$25,000 for desert water stations to aid illegal crossers

 

Pima County has approved a grant of $25,000 to help a pro-illegal group maintain emergency water stations in the Sonoran Desert outside Tucson.

The County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 earlier this week to fund the misguided organization, Humane Borders, which places and maintains 90-plus water, first aid, food and clothing stations throughout the desert.

Opponents of the grant have criticized the county’s annual funding, begun in 2001, for the water stations as a violation of laws against aiding and abetting illegal immigration.

“Is this not breaking our laws, especially federal law?” asked Wes Bramhall, a past president of Arizonans for Immigration Control.

Joe Sweeney, the Republican opponent of Congressional District 7 incumbent Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat, also criticized the board’s vote. “Is this not aiding and abetting and harboring illegal aliens?” Sweeney inquired .

None of the supervisors responded, according to a report in the Tucson Citizen.

Supervisor Ann Day cast the lone vote against the funding, a move she’s made since the program’s inception. “I don’t think it’s well documented just who uses the water and if it’s really that successful,” explained Day. She says water stations aren’t the answer.

“I think there are better solutions, working with the feds and getting beacon towers and cell phone towers,” adds Day, who is the sister of retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O‘Connor..

.The Arizona Republic was moved to editorialize on the subject, saying the group’s actions put the emphasis on the “humanity of illegal immigrants.” Linda Valdez is back at her post telling us that “more than 150″ people died last year trying to cross the southern Arizona desert. She speaks of individual dignity, valuing humanity and respect for human life, but neglects to mention that every person who perished would have lived if they were not breaking into our country illegally — oftentimes in the middle of the torrid summer.

As to her plea for respect for human life, we wonder why it doesn’t extend to human pre-born babies. She has written glowingly of Barack Obama, the lone vote against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (which provided that a live child born as the result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law) when he was a member of the Illinois state legislature.

Where’s your consistency, Ms. Valdez?