Marijuana found in another national park (Colorado)

The Drug Enforcement Administration Friday announced that it found 14,500 marijuana plants growing in a Colorado national park, authorities say are linked to Mexican drug cartels...... they have seen an increase in outdoor marijuana operations run by Mexican drug cartels.

In the most recent Colorado case, the marijuana was found in "the remote, rugged terrain" of Pike National Forest, which is about 60 miles southwest of Denver.

"The persons who were involved in this criminal activity had no regard for the damage caused to the forest and environment by the waste they left behind," said Jeffrey D. Sweetin, special agent in charge of the DEA's Denver office. "The public's safety is also at risk for those who recreate on our public lands due to these trafficking groups operating there."

DEA said Mexican migrant workers had been recruited to work at the site and harvest plants.

Mr. Sweetin said growing marijuana on public land in the United States has become attractive to drug cartels ......outdoor operations can be set up for relatively little money.

Authorities are concerned about the legal ramifications of such sites and the environmental consequences, which, they say, are severe..... these include "damage to the lands due to clearing the areas to prepare the garden site, trash left behind, chemicals used to grow the crop [seeping] into the watershed, and the public-safety issues associated with the recreating public coming in contact with these organizations ....."

In a statement (about the LaBrea 88,000 acre fire), the Forest Service said the blaze was sparked by a "cooking fire in a marijuana drug-trafficking operation ... believed to be run by a Mexican national drug organization.

These cartels burned 88,000 acres of California last week. A forest service man died clearing one in Oregon last week as well...not a word from the MSM.

Note from Mike Cutler about this article:

Hi Gang:

I have attached a news article that appears in today's edition of the Washington Times and details the issue of the use of our nation's national parks by members of the pernicious Mexican drug cartels to grow tens of millions of dollars worth of marijuana to be sold on the streets of cities and towns across our nation.

Our national parks are a national treasure that is being defiled by thugs who are illegally present in our country.

As was noted by Jefferey D. Sweetin, the DEA Special Agent-in-Charge of that agency's office in Denver, Colorado, the presence of these gang members in these parks not only represent a serious violation of law and represent a threat to the environment, but also represent a serious threat to the safety of visitors to the park.

Generally individuals who are involved in the drug trade are heavily armed and are more than willing to resort to extreme violence to protect their drugs and money. This is clearly apparent in considering that at present, the Drug cartels operating in Mexico at the present kill an average of more than 500 people each and every month in a thus far successful effort to control their turf and their means of amassing billions of dollars in profits from the drug trade.

The article focused on the efforts by the U.S. Park Police and the DEA but virtually nothing was said about the role of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) personnel in combatting this invasion of our nation in general by criminal aliens and national parks specifically, where the cultivation of marijuana plants are concerned.

Each and every day our citizens' lives and safety are put at risk by criminals whose mere presence in our country is a violation of law. Each and every day our nation's security is compromised by aliens who have no lawful right to be in our country.

Yet there are only about 5,500 ICE special agents working for our federal government across this nation and only a portion of those agents are assigned to enforcing the immigration laws while other ICE special agents are enforcing customs laws which have nothing to do with the immigration statutes.

To put this in perspective, the New York City Police Department has some 37,000 police officers who have the resources they need to not only arrest criminals but to act proactively to prevent crime. New York is ranked as the safest big city in the United States and, perhaps, throughout the world. Imagine what would happen if the NYPD had as few police officers as ICE has special agents! I can assure you that New York City's streets would be far from safe!

It is the lack of agents and resources that have made the United States a magnate for millions of illegal aliens and hundreds of thousands of criminal aliens.

Yet the best most of our politicians can offer is the promise to provide health care and even lawful status to millions of illegal aliens whose true identities, backgrounds, affiliations and intentions are unknown and unknowable!

I can only think of one word that accurate describes this lunacy- proposing free health care and lawful status to millions of illegal aliens by our politicians. That word is BETRAYAL!

I have often been asked about compassion and my position on illegal immigration.

Here is my response:

First of all, the United States is a nation of extremely limited resources. The current economic crisis should make this all too clear! Consider what illegal immigration has done to the state of California.

Next consider that at present, according to the United Nations, over one billion people living on our planet do not have access to safe drinking water or an adequate supply of food. That is poverty on a terrible scale. Clearly, considering the limitations of our nation, it is impossible to think that we could simply throw open our nation's doors to a billion poverty stricken people.

In one of his "Dirty Harry" films, Clint Eastwood famously remarked, "A man has got to know his limitations!" The same could certainly be said of a country.

The point is that I am not without compassion. First and foremost, I have compassion for my fellow Americans who are losing their jobs and their homes. I have compassion for my fellow Americans whose tenuous grip on their share of the American dream is evaporating.

Certainly I feel bad about the plight of those who live in poverty in their home countries. I understand that many of those who take the risks to enter our country are often desperate. The problem is that because of their desperation they are easy to exploit. As an INS special agent I often saw, up close and in person, how eager unscrupulous employers were to exploit and take advantage of these people. These employers would fire American citizens and lawful immigrants and replace them with illegal aliens who were often paid only a fraction of wages that the lawful workers had been paid. They worked under substandard conditions under abusive circumstances.

The large numbers of illegal aliens provided the criminal aliens with communities in which the bad guys could easily hide in plain sight or, in the parlance of the 9/11 Commission, "embed" themselves in communities around our country.

It is worth noting that the news article I attached below stated that none of those involved with the marijuana crops implicated in the fires have, as yet, been arrested. The criminal aliens have a means of escape that American criminals don't enjoy. Alien criminals can easily leave the United States when they know that they are being sought and head for the safety of their home countries where they are all but guaranteed that they will be safe from criminal prosecution. That is why I believe it is important to think of this alien criminals as being "transnationals."

They are able to vanish across our nation's borders as easily as they ran our nation's borders in the first place, giving them an additional sense of impunity.

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