Chertoff's volta face - is it for real?

U.S. to Beef Up Border Force:

"In a terse Aug. 11 letter to Chertoff, she [Gov. Janet Napolitano, D-AZ] said her office met with Border Patrol officials who 'indicated the agency is not interested in participating' in a joint effort to target human traffickers. In the letter, Napolitano said ICE representatives were not interested in exploring a joint operation in Phoenix, where human smugglers maintain safe houses for transient immigrants.

"'This bewildering resistance is a further example of ICE's inattention to Arizona,' she said."

It is amazing that it has taken the action of the Democrat governors of Arizona and New Mexico to get Bush's Department of Homeland Security to begin to talk seriously about border enforcement, a subject that polls very well all across the country and which Republicans generally favor slightly more than Democrats. Still, the proof is in the pudding and so far Chertoff has only agreed to consider the recipe.

An amazing statistic is buried in the this story. Arizona claims that state and local police have arrested 510,000 illegal aliens this fiscal year and there are still about six weeks left. That amounts to just over one arrest every second, day and night, all year long.