The Ultimate Gold Panning & Propecting Guide 

Gold panning is a really fun hobby that is enjoyed by people all around the world.

And it isn’t just hobbyists that use a gold pan to search for gold. Even experienced miners with a lifetime of experience with placer mining use them to quickly sample new areas and seek out concentrations of placer gold in creeks and rivers.

There is abundant information about gold panning on the internet… in fact, a while back we wrote this simple Step-by-Step Gold Panning Guide to help teach people the proper steps to use your pan.

However, we felt that a more expansive guide was needed to go beyond these simple steps in the gold panning process. There is a whole lot more involved in successfully finding gold than just using your pan properly.

Most of the people that go gold panning never find any gold. This is a fact. And their panning technique isn’t necessarily the problem… instead it likely has to do with the material that they are panning.

So let’s take a more in-depth look at successful gold panning so you can be sure to successfully find gold next time you go to your favorite river.

 

Choosing the Proper Gold Pan

First, let’s talk about the proper equipment, and of course the first thing you need is a good gold pan. There are lots of different pans out there, and all of them will work to varying degrees. After all, the panning process relies on gravity more to capture the gold, so theoretically ANY type of pan shaped object that had a low point would work to retain gold. In fact, miners during the early gold rushes in the 1800s used all sorts of homemade metal pans to get the gold.

Of course, today there are commercially produced gold pans that are do a really good job, and are a huge improvement when compared to what the “old timers” used back during the gold rush. And the first mass-produced pans were made of steel, which needed to be “cured” to remove factory oils before they could be used. Additionally, they would easily rust if not properly cared for.

A modern plastic pan has many advantages over the old metal pans that were popular years ago. The plastic gold pans that are made today are very durable, come in colors that contrast well with gold so that you can easily see the tiniest specks in the bottom of your pan, and they have built in riffles that aid in retention of the finest little bits of gold.

There are lots of good pans out there today, and one really good one is the Garrett Gravity Trap. It is my personal go-to pan for most situations. It is inexpensive and durable, and does a fantastic job of retaining fines.

 

Other Equipment to Have When You Start

To successfully pan for gold, you’ll need to carry more gear than just a pan. In fact, a good quality gold panning kit can really increase your odds of success when you start panning (This Garrett Gold Pan Kit has some good stuff to get you started).

You should still add a few more tools to your arsenal though if you want to be well equipped for a day on the river. Of course a good ol’ #2 shovel is a must-have item, and a smaller trowel sized shovel is also a pretty good idea.

Other good stuff to carry would be tweezers, magnifying glass, and a variety of crevicing tools that you can use to dig material out of cracks in the bedrock.

Crevicing tools don’t need to be store bought items specifically designed for prospecting; to the contrary, some of the handiest tools for this can be things like screwdrivers, thick pieces of wire, spoons, and pocket knives. The more variety you have, the better job you can do to get down to where to gold hides.

 

Where to Get Your Gravel

So what am I talking about when I say “where the gold hides?”

Well, I think most people know that gold is heavy; in fact it is generally the heaviest element that you will find in a river. What that means is that gold settles down, way down. And it settles in places where gravity allows it to.

Most of the gravel in that bar is barren and devoid of gold. Even if you are prospecting at a well-known gold-bearing river, the gold isn’t scattered around randomly, so if you simply dig a few shovelfuls of gravel from the top of a gravel bar and pan it out, you probably aren’t going to have any success.

 

Inside Bends and Behind Boulders

There are many places where gold can hide, but one universally understood truth is that gold will concentrate in “paystreaks” on the inside bends of rivers and streams. These are the areas where gravity allows the gold to settle.

Behind large boulders is another great place to get gravel to pan out. In the same way as inside bends, the slack water that is created behind large rocks and boulders can create conditions that placer gold can drop down and settle into the stream bed.

Boulders are great, but really any structure can have the same effect. For example, a seasonal logjam could easily create a similar environment where gold would settle.

 

Dig Deep and Clean out That Bedrock

Most prospectors understand that inside bends and behind boulders are good places to dig. However, this is the point where LOTS of first time gold panners mess up.

They need to DIG DEEPER!

