Flow of drugs, people places lives at risk
Story by Mitch Tobin Photos By Max Becherer
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Caught between the world's rich and poor, Arizona's parks, forests and wildlife refuges along its porous border with Mexico have become America's dangerous doormats.
The unrelenting flow of drug smugglers and people looking for work is jeopardizing the lives of recreational visitors and federal workers, according to land managers from Ajo to New Mexico who say they are woefully understaffed.
As detailed in tomorrow's Arizona Daily Star, the traffic is also inflicting lasting damage on a fragile environment, as border crossers and their pursuers blaze new roads and disrupt habitat for endangered species.
The illegal entrants - funneled to remote areas by the Border Patrol's heightened enforcement in cities - are also suspected of starting eight wildfires in Southern Arizona in 2002 that burned 68,413 acres and cost taxpayers $5.1 million.
Last month's shooting death of Kris Eggle, a 28-year-old ranger at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, was just the latest and most tragic sign of how Southern Arizona's vast public lands have become casualties in the cat-and-mouse game between law enforcement and illegal entrants.
As painful as it was, Eggle's death surprised few fellow rangers or public-lands employees in Southern Arizona. In fact, many say it's remarkable more workers or visitors haven't been killed in a drug-infested region where a flimsy wire fence - or nothing at all - separates the First and Third Worlds.
Visitors oblivious
The shady picnic grounds at Madera Canyon, a world-renowned birding spot east of Green Valley, might not seem like a hot spot for narco-trafficking. But the ranger in charge of the area says smugglers actually prefer to do business there when it's crowded so they blend in with legal visitors.
"It's a bad thought, but one of these days one of our employees or visitors will come upon a trigger-happy 16-year-old sitting on a drug load, and things will not go well," said Keith Graves of the Coronado National Forest's Nogales district, which has only one law enforcement officer to patrol 350,000 acres.
Site 10 in the Roundup picnic area at the head of Madera Canyon has been a particularly attractive spot for transferring bales of marijuana, forest officials say. Nearby, a typical bust on June 15 netted 130 pounds of pot and three smugglers who'd backpacked along the Arizona Trail and through the Mount Wrightson wilderness area.
"Marijuana is the drug of choice to come across public lands because it's big, bulky, stinky and it doesn't go through the ports well," said Greg Lelo, the forest's patrol captain.
The Coronado has seen an exponential increase in marijuana trafficking, with seizures soaring from 607 pounds in 1996 to 8,388 pounds in 2001. In the same period, dope seizures in national parks on the Arizona-Mexico border jumped from 3,448 to 23,535 pounds.
Lelo recounts times when agents on stakeouts watched nervously as birders and hikers passed right by drug stashes or drop-off points for smugglers.
"Sometimes people are just oblivious to the danger they're dealing with," said Lelo, whose vehicle has been rammed at 45 mph by fleeing drug traffickers.
Armed narcotics smugglers are considered far more dangerous than the poor workers coming across the border, though officials say the two groups sometimes mix together.
Besides Madera, smugglers of both drugs and people frequent other popular recreation sites on the Coronado, including Parker Canyon Lake and Ramsey and Carr canyons. The forest has boosted patrols in those areas to minimize conflicts - one reason Madera visitors now pay $5 is to support hiring of a new law enforcement officer.
But authorities acknowledge that crackdowns usually just push the problem to their neighbor's property. It's like "squeezing a balloon," they say - clamp down on one section and it pops out somewhere else.
While the public's encounters with armed smugglers are said to be rare, officials acknowledge many incidents and close calls go unreported. One attack that did make news was the armed carjacking and robbery in August 2001 of two women in Carr Canyon, near a popular recreation area in the Huachuca Mountains and along a popular route for smuggling.
Public land officials stress city streets are probably still more dangerous, but they're urging borderland recreationists to be cautious.
Lands understaffed
The perilous situation prompted a recent study for the House Appropriations Committee to conclude, "certain federal lands in southeast Arizona can no longer be used safely by the public or federal employees due to the significance of smuggling undocumented aliens and controlled substances into the United States."
The report reveals chilling episodes that would give pause to anyone who recreates or works on the region's public lands:
* Smugglers are "using hunting season as a cover to try to get drugs across the border," also disguising themselves as backpackers to blend in.
* At San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, smugglers went to an officer's home in the dead of night and threatened to harm the officer and his family if he didn't return a load of marijuana seized earlier in the day.
* At Coronado National Memorial, smugglers use a steep ridge overlooking the headquarters to spy on rangers. Among them are "heavily armed scouts who are equipped with automatic assault weapons, encrypted radios, night vision optics and possibly thermal imaging devices." Scouts have come within 50 yards of rangers' houses "under cover of darkness while utilizing sophisticated, military-style camouflage techniques."
