Johnson-Castro: Blackwater flows to the Rio Grande

By Jay Johnson-Castro
Jay Johnson-Castro

November 26 - As if a border wall is not enough of an insult and act of tyranny against our border community…how about this brute reality? Blackwater USA wants to police our Texas-Mexico border.


For some time, it has been well documented that the world’s largest mercenary army is not only setting up a new military training camp in Potrero, CA, but has applied to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to be on the Texas-Mexico border to assist in border security.


As John Ross, of Global Research, has reported: “For months, the North Carolina-based corporation has been pressuring local San Diego officials to grant it an operating license for an 824-acre training site to be known as Blackwater West in Potrero, California, 45 miles east of that bustling port city but only six miles from the Tecate, Mexico, border crossing.”


Ross has also reported on the testimony then-Blackwater president Gary Jackson gave before Congress in 2005. Jackson said his company was “prepared to provide assistance on border security” and that Blackwater’s long-time connections inside DHS “could generate lucrative contracts training increasingly heavily-armed ICE agents.”


Ross pointed to remarks San Diego Congressman Bob Filner, a Democrat, gave Salon Magazine's Elaine Zimmerman last month: that he believes Blackwater is positioning itself to move into the border security business.


Our Texas congressmen and senators must know this. Why have they not informed us? Why has the media not belted them with questions about Blackwater locating on the border?


All this year, we’ve been trying to get folks to look at the darkness that looms in our country due to the atrocities that Blackwater committed in New Orleans during the Katrina fiasco as well as the perpetuation of the Iraq way where their forces of international gun slingers are paid $1,000 a day to kill whomever they so choose with total impunity. No one seemed to want to believe it until recently when the Iraqi government itself demanded Blackwater’s exit from their country. Now, everyone has heard about Blackwater, probably because it was finally reported on by the national TV networks.


Recently, Blackwater has been under investigation for the atrocities it has been committing in Iraq. The U.S. State Department Inspector General, Howard Krongard, recently denied before a House Congressional committee that he knew his brother, a former high ranking CIA official, now serves on the Blackwater Advisory Board.


One thing for sure…we did not come to know about Blackwater from our senators and congressmen. One has to ask “Why not?” Do they not know that Blackwater, as far back as 2005, applied to be the privatized military presence here on the border? How about our state legislators and senators? Hopefully, our journalists “inside the checkpoints” will start asking the right questions. Here are a few hints for them:


According to Jeremy Scahill’s acclaimed book “Blackwater,” the company is “looking for a lucrative domestic opportunity.” Scahill writes that Blackwater made an application in early 2005 “to serve as a force to deal with immigration and border security.”


That was months before Katrina. So now we know that Blackwater is positioned to crack down on “illegal aliens.”


Blackwater’s game plan has been enhanced founded Erik Prince’s connections. His old boss is Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican who represents the 46th congressional district in California. Rohrabacher has endorsed the Minutemen. Blackwater has been further enhanced by another Republican congressman from California, Duncan Hunter, who is now running for president. Hunter is a strong supporter of the border wall plan. The ruling supremacists have been pushing for the “outsourcing” border security…with Blackwater in mind.


It’s all about the corrupt money. Money like that comes in the form of “outsourcing,” and here’s how it stacks up. Israel's private defense contractor, Elbit Systems, which has plenty of experience building border walls against Palestine, has been hired by private contractor, Boeing, to build the security system along our border. G4S Global Security is headquartered in England and Denmark. Its Wackenhut buses run around the country transporting immigrants on our nickel. We have “for profit” internment camps that leach mega-millions of our tax dollars to imprison the “huddled masses yearning to breath free.” All the while, Blackwater is waiting like hired guns for its border contract.


Where are our protectors? Are there really any in Congress? Why the silence and secrecy?


Meanwhile, we now know where Blackwater is now focused - the U.S.-Mexico border.


Do we of the Rio Grande corridor in Texas just roll over and allow this to happen? Will we allow our money to fund Blackwater to do to our Texas-Mexico border region what it did in New Orleans after Katrina…and now in Iraq?


Will we allow Blackwater to flow…unimpeded…to the Rio Grande?


Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr., is a humanitarian activist and businessman from Del Rio, Texas. He has traveled the U.S.-Mexico border extensively and organized the first public protest against the border wall plan. His column, Inside the Checkpoints, appears weekly in the Guardian.


For further reading:


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7310
http://www.gringogazettenorth.com/v6e17_03.php