You know how gold settles to the bottom of your gold pan when you agitate it, right? Well the sands and gravel in a river or creek is doing this CONSTANTLY. The result is that as soon as gold finds a place where it settles, it starts to move downward in the strata of the gravel. It goes down, down, down, until it hits something hard enough to stop it. And this is generally bedrock.

Clean out those bedrock cracks. This is where those crevicing tools I mentioned earlier really come into play. Do your best to get down as deep as you can, because the highest concentrations of placer gold area going to accumulate at the very bottom of these cracks.

Oftentimes, it will be a thimbleful of material at the bottom of a bedrock crack that is richer than a hundred shovelfuls of gravel just a few feet above it.

 

You Should Spend Way Longer Getting Your Gravel than You Do Panning

Ultimately, I think this is the main reason that many prospectors will have a lack of success with gold panning. First-timers generally get excited to start finding gold, so they start digging indiscriminately all over the place, filling up their pan and going through the motions without actually seeking out the places where gold is most likely to be found.

Most of the time, getting down to bedrock is no easy task. Depending on the area you are panning, there can be considerable overburden that covers the bedrock, and it can take a lot of time and effort to get down to the good gold-bearing gravels.

But if you don’t go to the extra effort to access these richest areas, then what is the point? You do want to find gold, right?

 

Classify Your Material Before Gold Panning

A good Gold Panning Kit should include a classifier. This is some sort of screen that is used to filter out the larger material.

Remember, most gold that you find is tiny. The vast majority of gold is dust and small “pickers” that are less than ¼” in diameter. Finding a gold nugget by panning is a rare occurrence, so classifying out the larger rocks and gravel that is highly unlikely to be gold is a good idea. There’s no sense wasting space in your gold pan with large, heavy rocks that almost certainly don’t contain any gold.

Classifying does a couple things. First, it removes those larger rocks that aren’t gold. Before you toss them aside, it’s always a good idea to give them a quick look-over to make sure that you’re not pitching a big gold nugget or specimen out, but most of the time it will just be gravel.

Rather than worry about inspecting all of the larger gravel that you toss aside, you could just leave it in a pile and scan it with a high-frequency gold metal detector after you are done to make sure that nothing good was tossed out.

The second benefit of removing the larger material is that the gravels in your pan will stratify more evenly if it is all of uniform size. This will help ensure that fine gold will easily settle down to the bottom of your gold pan, and it will stay there throughout the panning process.

 

Put a Moderate Amount of Gravel in Your Pan

Loading way too much gravel into a gold pan is another mistake that lots of prospectors make. For one thing, it makes your gold pan really heavy, which can get really uncomfortable during a long day prospecting on the river. When you are uncomfortable, you are more likely to get sloppy with your panning technique, so only put a moderate amount of classified gravel into your pan at any given time.

This would also be a good time to mention that you use a gold pan that is of proper size for you. For most men, a 14-inch pan is a good universal size. For women and kids, smaller 12” and even 10” pans might be the best size.

Sure, a bigger pan can hold more material, but they sure get heavy after you fill them up. Personally, my back and shoulders are a lot happier if I use a reasonably sized pan and work at a reasonable pace.

 

Get Everything Wet and Break it Up with your Hand

Alright, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of gold panning! You’ve now got some gravel in your pan and you want to start working it. The first thing you need to do is dip your pan in the creek and get some water in there to completely saturate the gravel in your pan.

Now, BEFORE you do any panning, get your hands in there and bust up any clumps that you feel.

Clay is the enemy of the gold prospector!

It can capture and hold small gold particles, pulling it out of the pan. You want to bust up any clumps of clay that you feel, and in general just make sure that everything is loose and separated. This will allow any free gold particles to settle into the bottom of the pan the way that they are supposed to.

 

Agitate Vigorously Before Tipping the Gold Pan

Now that you have everything loosened up in the pan, it’s time to start shaking it up, but don’t tip the pan yet. You want to give the gold a chance to get down to the bottom of the pan where you want it.

Continue to agitate the contents of the pan, and you will see that the larger, lighter weight pebbles (with a lower specific gravity) will rise to the top. This is a good sign. This shows us that the contents within the pan are starting to stratify, which is exactly what you want to happen.

Tip the pan, and slowly work it allowing lighter gravels to leave the pan

At this point, any gold that is in your pan should be settled to the bottom, and as you slightly tip the pan and continue agitating the contents the gold will end up in the bottom crease of the gold pan.

