http://thewesterner.blogspot.com/2010/07/arizona-smuggling-corridors.html
The Arizona Smuggling Corridors
A Profile of Government in Disarray
By David B. Ham and Stephen L. Wilmeth
Perhaps the greatest threat to the security of the United States today
is the 2045 miles of Mexican border. It is there that the drug war in
Mexico can be heard at night. It is there that the politics of
environmental RADICALISM has breached the independent thinking of
conservation minded leaders. It is there that the very existence of the
American experiment may face its toughest challenge.
Prior to 1924, border conflicts were handled by the states or various
military operations depending on actions from Washington. The most violent
border conflict in the history of the United States occurred in Texas. That
conflict was not a single event. Rather, it was a conflict that began before
statehood and continued following the Mexican American War when the United
States government largely removed its military presence from south Texas.
Texas mounted its own protective service in what it called its Ranger
force. Over time, the Texas Rangers evolved from a largely Indian fighting
force to a special assignment and border protective service in the days and
times up to 1904. During World War I, a United States contingent called
"Mounted Inspectors" was put afield due to concerns of national security.
Texas also responded to the war effort by beefing up its own security and
sent additional Rangers to the border.
The United States Border Patrol was established by Congress in 1924 in
response to the demand by Border States to halt illegal immigration. The
first offices were established in Detroit and El Paso. Subsequent offices
were established on the basis of what is now called "corridor development".
That was also extended to maritime locations where illegal entry expansion
was occurring. The early Border Patrol was an organization that hired its
officer force largely from candidates that had roots in the border region.
They were men with a common background to the American citizens whose
security they pledged to protect.
From the inception until the Bracero Program in the '50s, the Border
Patrol did its work without a great deal of fanfare. If there was conflict
it was largely with landowners who employed illegals. Thousands of miles of
fence and other infrastructure were built by Mexican labor at that time.
That conflict ultimately prompted the idea of the Bracero Program, whereby
Mexican workers were allowed conditional entry into the United States in
exchange for legal employment. The plan required the Border Patrol to
enforce the conditions of the program as well as to oversee the return of
the same workers following their temporary visits.
The demand for labor across a wider segment of American business
accelerated in the '60s. As a result, the country experienced a dramatic
expansion in illegal immigration. Interaction with the Border Patrol and a
broader profile of American business spectrum took place.
By the '70s, the number and the profile of illegal aliens were
changing. The border was becoming a more intense and the motives of
illegals were changing. Drugs, and the war on drugs, were starting to shape
a new and dangerous challenge.
By 1986, the Border Patrol had to start shifting its focus from the
border to areas more inland. This change in the mission of the Border
Patrol was largely the result of Congressional action. The Immigration
Control and Reform Act (IRCA) was passed. It mandated that an amnesty
program be implemented, and it authorized the prosecution of American
employers who hired illegals. Congress was putting the burden of proof on
American business to determine the legal status of aliens. The
Congressional mandate to secure the border was being passed to American
businesses.
By the early '90s, Americans living in urban border centers were in
near revolt as the hordes of illegal immigrants swarmed across the largely
open borders and quickly disappeared into the mass of humanity on the
American side. Something had to be done, and the Border Patrol figured out
a plan that worked.
Starting in El Paso, the idea of going back to the actual border,
making eye contact with illegals, and pinching off the flows was started.
The operation was instituted and the horde of illegal border crossings was
stopped. The numbers went down in El Paso, and the Border Patrol was able
to reduce the numbers crossing in the Sector as a whole.
The next operation was instituted in the urban centers of southern
California. This operation made use of what was learned in El Paso but it
also incorporated higher tech ideas. It brought to the border increased
agent numbers, border fencing, stadium lighting, and ideas in high tech
monitoring. This more sophisticated approach also worked. Numbers of
illegals entering San Diego went down and the San Diego Sector numbers were
down as well. The idea of putting pressure on the border at the point of
corridor entry was working. It only needed to be expanded.
Following the success at El Paso and the urban centers of southern
California, the Border Patrol was intent on expanding the idea into southern
Arizona. Nogales and the greater Tucson Sector was the target. That
operation brought the factors learned at El Paso and San Diego to the
Arizona border at Nogales. The operation failed.
What the illegals found in Arizona was exactly what made the efforts
in El Paso and southern California work. The immense and harsh conditions
of the open desert outside of the Nogales entry became a major entry into
the United States. Unlike the urban centers of southern California and El
Paso, the Arizona lands outside of the preferred entry points were not fully
patrolled and controlled by the Border Patrol. Much of the Arizona border
allowed the Border Patrol only conditional and limited access.
The hordes of illegals found the American invention of federally
designated Wilderness, and the United States has been at an ever increasing
risk ever since. The powerful United States Border Patrol couldn't access
the millions of acres of wilderness, but the human and drug smugglers
certainly could, and they did.
A Closer Look at the Corridor Concept
The Border Patrol first started using the corridor concept as a method
of controlling illegal immigration in the late '80s. The concept was
developed by David Aguilar and his staff at the Border Patrol's Southern
Region office in Dallas. The purpose was to control the heavy influx of
illegal aliens from Central American entering illegally through the McAllen
Sector. There were a lot of factors that led to the heavy influx including
natural disasters, protected status for certain aliens from El Salvador, and
a policy of releasing the other than Mexicans (OTMs) from detention
facilities because of absence of funding to detain them. Regardless of the
reason, the McAllen Sector of the Border Patrol was inundated by OTMs from
Central America.
To combat this problem, Aguilar created the McAllen Corridor and soon
resources and manpower began to flow into the Sector. Agents were pulled
from other Border Patrol Sectors to implement the staffing in the Sector on
a temporary basis. Anti-smuggling agents and resources, including
operational funding, were taken away from different Sectors all over the
nation to reinforce the McAllen corridor.
Eventually, the OTM invasion slowed and resources were returned to
their respective Border Patrol Sectors, but the corridor concept was
established. To determine what might qualify for the creation of a corridor,
Border Patrol Stations were required to report a whole new set of metrics
that were created to measure what was going on in their respective station
areas. Line watch stations, stations whose area of responsibility were
adjacent to the Mexican border, were instructed to divide their areas of
responsibility into zones and report the activity that occurred in a
respective zone. "Zone Reports", "Got aways", and "turn backs" were examples
of the new metrics.
With the amnesty and employer sanction provisions of IRCA,
apprehensions in the late '80s dropped. The lull didn't last long, though,
when it became apparent that the Clinton administration wasn't serious about
enforcing employer sanctions. By the early '90s, apprehensions across the
southern border were again increasing.
In 1991, El Paso, Texas was approaching chaos. Crime had increased
dramatically, auto theft was rampant, beggars and windshield cleaners were
at almost every intersection in the city. To combat this problem, El Paso
Sector Border Patrol Chief Sylvestre Reyes and his staff created Operation
"Hold the Line". The idea was simple. Instead of chasing illegal aliens
after they entered the United States, the Agents would prevent them from
entering illegally by deploying right on the border. Interestingly, this
plan wasn't approved by the regional hierarchy because El Paso was not an
approved corridor.
Although it was a struggle, the plan worked. Gradually the illegal
aliens began to realize that things had changed and the days of being able
to cross whenever and wherever they wanted in El Paso had changed. Reyes's
idea had been to close the urban border and force the aliens out into the
desert where it would be easier to apprehend them. The success of "Hold the
Line" soon led the San Diego Sector to adopt a similar strategy with the
implementation of Operation "Gatekeeper". At that time, the San Diego Sector
had been the consistent leader nationwide in apprehensions (McAllen and El
Paso battled for second). The Tucson Sector was still considered a Sector
where nothing much happened. Its harsh, isolated border expanses were not
yet seen as a pathway into the United States.
As anticipated, the illegals began to move out of the El Paso/ Juarez
metro area and seek easier ways to cross into the United States.
Apprehensions in the Deming, New Mexico station area 100 miles to the west
began to skyrocket. In the far western reaches of the Sector area at
Lordsburg, New Mexico large increases in apprehensions occurred as well. The
Deming corridor was created and by the late '90s other stations in the El
Paso Sector were being asked to detail agents and equipment to Deming to try
and stem the flow. Deming tried to emulate the El Paso strategy of forward
deployment of its agents, but the aliens would continually outflank them.
The farming area west of Columbus, New Mexico was soon overrun by illegal
aliens entering on foot and in vehicles headed north. The chaos that had
been happening in El Paso was now pushed into the Deming corridor.
The chaos would soon hit the Tucson Sector as well. Douglas and
Nogales, Arizona soon experienced the effects of increased illegal entry.
