Illegal aliens left an estimated 1,000 tons of trash while crossing the Arizona border into the United States last year, according to state officials.

According to federal government estimates, illegals each year leave more than 500 tons of trash and more than 100 abandoned vehicles at just one national wildlife refuge along the Arizona border.

But that kind of environmental impact is not mentioned in a new U.S. agreement with Mexico on border environmental issues.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on Aug. 8 that it had signed an agreement with Mexico to address “high priority border environmental issues.”

Those issues, according to the agreement, include reducing air pollution, improving access to clean air and water, and to “enhance compliance assurance and environmental stewardship” on both sides of the border.

But the 43-page document, “Border 2020: U.S-Mexico Environmental Program,” does not include any language about the ongoing impact to federal lands in the United States caused by human and drug trafficking and other illegal activities of Mexican drug cartels and other people who are illegally entering the country.

The agreement states that “protecting the health and the environment in the border region is essential to ensuring that the U.S. continues to be safe, healthy and economically productive,” but does not address the environmental and safety threat posed in the border region by illegal immigration and other crimes.

In Arizona, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings, the trashing of the southern border area by illegals has become a “huge problem,” according to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.

In 2011 alone, illegal border crossers left an estimated 1,000 tons of trash at Arizona border areas, ADEQ spokesman Mark Shaffer told CNSNews.com.

According to the latest statistics from the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection, 340,252 people were apprehended for entering the United States illegally in Fiscal Year 2011. Included in that number were 327,577 apprehended along the southwest border -- 129,188 of whom were apprehended in Arizona's Tucson and Yuma sectors, which together constitute the state’s border with Mexico.

The federal Government Accountability Office (GAO), meanwhile, says “illegal border activities” along the U.S.-Mexico border constitute “a threat to both public health and safety.

In a report to the House Committee on Natural Resources published in December 2010, the GAO said the extent of environmental damage done and the threat to public safety caused by “illegal border activity” was “substantial.”

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Editor's Note: Evidently, the Obama Administration and the Progressives ensconced at EPA only care about environmental issues that affect their agenda...


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