Now you can start letting some of the gravel to slowly leave your pan.

Do this process SLOWLY!

You’ve gone to a lot of effort at this point to make sure that you have good material in your pan, and you don’t want to get sloppy now.

 

Make Sure you are Panning over the Riffles

A gold pan like the Garrett Gravity Trap has several riffles that help to retain gold from falling out of the pan. In theory, you really shouldn’t need these at all, since a careful panning process should ensure that the gold never leaves the bottom crease of you pan. Still, you want to makes sure that your pan is oriented correctly so that the sand and gravel that is leaving your pan is going overtop these riffles. This is a little added “insurance” that you aren’t losing any gold out of your pan.

 

Tip Upright and Repeat Upright Agitation Several Times Throughout the Process

As you continue to add water to your pan and slowly pan out the contents of your pan, it is very important that you tip your pan fully upright and repeat the initial step of agitating the contents so that the gold will re-settle down to the bottom. It can even be a good idea to put your hands in there again and continue to break apart anything that feels like it’s sticking together. This is especially true if your material has a high percentage of clays.

 

Continue Until you have just a bit of the Heaviest Materials in the Pan

Continue this process until almost all of the lighter material has been washed out of the pan. This process will take several minutes, so don’t get too hasty and try to get it done quickly. Once you have gotten down to just a few pinches of material at the bottom of your pan, stop what you are doing and take a look at the contents.

Almost all areas (especially places that are known to have gold) will have some amount of what is generically called “black sands.” Black sand can actually be a variety of different minerals, but are most commonly made up of hematite and magnetite. These both have a heavy specific gravity and will show up at the bottom of your pan in most areas.

Also Read: Mercury Amalgamation and Fine Gold Recovery

And: Removing Fine Gold from Black Sands

Sometimes there will be other small minerals of various colors that you will see. Garnets are another gem that will often there. They are usually a deep red/purple color. Once you’ve reduced the contents of your gold pan to just these minerals, stop and take a closer look.

 

Visually Inspect the Contents and Look for “Pickers”

The first think you want to do is take a quick look amongst the black sands and see if you can spot any visible nuggets or “pickers” of gold. Remember, these aren’t likely to be big chunks, but rather little flakes that stand out within the black sands. Casually shake the pan while you look at the contents, looking for any bits of gold that may be exposed.

This is the when having a colored gold pan is really nice, rather than an old metal pan. The newer plastic pans that are green create a nice contrast with the gold that is in your pan, and often the little bits of gold can really stand out.

If you are fortunate enough to spot a nice picker, it is now a simple task of using tweezers to pick it up and drop it into your vial (hence the term “picker”).

It’s always a nice surprise to recover a good sized piece of gold that you can grab with your tweezers. Most of the time it’s too small to grab, so there are a few tricks to help you separate the fine gold from the remaining black sands so that you can capture it and add it to your vial.

 

Use a Magnet

Some (but not all) black sands are magnetic, so using a very strong magnet can really help to separate it out. There are special magnets that are designed for this task that are reasonably priced that do a great job.

Just be aware that sometimes gold can cling to black sands that you pick up with you magnet, so it’s a good idea to take your reject black sands and keep them in a bucket to look over a second time before you toss it out. It is very easy to lose some gold in this process, so take your time and be sure to look over everything carefully to make sure you are getting all the gold.

 

Tilt your Gold Pan and Shake it Very Slightly to Create a Line of Stratified Minerals

Doing this final step in the panning process can be a little tricky and frustrating or beginners, but it is really the step where you can expose the tiniest of the fine gold particles that may still remain hidden at the bottom of your pan. You can separate the gold from the black sands with carefully agitating the contents that are left. Tilt the pan just slightly and shake the pan in a very gentle motion. If done correctly, you can get a nice stratification of light to heavy materials, and the gold will show up at the trail end.

Another tip that you can do at this final step is to do a quick flick-of-the-wrist, enough motion that all of the garnets and black sand will move, but the gold will remain in place. This can be challenging at first, but a little practice will improve your skills. And it can be really fun surprise, because it will immediately expose any gold that was hidden beneath the sands.

 

Use Snuffer Bottle

The very last step to pick up the finest of the fine gold is to use your trusty snuffer bottle. A good Gold Panning Kit will include one. With a snuffer, you can carefully shoot water over top of your concentrates, which blows the black sands aside while leaving the gold.

