Word: devers
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Folks on the border who must deal daily with the throngs of illegals are not optimistic that the Federal Government will change its ways. As Cochise County Sheriff Dever dryly observes, "People in Washington get up in the morning, their laundry is done, their floors are cleaned, their meals are cooked. Guess who's doing that?" --With reporting by Laura Karmatz and research by Joan Levinstein
Elkins has been the police chief in Bisbee for 12 years, on the force for 30. Dever has been the sheriff of Cochise County--which includes Bisbee and encompasses an area almost the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island, with 84 miles along the Mexican border--for eight years and a deputy before that for 20 years. The two lawmen handle the same kinds of citizen demands made on local law-enforcement agencies everywhere--from murder to drugs to reports of abandoned cats. But never have they seen the likes of today's work, in which their time is monopolized...
...Sheriff Dever says more than a quarter of his budget "is spent on illegal-immigration activities," and he points to the ripple effect through the criminal-justice system: "The illegal aliens can't make bond, so they spend more time in jail. They're indigent, so they get a public defender. If they have health problems, they have to be treated...
...kind of dance: Mexico sends its poor north to take jobs illegally, and the U.S. arrests enough of the border crossers to create the illusion that it is enforcing the immigration laws while allowing the great majority to get through. Local lawmen like Jim Elkins and Larry Dever have learned the dance firsthand, and their towns and counties have...
...Dever feels overrun and doesn't mind who knows it. He relates a story about a recent visit by a television crew that arrived in his office and asked whether he was aware that a group of presumably illegal aliens was camped out in a drainage ditch next to the sheriff's headquarters. Sensing a story, the crew wondered if he was embarrassed by the aliens' presence. A plainspoken man, Dever said he was not the least bit embarrassed. Their presence, he said, illustrated quite pointedly just how pervasive the problem...