By then, David Aguilar was in Tucson as the Sector Chief and he had brought
many of his staff officers from the Southern Region to help gain control in
that Sector.
In 2003, Chief Aguilar was sent to Washington D.C. to take the place of
retiring Chief of the Border Patrol Gustavo De La Vina. The Tucson Corridor
had been created and accordingly extra manpower and technology had been
poured into the area. Zones and special enforcement areas were created, and
different strategies were created almost monthly, but nothing seemed to work
as entries continued to soar.
In 2004, a new theory of border control began to evolve and it became
the Border Patrol mantra for achieving control of the border. It was
believed, and ultimately shown, that with the right mixture of personnel,
technology, mobility, and infrastructure control of the border could be
achieved. This strategy was developed in conjunction with the pending
implementation of the Secure Border Initiative (SBInet). Using this
strategy Deming began to gain control of its area of responsibility. With
increased numbers of agents, camera surveillance technology, improved
infrastructure, and the authority to go anywhere without constraint, the
Border Patrol was able to develop a plan that was effective in the farming
area west of Columbus. Apprehensions dropped and a more orderly operational
control of the area was returned.
By 2009, apprehensions were down all across the nation largely because
of the economy. The El Paso Sector, once among the top two most active
Sectors in the nation, had experienced a whopping 51% decrease in
apprehensions. That was the largest decrease in the nation. Meanwhile,
Tucson's share of illegal apprehensions soared as a percent of the whole.
That year, nearly half (241,673) of the 540,865 apprehensions caught
nationwide occurred in the Tucson Sector.
While alien apprehensions were down nation wide, narcotic seizures
increased by 57%. As with human smuggling numbers, the Tucson Sector led
the way with 1,204,702 pounds of narcotics seized. That was a nearly 48% of
all marijuana interdiction along all United States borders.
Another measurement suggests the extent of the problem. The Tucson
Sector represents about 13% of the entire Mexican border, but, in 2009, the
rate of human apprehensions occurred at about 920 per mile of border for the
year. The southern border as a whole experienced a rate of 167 per mile of
border, but the El Paso Sector had an apprehension rate of just fewer than
6% of the Tucson result, or just 54 per mile. Those results would suggest
that El Paso still has pressure, but Tucson is out of control.
The Tucson Sector has received more manpower and technology in the past
ten years than any Sector, yet it has not achieved control of its border.
The question must be asked, "Why"? The answer is access to the border.
Prohibitions against accessing border wilderness areas, wildlife management
areas, wilderness study areas, a large Indian reservation on the border and
Department of Agriculture forest lands have dramatically hampered the Border
Patrol's ability to patrol and control that segment of the border. At the
same time, illegal aliens and drug smugglers aren't constrained by the
prohibitions and are accessing and abusing those areas.
Corridor profile
The most violent and explosive growth of the Arizona human and drug
smuggling corridors is a fact of life in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector.
It is ground zero where the unexpected circumstances of Operation
"Safeguard" and the displacement of illegals from "Hold the Line" and "Gate
Keeper" took root and flourished. What is unique about the Tucson Sector
that has created such danger even with the presence of increased manpower
and technology?
Starting at the New Mexico/Arizona line and running west, that stretch
of border is dominated by federal land holdings. The corridor entry points
discovered by illegals following Operation "Safeguard" were expanded from
the east into designated Wilderness dominated lands of Cabeza Prieta
National Wildlife Refuge, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Coronado
National Forest, and other Departments of Interior and Agriculture managed
lands. These lands all have some common characteristics. Those
similarities are:
1. The corridors have wilderness/de facto wilderness safe havens.
2. They have east /west highway access north and south of the corridors.
3. They have rugged and complex north/south mountain and drainage
orientation which provides channels of movement.
4. They are almost entirely or heavily dominated by federal land agency
management.
5. The concentration of American private property rights at risk is limited
as is the presence of resident American habitation.
6. All corridors have high, strategically located points of observation.
The First Step toward Solution
The lessons from history in Texas and in the urban centers now indicate
that success of controlling the border will come only by taking the fight
back to the border itself. Success cannot be achieved by dropping back and
focusing on peripheral issues. Silvestre Reyes' simplistic order to his
officers in the Operation Hold the Line to "go to the border and make eye
contact with illegals" is more valid today than it has ever been. The
problem is the Border Patrol cannot do that in Arizona. They are
constrained in the wilderness and de facto wilderness areas as discussed,
but the federal government has also created a loop hole whereby they can be
blocked from entry to other federal lands.