When you’ve got the fine gold completely separated, you simply suck it up with your snuffer bottle, which can later be transferred to your vial.

 

Conclusion

I hope this article gave you a bit more information than just the simple “how to” information that is out there. While learning the proper steps of gold panning is important, it really is the entire process that starts with getting the proper equipment, looking in the right places, and putting good quality material in your pan before you even begin.

If there is one bit of information that you should take away from this article, it would be that you need to spend more time worrying about where you get your gravel, rather than the panning technique itself.

Even the poorest panning technique will yield some gold if you are searching in the right areas, but you can’t make gold magically appear in places that it doesn’t exist! So take that extra time needed to find quality gold-rich material.

Happy gold prospecting & mining!

Submitted By Michael Webster 

Blogger: User Profile: Michael Webster

www.blogger.com/profile/16089681464802136846

Michael Webster is publisher of the Laguna Journal, Small Business Journal, Indian Gaming Journal & El Paso Journal, Prespectorsjournal.com on line newspapers and a Syndicated Investigative Reporter Michael Webster Syndicated Investigative Reports are read worldwide, in 100 or more U.S. outlets and in at least 136 countries and territories.

Michael (Mick) Webster's Blog - Constitution Club

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Michael (Mick) Webster's Blog | The goal of the Constitution Club is to create networks of liberty minded patriots in each of the over 3,000 counties in the Un

Corrupt banking systems & the fake war on terror & drugs

By Michael Webster, Syndicated Investigative reporter: 

The corrupt banking systems & the fake war on terror and drugs is the biggest threat of all to the United States and the free world.

According to a Senate report it revealed that HSBC’s lax anti-money laundering policies allowed some of the largest Mexican drug money, the leading terrorist state Iran, and even illegal Russian money to enter the U.S. and gain access to U.S. dollar liquidity over the last several of years.

More than 60 countries have advertised and gained a global reputation as offshore tax havens for the rich international terrorist and Mexican drug cartels and others around the world. They have opened corresponding bank accounts without real names or with any proper identification. These so called “shell banks,” also known as “international off shore banks”, and by many Gangster Banksters, they commonly bundle illegal money transfers that come in and go out without saying where they are coming from. For example, the Al-Shamal Islamic Bank, set up by Osama bin Laden himself in the Sudan, had correspondent accounts at Citibank and American Express Bank.

The report indicates that HSBC’s Mexican affiliate channeled $7 billion into the U.S. since 2007 which included cash proceeds from illegal drug sales by American street gangs working for the Mexican drug cartels in the United States.

It is also an interesting fact that on Sept. 11, the bin Laden family was flown out of Oklahoma City on a U.S. government airplane even though the Federal Aviation Administration had issued a no-fly order. Freezing those accounts in the billions of dollars inevitably would lead to disclosures of the huge financial tie-in between the Bush family and the worldwide bin Laden Group business cartel and its relative, Osama bin Laden.

Those same banks and others such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Wachovia circumvented rules designed to block transactions involving terrorists, drug lords, and rogue regimes.”  In one case,” two HSBC affiliates sent nearly 25,000 transactions involving $19.4 billion through their HBUS [HSBC’s U.S. affiliate] accounts over seven years without disclosing the transactions’ links to Iran.” They provided U.S. dollar financing and services to banks in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh that were tied to terrorist organizations, while also clearing $290 million in “obviously suspicious travelers cheques” that benefitted Russians “who claimed to be in the used car business.”

The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. 

As reported in the U.S. Border Fire Report in 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico. Mexican soldiers found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa Mexican drug cartel.

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.

Furthermore, the investigation showed how the bank’s regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) failed to take a single enforcement action against HSBC despite numerous violations by the international bank.  Among them, failing to monitor $60 trillion in wire transfer and account activity, a backlog of 17,000 unrevealed account alerts regarding potentially suspicious activity, and a failure to conduct anti-money laundering due diligence before opening accounts for HSBC affiliates.

Citibank lobbied but failed to derail legislation passed after Sept. 11 to ban such shell accounts from having correspondent accounts that let them move money into the U.S. banking system. Terrorists and drug traffickers still can go through “legitimate” banks in Liechtenstein, the Sudan, the Cayman Islands, or another offshore haven. Hijacker leader Mohammed Atta had a Citibank account in the branch at Dubai. Before the attack, he received $100,000 from an unidentified account in Dubai.

