Bureau of Land Management Covers Its Tracks

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), usually a quiet and somewhat backwater federal agency, has now taken its position as a placeholder for an Obama administration desperate to keep appearances up that the southwest border is secure. In a small but politically divisive move, the BLM last night did an operation in the Casa Grande area of the Sonora National Monument about a mile south of the major east-west corridor Interstate 8. The operation? Not to conduct law enforcement operations, but to replace signage that went from a public warning of illegal alien smuggling and drug trafficking and illegal use of weapons and transportation, to this:

The prior signage was criticized for being a "welcome mat" to illegal aliens and drug cartels by former Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Julie Myers Wood. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer even used the signs in a campaign ad that now appears on YouTube, calling them "an outrage" and curtly telling President Obama to "Do your job. Secure our borders." Yet despite the combination of mockery and anger over the signs throughout America – ironically, it was my guide's pictures of the then-brand-new signs that we took the day I was filming "Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 3: Guns, Drugs and 850 Illegal Aliens" in early June that caused the national stir – all that has been done by the Department of Interior (which owns nearly half the southwest border lands) is to send a man out to replace a sign. No warning about the dangers here in the Casa Grande sector, the most dangerous of the drug corridors to date...more

In case you missed it, here's the previous sign: