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President Bush could double for Bill Murray.
His repeated claim that he’s about to get tough at the border is like “Groundhog Day.” We’ve been hearing it over and over and over.
But while Bush is claiming he will stop the “catch and release” policy that has been at play for many years–including four since 9/11–the real heroes are at the local level. While Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff allow the borders to continue to hemorrhage, the men really doing the job are guys like Andrew Thomas, Rick Jones, and Bob Gosselin.
While Congressmen, like (R-CA) claim to be tough on the illegal alien problem–yet insist on shutting down internal Border Patrol checkpoints like the one in Temecula, California, in Issa’s San Diego area district–the real heroes fighting illegal aliens have no federal resources.

Immigration Groundhog Day: Jones, Thomas vs. Abu Moskowitz
Last year, Thomas, the Maricopa County, Arizona Attorney, was the first local prosecutor elected on a platform of stopping illegal immigration. It helped him beat several favored candidates in the Republican primary for the open seat.
He recently held an extensive forum on illegal immigration in Scottsdale (at which I was a speaker), featuring federal, state, and local officials from all over. The stars of the conference were Thomas and the many local elected officials like him, who are doing something to legislate at the State level what our federal officials are failing to do nationally.
Thomas didn’t just use illegal immigration as an electioneering slogan. He means business. Thomas detailed the large percentage of crime in his border area county that is committed by illegal aliens. He’s gone after them in novel, creative ways. For instance, Thomas compared illegal aliens’ applications to vote versus their responses to jury duty questionnaires. He’s prosecuted many who claim they are legal U.S. citizens qualified to vote, then claim they are not legal U.S. citizens so they can get out of jury duty. In Maricopa County, Arizona, they can no longer have it both ways.
Then, there is Rick Jones. The Butler County, Ohio Sheriff is my hero (read his blog). He recently sent a bill to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)–the federal agency charged with enforcing immigration laws, but failing miserably to do so–for more than $71,000 to cover the cost of housing 15 illegal aliens he picked up. He’s tired of doing the job that (a/k/a “Abu Moskowitz”), the Special Agent in Charge of ICE for Michigan and Ohio, is failing to do. But he’s not going to allow Moskowitz’s laziness and inaction to further endanger his constituents.
That’s why Jones, Butler County Commissioner Michael Fox, and Ohio State Representative Courtney Combs announced a multi-tiered initiative to eliminate illegal aliens living in their Ohio county and throughout the state. While Moskowitz wasted at least $30,000 on new furniture for his already posh Detroit office, Ohio officials–without Moskowitz’s plentiful, but poorly spent ICE funds–have decided to pick up his vast slack.
In October, the three Ohio officials introduced a new booking process requiring declarations of citizenship by jail inmates. They will report jailed felons and misdemeanants who falsify their information or are found to be illegal aliens to ICE and Moskowitz for immediate deportation or deportation after trial. The onus will be on Moskowitz and other ICE officials to finally do their job–the job that their ultimate superiors, Chertoff and Bush, have allowed them to shirk.
“We want to put extreme pressure on ICE to do its job with regard to illegal aliens,” Jones told the Hamilton Journal News. “Why should Butler County taxpayers have to pay for jail costs associated with people we don’t believe should ever have been in this country, let alone this state or county? If ICE is having so much trouble locating illegal aliens, heck, I’ll help them out — I’ll send them 20 a day from our county jail.”
While Bush and federal officials look the other way with employers hiring illegals, Butler County Commissioner Fox is working on initiatives to strongly discourage such employment in his county, while Ohio State Representative Combs is drafting legislation that will make it a state offense for illegal aliens to cross over Ohio’s borders and allow state action for immediate deportations..
Courageous Ohio officials say they will enforce trespassing laws against illegal aliens, where other spineless state officials, such as , who forbade state police from enforcing such laws against illegal aliens and using them to take the aliens off the street.
Then, there are legislators, like Michigan’s Bob Gosselin, and Arizona’s Russell Pearce, who’ve introduced legislative packages to prohibit benefits, like state-backed mortgages, from going to illegal aliens. Lawmakers in Wisconsin and Virginia have done the same. A county in Idaho filed a federal racketeering lawsuit against four companies employing illegals.
Strangely, ICE/Moskowitz spokesman Greg Palmore told AP that he has “concerns about racial profiling that come with some local efforts.” Actually, in the heart of Islamic America, –eschewing investigations and arrests of Islamic illegal aliens, in favor of round-ups of Latinos and Asians. Gee, someone sounds like a hypocrite.
And someone forgot about 9/11 very quickly. But he’s not a local official. Unfortunately, he’s the guy living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and guys–like Moskowitz–who work for him.