Associated Press
September 23, 2014
by Astrid Galvan
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- A southern Arizona city that spent days cleaning storm-related debris - including parts of trees - from Mexico that knocked down an international border fence is asking the federal government to cover costs.
Nogales Mayor Arturo Garino said the city council has directed its attorneys to work with the federal government in an attempt to regain what it spent cleaning up large tree trunks and branches that made their way from a canyon in Sonora, Mexico, through the border fence and into two trailer home parks and businesses in the Arizona city in late July.
Garino says it was the government's responsibility to open flood gates attached to the tall, steel fence that would have prevented so much debris from making it into the city.
"As a city, you know, we want to make sure that this doesn't happen again. The cause of this was the fence. We have to have some system there that's operational and it's functional," Garino said.
Garino said he couldn't provide an estimate for the cost of the cleanup effort. However, the Nogales International reports that city officials have estimated $23,000 in costs.
Meanwhile, the fence, just west of the Mariposa Port of Entry, remains down because of continuing rainfall, Border Patrol spokeswoman Nicole Ballistrea said. The soil needs to be completely dry before the fence can go back up, she said. The fence stood between 18 and 26 feet high, extended at least 7 feet underground and was reinforced with rebar. The debris knocked down about 60 feet worth of fencing.
"The late hour and sudden onslaught of the storm did not leave adequate lead time for agents to safely release the gates," Ballistrea said. "We'll continue with the repairs once the saturation level has (dropped)."
The storm in Nogales, Sonora, began the weekend of July 25 but largely avoided the American side of the border. Still, debris from a canyon about a mile south of Nogales, Arizona, traveled up to the border and became trapped at the fence. Enough debris piled up that it knocked the fence over. In came tree stumps, pieces of wood, and about three feet of water that flooded businesses on Western Avenue in Nogales and two trailer home parks.
"I remember helping one group pull out a tree that was 12-feet-long, 16 inches in diameter, underneath the trailer," Garino said.
It took the city, county and volunteers three days to clean up the mess.
"That's why we're trying to address the federal government, because if you look at it you would see that if the gates would have opened it would have been a casual flow. The amount of water that fell wasn't enough for it to cause a flood," Garino said.
http://www.azfamily.com/news/Downed-border-fence-caused-city-damage--276870361.html
Showing posts with label breach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breach. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Friday, September 5, 2014
One month later: gap still in U.S. Mexico border fence from monsoon
Tucson News Now
August 27, 2014
by Maria Hechanova
NOGALES, AZ (Tucson News Now) - There is still a big gap in the U.S.-Mexico border fence in Nogales, Arizona just west of the Mariposa Port of Entry.
It has been one month since the monsoon dumped a lot of rain in a small area in a short amount of time. The large amount of rushing water crossed the border and drained from Mexico into the U.S. in this area taking the fence down with it.
Tucson Sector U.S. Border Patrol agents say the reason for the delay is because contractors are waiting to fix the fence when the ground is less saturated.
The estimated repair date is still to be determined, though contractors have already assessed the damage and determined how the repairs need to be made.
Weather-related border fence damage does not happen often. According to officials, the last time something like this took place was back in 2011 in Lukeville, in western Pima County.
Right now, agents are continuing to monitor the section of missing fence in Nogales on the ground and with cameras to make sure there is not a security threat or breach. Though according to one BP agent on the scene there have been people trying to cross over into the U.S. via the hole, on foot.
According to agents, it is an already highly visible spot and no extra resources are necessary to keep it safe. Agents already assigned to the area are just keeping a closer eye on it.
The fence, which agents say can range from 18 to 26 feet tall in the area is made of steel, rebar, and concrete and is set deep in the ground. They say it would not make any sense to put the fence up now, because the foundation would not set correctly or hold up well in the next storm.
It is unclear if any modifications will be made to the original design to make the fence stronger or prevent an event like this from happening again. There is also no word yet on how much the repairs will cost.
http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/26381929/one-month-later-gap-still-in-us-mexico-border-fence-from-monsoon
August 27, 2014
by Maria Hechanova
NOGALES, AZ (Tucson News Now) - There is still a big gap in the U.S.-Mexico border fence in Nogales, Arizona just west of the Mariposa Port of Entry.
It has been one month since the monsoon dumped a lot of rain in a small area in a short amount of time. The large amount of rushing water crossed the border and drained from Mexico into the U.S. in this area taking the fence down with it.
Tucson Sector U.S. Border Patrol agents say the reason for the delay is because contractors are waiting to fix the fence when the ground is less saturated.
The estimated repair date is still to be determined, though contractors have already assessed the damage and determined how the repairs need to be made.
Weather-related border fence damage does not happen often. According to officials, the last time something like this took place was back in 2011 in Lukeville, in western Pima County.
Right now, agents are continuing to monitor the section of missing fence in Nogales on the ground and with cameras to make sure there is not a security threat or breach. Though according to one BP agent on the scene there have been people trying to cross over into the U.S. via the hole, on foot.
According to agents, it is an already highly visible spot and no extra resources are necessary to keep it safe. Agents already assigned to the area are just keeping a closer eye on it.
The fence, which agents say can range from 18 to 26 feet tall in the area is made of steel, rebar, and concrete and is set deep in the ground. They say it would not make any sense to put the fence up now, because the foundation would not set correctly or hold up well in the next storm.
It is unclear if any modifications will be made to the original design to make the fence stronger or prevent an event like this from happening again. There is also no word yet on how much the repairs will cost.
http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/26381929/one-month-later-gap-still-in-us-mexico-border-fence-from-monsoon
Monday, July 28, 2014
Vehicle-sized gap cut in border fence
Nogales International
July 28, 2014
by Curt Prendergast
While Mother Nature was tearing a hole in the border fence west of Nogales, human hands were at work on the other side of town cutting a gap in the barrier the size of a garage door.
Someone cut through eight poles in the border fence approximately 1-1/4 miles east of downtown Nogales, apparently using a precision tool to slice through the six-inch steel tubes filled with concrete and a strand of rebar.
The cuts were made at the bases of the poles and about 10 feet above the ground, creating a gap that appeared large enough to drive a medium-sized vehicle through.
The cuts were discovered on Saturday, according to Border Patrol spokeswoman Nicole Ballistrea, the same day monsoon runoff and debris toppled a section of the border fence west of the Mariposa Port of Entry.
By Monday morning, contractors were using blowtorches and metal clamps to repair the fence. This reporter saw agents in vehicles making their usual patrols along the access road next to the border fence, but there appeared to be no special contingent designated to protect the breach.
No tools were found at the site and the Border Patrol does not yet know who cut the fence, Ballistrea said.
Smugglers often attempt to cut border fences, as well as dig under them and climb over them, she wrote in an emailed statement.
“As the Tucson Sector continues to improve deterrence efforts along the border, smuggling organizations are finding it more difficult to move their illicit goods into the interior of the United States,” she wrote.
“Fencing infrastructure gives Border Patrol agents the time they need to stop illegal cross-border activity,” she wrote.
A contractor with Granite Construction, the company that built the fence in 2011, estimated at the time that someone would need about 15 minutes to cut through the steel tubes. By that math, if the person who cut the fence on Saturday were acting alone, the 16 total cuts would have taken about four hours to complete.
One of the selling points of the fence, which covers 2.8 miles of border and cost a reported $11.8 million to build, was that it would be more difficult to cut through than the landing-mat barrier it replaced.
http://www.nogalesinternational.com/news/vehicle-sized-gap-cut-in-border-fence/article_7fa4d496-16a1-11e4-9b19-001a4bcf887a.html
July 28, 2014
by Curt Prendergast
While Mother Nature was tearing a hole in the border fence west of Nogales, human hands were at work on the other side of town cutting a gap in the barrier the size of a garage door.
Someone cut through eight poles in the border fence approximately 1-1/4 miles east of downtown Nogales, apparently using a precision tool to slice through the six-inch steel tubes filled with concrete and a strand of rebar.
The cuts were made at the bases of the poles and about 10 feet above the ground, creating a gap that appeared large enough to drive a medium-sized vehicle through.
The cuts were discovered on Saturday, according to Border Patrol spokeswoman Nicole Ballistrea, the same day monsoon runoff and debris toppled a section of the border fence west of the Mariposa Port of Entry.
By Monday morning, contractors were using blowtorches and metal clamps to repair the fence. This reporter saw agents in vehicles making their usual patrols along the access road next to the border fence, but there appeared to be no special contingent designated to protect the breach.
No tools were found at the site and the Border Patrol does not yet know who cut the fence, Ballistrea said.
Smugglers often attempt to cut border fences, as well as dig under them and climb over them, she wrote in an emailed statement.
“As the Tucson Sector continues to improve deterrence efforts along the border, smuggling organizations are finding it more difficult to move their illicit goods into the interior of the United States,” she wrote.
“Fencing infrastructure gives Border Patrol agents the time they need to stop illegal cross-border activity,” she wrote.
A contractor with Granite Construction, the company that built the fence in 2011, estimated at the time that someone would need about 15 minutes to cut through the steel tubes. By that math, if the person who cut the fence on Saturday were acting alone, the 16 total cuts would have taken about four hours to complete.
One of the selling points of the fence, which covers 2.8 miles of border and cost a reported $11.8 million to build, was that it would be more difficult to cut through than the landing-mat barrier it replaced.
http://www.nogalesinternational.com/news/vehicle-sized-gap-cut-in-border-fence/article_7fa4d496-16a1-11e4-9b19-001a4bcf887a.html
Rainstorm runoff topples border fence, floods Western Avenue
Nogales International
July 27, 2014
by Jonathan Clark and Manuel C. Coppola
Runoff from a monsoon downpour toppled a section of border fence west of the Mariposa Port of Entry overnight Saturday, sending a torrent of debris-filled floodwater down Ephraim Canyon and into yards and homes along Western Avenue.
Leyva Bridge on Western Avenue, just east of the intersection with Interstate 19, was a particular trouble spot. Tree branches, logs and other detritus clogged two culverts under the bridge, and the muddy floodwaters surged out of the wash and into surrounding properties, including that of Raul Origel, immediately south of the bridge.
Origel’s front yard was covered Sunday morning with mud and stones that had been used to line the nearby wash. The water also entered his elevated trailer, reaching a foot in depth and destroying furniture, he said. He does not have flood insurance.
Standing next to a Ford Taurus embedded in the mud – one of five vehicles he owns that were damaged by the flood – Origel complained that the authorities don’t keep the wash clean, which allows for the culverts to clog during heavy runoff.
“There has to be someone, either at the city or county, to take responsibility,” he said.
The downpour began at around 11:30 p.m. Saturday night and was accompanied by intense thunder and lightning. As runoff surged south through the border fence – a structure comprised of interconnected metal tubes with 4-inch gaps that allow water to pass through – debris apparently accumulated behind it, blocking flow creating enough pressure to eventually topple an approximately 60-foot length of the barrier.
From there, the water surged through a pair of culverts and into Ephraim Canyon, combining with more runoff and debris until the wash met Western Avenue at Leyva Bridge.
The segment of border fence that collapsed was built above an existing arroyo, with large gates at its bottom that were meant to be opened to relieve pressure from flooding. The gates did not appear to have been opened. A Border Patrol spokeswoman reached Sunday was not immediately able to provide information on the mishap.
No injuries from the flooding were reported, but a family of five had to be rescued from their car near Leyva Bridge, said Nogales Fire Chief Hector Robles.
When an engine was unable to make it to the car on Western Avenue, NFD sent its Ladder One truck up Interstate 19 to reach the scene from the west. Firefighters then used the bucket at the end of the 101-foot ladder to rescue the family, Robles said.
The Southern Arizona Chapter of the American Red Cross said it is assisting 10 people – a family of seven plus an elderly couple and a single elderly person – whose homes were affected by the flooding in Nogales.
"We are providing temporary lodging, food and clothing and will have the families contact us tomorrow to see what other assistance can be made available to them," the organization said in a statement.
A woman at a property on the south side of the bend at Leyva Bridge said her aunt and uncle were evacuated from their home after floodwaters inside the residence reached the level of their midsections.
The woman, who did not wish to be named, allowed the NI access to her relatives’ mud-filled home on Sunday. Ruined furniture was strewn about the interior, including a refrigerator that had toppled over, and marks on the wall suggested the water had reached approximately 3 feet in depth.
Her aunt and uncle do not have flood insurance, the woman said.
Next door at the Cypress Trailer Park, residents were clearing away mud on Sunday morning and crossing their fingers that once-submerged cars would eventually start.
Three vehicles that had been parked outside Alma Alcaraz’s trailer were flooded and non-functioning, but the interior of her home, where she and four family members waited out the storm, remained dry.
“We stayed because we didn’t have any way to leave," Alcaraz said. “We were really nervous because we could feel the trailer moving.”
Those inside the trailer included two children, ages 5 and 7, she said.
Nancy Rodriguez, who rents a trailer at the park, said that once the rain started, she began taking regular peeks out her window at the wash. Once she saw the water breach the banks, she went to her car and tried to leave, but got stuck instead. So she drove it to higher ground at the park and waited out the storm in her trailer.
“It was very scary. I thought it was a dream or something,” she said.
The water never got into Rodriguez's home, but it left piles of debris underneath and a large log in her front lawn.
“I want the city to do something, because this happens every four years or two years,” Rodriguez said. “Every time it rains, this happens.”
She soon had a chance to deliver her complaints directly to Mayor Arturo Garino when he and Councilman Jose “Joe” Diaz arrived at the trailer park to assess the damage.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Garino said. “I look at this, and just by the flow and the way the debris is leaning against the guardrails, it looks like the water was trying to get back into the channels. So I think the street was the channel – that’s the problem.
“The Leyva Bridge has to be addressed,” as does a bridge farther downstream near the Circle K, he said. “We need to be able to channelize the water and keep it inside. This is too much.”
Garino said he would put the issue on the agenda for the Aug. 6 city council meeting, and noted that the county government would need to participate in a solution, since it governs the county flood control district, of which Nogales is a part.
Reached by telephone, Deputy City Manager John E. Kissinger said Western Avenue was the only area in the city affected by overnight flooding, and acknowledged that the problem resulted from clogs at Leyva Bridge.
“We have reached out to the IBWC (International Boundary and Water Commission) and have assessed all the major washes in the area and any critical infrastructure that could affect the IOI (international sewage line) and found no problems,” Kissinger said.
Asked if the Santa Cruz County Flood Control District can do anything to prevent this type of problem on Western Avenue in the future, he said, “Other than clearing out the wash on this side I don’t suspect that there’s not much more you can do. I believe that that most of that debris came from Mexico. I’ve been out there hundreds of times and from the border to the hospital you do not see this type of debris – huge tree trunks, pallets, car doors, plastic bottles.
“It is typical of the first flooding or microburst episode to see these things accumulate," he said. "We don’t anticipate a repeat of flooding to this magnitude (this year) because the wash has essentially been flushed of the type of debris that has been accumulating throughout the year and that would cause the water to jump its banks.”
