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The stealth footage is featured in a new video, titled "Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2: Drugs, Guns, and 850 Illegal Aliens," that the Center for Immigration Studies released Thursday.
Southern Arizona "has become almost a playground for smugglers," said Janice Kephart, the center's national security policy director. "Federal lands should be the starting point -- not the last point -- for border security."
The video, which runs nearly 10 minutes, features dramatic footage of lines of individuals moving resolutely northward in such areas as the Coronado National Forest and the Casa Grande Sector, just miles north of the Arizona-Mexico border.
Collected from hidden cameras in February and March, the footage -- edited for the shorter feature -- documents at least 850 illegal immigrants and nine drug couriers. It also reveals ongoing damage to the protected wilderness areas through trash and other destruction.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has said that U.S. policies have resulted in the state's being ''under attack'' from Mexican drug and immigrant-smuggling cartels. Those at the film's premiere concurred with that assessment.
These people do not come here "to pick tomatoes," said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, the ranking Republican on the House subcommittee that oversees national parks, forests and public lands. "These are drug smugglers, human traffickers, and terrorists."
Source: Center for Immigration Studies
