover that many an hour in security screenings across the country at places like the Statue of Liberty. This is such a blatant political use of LE staff. I assume the photo op will be coming soon. This is a nothing burger!
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/388049-interior-officers-ar...
And in other news..the sun rose today!! MAGA