The flood control district developed a $3-million project to construct a detention or retention pond in the Ephraim Canyon area, but it has yet to come to fruition. Garino lamented the absence of a retention pond, saying: “The water flow was just a direct water flow. There was nothing really to hold the water back and let it come slowly.”
Local officials also need to seek support from Nogales, Sonora, since Ephraim Canyon originates on that side of the border, Garino said.
As for the now-wide-open gap in the border fence, Nicole Ballistrea, spokeswoman for the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, said the agency has procedures for maintaining security during temporary breaches, such as a tunnel or busted fence.
"For any type of breach, or breach with the fence, we do have crews that go out there and repair those," she said. "And we also have agents that work that area to monitor. And we also have cameras that will help us observe that area."
Ballistrea said she would follow up on questions about the extent of the damage and timetable for repair on Monday.
http://www.nogalesinternational.com/news/monsoon-runoff-topples-border-fence-floods-western-avenue/article_6b02dd90-15dd-11e4-991e-001a4bcf887a.html
July 27, 2014
by Jonathan Clark and Manuel C. Coppola
Runoff from a monsoon downpour toppled a section of border fence west of the Mariposa Port of Entry overnight Saturday, sending a torrent of debris-filled floodwater down Ephraim Canyon and into yards and homes along Western Avenue.
Leyva Bridge on Western Avenue, just east of the intersection with Interstate 19, was a particular trouble spot. Tree branches, logs and other detritus clogged two culverts under the bridge, and the muddy floodwaters surged out of the wash and into surrounding properties, including that of Raul Origel, immediately south of the bridge.
Origel’s front yard was covered Sunday morning with mud and stones that had been used to line the nearby wash. The water also entered his elevated trailer, reaching a foot in depth and destroying furniture, he said. He does not have flood insurance.
Standing next to a Ford Taurus embedded in the mud – one of five vehicles he owns that were damaged by the flood – Origel complained that the authorities don’t keep the wash clean, which allows for the culverts to clog during heavy runoff.
“There has to be someone, either at the city or county, to take responsibility,” he said.
The downpour began at around 11:30 p.m. Saturday night and was accompanied by intense thunder and lightning. As runoff surged south through the border fence – a structure comprised of interconnected metal tubes with 4-inch gaps that allow water to pass through – debris apparently accumulated behind it, blocking flow creating enough pressure to eventually topple an approximately 60-foot length of the barrier.
From there, the water surged through a pair of culverts and into Ephraim Canyon, combining with more runoff and debris until the wash met Western Avenue at Leyva Bridge.
The segment of border fence that collapsed was built above an existing arroyo, with large gates at its bottom that were meant to be opened to relieve pressure from flooding. The gates did not appear to have been opened. A Border Patrol spokeswoman reached Sunday was not immediately able to provide information on the mishap.
No injuries from the flooding were reported, but a family of five had to be rescued from their car near Leyva Bridge, said Nogales Fire Chief Hector Robles.
When an engine was unable to make it to the car on Western Avenue, NFD sent its Ladder One truck up Interstate 19 to reach the scene from the west. Firefighters then used the bucket at the end of the 101-foot ladder to rescue the family, Robles said.
The Southern Arizona Chapter of the American Red Cross said it is assisting 10 people – a family of seven plus an elderly couple and a single elderly person – whose homes were affected by the flooding in Nogales.
"We are providing temporary lodging, food and clothing and will have the families contact us tomorrow to see what other assistance can be made available to them," the organization said in a statement.
A woman at a property on the south side of the bend at Leyva Bridge said her aunt and uncle were evacuated from their home after floodwaters inside the residence reached the level of their midsections.
The woman, who did not wish to be named, allowed the NI access to her relatives’ mud-filled home on Sunday. Ruined furniture was strewn about the interior, including a refrigerator that had toppled over, and marks on the wall suggested the water had reached approximately 3 feet in depth.
Her aunt and uncle do not have flood insurance, the woman said.
Next door at the Cypress Trailer Park, residents were clearing away mud on Sunday morning and crossing their fingers that once-submerged cars would eventually start.
Three vehicles that had been parked outside Alma Alcaraz’s trailer were flooded and non-functioning, but the interior of her home, where she and four family members waited out the storm, remained dry.
“We stayed because we didn’t have any way to leave," Alcaraz said. “We were really nervous because we could feel the trailer moving.”
Those inside the trailer included two children, ages 5 and 7, she said.
Nancy Rodriguez, who rents a trailer at the park, said that once the rain started, she began taking regular peeks out her window at the wash. Once she saw the water breach the banks, she went to her car and tried to leave, but got stuck instead. So she drove it to higher ground at the park and waited out the storm in her trailer.
“It was very scary. I thought it was a dream or something,” she said.
The water never got into Rodriguez's home, but it left piles of debris underneath and a large log in her front lawn.
“I want the city to do something, because this happens every four years or two years,” Rodriguez said. “Every time it rains, this happens.”
She soon had a chance to deliver her complaints directly to Mayor Arturo Garino when he and Councilman Jose “Joe” Diaz arrived at the trailer park to assess the damage.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Garino said. “I look at this, and just by the flow and the way the debris is leaning against the guardrails, it looks like the water was trying to get back into the channels. So I think the street was the channel – that’s the problem.
“The Leyva Bridge has to be addressed,” as does a bridge farther downstream near the Circle K, he said. “We need to be able to channelize the water and keep it inside. This is too much.”
Garino said he would put the issue on the agenda for the Aug. 6 city council meeting, and noted that the county government would need to participate in a solution, since it governs the county flood control district, of which Nogales is a part.
Reached by telephone, Deputy City Manager John E. Kissinger said Western Avenue was the only area in the city affected by overnight flooding, and acknowledged that the problem resulted from clogs at Leyva Bridge.
“We have reached out to the IBWC (International Boundary and Water Commission) and have assessed all the major washes in the area and any critical infrastructure that could affect the IOI (international sewage line) and found no problems,” Kissinger said.
Asked if the Santa Cruz County Flood Control District can do anything to prevent this type of problem on Western Avenue in the future, he said, “Other than clearing out the wash on this side I don’t suspect that there’s not much more you can do. I believe that that most of that debris came from Mexico. I’ve been out there hundreds of times and from the border to the hospital you do not see this type of debris – huge tree trunks, pallets, car doors, plastic bottles.
“It is typical of the first flooding or microburst episode to see these things accumulate," he said. "We don’t anticipate a repeat of flooding to this magnitude (this year) because the wash has essentially been flushed of the type of debris that has been accumulating throughout the year and that would cause the water to jump its banks.”
The flood control district developed a $3-million project to construct a detention or retention pond in the Ephraim Canyon area, but it has yet to come to fruition. Garino lamented the absence of a retention pond, saying: “The water flow was just a direct water flow. There was nothing really to hold the water back and let it come slowly.”
Local officials also need to seek support from Nogales, Sonora, since Ephraim Canyon originates on that side of the border, Garino said.
As for the now-wide-open gap in the border fence, Nicole Ballistrea, spokeswoman for the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, said the agency has procedures for maintaining security during temporary breaches, such as a tunnel or busted fence.
"For any type of breach, or breach with the fence, we do have crews that go out there and repair those," she said. "And we also have agents that work that area to monitor. And we also have cameras that will help us observe that area."
Ballistrea said she would follow up on questions about the extent of the damage and timetable for repair on Monday.
http://www.nogalesinternational.com/news/monsoon-runoff-topples-border-fence-floods-western-avenue/article_6b02dd90-15dd-11e4-991e-001a4bcf887a.html
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Border fence extension remains in Congressional limbo
KSAT San Antonio
May 8, 2014
by Jesse Degollado
Funded by the Secure Fence Act of 2006, plans to extend the border fence, part of immigration reform, remain in Congressional limbo.
Nicol has photographed makeshift ladders left behind by undocumented immigrants. He said most are seized by U.S. Border Patrol.
He also said the fence has done little to slow, much less stop, the current surge of Central Americans into the Rio Grande Valley.
According to Customs and Border Protection, only 650 miles of fencing exists along the 2,000-mile southern border.
May 8, 2014
by Jesse Degollado
Funded by the Secure Fence Act of 2006, plans to extend the border fence, part of immigration reform, remain in Congressional limbo.
Critics of the fence in south Texas question spending more taxpayer dollars on a barrier that they said has had little effect.
“A border fence is a 14th century solution to a 21st century problem," said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Dist. 28).
Cuellar, who serves on the Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee, said he supports “smart border security,” using technology.
“The wall here was $12 million a mile,” said Scott Nicol, one of its early opponents and founder of NoBorderWall.com. “It can be completely defeated by a couple of dollars worth of scrap wood."
He also said the fence has done little to slow, much less stop, the current surge of Central Americans into the Rio Grande Valley.
“The walls are up and apprehensions are rising again, so I don’t see the wall doing a lot,” Nicol said.
William Alber, a retired General Motors worker from Michigan and a full-time winter Texan, said he agrees.
Alber said he watched the fence going up from his front yard at a mobile home park near McAllen.
“The wall didn’t do any good. They just come over the top of the wall,” Alber said.
He said they also often run across his driveway, but he’s never been threatened.
“It’s elderly ladies. It’s girls. I’ve seen little kids, 7, 8 years old running with them,” Alber said. “There’s no doubt in my mind they’re desperate.”
Alber said if Border Patrol is not there watching, many others simply go around the fence where it abruptly ends.
Daniel Tirado, a spokesman for U.S. Border Patrol, said the 54 miles of fencing in the Rio Grande Valley was strategically placed to give its 5,000-plus agents the tactical advantage.
Tirado said the border fence helps shift illegal activity to less populated areas, “decreasing the smuggler’s ability to exploit easily accessible routes through communities, increasing the possibility of apprehension.”
However, those living between the fence and the Rio Grande have said they’re in a no-man’s land used by smugglers.
Tirado said that is why agents often patrol those areas, assisted by other means of detection such as cameras and sensors.
He said Border Patrol relies on a combination of technology, infrastructure and personnel to secure the south Texas border.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
481-foot drug tunnel found crossing US-Mexico Border
Arizona Republic
February 14, 2014
by Daniel Gonzalez
NOGALES, Ariz. — Nogales has been the epicenter for cross-border drug tunnels for years. U.S. authorities have found 100 drug tunnels in that city since 1990, more than any other location along the 2,000-mile United States-Mexico border.
But the tunnel found this week tops them all. At 481 feet, longer than 11/2 football fields, it is the longest ever discovered in Nogales, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
The tunnel extended from a house in Nogales, Sonora, to a house in Nogales, Ariz., and was being used to smuggle marijuana and other drugs into the U.S., ICE officials said.
Federal authorities found a half pound of heroin and 46 pounds of marijuana inside.
They seized another 590 pounds of marijuana after stopping a vehicle federal agents saw driving away from the house in Nogales, Ariz., on Monday.
The house was under surveillance by a multiagency task force created in 2012 to find and dismantle drug tunnels.
The driver of the truck, Jesus Alberto Ramirez-Valencia, 22, a U.S. citizen from Nogales, Ariz., and two Mexican citizens, Jose Mario Armenta-Valdez, 41, and Jose Solorzano-Flores, 41, were charged with drug conspiracy.
The driver was apparently transporting the drugs to a second house where Solorzano-Flores was found outside, authorities say. Armenta-Valdez was arrested after federal agents raided the house, where an opening to the drug tunnel leading into the U.S. from Mexico was found.
Eric Balliet, assistant special agent in charge of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations in Nogales, said drug smugglers are resorting to tunnels because of tighter border security.
"If a drug-trafficking organization can establish a well-manufactured tunnel, the likelihood of a law-enforcement encounter is somewhat slim," Balliet said. "You don't run the risk of exposing your dope above ground, whether it's human backpackers or smuggling through the port or over the fence. It's completely concealed from start to finish."
The drug tunnel found Monday is the third uncovered in Nogales since December.
Since 1990, 169 tunnels have been found along the southern border, 100 of them in Nogales.
Last fiscal year, six of the seven tunnels found along the U.S.-Mexico border were found in Nogales.
In 2012, seven of the 16 tunnels found on the border were in Nogales, and 12 of the 18 the year before that, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Nogales is popular for drug tunnels because smugglers can tap a vast underground drainage system that connects the border cities, Balliet said.
Once inside the drainage system, smugglers bore spider tunnels into the U.S., he said
The two cities also have large neighborhoods close to each other, making it easy for smugglers to dig tunnels from a house on the Mexican side to a house on the U.S. side, he said.
The tunnel found Monday stretched 70 feet from a house in Nogales, Sonora, to the U.S. border and then another 411 feet to a house in Nogales, Ariz., ICE officials said.
The passageway was roughly 2 feet wide and 3 feet high, and had wood shoring, electric lighting and ventilation fans, ICE officials said.
The tunnel task force includes officers from ICE, the Border Patrol, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Nogales police, and Mexican authorities.
http://www.wbir.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/14/largest-ever-drug-tunnel-in-nogales-found/5484031/
February 14, 2014
by Daniel Gonzalez
NOGALES, Ariz. — Nogales has been the epicenter for cross-border drug tunnels for years. U.S. authorities have found 100 drug tunnels in that city since 1990, more than any other location along the 2,000-mile United States-Mexico border.
But the tunnel found this week tops them all. At 481 feet, longer than 11/2 football fields, it is the longest ever discovered in Nogales, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
The tunnel extended from a house in Nogales, Sonora, to a house in Nogales, Ariz., and was being used to smuggle marijuana and other drugs into the U.S., ICE officials said.
Federal authorities found a half pound of heroin and 46 pounds of marijuana inside.
They seized another 590 pounds of marijuana after stopping a vehicle federal agents saw driving away from the house in Nogales, Ariz., on Monday.
The house was under surveillance by a multiagency task force created in 2012 to find and dismantle drug tunnels.
The driver of the truck, Jesus Alberto Ramirez-Valencia, 22, a U.S. citizen from Nogales, Ariz., and two Mexican citizens, Jose Mario Armenta-Valdez, 41, and Jose Solorzano-Flores, 41, were charged with drug conspiracy.
The driver was apparently transporting the drugs to a second house where Solorzano-Flores was found outside, authorities say. Armenta-Valdez was arrested after federal agents raided the house, where an opening to the drug tunnel leading into the U.S. from Mexico was found.
Eric Balliet, assistant special agent in charge of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations in Nogales, said drug smugglers are resorting to tunnels because of tighter border security.
"If a drug-trafficking organization can establish a well-manufactured tunnel, the likelihood of a law-enforcement encounter is somewhat slim," Balliet said. "You don't run the risk of exposing your dope above ground, whether it's human backpackers or smuggling through the port or over the fence. It's completely concealed from start to finish."
The drug tunnel found Monday is the third uncovered in Nogales since December.
Since 1990, 169 tunnels have been found along the southern border, 100 of them in Nogales.