Washington lawyer Jack Blum co-wrote a report to the United Nations on the offshore phenomenon, said, “U.S. policy is influenced by the fact that the hot money from the rest of the world fueled one of the greatest booms in the stock market and that brokerage firms find it profitable to run private banking operations for rich people who don’t want to pay taxes. Seventy billion dollars in U.S. taxes are evaded every year through offshore accounts.”

One of the worst examples of money laundering of Nazi gold is by the private Vatican Bank in Vatican City. The Pope, as the sole shareholder of the Vatican Bank, is one of the richest men in the world and, by definition, one of the least moral. A well-known attorney who specializes in Holocaust restitution has documented transfers of gold from Nazi SS accounts to the Vatican Bank in 1943 just as the Allies were closing in. The Vatican Bank claims to have no records from the World War II period. How convenient.

Before Sept. 11, the Bush White House flatly refused to freeze accounts of so-called “terrorists” such as Osama bin Laden in ABN-AMRO, the Dutch bank operating in 15 major U.S. cities. Why? Simply put, because the secret accounts implicated the Bush family along with the so-called “terrorists.”

The Bush family is tied financially to the Carlyle Group which, in turn, has had the 1st President Bush as a heavily paid consultant to the Bin Laden Group

Freezing those accounts in the billions of dollars inevitably would have led to disclosures would have revealed the huge financial ties between the Bush family and the worldwide Bin Laden Group business cartel and its then relative, Osama bin Laden. Back then demonized as the head “terrorist” of the world, Osama bin Laden reportedly got huge amounts of cash, covertly transferred, through members of the Saudi Royal Family, which is secretly, and often openly, anti-American. The navigator of these transactions was ABN-AMRO, also known as Algemene Bank Nederland. Osama’s 24 top family members resided in the United States until a few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack of 911.

It is clear that the so called “war on drugs and the “war on terrorism” is a sham and that many other U.S. banks are at the very least complicit in helping to launder the dirty money of the terrorists and drug lords, most of it generated by the illicit drug trade, chiefly the opium trade out of Afghanistan, heroin and other drugs out of the Golden Triangle, and heroin, cocaine, marijuana & designer drugs out of Mexico, Central America and South America.

Sources:

U.S. Sen Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations  

http://www.forbes.com/forbes

www.usborderfirerepot.com

www.lagunajournal.com

U.S. DEA

U.S. Border Patrol

Related article: Terrorist threaten United States through drug lords  by Michael Webster

Michael ( Mick) Webster  Syndicated Investigative Reports are read worldwide, in 100 or more U.S. outlets and in at least 136 countries and territories. He publishes articles in association with global news agencies and media information services with more than 350 news affiliates in 136 countries. 
 He served as a trustee on trade Union funds. A noted Author, Lecturer, Educator, Emergency Manager, Counter-Terrorist, War on Drugs and War on Terrorist Specialist,  Newspaper Publisher. Radio News caster. Labor Law generalist, Teamster Union Business Agent, General Organizer, Union Rank and File Member Grievances Representative, NLRB Union Representative, Union Contract Negotiator, Workers Compensation Appeals Board Hearing Representative. Mr. Webster represented management on that side of the table as the former Director of Federated of Nevada. Mr. Webster publishes on-line newspapers a twww.lagunajournal.com  andwww.usborderfirereport.com  and does investigative reports for print, electronic and on-line News Agencies. 

Biden Administration Restricting The Access of Reporters to Facilities at The Border

 The Biden administration has come under fire from several news agencies for restricting the access of reporters to facilities at the border as a surge of migrants including children  cross into the United States.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas travelled to the border on Friday with a group of senators from both parties. The Biden administration blocked journalists from joining the trip, something reporters usually can do when members of the cabinet make trips of this kind with lawmakers.

Despite promises to be more transparent, the administration has blocked access to border facilities for the media, CNN reported. At least 14,000 children are detained at migration facilities.

Radio Television Digital News Foundation executive director Dan Shelley slammed the lack of media access in a statement: "The President promised things would be different. Turns out he was right but in this case not the way we had hoped.