* People-smuggling through the Tucson-area Saguaro National Park, some 60 miles north of the border, leads to "a variety of dangerous and volatile situations, including high-speed pursuits, vehicle bailouts, resisting arrest and suspect confrontations that escalate officer safety concerns."
The influx of border crossers has prompted some increases in law enforcement on Arizona's public lands. But by virtually all accounts the mobilization has been grossly inadequate.
Taxpayers stand to foot the bill to further step up the policing. In their report to Congress, federal agencies in southeast Arizona said they need 93 more employees - about half in law enforcement - and $62.9 million over the next five years to repair damage and protect workers, visitors and property.
In grainy videos made by U.S. agents with night vision technology, the border crossers glow green and really do look like "illegal aliens." At times, the camera catches so many people it looks like a wildfire is burning.
Dan Wirth of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association shows those images in a PowerPoint presentation on the border that begins not in cactus-studded desert, but at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. This, he says, is really a homeland security issue.
In one video, a long line of smugglers glows in the night, lugging big backpacks.
"Which backpack," he asks, "has the biological precursor or weapon of mass destruction?"
Organ Pipe on front lines
Organ Pipe, which has about 30 miles of the border, is particularly vulnerable since Mexico's Highway 2 runs right along the park's boundary.
In 2001 alone, Organ Pipe officials found 150 abandoned vehicles on their property, engaged in 30 high-speed pursuits, seized six tons of pot and figured at least 21 border crossers died in the park or after crossing it.
Just four days before he was killed, Eggle sent a memo that was distributed throughout the nation in the park service's "morning report." It told how rangers tracked three drug smugglers for seven miles and, with help from helicopters, seized a quarter-ton of dope.
In the creosote flats where Eggle died, several gaps in the border fence have fresh car tracks leading north into the park from a village of cinderblock hovels with outhouses.
Rangers who've come to Organ Pipe after Eggle's death say they're amazed by the Wild West conditions.
"I'm more paranoid here than I am in the city," said Julie Horne, a Yosemite ranger who graduated from law enforcement training with Eggle.
It's still unclear whether Eggle's death will scare legal visitors away from Organ Pipe - named "most dangerous national park" two years in a row by a rangers' advocacy group. In recent years, visitation has varied widely and mostly depended on the wildflower season, park Superintendent Bill Wellman said.
Many illegal visitors to Organ Pipe are greeted by signs in Spanish warning of the dangerous heat and lack of water for the next 30 miles.
"It does very little to discourage people who've already traveled 1,000 miles and spent their life savings to get here - they're committed," said Dale Thompson, Organ Pipe's chief ranger.
Thompson, like most of Southern Arizona's public lands officials, thinks there's no way to stop people from coming.
"The problem is never going to go away as long as America creates a demand for narcotics," said Thompson, who said blame for Eggle's death "falls back on the casual user of marijuana in this country . . . they had their finger right on the trigger with that gunman."
Authorities say Eggle's killer drove through Organ Pipe's border fence as he fled Mexican police investigating a drug-related quadruple homicide. He was then killed in a hail of bullets fired by Mexican officers standing on their side of the border.
Bigger policies at stake
To some, the mounting violence and resource damage means the United States should redouble its efforts to secure its borders in a post-Sept. 11 world, possibly using the military.
To others, Eggle's death and smugglers' ecological impact are further proof the war on drugs and current border policies are counterproductive.
Thompson, whose job is to protect one of America's natural gems, simply says, "I can't solve this problem," and advises "the generals need to get their heads together."
From the generals down to the privates, the consensus is that Arizona's public lands are paying a price because the Border Patrol increased its presence in places like Nogales and Douglas, where residents were overrun by border crossers in the 1990s.
Lights, roads and tall fences that agents put there have dramatically cut property crime and boosted property values in those cities, said Border Patrol spokesman Ryan Scudder.
Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., who requested the congressional study of border crossers' impacts, said more sensors, overflights and agents could curb threats to public lands. But, he said, since "all you do is shift the problem to another location," the United States should adopt a guest worker program to legalize more immigration.
"If you want to see the number of water jugs abandoned in the desert go down, let them come in through the gate at Nogales with a visa and contract to work in hand, then let them get on the bus to Omaha, Cleveland or North Carolina," Kolbe said.
Such a plan has people like Cruz Diaz in mind. The 30-year-old from Michoacan, Mexico, is typical of the people trying to cross the area around Organ Pipe. Diaz said there are jobs in his hometown, but they pay too little, so he's come north.
Last year Diaz tried to enter the United States near Naco, but said stepped-up enforcement by the Border Patrol made it too difficult. So in recent weeks he's tried twice to cross south of Ajo, neither time successfully.
"We knew there would be lots of immigration officers and it would be very hot," he said last week after being caught. "But if there's work here, it's worth it."
After the Border Patrol recorded digital images of his face and fingerprints, Cruz was put on a van and sent back to the border at Lukeville, where he walked into Mexico through a revolving metal door.
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