Last fiscal year, six of the seven tunnels found along the U.S.-Mexico border were found in Nogales.
In 2012, seven of the 16 tunnels found on the border were in Nogales, and 12 of the 18 the year before that, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Nogales is popular for drug tunnels because smugglers can tap a vast underground drainage system that connects the border cities, Balliet said.
Once inside the drainage system, smugglers bore spider tunnels into the U.S., he said
The two cities also have large neighborhoods close to each other, making it easy for smugglers to dig tunnels from a house on the Mexican side to a house on the U.S. side, he said.
The tunnel found Monday stretched 70 feet from a house in Nogales, Sonora, to the U.S. border and then another 411 feet to a house in Nogales, Ariz., ICE officials said.
The passageway was roughly 2 feet wide and 3 feet high, and had wood shoring, electric lighting and ventilation fans, ICE officials said.
The tunnel task force includes officers from ICE, the Border Patrol, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Nogales police, and Mexican authorities.
http://www.wbir.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/14/largest-ever-drug-tunnel-in-nogales-found/5484031/
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Sun, frost, thirst and bullets: A deadly border could become even more dangerous under Senate plan
NBC News
June 26, 2013
by Bill Briggs
The southwestern U.S. border has become an increasingly lethal snare: Brutal heat, desert freezes, harsh currents, poisonous snakes and sporadic gunfire are killing a rising number of undocumented migrants who are picking progressively treacherous routes to elude extra federal patrols.
And the "border surge" — a Senate proposal to double U.S. agents on the Mexican boundary and extend 700 miles of fencing — would squeeze even more incoming migrants onto perilous and scorching overland paths, likely boosting the death toll of crossers from the 477 who perished attempting to enter America during 2012, experts say.
“People are going into more dangerous areas. It’s probably very difficult to carry water the farther out you’re going,” said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, an Arlington, Va.-based group that researches immigration issues. He authored a March study that showed the death rate among people trying to illegally traverse the Mexican border soared by 27 percent last year while overall migration from Mexico continued to decline.
“These aren’t camping trips. People aren’t preparing. Or, they may be taken in by smugglers … and that’s not the same as a family going together where they really care about what happens to one another,” Anderson said.
Harsh weather and desolate terrain combine to cause the most common form of death on the border: a nasty blend of dehydration plus either overheated or over-chilled bodies, according to a University of Arizona study published this month that examined data from the Pima County (Arizona) Medical Examiner's Office.
Among the 171 undocumented migrants who died last year while scaling the mountain-and-canyon-dotted border southwest of Tucson, 46 percent expired due to “exposure” to the elements, the Arizona report determined. About eight in 10 were from Mexico.
“There’s nobody out there, nowhere to go for help. So a lot of times we’ll be out there, driving a dirt road or walking a remote trail, and encounter people who are lost, sick or injured — in pretty in bad shape — and who were praying someone would come by,” said Greg Boyce, spokesman for No More Deaths, a volunteer-aid group based in Arizona. Their volunteers include nurses, doctors and emergency medical technicians.
During their search excursions near Tucson, group members sometimes summon medical helicopters and ambulances to rush the sickest undocumented migrants to local hospitals. They occasionally work in tandem with some of the 900-plus U.S. Customs and Border agents who are trained in trauma treatment, Boyce said. (Last year, Border Patrol officers made 1,333 rescues at or near the southwest boundary, according to federal figures). Boyce's group also leaves containers of water throughout that vast area — thousands of gallons to date.
"The really tough cases involve somebody who is not in an acute emergency, but their health is suffering. They've already been out there two or three days and they’ve got another two or three in the desert until they reach a safe place,” Boyce said. “We know if they keep walking, their health will deteriorate.
“In some cases, we’ll encourage people to turn themselves into the Border Patrol — if they want, they can try another day; it’s better than dying out there,” he added. “But our advice sometimes goes unheeded. They’re desperate.”
At the southern tip of Texas near Brownsville, most of the undocumented migrants who cross the border come from Central America, said Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America, a human-rights group. They skirt through the Rio Grande Valley, which is perched along the northern bank of the Rio Grande river that divides the United States and Mexico.
Deaths in that area also rose in 2012, Isacson said, and some causes included snakebites and drownings in the swift currents of irrigation canals that wind through that sector or in the waters of the Rio Grande. But hundreds of those crossers were found dead well inside Texas, north of Brownsville and in a town called McAllen, halfway toward the coastal city of Corpus Christi.
“On that primary highway north (of the border), there’s a Border Patrol checkpoint so the smugglers drop everybody off the road to get around that. It's probably only about a 10- to 12-mile walk through this scrub-land but that’s where they’re dying," Isacson said. “Most of these migrants have been held in a safe house for several days, maybe even on the U.S. side of the border, but have been poorly fed and not given much water.
“In that area, it’s flat and there’s lots of bushes and mesquite that obscure your view. So people get lost. They end up going in circles,” he added.
Gunfire, kidnappings
Bullets also fly on the border. According to Isacson's tracking: “There have been as many as 20 cross-border shooting incidents in the last few years.” U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials confirmed that during the past two years there have been eight such fatal incidents involving their agents or officers.
One case involved friendly fire. In October 2012, Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Ivie, 30, was fatally shot after he and two fellow agents responded to something or someone triggering one of the thousands of ground sensors that dot parts of southeastern Arizona. An investigation found that when Ivie opened fire on two other agents, apparently mistaking them for smugglers, they returned fire and killed him.
And in rare situations, abductions occur along the border. In May, armed gunmen kidnapped U.S. Marine Armando Torres III in Mexico — along with the Marine’s father and uncle — shortly after Torres exited south Texas to visit his father’s ranch in neighboring La Barranca, Tamaulipas. As of June 15, the FBI reported it was conducting an international probe.
On June 4, Mexican soldiers rescued 165 people who had been kidnapped about three weeks earlier by a drug cartel and held in a small home along the U.S. line. Among the victims were 150 migrants from Central America who had planned to cross the border in the Rio Grande Valley.
As Congress appears set to clamp down even harder on the U.S.-Mexico border with bolstered patrols and fencing, human-rights advocates like Isacson and Boyce contend that deaths among illegal migrants will spike as more of those people choose to head even deeper into the remote, desert scrub and higher into the mountains as they hike to enter America. Temperatures along those routes can reach 110 degrees.
"If they’re going to double border patrol, they should at least quadruple or quintuple the portion of border patrol that is doing search and rescue," Isacson said. "That would save some lives."
According to Customs and Border spokesman Bill Brooks, that agency already "has taken significant steps" to prevent the deaths of border-crossing migrants.
"Most notably, (those steps include) the Border Safety Initiative (BSI), a humanitarian, bi-national strategy, designed to reduce migrant deaths and make the border safer for agents, border residents, and migrants, by training agents as first responders, EMTs and paramedics," Brooks said in an email.
But if twice as many Border Patrol agents soon begin roaming the boundary — should the Senate bill becomes law — will the risk of migrant shootings by agents also rise?
"If Border Patrol's manpower doubles, and it doesn't improve its current training and procedures for use of force and for dealing with abuses, then it's very likely that we'll see more episodes of violence and shootings," Isacson said.
"There's really not enough for a doubled force to do — something that's been completely ignored in this debate," Isacson added. "The number of border-crossers apprehended per Border Patrol agent is now 19 per year. In 2000, it was 10-times that, 192 apprehensions per agent. In 1993 it was 327 ... There will be far less to guard against if the force doubles."
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, however, that "common sense immigration reform legislation" must include measures that would tighten border security — along with crackdowns on employers that hire undocumented workers and a streamlining of the legal-immigration system.
"The border security amendment agreed to by a bipartisan group of Senators is in line with that criteria," Napolitano said in a June 21 statement. "It will devote important additional resources to the robust border security system this Administration has put in place and strengthen what was already an unmatched piece of border security legislation.”
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/24/19120052-sun-frost-thirst-and-bullets-a-deadly-border-could-become-even-more-dangerous-under-senate-plan?lite&preview=true
Friday, March 22, 2013
Officials Concede Failures on Gauging Border Security
New York Times
March 22, 2013
by Julia Preston
More than two years after Homeland Security officials told Congress that they would produce new, more accurate standards to assess security at the nation’s borders, senior officials from the department acknowledged this week that they had not completed the new measurements and were not likely to in coming months, as the debate proceeds about overhauling the immigration system.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers were taken aback at a hearing on Wednesday in the House of Representatives when Mark Borkowski, a senior Homeland Security official, said he had no progress to report on a broad measure of border conditions the department had been working on since 2010. The lawmakers warned that failure by the Obama administration to devise a reliable method of border evaluation could imperil passage of immigration legislation.
March 22, 2013
by Julia Preston
More than two years after Homeland Security officials told Congress that they would produce new, more accurate standards to assess security at the nation’s borders, senior officials from the department acknowledged this week that they had not completed the new measurements and were not likely to in coming months, as the debate proceeds about overhauling the immigration system.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers were taken aback at a hearing on Wednesday in the House of Representatives when Mark Borkowski, a senior Homeland Security official, said he had no progress to report on a broad measure of border conditions the department had been working on since 2010. The lawmakers warned that failure by the Obama administration to devise a reliable method of border evaluation could imperil passage of immigration legislation.
“We do not want the Department of Homeland Security to be the stumbling block to comprehensive immigration reform for this country,” said Representative Candice Miller, a Republican from Michigan who is the chairwoman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on border security. She told Mr. Borkowski that the lack of security measurements from the administration “could be a component of our failure to pass something I think is very important for our country.”
Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, a Democrat and strong a supporter of President Obama’s immigration proposals, was more blunt. “I would say to the department, you’ve got to get in the game,” she said.
Amid contentious discussions in Congress over immigration, one point of wide agreement is that an evaluation of border security will be a central piece of any comprehensive bill. A bipartisan group in the Senate is working to write legislation that includes a “trigger,” which would make the path to citizenship for more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the country contingent on measurable advances in security at the borders.
Lawmakers have been pressing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to devise a measure they can use to judge if the Obama administration’s claims of significant progress in border enforcement are justified. Republican senators in the bipartisan group have said a border standard is pivotal to their efforts.
“We need to have a measurement,” Senator John McCain of Arizona insisted at a hearing in the Senate last week.
“We need to assure the American people that we have effective control of the border and we have made advances to achieve that,” he said. “I need to have something to assure people they are not going to live in fear.”
Obama administration officials said on Thursday that they had resisted producing a single measure to assess the border because the president did not want any hurdles placed on the pathway to eventual citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally.
They also said security conditions could change very rapidly along the border depending on where smugglers tried to bring people and narcotics across, and where border agents were concentrating their technology and other resources.
“While border security is complex and cannot be measured in a single metric,” said Peter Boogaard, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, “in every metric available to measure progress, we’re heading in the right direction, including decreased apprehensions and increased seizures.”
Ms. Miller and Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, have said they are preparing legislation that would compel administration officials to produce border measurements if they do not come forward with them in coming weeks.
For several years before 2010, border officials used a measure known as operational control to describe the level of security along the southwest line. But in 2010, Ms. Napolitano said the department would drop that standard, arguing it did not reflect a substantial buildup of agents and detection technology in recent years, and it was insufficiently flexible to account for the varying terrain and fast-changing conditions along the nearly 2,000-mile southwest border, where most illegal crossings occur.
In a recent interview, David V. Aguilar, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said he had first proposed the concept of operational control years ago when he was the chief of the Border Patrol. He said it was meant to describe immediate conditions in limited patrol sectors, and he lamented that it had become the broadest measure of security advances across the entire border.
“It was never meant to be applied that way,” Mr. Aguilar said.
Since 2010, border officials have reported their results to the public mainly in terms of apprehensions they make of illegal crossers. Those figures have declined sharply across the southwest line, in what many experts agree is a sign of sharply reduced illegal flows. But border officials acknowledge that apprehensions alone are an imperfect indicator.
So Mr. Borkowski, an assistant commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, and other officials have been working on what they have called the Border Condition Index. They advised Congress that it would assemble many different variables, including crime rates in cities and towns along the border, and daily flows of legitimate travelers and commerce through the ports of entry.
Officials said the index would provide a broad, easily understandable view of enforcement at the border and the sense of security of Americans living near it.
But as the immigration debate has gathered speed, even border analysts who praise the Obama administration’s enforcement efforts have grown frustrated with the Department of Homeland Security’s reluctance to produce data to assess them.
“By every available measure, the border is far more secure today than it has ever been,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who specializes in immigration. “But D.H.S. does not have a reliable set of performance measures with respect to border security, and it has been utterly remiss in releasing data that would help Congress make a serious assessment.”
At the hearing on Wednesday, Mr. Borkowski said the border index was still undergoing internal reviews, and he gave no time frame for when it would be ready. He also told Ms. Miller that the index would not be useful to assess border security as part of the negotiations over a comprehensive bill.
Ms. Miller and other lawmakers were stunned. “I’ve been operating under the assumption for the last several years,” she said, that the index would be something that “anybody or any other agency vetting this would be using as a measurement.”
Ms. Jackson Lee, the highest ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, blasted Mr. Borkowski for not offering a concrete standard. “You all have got to rise to the occasion,” she said.
Michael J. Fisher, the chief of the Border Patrol, who also testified, sought to respond to the lawmakers, saying he would provide figures on numbers of illegal crossers who were caught more than once, and estimates of the percentages of those crossers who were detained and of those who got away.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Immigrant deaths soar in South Texas
San Antonio Express News
December 30, 2012
by John MacCormack
FALFURRIAS — Back in October, as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney jousted about immigration issues in the second televised debate, the president made a remarkable assertion about control of the southern border.
“The flow of undocumented workers across the border is actually lower than it's been in 40 years,” he said.
And indeed, after a decade of increased enforcement that included construction of hundreds of miles of steel border wall and a doubling in size of the U.S. Border Patrol, the results are undeniable. The 327,577 people caught by the Border Patrol on the southern border in fiscal year 2011 were the fewest since 1970. And it was about one-third of the apprehensions made in 2005.
But don't try telling folks in Brooks County that things are under control. Here, apprehensions of immigrants crossing illegally, rescues of people lost in the brush and wild car chases all have increased markedly in the past couple of years. A far more tragic indicator: the death toll of those trying to sneak around the Border Patrol checkpoint south of town on U.S. 281 has risen dramatically.
By late December, the remains of 127 people had been found in the brushy ranchland around the checkpoint, nearly double last year's total and the highest anyone can remember. In 2010, 20 bodies were found.
“When you have 127 people die in your county in one year, it's too much. One body would be too much,” said County Judge Raul Ramirez, who recently ran out of space for “John Doe” burials at the county's Sacred Heart Cemetery and is looking for a new place to bury the unidentified dead.
At Sacred Heart, their simple graves are marked with bright plastic flowers and small signs that tell what little is known, such as “skeletal remains” or “skull case” or “unknown female,” and the ranch where they were found.