This is what is coming to the states and the cartels are in 1,500 U.S. cities

[Editors Note –Not for children's eyes. The following is a gruesome depiction as to the dangers and murders happening on both sides of the U.S. and Mexican boarder'. The image is that of five heads decapitated by Mexican Human & Drug Cartels in Mexico.(MHDC)

By Michael Webster Syndicated Investigative Reporter

This is what is coming to the states and the cartels are in 1,500 U.S. cities last I heard! (and that was a while back – could be a lot more than that now!) Hopefully this well get Americans attention.

Mexican Human & Drug Cartels .(MHDC) and related gangland type murders and kidnappings are happening on both sides of the U.S. Mexican border. But know the border patrol pooled away by having to baby set the thousands of illegal aliens which includes hundreds of miners daily, which open up the border to criminal activity, the kids have got to be poperly looked after. Than having to be dealt with is our National Forests and private homes they are being used throughout the U.S. by Cartel operatives trafficking and producing illegal drugs. Many county sheriffs are having to deal with this razing threat alone like Penal County Arizona Sheriff’s office who have had shootouts with the cartels far from the U.S. Mexican border.

Some experts now believe America’s number one threat today is being invaded by dangerous Mexican Drug Cartels (MDC’s) and their gangs! The photo above is of a Mexican bar where the beheaded remains where put out on a stage. There have been more than several beheadings on U.S. soil by Mexican drug cartel members. American citizens have been reported to have been killed and kidnapped in Mexico and in the United States. Some Americans where kidnapped in the U.S. and taken to Mexico where they where killed by these very dangerous MDC enforcers. Most gang killings in America are related to drugs that are directly related to the MDCS, who supply the drugs the U.S. gangs traffic in. American law enforcement fear many more drug killings to be committed in the states as the illegals invade U.S. Border so called “war on drugs” goes forward practically uncontrolled.

The FBI does not keep track of all the murders in the USA that are drug related much less any pertaining to what are believed Mexican Drug Cartel involvement. Within the past several years MDCS reached into the U.S. and killed U.S. Government law enforcement employees, informants, drug dealers and Mexican Nationals, according to authorities.

According to NBC Nightly News in Cochise County, Ariz., which shares an 84-mile-long border with Mexico, Sheriff Larry Dever has lost four friends — three police officers and a rancher — to cartel violence, and insists Mexican traffickers crossing into his county are well-armed and much more aggressive now than they were just a few years ago. “We’re getting overrun from the south, because the federal government can't do its job,” he said.

The long-time sheriff argued that the FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics cited by the White House fail to include many of the crimes committed by traffickers, including kidnapping, extortion, public corruption, drug and human smuggling, and trespassing. “I invite them to come down here, come live with us and go camp out at some rancher’s house and see what happens at night,” he said. When asked if anyone from Washington had ever agreed to do that, Dever said, “Heck no, they come for photo ops.”.

At the Austin headquarters for the Texas Department of Public Safety, former director Steve McCraw, a former FBI supervisor and counter-terrorism specialist, studied a chart on the wall filled with red and green dots indicating where drug and money seizures have been made around the state.
“The border’s not secure, clearly. I think by any indication it’s not secure,” he said. “We’ve identified 25 murders that are cartel-related, we’ve identified 124 kidnappings and extortion's that are cartel-related. We know of 61 instances in which cartel members shot at police officers while they’re on the river trying to interdict trucks.”
McCraw agreed with Dever that federal officials often use incomplete statistics to defend their arguments about border safety. “You can’t cherry pick your statistics,” he said. “We’ve got a duty to be very accurate about what’s going on now and how we see the current threat.”

According to Congressional testimony in 2009 and 2011, the current federal interagency definition of Mexican spillover violence is: “…deliberate, planned attacks by the cartels on U.S. assets, including civilian, military, or law enforcement officials or physical institutions such as government buildings, consulates or businesses. This definition does not include trafficker on trafficker violence, whether perpetrated in Mexico or the U.S.”

Many state officials say trafficker on trafficker violence should not be excluded, because cartel shootouts seen in Texas, Arizona and other states can put civilians in danger and in fear for their lives. “That’s ludicrous,” said McCraw. “Any time there’s a murder, an assassination, or the death squads of ‘sicarios’ come over here and try to do a takeover like that, there’s always consequences in that neighborhood.”
McCraw, Dever and other regional officials argue that all crimes linked to Mexican traffickers should be gathered to assess the true scope of border threats so that law enforcement needs can more accurately be determined.

