Umm.. they aren't putting signs up telling AMERICANS to NOT got into national parks because THERE ARE DRUG SMUGGLING ILLEGAL ALIENS THAT MIGHT KILL THEM. To not respond in kind, when Obama has given an OATH to follow and protect the constitution... it's one of the FEW DUTIES that's ACTUALLY part of his oath.
That whole thing is wildly overhyped... First off, it is 3,500 acres. That's only 2 square miles, not the "massive stretch of AZ" the right wing media likes to refer to it as. Secondly, it wasn't declared off limits by the federal government or something, it was just the park ranger... It's a pretty reasonable assumption that the park ranger is just trying to make a scene... I have never seen any statistic indicating that there actually has been some huge number of deaths in that area or anything... I actually was in that park about 3 years ago with my girlfriend at the time and it was quiet, pretty, and empty... I saw a couple border patrol cars, and that's it. The notion that it is a war zone and all that is manufactured by right wingers.
But, we obviously are disagreeing over how to prioritize this issue, so lets try a thought experiment. Lets compare it to another potential priority. Imagine that you are given control over dealing with two issues- illegal immigration and drunk driving. We spent about $36 billion a year on fighting illegal immigration. Approximately a dollar a day per tax payer. We spend less than $50 million specifically on targetting drunk driving, but we should assume that some portion of general law enforcement efforts are focused on drunk driving, so lets say $1 billion to be generous. You are given an additional $10 billion (every tax payer is chipping in about $100 a year to give you that budget). Where do you want to spend it?
Some numbers you might want to consider. First, approximately 10,000 Americans, many of whom are not the drunk driver, die because of drunk driving a year, whereas certainly no more than 500 Americans a year are killed by an illegal immigrant, and best I can tell, it's actually MUCH less than that. $10 billion would be enough money to dramatically reduce drunk driving. You could set up a fund to provide free cab rides at bar closing time to anybody who wanted one anywhere in the country for that, you could double or tripple the law enforcement on the stretches of road and the times most likely to have drunk drivers, you could pay for those breathalizer locks to be installed in the car of every driver ever arrested for drunk driving, you could set up education programs, and/or you could extend the operating hours of public transportation until after closing time in every city. You really could take a massive bite out of those drunk driving deaths. Thousands of lives saved a year for sure.
So, what would the money do if spent on immigration enforcement? At present, on average, it costs us about $113k per illegal immigrant we either catch crossing the border or deport. So, $10 billion would mean somewhere around another 88,000 illegal immigrants being deported each year. That means deporting less than 1% of the illegal immigrants. So, even assuming our high estimate of 500 people killed a year by illegal immigrants, we can guesstime that the $10 billion spent would save 5 lives. Realistically, living in the US, you would not notice a difference in your day to day life at all having 88,000 fewer illegal immigrants. The effect on the economy would be negligible, the cultural change would be insignificant, the saved social services would be practically nothing.
Which would you rather do? Of course, in reality, there are thousands of priorities being balanced, not just two. Many of them are far better return on investment. $10 billion in cancer research would be a huge deal. After about 3-4 years we could have a mission to mars at that funding level. We could ensure that no child in the US ever went without food for that amount. We could buy a computer for every high school kid in the country. We could do tons of stuff. The point being, you can't just think about it as a "should we do X?" question. You have to think about it as "where does X fit in our list of priorities?" In my opinion, illegal immigration just is not that high on our list of priorities. We are in a recession, we owe $11 trillion in debt, we are in two wars, our education system is dragging up the rear of the first world, our health care system is a disaster, we have a higher percentage of our population living in poverty than any other first world country, we have the second lowest intergenerational income mobility of any first world countries, terrorism, disease, the pace of our scientific progress is slipping relative to other countries, we're going to run completely out of oil in the next couple decades, global warming, etc, etc.