Those that later are identified by DNA tests or other information are exhumed and sent back to their families, most often in Mexico or Central America.
The judge said the annual costs to his poor, rural county of dealing with illegal immigration and the unknown dead, including mortician fees and autopsies, run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. With an annual budget of about $6 million and just six full-time patrol deputies, Brooks County is ill-equipped for the task. And because it's not a border county, it receives very little state and federal aid.
“It all comes through Falfurrias. It's the No. 1 checkpoint in terms of seizures and illegal drugs,” the judge said, adding later, “I ask myself, why us?”
A busy December Already this year, one Brooks County rancher has found the remains of 16 people on his property, which straddles U.S. 281 near the checkpoint, far more than ever before.
“It's just been horrible. And there would have been a lot more deaths if the county didn't have a locator for 911 calls. Everyone has a cellphone,” said Presnall Cage, 67, whose 43,000-acre ranch is regularly traversed by large groups.
“They are coming across as bad as they ever have,” he added. “People say it's slowed down, but it doesn't seem that way to me.”
The deaths have risen markedly despite efforts by both the Border Patrol and local deputies to prevent them. The measures include hundreds of GPS markers spread around the brush that can help pinpoint 911 calls, flashing beacons that have water and panic buttons, and special Border Patrol units trained to save stranded travelers.
Although several hundred agents are stationed in Falfurrias, the vastness of the terrain and the heavy pressure from smugglers sometimes has them overmatched. All told, more than 2,600 agents work in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, trailing only El Paso and Tucson.
“What you're seeing now is the busiest this checkpoint has been since I came to this sector in 1995,” said Enrique Mendiola, a Border Patrol spokesman, who said that this year, the traditional winter lull never happened.
According to a large sign at the checkpoint, 36,075 pounds of drugs have been seized and 3,781 undocumented people have been apprehended here since Oct. 1.
While the Border Patrol does not release statistics for individual checkpoints, the December apprehensions of illegal immigrants here were more than double those of last December, according to unofficial sources.
The latest official statistics for the Rio Grande Valley Sector, which includes Falfurrias, show apprehensions surged by more than 60 percent from 2011 to 2012 for comparable 10-month periods, according to Mendiola. No one has a good explanation for why Brooks County is such a hot spot, and nothing as dramatic is happening around other South Texas checkpoints in Kenedy, Jim Hogg and Webb Counties.
“If we knew why, we'd go after it,” said Mendiola, who thinks that the construction of the steel border fence in the eastern half of the Rio Grande Valley has pushed most illegal activity westward toward U.S. 281.
“You used to have one organization running drugs, another running people. That was all we knew,” he said. “Now we have transnational criminal organizations and it's a multi-commodity business.”
Chief Sheriff's Deputy Benny Martinez sees other factors. “In my opinion, it has to do with the enforcement in Arizona. They're shifting back to Texas,” he said of the human smugglers. “We're already had 250 to 300 rescues this year, either from cellphone calls or people we find in the brush. It's way more than in the past,” he said.
In southern Arizona, another recent hot spot for illegal immigration, immigrant deaths peaked in 2010 at 252, forcing the medical examiner to hold bodies awaiting autopsies in refrigerated trucks. This year, the total likely will be below 160.
In Brooks County, encounters between smugglers and the law are becoming more frequent and more dangerous.
“They're getting aggressive, in the way they are driving and the methods they use to get away. And once they are apprehended, they fight back,” sheriff's Investigator Danny Davila said. “We had one last week,” he continued. “We tried to pull him over, but he went through a ranch, fence line after fence line, until he came to another paved road, and then he was gone.”
“We couldn't stay with him because it was starting to get dark and we had lost sight of him,” he added. “It was not safe.”
Most of the illegal immigrant traffic seems to be headed for Houston, and Davila thinks that large criminal organizations in Mexico working with associates in that city have chosen U.S. 281 as their smuggling corridor.
“This is the path of least resistance. We're knocking down maybe 10 percent of what's going through the county. The volume has gotten phenomenal,” he said.
Deadly consequences
Much of the illegal traffic that goes northward through Brooks County follows backcountry roads into Duval County. There, similar chases occur daily, and often with the same result, an SUV crashing through fence lines into the brush.
“They never pull over. We get three to four bailouts on a good day. And for every bailout, maybe five others get through,” said Jose Martinez, chief deputy in Duval County. “We've already confiscated 325 cars this year from bailouts. We caught people in about fifty of those vehicles, but we hardly ever catch the driver,” he added.
The consequences for the human cargo often are deadly.
In April, nine people died near Palmview in the Valley when Border Patrol agents attempted to stop a minivan soon after it left a stash house. Eighteen illegal immigrants were in the van, driven by a 15-year-old, when it rolled over.
In May, a high-speed early-morning chase in Kleberg County that went through fenced ranchland ended with a man having his leg severed. The man, who never was identified, died of blood loss at the scene.
In October, two Guatemalans were killed after a DPS sharpshooter in a helicopter fired on a fleeing pickup that was carrying illegal immigrants near La Joya. The much criticized shooting still is being reviewed.
Unaccompanied children
During an eight-hour stretch one day earlier this month, in which reporters accompanied Border Patrol agents and Brooks County sheriff's deputies on calls around the county, the action was heavy. The day included a 300-pound marijuana bust and two arrests following a short car chase.
There were a total of three high-speed car chases. One involved a pickup carrying eight people that careened through a hotel parking lot before being abandoned. Finally, there was the discovery of a large group of men, women and children wandering aimlessly in the brush miles off U.S. 281. After being loaded into a white van, half the group of hungry, dirty people was taken to Border Patrol headquarters in Falfurrias to be processed. Most were Central Americans, who now make up a large percentage of those caught.
Among them were eight women and three children younger than age 12, including a Honduran girl, 11, who was traveling alone.
Humberto Martinez Vasquez Guzman, 18, from Guatemala, had come with his young wife, Silva Elena, in hopes of reaching relatives in Kentucky. He said they each had paid $6,500 to smugglers for the trip, only to be abandoned in South Texas, far short of their destination.
“We crossed the river at McAllen on Saturday, and on Monday night they brought us up here. They dropped us by the highway and left. We were walking three days in the brush without food,” he said on a recent day, the picture of complete defeat.
Martinez said an earthquake that destroyed much of the housing in his hometown, Aldea San Marcos, near the Mexican border, had pushed him to attempt the perilous journey that had just ended so badly. “I've got to ask for help to avoid being returned. God knows I'm not lying,” he said.
But, Mendiola said, there was little likelihood of any of them staying in the United States. And despite his many years of dealing with similar unhappy endings, the veteran Border Patrol agent was moved to comment about the unaccompanied young girl.
“It's a sad thing to have an 11-year-old here like this,” he said of a slim child in a black T-shirt. “At her age,” he added, “I wouldn't even let my kid go three blocks, and these people are coming through three countries.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Border-woes-no-longer-just-on-the-border-4155003.php
“The flow of undocumented workers across the border is actually lower than it's been in 40 years,” he said.
And indeed, after a decade of increased enforcement that included construction of hundreds of miles of steel border wall and a doubling in size of the U.S. Border Patrol, the results are undeniable. The 327,577 people caught by the Border Patrol on the southern border in fiscal year 2011 were the fewest since 1970. And it was about one-third of the apprehensions made in 2005.
But don't try telling folks in Brooks County that things are under control. Here, apprehensions of immigrants crossing illegally, rescues of people lost in the brush and wild car chases all have increased markedly in the past couple of years. A far more tragic indicator: the death toll of those trying to sneak around the Border Patrol checkpoint south of town on U.S. 281 has risen dramatically.
By late December, the remains of 127 people had been found in the brushy ranchland around the checkpoint, nearly double last year's total and the highest anyone can remember. In 2010, 20 bodies were found.
“When you have 127 people die in your county in one year, it's too much. One body would be too much,” said County Judge Raul Ramirez, who recently ran out of space for “John Doe” burials at the county's Sacred Heart Cemetery and is looking for a new place to bury the unidentified dead.
At Sacred Heart, their simple graves are marked with bright plastic flowers and small signs that tell what little is known, such as “skeletal remains” or “skull case” or “unknown female,” and the ranch where they were found.
Those that later are identified by DNA tests or other information are exhumed and sent back to their families, most often in Mexico or Central America.
The judge said the annual costs to his poor, rural county of dealing with illegal immigration and the unknown dead, including mortician fees and autopsies, run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. With an annual budget of about $6 million and just six full-time patrol deputies, Brooks County is ill-equipped for the task. And because it's not a border county, it receives very little state and federal aid.
“It all comes through Falfurrias. It's the No. 1 checkpoint in terms of seizures and illegal drugs,” the judge said, adding later, “I ask myself, why us?”
A busy December Already this year, one Brooks County rancher has found the remains of 16 people on his property, which straddles U.S. 281 near the checkpoint, far more than ever before.
“It's just been horrible. And there would have been a lot more deaths if the county didn't have a locator for 911 calls. Everyone has a cellphone,” said Presnall Cage, 67, whose 43,000-acre ranch is regularly traversed by large groups.
“They are coming across as bad as they ever have,” he added. “People say it's slowed down, but it doesn't seem that way to me.”
The deaths have risen markedly despite efforts by both the Border Patrol and local deputies to prevent them. The measures include hundreds of GPS markers spread around the brush that can help pinpoint 911 calls, flashing beacons that have water and panic buttons, and special Border Patrol units trained to save stranded travelers.
Although several hundred agents are stationed in Falfurrias, the vastness of the terrain and the heavy pressure from smugglers sometimes has them overmatched. All told, more than 2,600 agents work in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, trailing only El Paso and Tucson.
“What you're seeing now is the busiest this checkpoint has been since I came to this sector in 1995,” said Enrique Mendiola, a Border Patrol spokesman, who said that this year, the traditional winter lull never happened.
According to a large sign at the checkpoint, 36,075 pounds of drugs have been seized and 3,781 undocumented people have been apprehended here since Oct. 1.
While the Border Patrol does not release statistics for individual checkpoints, the December apprehensions of illegal immigrants here were more than double those of last December, according to unofficial sources.
The latest official statistics for the Rio Grande Valley Sector, which includes Falfurrias, show apprehensions surged by more than 60 percent from 2011 to 2012 for comparable 10-month periods, according to Mendiola. No one has a good explanation for why Brooks County is such a hot spot, and nothing as dramatic is happening around other South Texas checkpoints in Kenedy, Jim Hogg and Webb Counties.
“If we knew why, we'd go after it,” said Mendiola, who thinks that the construction of the steel border fence in the eastern half of the Rio Grande Valley has pushed most illegal activity westward toward U.S. 281.
“You used to have one organization running drugs, another running people. That was all we knew,” he said. “Now we have transnational criminal organizations and it's a multi-commodity business.”
Chief Sheriff's Deputy Benny Martinez sees other factors. “In my opinion, it has to do with the enforcement in Arizona. They're shifting back to Texas,” he said of the human smugglers. “We're already had 250 to 300 rescues this year, either from cellphone calls or people we find in the brush. It's way more than in the past,” he said.
In southern Arizona, another recent hot spot for illegal immigration, immigrant deaths peaked in 2010 at 252, forcing the medical examiner to hold bodies awaiting autopsies in refrigerated trucks. This year, the total likely will be below 160.
In Brooks County, encounters between smugglers and the law are becoming more frequent and more dangerous.
“They're getting aggressive, in the way they are driving and the methods they use to get away. And once they are apprehended, they fight back,” sheriff's Investigator Danny Davila said. “We had one last week,” he continued. “We tried to pull him over, but he went through a ranch, fence line after fence line, until he came to another paved road, and then he was gone.”
“We couldn't stay with him because it was starting to get dark and we had lost sight of him,” he added. “It was not safe.”
Most of the illegal immigrant traffic seems to be headed for Houston, and Davila thinks that large criminal organizations in Mexico working with associates in that city have chosen U.S. 281 as their smuggling corridor.
“This is the path of least resistance. We're knocking down maybe 10 percent of what's going through the county. The volume has gotten phenomenal,” he said.
Deadly consequences
Much of the illegal traffic that goes northward through Brooks County follows backcountry roads into Duval County. There, similar chases occur daily, and often with the same result, an SUV crashing through fence lines into the brush.
“They never pull over. We get three to four bailouts on a good day. And for every bailout, maybe five others get through,” said Jose Martinez, chief deputy in Duval County. “We've already confiscated 325 cars this year from bailouts. We caught people in about fifty of those vehicles, but we hardly ever catch the driver,” he added.
The consequences for the human cargo often are deadly.
In April, nine people died near Palmview in the Valley when Border Patrol agents attempted to stop a minivan soon after it left a stash house. Eighteen illegal immigrants were in the van, driven by a 15-year-old, when it rolled over.
In May, a high-speed early-morning chase in Kleberg County that went through fenced ranchland ended with a man having his leg severed. The man, who never was identified, died of blood loss at the scene.
In October, two Guatemalans were killed after a DPS sharpshooter in a helicopter fired on a fleeing pickup that was carrying illegal immigrants near La Joya. The much criticized shooting still is being reviewed.
Unaccompanied children
During an eight-hour stretch one day earlier this month, in which reporters accompanied Border Patrol agents and Brooks County sheriff's deputies on calls around the county, the action was heavy. The day included a 300-pound marijuana bust and two arrests following a short car chase.
There were a total of three high-speed car chases. One involved a pickup carrying eight people that careened through a hotel parking lot before being abandoned. Finally, there was the discovery of a large group of men, women and children wandering aimlessly in the brush miles off U.S. 281. After being loaded into a white van, half the group of hungry, dirty people was taken to Border Patrol headquarters in Falfurrias to be processed. Most were Central Americans, who now make up a large percentage of those caught.
Among them were eight women and three children younger than age 12, including a Honduran girl, 11, who was traveling alone.
Humberto Martinez Vasquez Guzman, 18, from Guatemala, had come with his young wife, Silva Elena, in hopes of reaching relatives in Kentucky. He said they each had paid $6,500 to smugglers for the trip, only to be abandoned in South Texas, far short of their destination.
“We crossed the river at McAllen on Saturday, and on Monday night they brought us up here. They dropped us by the highway and left. We were walking three days in the brush without food,” he said on a recent day, the picture of complete defeat.
Martinez said an earthquake that destroyed much of the housing in his hometown, Aldea San Marcos, near the Mexican border, had pushed him to attempt the perilous journey that had just ended so badly. “I've got to ask for help to avoid being returned. God knows I'm not lying,” he said.
But, Mendiola said, there was little likelihood of any of them staying in the United States. And despite his many years of dealing with similar unhappy endings, the veteran Border Patrol agent was moved to comment about the unaccompanied young girl.
