An Open Invitation to the President of the United States of America

An Open Invitation to the President of the 

United States of America

Re:  An Invitation to Meet Me on the Arizona/Mexico Border

Goal:  "Listen to the Border"

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing this letter to you for a myriad of reasons. The primary one being the glaring reality that you have never visited the Arizona/Mexico Border.

After your confrontation yesterday on the tarmac in the Phoenix airport with Governor Jan Brewer, I feel, it is my duty as an American citizen to speak out and to also offer you an invitation. You say that you “want to hear from the American people”… here I am… about as American as you can get!

Mr. President, on one of your trips, you referred to it as a “listening tour”… you indicated that you wanted to "listen" to the American people. This letter to you, Mr. President, is an invitation to extend your “listening tour” and meet me on the Mexican Border in the Tucson Sector of Arizona.

Over the Labor Day weekend, you visited New Jersey to observe the disaster areas left from Hurricane Irene. A different kind of disaster is taking place on our border with Mexico, one much more threatening and deadly.

Leave your new buses in DC and instead bring a Blackhawk! Fly with me along the hostile and desperate border with Mexico. Yes, I know the stats that are being published; I’m a photo-journalist with lots of real time boots-on-the-ground work done in Arizona on the Border.

Mr. President, please meet me at the Border where you can hopefully hear as you really listen in this corridor of killing.

• Listen to the silence of the desert
• Listen to the sound of AK-47 fire echoing through the desert
• Listen to harrowing stories of the ranchers that live on the Border whose lives are a living hell that no one in the White House has even given serious recognition much less “listened to” for years
• Listen to highly sophisticated communication networks of the drug cartels from their posts on some of Arizona’s highest craggy mountaintops that resemble the topography of Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Listen as spotters choreograph their runners and warn them with their smart phones and GPS coordinates as to the exact location of Border Patrol officers to make sure their cargo – drug or human – reaches its destination in the United States
• Listen to the outrageous immorality of children that are being sold into sex slavery 24/7
• Listen to the screams of women that are being raped and sold into prostitution and sex slavery… traded like mere commodities for thousands of dollars
• Listen to abuse… rape… murder… strife… abandonment… futility
• Listen to chilling fear and bitter horror
• Listen to screams of the environment being brutalized every minute of every day
• Listen to the crushing of lives and families in epidemic proportions
• Listen to drug mules running through tunnels in Nogales under the border… feet, legs and backs burdened with 50 or more pounds of drugs
• Listen to coyotes trafficking humans through the sewers of Ambos Nogales… the futures of the victims totally unknown
• Listen to blood-curdling terror
• Listen to the highly effective effective Shadow Wolves on the Tohono O'odham Nation silently tracking smugglers with skills used and passed down by their ancestors
• Listen to the perilous tragedy of the exploitative conditions surrounding border issues
• Listen to the ghastly truths
• Listen to the morgue of the valleys
• Listen to blood running
• Listen to the very life leaving hundreds of bodies… these bodies are all human beings
• Listen to the silent outcries for help
• Listen to the drug and human trafficking coursing through our National Forests that have been turned into sophisticated super highways for running drugs, guns and humans
• Listen to Peck Canyon where one of our own was murdered in the line of duty with “one of our own” US weapons that fast and furiously “walked across the border”
• Listen to the assassination of our very sovereignty
• Listen to the slaughter of the American Dream

If we can take out Bin Laden with surgical precision oceans away, why don’t we seal our own backyard, Mr. President?

Great leaders are not merely assassins, Mr. President, they are most importantly and more significantly the protectors of our lands, seas and, above all, each and every citizen of this great nation!

Let me be clear, I’m offering my research, personal knowledge and experience of living on the border in the Tucson Sector for almost 3 years. I left at the bidding of local Border Patrol agents for my own personal safety. Yes, for me, it’s up close and personal!

My roots go back to an “all American” home in a small farming community in Illinois. Raised by my grandfather, a factory worker and a union member, who believed in America and her values. He held those American values dear in his everyday life… he lived them and passed those same values on to me. I love this country!

Mr. President, O’ why “won’t” you see?

Please allow me to show you… please meet me on the Border.

I’m aware of your “moats and alligators” visit to El Paso. With all due respect, Mr. President, even moats and alligators won’t stop this invasion.


It isn’t “coming,” Mr. President… it’s already here! Yes, the brutality and violence is spilling over the border and IS "coming to America!"

I will await your reply to my sincere invitation.

Respectfully,
Jan McCracken
Author, Dear Capitol Hill: O’ Why Can’t You See… 
Our Lawless Borders