From TheBlaze.com:

Aug. 13, 2013 10:28am, by Sara Carter

SIERRA VISTA, Arizona — Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels doesn’t mince words. He’s angry that local law enforcement and the citizens who call the Southwest border home have been left out of the decision making process when it comes to security and immigration reform.

Dannels has lived along the border since 1984. He remembers when the dangers from smugglers circumventing the rocky, mountainous terrain were few and far between. Now, he says, a different breed of narcotics traffickers has amassed weapons, technology and small armies of death; threatening not only the stability of Mexico but U.S. national security as well. He works closely with DEA, FBI, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement but the system is not perfect.

It’s no secret that the Mexican drug runners and human traffickers have gotten infinitely more organized, better funded, better armed and more violent.  Automatic weapons are the norm, as are grenades and explosives.

The photographs, which of course I have not “made up” or Photoshopped as perhaps Leftists would accuse, speak for themselves regarding the naked savagery of Mexican cartels.  You need to see this.  The American public needs to see this.

Sitting at a local eatery under the shadow of the Huachuca Mountains, he questioned how much time, if any, the law makers who drafted SB 774 –  known as the ”Gang of Eight” bill — had actually spent on the border. Dannels, along with residents living on the Southwest border and local senior law enforcement officials told TheBlaze on a recent trip to Arizona that they were left out of the decision making process on border security.  They say the Gang of Eight bill just isn’t good enough when it comes to addressing the complex security issues they deal with every day.

And that is the entire point.  Border Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police must deal with the violence and incursions every day, every hour.  It never stops.  It never takes a pause.

“Look at (Sen. Marco) Rubio out of Florida — have you been down here, Rubio?” he said, noting that drug cartels had just replaced a radio relay station on the mountain that the sheriff’s team had taken down less than three weeks earlier.

A radio relay station which helps cartel soldiers speak to each other via radio relay towers.  Yes.  The cartels have their OWN radio towers on OUR soil.

The Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug organizations, uses the ”receiver/transmitter to extend their communication footprint between Mexico and the Huachuca mountains,” a U.S. Intelligence official, familiar with the terrain, told TheBlaze. It’s how they stay ahead of law enforcement and keep track of their contraband, the official added.

Home invasions, burglary, theft, destruction of private property — and a constant fear that it’s only going to get worse — is something Cochise County border residents live with daily.

Home invasion burglaries and robberies, kidnappings, theft, destruction of AMERICAN private property — these are the things that American citizens have to tolerate every day, every hour.  It never stops.  It never takes a pause.

“I say to myself, ‘Rubio, you’re making decisions for me, for my state, for my county, my city when you haven’t even been here – what an insult,  what do you know about our border?  You know nothing about our border. Yet you’re making those decisions without even speaking to us.’”

Rubio’s office did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Imagine that.  No returned telephone calls.

Ranchers and law enforcement agents in Arizona told TheBlaze they don’t trust that anyone in Washington understands how serious the security issues are, especially with the growing power of Mexican drug cartels operating on the border.

Again, DC politicians — and there isn’t much more than a dime’s difference between the Demorats and the Old Staid Republicans — operating and issuing their own orders, laws and acts in a vacuum that is purposely held in arrogance and ignorance.

Sheriff Dannels sums up:

“You can understand why the citizens of Cochise county are upset, they detoured the drug cartels right into their backyards,” Dannels said.  ”I say it everyday…on the federal side- you created it, you solve it. You need to redefine your plan of the 90s, and don’t put a maintenance key on border security until that’s done and I stand strongly on that.”

But: not only won’t the federal government “solve it,” they refuse to let anyone else even try.

I recommend you look at these ugly photographs once again.  Because that is what you are defending your border against.  That is: those things normalizing here.

BZ