“It's a sad thing to have an 11-year-old here like this,” he said of a slim child in a black T-shirt. “At her age,” he added, “I wouldn't even let my kid go three blocks, and these people are coming through three countries.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Border-woes-no-longer-just-on-the-border-4155003.php
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Cans of pot launched over Mexico-Arizona border fence
USA Today
December 12, 2012
by Domenico Nicosia
Thirty-three marijuana-filled cans were found on the Arizona side of the Mexican border, apparently shot over the fence with an air-pressured cannon.
Weighing about 2-1/2 pounds each, the cans were found late last week scattered in a field here near the Colorado River, U.S. Border Patrol officials said Tuesday. The almost 85 pounds of contents were estimated to be worth $43,000.
Border officials said they believe that pneumatic cannons — similar to the guns that launch T-shirts and other items during sporting events — were used to shoot the cans about 500 feet over the border fence after drug smugglers had crossed the river. A carbon dioxide tank also was found in the area.
The find was "another unique but unsuccessful attempt" to smuggle drugs into the U.S., officials said. Smugglers try to come up with ways to counter authorities as border officials disrupt drug-smuggling patterns.
Mexican authorities also are looking into the incident.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/12/pot-cannon-arizona-mexico/1762949/
December 12, 2012
by Domenico Nicosia
Thirty-three marijuana-filled cans were found on the Arizona side of the Mexican border, apparently shot over the fence with an air-pressured cannon.
Weighing about 2-1/2 pounds each, the cans were found late last week scattered in a field here near the Colorado River, U.S. Border Patrol officials said Tuesday. The almost 85 pounds of contents were estimated to be worth $43,000.
Border officials said they believe that pneumatic cannons — similar to the guns that launch T-shirts and other items during sporting events — were used to shoot the cans about 500 feet over the border fence after drug smugglers had crossed the river. A carbon dioxide tank also was found in the area.
The find was "another unique but unsuccessful attempt" to smuggle drugs into the U.S., officials said. Smugglers try to come up with ways to counter authorities as border officials disrupt drug-smuggling patterns.
Mexican authorities also are looking into the incident.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/12/pot-cannon-arizona-mexico/1762949/
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Arizona border agent arrested for alleged on-duty drug smuggling
Chicago Tribune / Reuters
December 4, 2012
by David Schwartz
PHOENIX (Reuters) - A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been arrested after he was spotted accepting bundles of marijuana from a suspected Mexican smuggler at an international border fence in Arizona, authorities said on Tuesday.
Aaron Anaya, 25, was taken into custody early on Monday by federal agents who seized 147 pounds (66.6 kg) of marijuana inside three duffle bags from his border patrol vehicle, authorities said in a criminal complaint in U.S. District Court in Phoenix.
Anaya, a U.S. Border Patrol agent since 2010, was charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute and firearm possession during a drug trafficking offense, according to the criminal complaint. Anaya had his service weapon with him at the time.
The controlled substance count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and the firearms count is punishable by up to 5 years behind bars.
Anaya's federal public defender could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Stephen Martin, the Border Patrol's sector chief for Yuma, Arizona, said the agency was "sorely disappointed by the alleged conduct of one of our own."
"I appreciate the efforts by our law enforcement partners and our own agents to uncover those that violate their oath of office, and hold them accountable for their actions," Martin said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Anaya was arrested by agents from the FBI-led Southwest Border Corruption Task Force who were conducting surveillance with the help of aircraft in an area between Yuma and Wellton, about 185 miles southwest of Phoenix.
According to a probable cause statement filed with the complaint, agents say they watched as Anaya stopped his patrol vehicle along the border and picked up bales of marijuana tossed over the fence into Arizona from a man on Mexican side.
Anaya was then seen by the agents placing the load into his vehicle before he continued patrolling, the probable cause document said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports that 129 agents were arrested on corruption charges from 2003 to 2009.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-smuggling-borderagentbre8b4012-20121204,0,2545413.story
December 4, 2012
by David Schwartz
PHOENIX (Reuters) - A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been arrested after he was spotted accepting bundles of marijuana from a suspected Mexican smuggler at an international border fence in Arizona, authorities said on Tuesday.
Aaron Anaya, 25, was taken into custody early on Monday by federal agents who seized 147 pounds (66.6 kg) of marijuana inside three duffle bags from his border patrol vehicle, authorities said in a criminal complaint in U.S. District Court in Phoenix.
Anaya, a U.S. Border Patrol agent since 2010, was charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute and firearm possession during a drug trafficking offense, according to the criminal complaint. Anaya had his service weapon with him at the time.
The controlled substance count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and the firearms count is punishable by up to 5 years behind bars.
Anaya's federal public defender could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Stephen Martin, the Border Patrol's sector chief for Yuma, Arizona, said the agency was "sorely disappointed by the alleged conduct of one of our own."
"I appreciate the efforts by our law enforcement partners and our own agents to uncover those that violate their oath of office, and hold them accountable for their actions," Martin said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Anaya was arrested by agents from the FBI-led Southwest Border Corruption Task Force who were conducting surveillance with the help of aircraft in an area between Yuma and Wellton, about 185 miles southwest of Phoenix.
According to a probable cause statement filed with the complaint, agents say they watched as Anaya stopped his patrol vehicle along the border and picked up bales of marijuana tossed over the fence into Arizona from a man on Mexican side.
Anaya was then seen by the agents placing the load into his vehicle before he continued patrolling, the probable cause document said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports that 129 agents were arrested on corruption charges from 2003 to 2009.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-smuggling-borderagentbre8b4012-20121204,0,2545413.story
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Suspected drug smugglers try to leap border fence with Jeep, ramp
Los Angeles Times
October 31, 2012
by John M. Glionna
The rules of the smuggling game across the U.S.-Mexico border have been written unofficially for years: If a bad guy moving drugs or people encounters a border fence, you tunnel under it.
“That area is just west of the Arizona-California line,” spokesman Victor Brabble told the Times. “There’s a floating fence there that we move when the dunes move. I guess the only way to get past it is to scale it.”
In 2007, Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar was killed near the same area when he was deliberately struck by a vehicle while attempting to deploy a controlled tire deflation device.
The region, handled by the Border Patrol’s Yuma, Ariz., office, has been rife with underground tunnels allowing drug dealers to move product. This summer, U.S. authorities uncovered a 240-yard-long tunnel, which had been in use near Yuma for nearly three months. Agents characterize the bust as a "major" find, saying the tunnel included sophisticated work such as electricity and ventilation.
Authorities say that 156 tunnels have been uncovered along the U.S. Southwestern border since the early 1990s. Three out of four were discovered after 2001, the majority of which were incomplete.
Clever detective work and improved tunnel detection technology have made underground trafficking more difficult, authorities said. But the huge drug quantities heading across the border could also be explained by a surge in marijuana production in Mexico and, in particular, Baja California, where Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel has been expanding its influence.
In eight years, the U.S. Border Patrol’s biggest find was a nearly half-mile-long tunnel south of San Diego in 2006 – that’s the length of seven football fields.
But like in the recent Jeep incident, sometimes the evidence is right there before your eyes.
Agents from the Yuma station had been patrolling the Imperial Sand Dunes area when they spotted the silver Jeep Cherokee attempting to scale the fence. What the smugglers left behind was a 2,000-pound vehicle perched precariously on the precipice of the boundary.
Authorities say they seized both the vehicle and the ramp, adding that it wasn’t clear if the smugglers were trying to spirit drugs, people or both into the U.S.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-smugglers-jeep-border-ramp-20121031,0,6959278.story
October 31, 2012
by John M. Glionna
The rules of the smuggling game across the U.S.-Mexico border have been written unofficially for years: If a bad guy moving drugs or people encounters a border fence, you tunnel under it.
But a group of enterprising – or desperate –
smugglers got caught trying an alternative method. They built a flimsy makeshift
ramp and tried to drive over a U.S. Border Patrol fence
near the Imperial Sand Dunes in Southern California.
A U.S. Border Patrol spokeswoman in Arizona told
the Los Angeles Times that a pair of suspected smugglers
tried to drive over a 14-foot-high fence in southeastern Arizona just after
midnight Tuesday but abandoned the vehicle and fled back into Mexico as agents
approached.
“That area is just west of the Arizona-California line,” spokesman Victor Brabble told the Times. “There’s a floating fence there that we move when the dunes move. I guess the only way to get past it is to scale it.”
In 2007, Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar was killed near the same area when he was deliberately struck by a vehicle while attempting to deploy a controlled tire deflation device.
The region, handled by the Border Patrol’s Yuma, Ariz., office, has been rife with underground tunnels allowing drug dealers to move product. This summer, U.S. authorities uncovered a 240-yard-long tunnel, which had been in use near Yuma for nearly three months. Agents characterize the bust as a "major" find, saying the tunnel included sophisticated work such as electricity and ventilation.
Authorities say that 156 tunnels have been uncovered along the U.S. Southwestern border since the early 1990s. Three out of four were discovered after 2001, the majority of which were incomplete.
Clever detective work and improved tunnel detection technology have made underground trafficking more difficult, authorities said. But the huge drug quantities heading across the border could also be explained by a surge in marijuana production in Mexico and, in particular, Baja California, where Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel has been expanding its influence.
In eight years, the U.S. Border Patrol’s biggest find was a nearly half-mile-long tunnel south of San Diego in 2006 – that’s the length of seven football fields.
But like in the recent Jeep incident, sometimes the evidence is right there before your eyes.
Agents from the Yuma station had been patrolling the Imperial Sand Dunes area when they spotted the silver Jeep Cherokee attempting to scale the fence. What the smugglers left behind was a 2,000-pound vehicle perched precariously on the precipice of the boundary.
Authorities say they seized both the vehicle and the ramp, adding that it wasn’t clear if the smugglers were trying to spirit drugs, people or both into the U.S.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-smugglers-jeep-border-ramp-20121031,0,6959278.story
Smugglers try driving over US border fence, get stuck
Associated Press / MSN
October 31, 2012
YUMA, Ariz. — Suspected smugglers tried to use ramps to drive an SUV over a 14-foot fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, but they abandoned the effort when it got stuck on top.
U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Spencer Tippets says agents spotted the SUV perched atop the fence early Tuesday near the border between Arizona and California.
Two people on the Mexican side were trying to free the Jeep when the agents approached. They ran further into Mexico.
The Jeep was empty, but agents say it was probably filled with contraband like marijuana before it got stuck.
October 31, 2012
YUMA, Ariz. — Suspected smugglers tried to use ramps to drive an SUV over a 14-foot fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, but they abandoned the effort when it got stuck on top.
U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Spencer Tippets says agents spotted the SUV perched atop the fence early Tuesday near the border between Arizona and California.
Two people on the Mexican side were trying to free the Jeep when the agents approached. They ran further into Mexico.
The Jeep was empty, but agents say it was probably filled with contraband like marijuana before it got stuck.
The smugglers had built ramps that looked like long ladders to drive up and over the fence.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Border Patrol scrutinized over teen's shooting death
Arizona Republic
October 18, 2012
by Bob Ortega
NOGALES, Ariz. - There was nothing unusual about the call to the Border Patrol and Nogales police on Oct. 10 to report two men climbing the border fence to bring drugs into the United States.
It also was not unusual that once Border Patrol agents arrived at the scene and attempted to arrest the men, who were now fleeing back to Mexico, one or more people began to hurl rocks over the fence at the agents from the Mexico side of the border.
The decision by one or more agents to open fire on the rock throwers, though, is another matter. It is the subject of furious disagreement between the Border Patrol and critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and human-rights advocates, who say agents resort to deadly force too often. The Mexican government has condemned the shooting and called for a thorough investigation.
At least one Border Patrol agent fired shots through an opening in the fence. Moments later, Mexican police found the body of a 16-year-old boy on the ground in front of a medical office. Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez had been shot eight times. Police investigators marked 11 bullet holes on the walls of the medical office.
Elena Rodriguez is the 18th person to be killed by Border Patrol agents since January 2010, with all but two of those deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border, says Vicki Gaubeca, director of the ACLU's Regional Center for Border Rights, in Las Cruces, N.M. Eight of those killed allegedly had been throwing rocks at Border Patrol officers.
In the most recent incident, there are discrepancies between the Border Patrol's version of events and accounts of witnesses on the Mexican side of the border. The Border Patrol said its agent fired at someone who was throwing rocks at the agents over the fence. Elena Rodriguez's family has said all the bullets entered the boy's body from behind.
The discrepancies may be resolved: A Border Patrol spokesman says video cameras on the border fence were in operation during the incident. Those recordings have been turned over to FBI investigators. Sonora's attorney general also has requested a copy from the Department of Justice, the attorney general's spokeswoman, Sandra Hurtado, said.
The FBI was on the scene hours after the incident and has collected reports from the agents and Nogales police officers. It is standard for the FBI to investigate deadly incidents involving the Border Patrol.
ACLU attorney Chris Rickerd has criticized agents' actions in several deaths involving border agents, including a March 21, 2011, incident in which a Border Patrol officer in Douglas shot a 19-year-old U.S. citizen, Carlos Lamadrid, three times in the back as Lamadrid fled into Agua Prieta, Mexico. Rickerd said the Border Patrol should explain what disciplinary actions it takes when agents violate use-of-force policies.
The Border Patrol didn't respond by deadline to questions from The Republic about what disciplinary actions, if any, have been taken related to the 18 deaths.
Customs and Border Protection spokesman Michael Friel said the agency's use of force is based on the Department of Justice's policy. "Law-enforcement personnel are trained to use deadly force in circumstances that pose a threat to their lives, the lives of their fellow law-enforcement partners and innocent third parties," he said.
CBP wouldn't provide additional details on its use-of-force policy. But rocks are considered potentially lethal, and the agency typically has not disciplined officers for firing at rock throwers.
The agency doesn't classify rock-throwing incidents separately from other assaults on agents, but Friel said that such incidents are the most common type of assault along the border, numbering in the hundreds over the past three years.
No agents have been killed in rock-throwing incidents. Since early 2010, seven Border Patrol agents have been killed on duty: five in vehicle accidents; one, Brian Terry, was shot by drug smugglers in 2010; and one, Nicholas Ivie, was shot in a friendly-fire incident two weeks ago near Bisbee.
Lt. Carlos Jimenez of the Nogales Police Department said it's common for drug cartels to hire people as border lookouts "and to tell them if something goes bad to throw rocks to distract or deter law-enforcement officers ... They'll pay anybody willing to do it, youths, old people. They don't discriminate by age or gender."
Elena Rodriguez's mother, Araceli Rodriguez, insisted that her son would not have been involved in drug activity and must have been walking in the area when he was shot less than four blocks from his home.
"He wasn't a bad boy," she said tearfully in an interview at her home in Nogales, Sonora. A framed photograph of her son surrounded by flowers stood on a nearby table.
"They killed my little boy, and I want to know why. I want to know why they shot him so many times, why they shot him in the back," she said. "We want justice."
The Border Patrol declined to discuss details of the Elena Rodriguez case, citing the FBI investigation.
