The Deadly Passage of the All-American Canal-Over 550 Drowned Crossing Border

[RamboLiberal]

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Since 9/11, getting into the United States has become a good deal harder and, for some, much more dangerous. With border enforcement increasing, many illegal immigrants are now attempting to cross one of this country's most important irrigation projects called the "All-American Canal." The canal has become sort of a national moat on our southern border, and hundreds of people have perished in its waters. It is a carnage that has gone mostly unnoticed because many of the victims are buried without their names.

In the California desert, in a field of mud, is a graveyard that is hard to imagine in America. Bricks mark the final resting place of hundreds of human beings, identities unknown. They died traveling to America in search of a life better than their home countries could offer. They rolled the dice in the underworld of human smuggling and lost. Their families back home never learned that their journey ended in the All-American Canal.

Asked where the bodies are usually found, Dr. John Hunter told "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley, "Typically, they'll find them at the drops. So for example, there's five of these big hydro drops here. Drop one, they found over a hundred bodies at drop one, drop two they had 60. Drop three, 60 etc."

Hunter showed us the hydroelectric dams or "drops" that catch most of the bodies. Hunter is an unlikely activist: he's a physicist and life-long Republican who has spent much of his career designing weapons for the U.S. government.

"I'm a very right-wing guy," Hunter(Duncan Hunter's brother) said. "I'm not an open border kinda person. I just don't believe we should be letting people drown in our backyards. It's inhuman."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/30/60minutes/main6448631.shtml?tag=cbsContent;cbsCarousel