The refusal by the Federal Government to control the US-Mexico Border has led to the deaths of thousands of people on both sides of the border. Even CNN is now acknowledging that open borders have made most of our major cities dangerous and drug ridden.
It is reported that 1500 American cities are effected by Mexican Drug Cartel violence.
Mexican Drug Cartel In US Cities

Sources:

NBC Nightly News, DEA,U.S. Border Patrol and Survival Family Emergency Response & Preparedness Guide ad Mexican army officers & the El Paso Journal

WHY THOUSANDS OF TROOPS ARE STILL IN DC

 

Syndicated Investigative Reporter Michael Webster

Many Americans are questioning the Constitutionally of having troops in the capital with nearly 30,000 National Guard units summoned to the Capitol resembled an armed camp, with rifle-bearing soldiers standing shoulder from one another, and heavy military trucks and K-rails blocking excess to the capital and roads leading to the capital. That is roughly three times the total number of American troops deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria combined. Other troops will help control traffic and Metro stations elsewhere in the city. Members of the Guard at the Capitol will be equipped with Beretta M9 sidearms and some will carry automatic rifles and shotguns. All will have protective riot gear, including helmets and Kevlar vests, Guard officials said. According to some legislatures these troop weapons are not loaded and have no ammunition in them.

The city itself contended with a wide perimeter of closed streets. The military will keep thousands of National Guard troops at the US Capital for the foreseeable future. This appears to the rest of the world as turning America into a banana republic.

According to the government officials' the troops will be the National Guard and not active-duty. But officials know such events are fraught with risk and cite Kent State in 1970, Tiananmen Square in 1989 and Tehran in 2009.

 The Defense Department crossed a line that the Pentagon officials have tried to avoid. This to the world appears to be pitting armed military forces against American citizens in there own Capital.

The NY Times reports that the vast majority of military forces in Washington will be National Guard. But a small number of elite commandos from the Joint Special Operations Command, a secretive command based at Fort Bragg, N.C.,This elite force is designed to help counter any terrorist attack or other national emergency, especially any involving nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

Under the 1878 federal law members of the army are prohibited from acting as a domestic police force.

Active-duty troops are only allowed to help police officers under limited exceptions to the act, including when expressly authorized by law or by the constitution.

But one politician has expressed concern that the soldiers may find themselves in a legal grey area. House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Readiness, said the situation teetered “on the edge of the Posse Comitatus law.”

The US military’s Northern Command defended the troops’ presence in the Capital.

Convicted Sexual Predators Arrested by Border Patrol

 Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol agents arrested three criminal aliens with prior convictions for sexual offenses.

Monday afternoon, Brownsville Border Patrol Station agents working near Brownsville, Texas, apprehended a male Guatemalan national after he illegally entered the country.  During processing, record checks revealed the subject, later identified as MARTINEZ, Jose Estuardo, was arrested in 2013 for indecency with a child/sexual contact by the Hopkins County Sheriff’s Office in Sulphur Springs, Texas. Martinez was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to 8 years probation.

Hours later, Border Patrol agents working near Falfurrias, Texas, arrested a Mexican national illegally present in the United States. The subject was taken into custody and transported for processing.  At the station, the subject’s criminal history revealed an arrest in 2015 for rape by the Sandy Springs Police Department in Sandy Springs, Georgia. The individual was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to 20 years confinement, of which he served 5 years.

Today, Rio Grande City Border Patrol agents apprehended a group of nine illegal aliens near Fronton, Texas. During processing, agents discovered that one of the individuals identified as Canales-Velasquez, Tony, a Honduran national, had a prior arrest by the Potter County Sheriff’s Office in Amarillo, Texas, for indecency with a child. Canales was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to five years probation.

Border Patrol processed the subjects accordingly.

Even with the spread of the COVID-19 virus, human smugglers continue to try these brazen attempts with zero regard for the lives they endanger nor to the health of the citizens of our great nation.  The U.S. Border Patrol agents of the Rio Grande Valley Sector will continue to safeguard the nation and community against these criminal elements.