Garcia said in a report that he saw two men carrying bundles of marijuana on their backs, jumping down from the fence onto the Arizona side and running toward houses on a street facing the fence. He chased them into a driveway and lost sight of them.
Moments later, he said, the first of several Border Patrol agents arrived, along with a police K-9 officer, John Zuniga.
In his report, Zuniga wrote that he spotted the two men, who had dropped their bundles, trying to climb back over the fence into Mexico. After Zuniga and Border Patrol agents yelled at them to get down from the fence, Zuniga reported that he "heard several rocks start hitting the ground, and I looked up and could see the rocks flying through the air."
As he took his dog back to his vehicle, Zuniga heard gunfire. When he looked up, he saw an agent standing by the fence.
Neither Zuniga nor Garcia reported seeing shots fired.
"I then heard an agent say, 'There is one 10-7,' which means out of service or no longer alive," Zuniga wrote in the report.
The Border Patrol initially told the public that an agent had fired and someone "appeared" to have been hit. The agency has not said whether more than one agent fired shots.
Across the fence, in his home and medical office on Calle Internacional, a street that runs along the border, Dr. Luis Contreras Sanchez was surfing the Internet when he heard someone run past his window, followed by at least eight shots, he said in an interview with The Republic.
"I turned out the light, dove down and called the police," he said. "I didn't hear anyone screaming or yelling outside, or I'd have gone out."
Minutes later, police arrived, Contreras Sanchez said. He looked out and saw the boy face down on the sidewalk.
While Border Patrol officials said that the agent fired after rock-throwers ignored repeated orders to stop, Contreras Sanchez said he didn't hear such orders. The Nogales Police Department's reports don't mention orders for the rock-throwers to stop.
"If you see photos of where he was standing and where he allegedly was throwing rocks, from that distance, how lethal could those rocks be? How defensible is it to shoot someone?" asks the ACLU's Gaubeca.
The fence where the incident occurred was rebuilt a year ago as part of a project to construct more than 650 miles of new barriers mandated by Congress to tighten border security.
The new fence covers a 2.8-mile stretch from one end of Nogales to the other. Built of parallel beams constructed from a triple layer of rebar, concrete and steel, the fence averages 18 to 20 feet in height and has an extra steel barrier on top to make it harder to scale.
When it was completed during the summer of 2011, officials said the fence would better protect border agents from rock-throwers because unlike the old sheet-metal fence, which was 10 to 12 feet high, agents can see through it.
It may have had an impact. Border Patrol officers in the Tucson Sector, which includes Nogales, reported 251 assaults for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2011, a 40 percent drop from the previous fiscal year.
At the main border crossing in Nogales, the fence is at street level. Moving west, toward Contreras Sanchez's office, three blocks away, the fence climbs a steep hill on the U.S. side. Where Elena Rodriguez was shot, the base of the fence is 25 feet above street level; the top of the fence is roughly 45 feet above where the boy was shot.
The angle is such that it would be all but impossible for a rock-thrower to hit someone near the fence on the U.S. side.
Elena Rodriguez's family has hired a U.S. attorney, Luis Parra, to sue the Border Patrol.
Similar cross-border suits in recent years have been dismissed by U.S. courts. For example, 15-year-old Sergio Hernandez-Guereca was shot twice and killed by a Border Patrol officer in El Paso in June 2010, allegedly while throwing rocks as the agent arrested another youth.
The Department of Justice declined to prosecute the agent, saying he hadn't violated CBP's use-of-force policies or training. The department declined an extradition request by the state government of Chihuahua. Federal district courts twice dismissed suits by the family, alleging wrongful death and violation of the boy's rights. In both cases, U.S. District Judge David Briones ruled that U.S. constitutional protections don't apply because Hernandez-Guereca was a Mexican citizen and in Mexico at the time he was killed. An appeal to the 5th Circuit Court is pending.
David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego, called the judge's ruling "a legitimate legal interpretation in the absence of any higher court ruling that suggests otherwise . . . It exposes one of the many challenges of the border region that are not well captured in national law."
He said firing a gun on one side of an international border doesn't necessarily create legal responsibility for the impact in the neighboring country.
Gaubeca said that while the Mexican government could ask to extradite the Border Patrol agent, the U.S. government can, as it has before, simply say no.
"How do you wrestle with the issue of causing harm on the other side of an international boundary, and what remedy is there for people who feel this is a wrongful shooting or an inappropriate use of lethal force?" Gaubeca asked.
This, she argues, is why it's particularly important for the Border Patrol to train its agents to defuse confrontations.
Since 2007, when the George W. Bush administration launched a major expansion, the Border Patrol has nearly doubled in size, to more than 21,000 agents. To recruit and quickly hire that many new agents, the Border Patrol reduced requirements, deferred background checks and omitted lie-detector tests that had been standard, and shortened training that officers receive, said John Carlos Frey, a filmmaker who this year produced a documentary on the patrol for the PBS program "Need to Know."
Rickerd, of the ACLU, said in a recent blog post that the Border Patrol should "make clear whether or not it abides by best law enforcement practices," in terms of the training it gives agents, whether it equips them with adequate protective gear that would reduce their need to use deadly force, and what plans it has to install dashboard-mounted and other cameras to record its agents' actions.
On Monday, as she waited to meet with state police for any news on the investigation, Araceli Rodriguez shared one of the many questions to which she'd like an answer: "Why didn't the Border Patrol agents just fire a warning shot in the air?"
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2012/10/17/20121017border-patrol-scrutinized-teen-shooting-death.html
October 18, 2012
by Bob Ortega
NOGALES, Ariz. - There was nothing unusual about the call to the Border Patrol and Nogales police on Oct. 10 to report two men climbing the border fence to bring drugs into the United States.
It also was not unusual that once Border Patrol agents arrived at the scene and attempted to arrest the men, who were now fleeing back to Mexico, one or more people began to hurl rocks over the fence at the agents from the Mexico side of the border.
The decision by one or more agents to open fire on the rock throwers, though, is another matter. It is the subject of furious disagreement between the Border Patrol and critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and human-rights advocates, who say agents resort to deadly force too often. The Mexican government has condemned the shooting and called for a thorough investigation.
At least one Border Patrol agent fired shots through an opening in the fence. Moments later, Mexican police found the body of a 16-year-old boy on the ground in front of a medical office. Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez had been shot eight times. Police investigators marked 11 bullet holes on the walls of the medical office.
Elena Rodriguez is the 18th person to be killed by Border Patrol agents since January 2010, with all but two of those deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border, says Vicki Gaubeca, director of the ACLU's Regional Center for Border Rights, in Las Cruces, N.M. Eight of those killed allegedly had been throwing rocks at Border Patrol officers.
In the most recent incident, there are discrepancies between the Border Patrol's version of events and accounts of witnesses on the Mexican side of the border. The Border Patrol said its agent fired at someone who was throwing rocks at the agents over the fence. Elena Rodriguez's family has said all the bullets entered the boy's body from behind.
The discrepancies may be resolved: A Border Patrol spokesman says video cameras on the border fence were in operation during the incident. Those recordings have been turned over to FBI investigators. Sonora's attorney general also has requested a copy from the Department of Justice, the attorney general's spokeswoman, Sandra Hurtado, said.
The FBI was on the scene hours after the incident and has collected reports from the agents and Nogales police officers. It is standard for the FBI to investigate deadly incidents involving the Border Patrol.
Use of deadly force
Even before Elena Rodriguez's death, the ACLU, several members of Congress and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had this year called for an independent, comprehensive investigation into Customs and Border Protection's policies on use of force.ACLU attorney Chris Rickerd has criticized agents' actions in several deaths involving border agents, including a March 21, 2011, incident in which a Border Patrol officer in Douglas shot a 19-year-old U.S. citizen, Carlos Lamadrid, three times in the back as Lamadrid fled into Agua Prieta, Mexico. Rickerd said the Border Patrol should explain what disciplinary actions it takes when agents violate use-of-force policies.
The Border Patrol didn't respond by deadline to questions from The Republic about what disciplinary actions, if any, have been taken related to the 18 deaths.
Customs and Border Protection spokesman Michael Friel said the agency's use of force is based on the Department of Justice's policy. "Law-enforcement personnel are trained to use deadly force in circumstances that pose a threat to their lives, the lives of their fellow law-enforcement partners and innocent third parties," he said.
CBP wouldn't provide additional details on its use-of-force policy. But rocks are considered potentially lethal, and the agency typically has not disciplined officers for firing at rock throwers.
The agency doesn't classify rock-throwing incidents separately from other assaults on agents, but Friel said that such incidents are the most common type of assault along the border, numbering in the hundreds over the past three years.
No agents have been killed in rock-throwing incidents. Since early 2010, seven Border Patrol agents have been killed on duty: five in vehicle accidents; one, Brian Terry, was shot by drug smugglers in 2010; and one, Nicholas Ivie, was shot in a friendly-fire incident two weeks ago near Bisbee.
Lt. Carlos Jimenez of the Nogales Police Department said it's common for drug cartels to hire people as border lookouts "and to tell them if something goes bad to throw rocks to distract or deter law-enforcement officers ... They'll pay anybody willing to do it, youths, old people. They don't discriminate by age or gender."
Elena Rodriguez's mother, Araceli Rodriguez, insisted that her son would not have been involved in drug activity and must have been walking in the area when he was shot less than four blocks from his home.
"He wasn't a bad boy," she said tearfully in an interview at her home in Nogales, Sonora. A framed photograph of her son surrounded by flowers stood on a nearby table.
"They killed my little boy, and I want to know why. I want to know why they shot him so many times, why they shot him in the back," she said. "We want justice."
The Border Patrol declined to discuss details of the Elena Rodriguez case, citing the FBI investigation.
Responding to the scene
Nogales, Ariz., police Officer Quinardo Garcia was the first of several officers to respond to a report, at 11:16 p.m. on Oct. 10, of two men climbing over the border fence from Mexico.Garcia said in a report that he saw two men carrying bundles of marijuana on their backs, jumping down from the fence onto the Arizona side and running toward houses on a street facing the fence. He chased them into a driveway and lost sight of them.
Moments later, he said, the first of several Border Patrol agents arrived, along with a police K-9 officer, John Zuniga.
In his report, Zuniga wrote that he spotted the two men, who had dropped their bundles, trying to climb back over the fence into Mexico. After Zuniga and Border Patrol agents yelled at them to get down from the fence, Zuniga reported that he "heard several rocks start hitting the ground, and I looked up and could see the rocks flying through the air."
As he took his dog back to his vehicle, Zuniga heard gunfire. When he looked up, he saw an agent standing by the fence.
Neither Zuniga nor Garcia reported seeing shots fired.
"I then heard an agent say, 'There is one 10-7,' which means out of service or no longer alive," Zuniga wrote in the report.
The Border Patrol initially told the public that an agent had fired and someone "appeared" to have been hit. The agency has not said whether more than one agent fired shots.
Across the fence, in his home and medical office on Calle Internacional, a street that runs along the border, Dr. Luis Contreras Sanchez was surfing the Internet when he heard someone run past his window, followed by at least eight shots, he said in an interview with The Republic.
"I turned out the light, dove down and called the police," he said. "I didn't hear anyone screaming or yelling outside, or I'd have gone out."
Minutes later, police arrived, Contreras Sanchez said. He looked out and saw the boy face down on the sidewalk.
While Border Patrol officials said that the agent fired after rock-throwers ignored repeated orders to stop, Contreras Sanchez said he didn't hear such orders. The Nogales Police Department's reports don't mention orders for the rock-throwers to stop.
Actions criticized
To some Border Patrol critics, even if Elena Rodriguez was throwing rocks, the agent's response was not justified."If you see photos of where he was standing and where he allegedly was throwing rocks, from that distance, how lethal could those rocks be? How defensible is it to shoot someone?" asks the ACLU's Gaubeca.
The fence where the incident occurred was rebuilt a year ago as part of a project to construct more than 650 miles of new barriers mandated by Congress to tighten border security.
The new fence covers a 2.8-mile stretch from one end of Nogales to the other. Built of parallel beams constructed from a triple layer of rebar, concrete and steel, the fence averages 18 to 20 feet in height and has an extra steel barrier on top to make it harder to scale.
When it was completed during the summer of 2011, officials said the fence would better protect border agents from rock-throwers because unlike the old sheet-metal fence, which was 10 to 12 feet high, agents can see through it.
It may have had an impact. Border Patrol officers in the Tucson Sector, which includes Nogales, reported 251 assaults for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2011, a 40 percent drop from the previous fiscal year.
At the main border crossing in Nogales, the fence is at street level. Moving west, toward Contreras Sanchez's office, three blocks away, the fence climbs a steep hill on the U.S. side. Where Elena Rodriguez was shot, the base of the fence is 25 feet above street level; the top of the fence is roughly 45 feet above where the boy was shot.
The angle is such that it would be all but impossible for a rock-thrower to hit someone near the fence on the U.S. side.
Elena Rodriguez's family has hired a U.S. attorney, Luis Parra, to sue the Border Patrol.
Similar cross-border suits in recent years have been dismissed by U.S. courts. For example, 15-year-old Sergio Hernandez-Guereca was shot twice and killed by a Border Patrol officer in El Paso in June 2010, allegedly while throwing rocks as the agent arrested another youth.
The Department of Justice declined to prosecute the agent, saying he hadn't violated CBP's use-of-force policies or training. The department declined an extradition request by the state government of Chihuahua. Federal district courts twice dismissed suits by the family, alleging wrongful death and violation of the boy's rights. In both cases, U.S. District Judge David Briones ruled that U.S. constitutional protections don't apply because Hernandez-Guereca was a Mexican citizen and in Mexico at the time he was killed. An appeal to the 5th Circuit Court is pending.
David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego, called the judge's ruling "a legitimate legal interpretation in the absence of any higher court ruling that suggests otherwise . . . It exposes one of the many challenges of the border region that are not well captured in national law."
He said firing a gun on one side of an international border doesn't necessarily create legal responsibility for the impact in the neighboring country.
Gaubeca said that while the Mexican government could ask to extradite the Border Patrol agent, the U.S. government can, as it has before, simply say no.
"How do you wrestle with the issue of causing harm on the other side of an international boundary, and what remedy is there for people who feel this is a wrongful shooting or an inappropriate use of lethal force?" Gaubeca asked.
This, she argues, is why it's particularly important for the Border Patrol to train its agents to defuse confrontations.
Since 2007, when the George W. Bush administration launched a major expansion, the Border Patrol has nearly doubled in size, to more than 21,000 agents. To recruit and quickly hire that many new agents, the Border Patrol reduced requirements, deferred background checks and omitted lie-detector tests that had been standard, and shortened training that officers receive, said John Carlos Frey, a filmmaker who this year produced a documentary on the patrol for the PBS program "Need to Know."
Rickerd, of the ACLU, said in a recent blog post that the Border Patrol should "make clear whether or not it abides by best law enforcement practices," in terms of the training it gives agents, whether it equips them with adequate protective gear that would reduce their need to use deadly force, and what plans it has to install dashboard-mounted and other cameras to record its agents' actions.