By statutory authority, the Border Patrol has the right to enter into
any private property for any reason and without announcement within 25 miles
of the Mexican border. That authority was granted years ago in order to
defend the sovereignty of our nation. Nothing was deemed more important
than the need to protect American citizenry.
The Border Patrol, however, has no similar access authority to federal
land holdings. An individual American cannot lock his or her gate and keep
the Border Patrol off private property, but the United States can do the
same thing and preclude the Border Patrol from entering. At the time the
private entry authorization was done, nobody dreamed that a federal agent
would ever be restricted from accessing federal lands. The federal land
management agencies and the converging Wilderness and Rewilding agenda of
the environmental movement have changed that situation. That agenda is
trumping national security, they have done much to confound Border Patrol
activity, and they have created havoc on the Arizona border.
Implications of that double standard played into the March, 2010,
murder of rancher Rob Krentz. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Regional Manager,
Benjamin Tuggle, wrote three letters to the Border Patrol in 2009 detailing
how, henceforth, they would have only conditional access to the San
Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge directly on the border east from
Douglas, Arizona. The stipulations were that the Border Patrol would only
be allowed onto the refuge in the event of life or death (human) conditions.
Normal, mechanical access for patrolling and illegal interdiction would be
denied and if the Border Patrol did not abide by the demand all access would
be removed and future access would take place only on the basis of a special
use permit.
Money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was used to
rebuild fences and barriers around the refuge on the condition of National
Security enhancement. The majority of the money was spent on fencing that
blocks Border Patrol mechanical access. The actual portion of the work that
blocks illegal alien entry was the lesser amount of the total project. The
Krentz murderer used the sanctuary of the refuge both for accessing the
United States as well as for his escape back into Mexico. Based on the
conditions set forth by Tuggle and his staff, the Border Patrol could not
have interdicted the murderer with mechanical means even if they had known
the exact location of the murderer.
The blind insistence that more and more lands be protected for the
purposes of creating an environment largely "untrammeled by man" has made it
dangerous for traditional and legal activities in those lands. The void
that is being created is being filled by drug and human smugglers. The
Border Patrol cannot fully accomplish its mission, few Americans now want to
visit those areas, and far too few productive endeavors that maintain a
presence of Americans with property rights at risk are allowed and cultured
by the federal agencies managing those lands. In the place of a protective
and historical American presence, the proliferation of corridor expansion
and the escalation of the war to control that growth have exploded.
At a minimum, the Border Patrol must have the same rights and authority
to enter federal lands within 25 miles of the border as they do on private
land holdings. That organization cannot be encumbered and denied access in
order to attempt to carry out its mission while at the same time drug and
human smugglers make full use of the lands where that access is conditional
or denied. The universal message to Congress should be, "Start defending
this country by installing the full rights and authority of the Border
Patrol by allowing full and unencumbered access to any and all lands, at any
and all times, without any time or conditional constraints to the 25 mile
buffer along the entire Mexican border from Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific
Ocean". The Border Patrol has demonstrated in the El Paso Sector that, if
it has such authority, it can control the border and the human and drug
smuggling corridors. Without it, it is a defensive war that America is
losing.
Biographies of authors:
David B. Ham served the United States 31 years as a Border Patrol Officer.
He was instrumental in establishing the Anti-smuggling team in the El Paso
Sector. At the time of his retirement in 2003, he was the El Paso Sector
Assistant Chief. He has extensive experience in the areas of southern New
Mexico being considered for federal wilderness designation. He is adamantly
opposed the any restriction to Border Patrol activities within 25 miles of
the Mexican border. He is the current President of the Board of Governors
of the National Border Patrol Museum. Mr. Ham is a native of Andrews, Texas
and resides in El Paso.
Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. He believes that
long established desert ranches are ecosystems within the greater landscape
of the Southwest. Any disruption in best management practices affects the
balance of those stewardship units, and the designation of wilderness poses
the highest risk of all artificially imposed restrictions. The disruption
of established water systems, the curtailment of turf improvement projects,
the elimination of brush control, and the elimination of land stewards are
threats to wildlife, and, in the case of border ranches, outright threats to
the security of the United States.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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