Arivaca and Project 28
by C Hues
On April 14 2007 an agent from the Boeing Corp dropped off a document at the Arivaca Library, a 50 page description of the Dept of Homeland Security's latest plan to secure our US Borders called SBInet PROJECT 28. Our librarians were told that the document could not be taken out of the Library, or duplicated. The agent also said he would be back to pick up the document in five days, on the 18th, which would end the "public viewing time". In other words, since the Library would be closed three out of those five days, 1500 people in Arivaca would be given three days to examine a 50 page document regarding installations that could greatly impact our lives.
PROJECT 28 refers to a test area in which the US Government is erecting nine 98 foot high detection/identification towers in a 28 mile stretch from the sacred Baboquivari Mountain on the Papago Indian Reservation to a location on Tres Bellotas Road, two miles south of Arivaca, which overlooks both the old Townsite and the entire vast stretch of 5-20 acre parcels to the east which house the bulk of our population. The towers contain day/night cameras, spot lights, radar movement detectors, loud speakers, hailer horns and "other classified technologies".
By word of mouth I heard about this Project document on April 23rd. Copies had been made. I read the document and immediately organized a Protest Gathering, which was held on the 26th at the Tres Bellotas site, and was covered by Tucson media, as were the following three meetings in town with the Border Patrol and Boeing present.
Despite our protests, on May 24th the tower on Tres Bellotas was erected. We had by then been interviewed and featured by Reuters International News Syndicate similar to our US Associated Press, by MS NBC, KABC Los Angeles, Flashpoint radio in San Francisco, the Washington Post, and many local TV stations and newspapers.
At this writing, a proposed Immigration Act is moving through the Congress, with this SBInet Tower Project of hundreds of such towers requested for both our Northern and Southern Borders tucked into its tomblike pages. I have one significant question regarding this situation: if these towers are going to be built to stop illegal immigrants from coming to work in our country, why put them on the Canadian Border too? There's no such problem there. The Towers simply augment the current attitude of military presence on the Border with Mexico and indicate an unhealthy prognosis for our future.