On Monday, as she waited to meet with state police for any news on the investigation, Araceli Rodriguez shared one of the many questions to which she'd like an answer: "Why didn't the Border Patrol agents just fire a warning shot in the air?"
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2012/10/17/20121017border-patrol-scrutinized-teen-shooting-death.html
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
U.S. Mexico border fence collapses in Los Algodones, Mexico
KSWT News 13
July 25, 2012
by Stephanie Sanchez
July 25, 2012
by Stephanie Sanchez
Yuma--A construction company was excavating near the U.S. Mexico border fence in Los Algodones, Mexico Thursday night around 8 p.m. About 114 feet of border fence collapsed.
"There are extra agents in this area, air assets are on stand by and will adjust where needed as well," Spencer Tippets, U.S. Border Patrol spokesman of the Yuma sector said. "Extra security will be in place until the fence is repaired."
The excavating equipment belonged to Haro express, a Mexican material transporting company.
An anonymous source close to the project tells us they specifically warned the company to not to dig so close to the border fence but they went ahead anyway.
They were reportedly under a deadline for a construction project on a plaza in downtown Algodones.
Parts of the fence toppled over the tractor and truck but no injuries were reported.
"We don't know exactly what the engineers will come up with as far as the replacement of the fence," Tippets said. "Were not sure if they will continue with the same kind of construction in this area or if use the same type of fencing."
He said they don't know how long it will take to rebuild the border fence and the estimated amount of damage isn't known yet.
The International Boundary and Water Commission and Mexican authorities are reviewing the incident. Customs and Border Protection is considering the most efficient means of repairing the fence. Security has been increased at the scene until repairs are made."
Break in Border Wall Near Los Algodones, Mexico
KSWT News 13
July 25, 2012
July 25, 2012
Los Algodones, Mexico - A section of the border fence between the US and Los Algodones, Mexico has come down. KSWT News 13 reporter Stephanie Sanchez tells us from scene that crews are working on repairs and the area is secure.
Initial reports indicate about 114 feet of the fence is open. There was a construction crew on the Mexican side of the fence doing some excavating Tuesday night. The portion of the wall collapsed around 8p.m. There is no indication there was any intentional damage to the fence.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
'Extraordinary' U.S.-Mexico drug tunnel may be Sinaloa cartel's
Los Angeles Times
July 12, 2012
by William C. Rempel
The “fully operational” tunnel is a 755-foot passageway, tall enough for a 6-foot person to walk through, that burrows under the border fence, a park and a water canal. It connects a small, nondescript warehouse on the U.S. side to an inoperative ice manufacturing plant behind a strip club in Mexico.
It is outfitted with lights, fans and a ventilation system. The vertical shafts on both sides of the border descend 57 feet, creating what officials said were significant engineering challenges.
“I would suspect that professional engineers were cooperating with the builders, if not working on site,” said Doug Coleman, special agent in charge of the DEA's Phoenix field office. He said construction might have taken at least a year and cost an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million.
Two couriers were arrested, one of them a U.S. citizen. A third person also has been arrested in a case that Coleman said was “only beginning.” Coleman declined to answer questions about the continuing investigation.
DEA investigators who searched the warehouse found tons of sandy soil stored in dozens of 55-gallon drums. The stored dirt “suggested there must be a tunnel,” Coleman said at a news conference Thursday.
Access to the tunnel was located under a 2,000-gallon water tank that could be moved only with the use of a forklift. Investigators found the vertical shaft lined with 4-by-6-inch wooden planks. The tunnel itself is lined with plywood and reinforced with the same planks. It is about 6 feet 6 high and 4 feet wide.
On the Mexico side, access was found in the ice house, where investigators also found stacks of 200-pound seed bags apparently filled with additional tons of excavated sand and dirt. Entry to the vertical shaft was underwater. Investigators had to drain a large tank to get to it.
Asked to compare the tunnel to nearly 140 others found along the Mexican border with Arizona and California in the past 10 years, Coleman said he had seen nothing like it. “It's an extraordinary piece of engineering,” he said.
The one-story warehouse, part of a strip mall only a few steps from the San Luis border crossing, had been under surveillance by DEA agents for several months as a suspected stash location. The ice house also had been a suspect site in the past, raided at various times in recent years by Mexican drug agents without anything suspicious turning up.
Coleman said that although the people behind the tunnel had yet to be identified, “it's a good guess” that it will be tied to the Sinaloa cartel and people employed by drug boss Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman.
DEA officials said estimates that the tunnel could have cost as much as $2 million were based on initial analysis of the materials used in construction. They speculated that sophisticated underground sensors and directional devices might have been used to assure that the tunnel from the Mexico side actually met the vertical shaft under the San Luis warehouse.
Also found at the warehouse were two vans formerly operated by the U.S. Postal Service, faded remnants of their identifying decals still visible. Investigators believe the cartel intended to disguise some of its drug shipments as U.S. mail.
Jay Crede of Homeland Security Investigations said the tunnel was of obvious concern to his department, but he celebrated its discovery. He called the loss of the tunnel “a blow to … traffickers.”
Another DEA veteran, Coleman aide Chris Feistl, went further. “As drug cases go, we didn't get a whole lot of dope in this seizure,” he said, “but when you think about how much cartel time and effort and money went into this tunnel — we really ruined somebody's day.”
The 39 pounds of methamphetamine has an estimated wholesale value to the cartel of nearly $700,000. Its street value is about five times higher.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-drug-tunnel-details-20120712,0,612829.story
July 12, 2012
by William C. Rempel
SAN LUIS, Ariz. — The powerful Sinaloa drug cartel
is believed to be behind one of the most sophisticated and well-engineered smuggling
tunnels ever found along the U.S.-Mexico border,
according to U.S. drug enforcement officials who announced the discovery
Thursday in Yuma.
The “fully operational” tunnel is a 755-foot passageway, tall enough for a 6-foot person to walk through, that burrows under the border fence, a park and a water canal. It connects a small, nondescript warehouse on the U.S. side to an inoperative ice manufacturing plant behind a strip club in Mexico.
It is outfitted with lights, fans and a ventilation system. The vertical shafts on both sides of the border descend 57 feet, creating what officials said were significant engineering challenges.
“I would suspect that professional engineers were cooperating with the builders, if not working on site,” said Doug Coleman, special agent in charge of the DEA's Phoenix field office. He said construction might have taken at least a year and cost an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million.
It was unclear how much, if any, contraband may
have been smuggled through the recently completed tunnel, but authorities said
its existence was exposed by the seizure last week of a 39-pound load of methamphetamine.
The drugs were found by state police during a traffic stop on the highway
between San Luis and Yuma and then traced back to the warehouse.
Two couriers were arrested, one of them a U.S. citizen. A third person also has been arrested in a case that Coleman said was “only beginning.” Coleman declined to answer questions about the continuing investigation.
DEA investigators who searched the warehouse found tons of sandy soil stored in dozens of 55-gallon drums. The stored dirt “suggested there must be a tunnel,” Coleman said at a news conference Thursday.
Access to the tunnel was located under a 2,000-gallon water tank that could be moved only with the use of a forklift. Investigators found the vertical shaft lined with 4-by-6-inch wooden planks. The tunnel itself is lined with plywood and reinforced with the same planks. It is about 6 feet 6 high and 4 feet wide.
On the Mexico side, access was found in the ice house, where investigators also found stacks of 200-pound seed bags apparently filled with additional tons of excavated sand and dirt. Entry to the vertical shaft was underwater. Investigators had to drain a large tank to get to it.
Asked to compare the tunnel to nearly 140 others found along the Mexican border with Arizona and California in the past 10 years, Coleman said he had seen nothing like it. “It's an extraordinary piece of engineering,” he said.
The one-story warehouse, part of a strip mall only a few steps from the San Luis border crossing, had been under surveillance by DEA agents for several months as a suspected stash location. The ice house also had been a suspect site in the past, raided at various times in recent years by Mexican drug agents without anything suspicious turning up.
Coleman said that although the people behind the tunnel had yet to be identified, “it's a good guess” that it will be tied to the Sinaloa cartel and people employed by drug boss Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman.
DEA officials said estimates that the tunnel could have cost as much as $2 million were based on initial analysis of the materials used in construction. They speculated that sophisticated underground sensors and directional devices might have been used to assure that the tunnel from the Mexico side actually met the vertical shaft under the San Luis warehouse.
Also found at the warehouse were two vans formerly operated by the U.S. Postal Service, faded remnants of their identifying decals still visible. Investigators believe the cartel intended to disguise some of its drug shipments as U.S. mail.
Jay Crede of Homeland Security Investigations said the tunnel was of obvious concern to his department, but he celebrated its discovery. He called the loss of the tunnel “a blow to … traffickers.”
Another DEA veteran, Coleman aide Chris Feistl, went further. “As drug cases go, we didn't get a whole lot of dope in this seizure,” he said, “but when you think about how much cartel time and effort and money went into this tunnel — we really ruined somebody's day.”
The 39 pounds of methamphetamine has an estimated wholesale value to the cartel of nearly $700,000. Its street value is about five times higher.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-drug-tunnel-details-20120712,0,612829.story
Monday, July 9, 2012
Mexico discovers drug tunnel under Arizona border
Associated Press / East Valley Tribune
July 8, 2012
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico's army has uncovered a 755-foot (230-meter) tunnel running under the Sonora-Arizona border that was used to smuggle drugs into the United States.
Mexico's defense secretariat says the tunnel linked a soon-to-be-opened ice and purified water business in San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora to a business in San Luis, Arizona.
Gen. Raul Guereca said Saturday that the tunnel was 4.25 feet (1.3 meters) high and reached a depth of almost 60 feet (18 meters) below ground. It had electricity, ventilation and small cars to transport the drugs through the tunnel.
Officials did not say which cartel they thought had built the tunnel. As U.S. authorities have tightened land crossings, tunnels have become a popular way for Mexico's cartels to smuggle drugs and people into the U.S.
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/local/cop_shop/article_8b035a00-c942-11e1-be5c-0019bb2963f4.html
July 8, 2012
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico's army has uncovered a 755-foot (230-meter) tunnel running under the Sonora-Arizona border that was used to smuggle drugs into the United States.
Mexico's defense secretariat says the tunnel linked a soon-to-be-opened ice and purified water business in San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora to a business in San Luis, Arizona.
Gen. Raul Guereca said Saturday that the tunnel was 4.25 feet (1.3 meters) high and reached a depth of almost 60 feet (18 meters) below ground. It had electricity, ventilation and small cars to transport the drugs through the tunnel.
Officials did not say which cartel they thought had built the tunnel. As U.S. authorities have tightened land crossings, tunnels have become a popular way for Mexico's cartels to smuggle drugs and people into the U.S.
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/local/cop_shop/article_8b035a00-c942-11e1-be5c-0019bb2963f4.html
Monday, February 20, 2012
Pot-smuggling tunnels in Tijuana grow more elaborate
McClatchy / Boston Herald
February 20, 2012
by Tim Johnson
TIJUANA, Mexico _ When smuggling goes smoothly for the marijuana division of the huge Sinaloa Cartel, cross-border deliveries unfold with clockwork precision.
Harvested marijuana arrives in plastic-wrapped bales to a depot hidden among the rundown warehouses on the Mexican side of the concrete U.S. border fence.
Once enough marijuana is collected, workers drop the vacuum-packed bales through shafts leading to the ever-more-elaborate tunnels that cross underneath the border through the clay-laden soil.
U.S. agents have been waging war against the tunnels for years, using a range of high-tech devices from ground-penetrating radar to seismic sensors to find and destroy them. But despite the efforts, drug smugglers continue to build the tunnels, often spending $1 million to dig a single pathway equipped with lighting, forced-air ventilation, water pumps, shoring on walls and hydraulic elevators.
Lately, new tunnels have included railways. The bales move on electric mining carts with hand throttles that roll at up to 15 mph.
"A tunnel represents an incursion into the U.S., and it’s a national security event," said Jose M. Garcia, who oversees the federal multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force.
The location of the tunnels helps explain why agents have such difficulty finding them. The area where the most advanced tunnels have been found is adjacent to the Tijuana international airport, where scores of planes take off and land daily. Nearby warehouses buzz with legitimate activity.
"All that noise from the airport is a great advantage to them," said Victor Clark Alfaro, an anthropologist and human rights activist in Tijuana who also lectures at San Diego State University. "This border is perforated like an anthill."
U.S. officials say they have found more than 160 tunnels since 1990 along the 1,954-mile border, mostly in the stretch of Mexico that borders Arizona and California. In the past 15 months, U.S. agents have busted increasingly sophisticated tunnels.
Geography and geology make the intensely urban Tijuana-San Diego corridor ideal for the tunnels. Tijuana is Mexico’s sixth largest city, with 1.3 million people, while San Diego is the eighth largest U.S. city, with several interstate highways. Moreover, soil here has a composition that’s easy to dig.
In a two-week span last November, U.S. agents shut down two sophisticated tunnels that led from an area near Tijuana’s airport to the Otay Mesa industrial park on the U.S. side. Some 49 tons of marijuana were seized. The discoveries marked the second year in a row in which elaborate tunnels were found within a mile of the busy Otay Mesa border crossing.
U.S. officials are sensitive about a public view that they aren’t finding the tunnels.
"Understandably, American citizens react to news stories about the discovery of a large tunnel, complete with plumbing, lights, ventilation and a rudimentary railway system, with a mixture of surprise, indignation, alarm and dismay," Laura E. Duffy, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, told the Senate drug caucus last June.
"How, they ask, can such a sophisticated illegal structure be constructed right under our noses?"
Part of the difficulty, she said, is that drug traffickers use horizontal drills that cost up to $75,000 and can cut without disturbing topsoil. The tunnels run anywhere from 30 to 90 feet deep, avoiding greater depths, which would hit underground water tables.
Drug traffickers also have been adept at setting up bogus U.S. companies to rent space in bustling Otay Mesa and its 600 warehouses and 12,000 businesses. Many firms are unaware of activities by their neighbors, perhaps noticing only if there’s truck traffic at unusual hours.
Garcia said that even with devices such as seismic sensors, a majority of tunnel busts came from tip-offs by informants or suspicious warehouse operators.
Big tunnels are thought to be the work of the Sinaloa Cartel, which has seized control of Tijuana from the local Arellano-Felix cartel after years of bloody conflict and now is operating in tandem with remnants of the group.
Sinaloa operatives employ mining engineers and architects to help construct their tunnels, while keeping knowledge of locations to as few people as possible.
Experts on the San Diego Tunnel Task Force say "some tunnel excavators in Mexico are killed when the job is done to prevent them from spreading the word on the location," Duffy told senators.
