Yet another price we pay for illegal immigration:

MARINE CORPS AIR STATION YUMA, Ariz. -- Marines preparing for combat in Iraq or Afghanistan have lost significant amounts of training time because undocumented immigrants from Mexico have constantly wandered onto a bombing test range in Arizona, according to the commander of this base along the border.

Virtually every Marine squadron headed to Iraq or Afghanistan receives combat training at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, which for nearly 40 miles touches the US-Mexico border in the southwestern corner of Arizona. The Border Patrol's focus in recent years on tightening the border in the eastern part of the state, where volunteer citizens this month have established their own observation posts, has pushed more undocumented immigrants westward.

The government fails to protect the border for years, so let's blame it on the Minutemen! Sheesh.

Since July 2004, the training range has been shut down more than 500 times because of immigrants spotted on the range, causing a loss of more than 1,100 training hours, said Colonel James J. Cooney, the base's commanding officer.

''That's equivalent to almost 46 days of training. We're getting overrun here," he said in an interview. ''Any moment we take away from a Marine's experience base could cost him his life in combat."

Cooney said Marines intercepted more than 1,500 undocumented immigrants on the training range last year and, in the first three months of this year, more than 1,100. Base personnel detain the immigrants and call in Border Patrol agents to pick them up.

Semper fi, "vigilantes."

Missing training and using Marines to detain illegals degrades readiness, and hopefully I don't need to remind anyone that with two theatres in a global hot war going on, our combat troops' readiness is key to winning. But readiness isn't the only way that illegals are threatening our ability to fight the war:

There is some concern that, besides wandering immigrants, foreign terrorists could cross the Mexican border and infiltrate the Arizona bases to conduct intelligence gathering or commit acts of sabotage.

That only makes sense. If amateur wanderers can get into the base, so can professional coyotes, MS-13 militants and even al Qaeda operators.

(thanks to bWb)