Marijuana growers are turning to ever-larger plantations to meet the capacity of bigger tunnels. Last July, soldiers found a 300-acre screened and irrigated marijuana plantation near San Quintin, 150 miles south of Tijuana, which was four times larger than any such site that had been seized before. Eight months earlier, soldiers seized 148 tons _ 134 metric tons _ of pot in Tijuana, a record.
U.S. and Mexican agents say that tunnel digging, using pneumatic spades, generally is limited to teams of six or seven men. They live at the Tijuana site where the tunnel begins, and excavation is timed to conclude with the harvesting of marijuana crops in late summer and early autumn, so there’s little time for the tunnel to sit idle and be detected.
"The process is tedious," Garcia said, involving working day and night and lugging bags of dirt along the shaft for removal.
But even with million-dollar investments, Garcia said, the tunnel builders "recoup that by making just one trip, given the value of the narcotics we’ve seized."
Most bales of marijuana carry stickers, often fanciful images such as Donald Duck, Captain America, Budweiser or Homer Simpson. The stickers indicate ownership and destination, U.S. agents said.
Tunnel operatives make sure to recoup their investments first.
"The way it works is the tunnel guys build it, so their stuff gets through first. Once it gets through, they start hiring out" to other drug organizations, said Louis Gomez, the supervisor of the San Diego Tunnel Task Force, which includes agents of Customs and Border Protection, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.
Tunnel shafts on the Tijuana side that a McClatchy Newspapers journalist visited included one hidden in the floor of a walk-in freezer in a warehouse that’s only two football fields away from warehouses on the U.S. side of the border.
Another shaft was hidden in a unique fashion: "It was the entire floor of a bathroom that went up and down, and they used a hydraulic lift like you’d see in a service station," Garcia said.
Tijuana Police Chief Alberto Capella Ibarra said the tunnels kept growing in sophistication.
"It speaks of the strength and economic power of the cartels, because these tunnels are a huge investment for them," Capella said.
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/international/americas/view.bg?&articleid=1405102&format=&page=1&listingType=intamer#articleFull
February 20, 2012
by Tim Johnson
TIJUANA, Mexico _ When smuggling goes smoothly for the marijuana division of the huge Sinaloa Cartel, cross-border deliveries unfold with clockwork precision.
Harvested marijuana arrives in plastic-wrapped bales to a depot hidden among the rundown warehouses on the Mexican side of the concrete U.S. border fence.
Once enough marijuana is collected, workers drop the vacuum-packed bales through shafts leading to the ever-more-elaborate tunnels that cross underneath the border through the clay-laden soil.
U.S. agents have been waging war against the tunnels for years, using a range of high-tech devices from ground-penetrating radar to seismic sensors to find and destroy them. But despite the efforts, drug smugglers continue to build the tunnels, often spending $1 million to dig a single pathway equipped with lighting, forced-air ventilation, water pumps, shoring on walls and hydraulic elevators.
Lately, new tunnels have included railways. The bales move on electric mining carts with hand throttles that roll at up to 15 mph.
"A tunnel represents an incursion into the U.S., and it’s a national security event," said Jose M. Garcia, who oversees the federal multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force.
The location of the tunnels helps explain why agents have such difficulty finding them. The area where the most advanced tunnels have been found is adjacent to the Tijuana international airport, where scores of planes take off and land daily. Nearby warehouses buzz with legitimate activity.
"All that noise from the airport is a great advantage to them," said Victor Clark Alfaro, an anthropologist and human rights activist in Tijuana who also lectures at San Diego State University. "This border is perforated like an anthill."
U.S. officials say they have found more than 160 tunnels since 1990 along the 1,954-mile border, mostly in the stretch of Mexico that borders Arizona and California. In the past 15 months, U.S. agents have busted increasingly sophisticated tunnels.
Geography and geology make the intensely urban Tijuana-San Diego corridor ideal for the tunnels. Tijuana is Mexico’s sixth largest city, with 1.3 million people, while San Diego is the eighth largest U.S. city, with several interstate highways. Moreover, soil here has a composition that’s easy to dig.
In a two-week span last November, U.S. agents shut down two sophisticated tunnels that led from an area near Tijuana’s airport to the Otay Mesa industrial park on the U.S. side. Some 49 tons of marijuana were seized. The discoveries marked the second year in a row in which elaborate tunnels were found within a mile of the busy Otay Mesa border crossing.
U.S. officials are sensitive about a public view that they aren’t finding the tunnels.
"Understandably, American citizens react to news stories about the discovery of a large tunnel, complete with plumbing, lights, ventilation and a rudimentary railway system, with a mixture of surprise, indignation, alarm and dismay," Laura E. Duffy, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, told the Senate drug caucus last June.
"How, they ask, can such a sophisticated illegal structure be constructed right under our noses?"
Part of the difficulty, she said, is that drug traffickers use horizontal drills that cost up to $75,000 and can cut without disturbing topsoil. The tunnels run anywhere from 30 to 90 feet deep, avoiding greater depths, which would hit underground water tables.
Drug traffickers also have been adept at setting up bogus U.S. companies to rent space in bustling Otay Mesa and its 600 warehouses and 12,000 businesses. Many firms are unaware of activities by their neighbors, perhaps noticing only if there’s truck traffic at unusual hours.
Garcia said that even with devices such as seismic sensors, a majority of tunnel busts came from tip-offs by informants or suspicious warehouse operators.
Big tunnels are thought to be the work of the Sinaloa Cartel, which has seized control of Tijuana from the local Arellano-Felix cartel after years of bloody conflict and now is operating in tandem with remnants of the group.
Sinaloa operatives employ mining engineers and architects to help construct their tunnels, while keeping knowledge of locations to as few people as possible.
Experts on the San Diego Tunnel Task Force say "some tunnel excavators in Mexico are killed when the job is done to prevent them from spreading the word on the location," Duffy told senators.
Marijuana growers are turning to ever-larger plantations to meet the capacity of bigger tunnels. Last July, soldiers found a 300-acre screened and irrigated marijuana plantation near San Quintin, 150 miles south of Tijuana, which was four times larger than any such site that had been seized before. Eight months earlier, soldiers seized 148 tons _ 134 metric tons _ of pot in Tijuana, a record.
U.S. and Mexican agents say that tunnel digging, using pneumatic spades, generally is limited to teams of six or seven men. They live at the Tijuana site where the tunnel begins, and excavation is timed to conclude with the harvesting of marijuana crops in late summer and early autumn, so there’s little time for the tunnel to sit idle and be detected.
"The process is tedious," Garcia said, involving working day and night and lugging bags of dirt along the shaft for removal.
But even with million-dollar investments, Garcia said, the tunnel builders "recoup that by making just one trip, given the value of the narcotics we’ve seized."
Most bales of marijuana carry stickers, often fanciful images such as Donald Duck, Captain America, Budweiser or Homer Simpson. The stickers indicate ownership and destination, U.S. agents said.
Tunnel operatives make sure to recoup their investments first.
"The way it works is the tunnel guys build it, so their stuff gets through first. Once it gets through, they start hiring out" to other drug organizations, said Louis Gomez, the supervisor of the San Diego Tunnel Task Force, which includes agents of Customs and Border Protection, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.
Tunnel shafts on the Tijuana side that a McClatchy Newspapers journalist visited included one hidden in the floor of a walk-in freezer in a warehouse that’s only two football fields away from warehouses on the U.S. side of the border.
Another shaft was hidden in a unique fashion: "It was the entire floor of a bathroom that went up and down, and they used a hydraulic lift like you’d see in a service station," Garcia said.
Tijuana Police Chief Alberto Capella Ibarra said the tunnels kept growing in sophistication.
"It speaks of the strength and economic power of the cartels, because these tunnels are a huge investment for them," Capella said.
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/international/americas/view.bg?&articleid=1405102&format=&page=1&listingType=intamer#articleFull
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Texans on wrong side of border fence grow anxious
CBS News / Associated Press
February 11, 2012
by Christopher Sherman
(AP) BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Max Pons is already anticipating the anxiety he'll feel when the heavy steel gate shuts behind him, leaving his home isolated on a strip of land between America's border fence and the violence raging across the Rio Grande in Mexico.
For the past year, the manager of a sprawling preserve on the southern tip of Texas has been comforted by a gap in the rust-colored fence that gave him a quick escape route north in case of emergency. Now the U.S. government is installing the first gates to fill in this part of the fence along the Southwest border, and Pons admits he's pondering drastic scenarios.
"I think in my head I'm going to feel trapped," said Pons, who lives on the 1,000-acre property of sabal palms, oxbow lakes and citrus groves he manages for the Nature Conservancy's Southmost Preserve. "I need to have something that is much easier for me to have to ram to get through" if necessary.
Pons' concerns illustrate one of the complications in the government's 5-year-old effort to build a secure barrier along the border that would keep out illegal activity from Mexico without causing worse problems for the people living in the region.
In this lush area, the Rio Grande's wide floodplain precluded building the fence right on the border so it was set back more than a mile in places, running behind the levees. The result is a no-man's-land of hundreds of properties, and the people who work on them, on the wrong side of the divide.
The arrival of the gates will reveal whether the government's solution for this border fence problem will work. Can sliding panels in the fence controlled by passcodes allow isolated workers to cross when they need to while keeping intruders out?
Pons hopes the gates will open fast. "Because when is reinforcement going to show up?"
Some landowners also worry they'll become kidnapping targets for smugglers seeking passage through the 18-foot-tall metal fence.
Violence has surged in Tamaulipas, the Mexican state bordering this part of Texas, in the past two years. This week the State Department issued a new travel warning urging U.S. citizens again to avoid traveling there.
Residents in this rural area often see groups of illegal immigrants passing through or smugglers toting bundles. In October, the Border Patrol caught a high-ranking member of the Gulf cartel's Matamoros operations who had crossed about a half-hour upriver.
Gates will roll open on a metal track after a passcode is punched into a panel on or near the fence. Landowners would have permanent codes and could request temporary ones for visitors. Customs and Border Protection has begun testing its first two gates and plans to install 42 more in South Texas this year at a cost of $10 million.
For more than a year the tall steel bars and panels erected in segments on this stretch of the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border created an effect that was more gap-toothed grin than impenetrable obstacle.
When the gates are closed, the Texans on the other side won't be completely isolated, agency officials say. Border Patrol agents will continue to work both sides of the fence and can assist property owners. Many of the areas also are monitored by cameras and sensors.
But farmers point out that there is a lot the agents can't stop. They point out dusty footprints scaling the columns and say illegal immigrants can climb the barrier in seconds flat.
"It's the biggest waste of taxpayer money," said Leonard Loop at his produce stand east of Brownsville, where his family farms and some relatives' homes are in an area between the fence and the river.
Loop's nephew Paul said he was not looking forward to the delay the gates will add to the countless trips he and his brother make between fields and the barn with their equipment. He also worried about becoming a target for smugglers eager to use the gates for large shipments. They are wide enough for farm equipment.
"Any drug dealer is going to know anyone on this side has a way out," Paul Loop said, while crews harvested cabbage in a nearby field.
Othal Brand Jr., chairman and general manager of the Hidalgo County Water Improvement District No. 3, said he welcomes the completion of the fence even though the district's headquarters is between the barrier and the river.
He said he's optimistic it will help deflect illegal crossings and other illegal activity as intended.
"It's like building a car and only putting three tires on it," he said. "Finish it. Get it done."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501363_162-57375981/texans-on-wrong-side-of-border-fence-grow-anxious/
February 11, 2012
by Christopher Sherman
(AP) BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Max Pons is already anticipating the anxiety he'll feel when the heavy steel gate shuts behind him, leaving his home isolated on a strip of land between America's border fence and the violence raging across the Rio Grande in Mexico.
For the past year, the manager of a sprawling preserve on the southern tip of Texas has been comforted by a gap in the rust-colored fence that gave him a quick escape route north in case of emergency. Now the U.S. government is installing the first gates to fill in this part of the fence along the Southwest border, and Pons admits he's pondering drastic scenarios.
"I think in my head I'm going to feel trapped," said Pons, who lives on the 1,000-acre property of sabal palms, oxbow lakes and citrus groves he manages for the Nature Conservancy's Southmost Preserve. "I need to have something that is much easier for me to have to ram to get through" if necessary.
Pons' concerns illustrate one of the complications in the government's 5-year-old effort to build a secure barrier along the border that would keep out illegal activity from Mexico without causing worse problems for the people living in the region.
In this lush area, the Rio Grande's wide floodplain precluded building the fence right on the border so it was set back more than a mile in places, running behind the levees. The result is a no-man's-land of hundreds of properties, and the people who work on them, on the wrong side of the divide.
The arrival of the gates will reveal whether the government's solution for this border fence problem will work. Can sliding panels in the fence controlled by passcodes allow isolated workers to cross when they need to while keeping intruders out?
Pons hopes the gates will open fast. "Because when is reinforcement going to show up?"
Some landowners also worry they'll become kidnapping targets for smugglers seeking passage through the 18-foot-tall metal fence.
Violence has surged in Tamaulipas, the Mexican state bordering this part of Texas, in the past two years. This week the State Department issued a new travel warning urging U.S. citizens again to avoid traveling there.
Residents in this rural area often see groups of illegal immigrants passing through or smugglers toting bundles. In October, the Border Patrol caught a high-ranking member of the Gulf cartel's Matamoros operations who had crossed about a half-hour upriver.
Gates will roll open on a metal track after a passcode is punched into a panel on or near the fence. Landowners would have permanent codes and could request temporary ones for visitors. Customs and Border Protection has begun testing its first two gates and plans to install 42 more in South Texas this year at a cost of $10 million.
For more than a year the tall steel bars and panels erected in segments on this stretch of the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border created an effect that was more gap-toothed grin than impenetrable obstacle.
When the gates are closed, the Texans on the other side won't be completely isolated, agency officials say. Border Patrol agents will continue to work both sides of the fence and can assist property owners. Many of the areas also are monitored by cameras and sensors.
But farmers point out that there is a lot the agents can't stop. They point out dusty footprints scaling the columns and say illegal immigrants can climb the barrier in seconds flat.
"It's the biggest waste of taxpayer money," said Leonard Loop at his produce stand east of Brownsville, where his family farms and some relatives' homes are in an area between the fence and the river.
Loop's nephew Paul said he was not looking forward to the delay the gates will add to the countless trips he and his brother make between fields and the barn with their equipment. He also worried about becoming a target for smugglers eager to use the gates for large shipments. They are wide enough for farm equipment.
"Any drug dealer is going to know anyone on this side has a way out," Paul Loop said, while crews harvested cabbage in a nearby field.
Othal Brand Jr., chairman and general manager of the Hidalgo County Water Improvement District No. 3, said he welcomes the completion of the fence even though the district's headquarters is between the barrier and the river.
He said he's optimistic it will help deflect illegal crossings and other illegal activity as intended.
"It's like building a car and only putting three tires on it," he said. "Finish it. Get it done."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501363_162-57375981/texans-on-wrong-side-of-border-fence-grow-anxious/
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