CROSSED LINES
Slivka, Judd
Armed men dressed as Mexican soldiers keep crossing the border. Who are they? b y .1 u d d S 1 i v k a Arivaca, Arizona APPJL 22, 2005. l l : 3 0 A.M. p ~ D. AYERS HEARS THE...
...The drug cars are driving hell for leather down a dirt road, not far from the border...
...There's another problem, too, that doesn't really get discussed...
...A moment later, another Humvee appears on the Mexican side...
...Looks to the sound...
...His work has appeared in ESPN: The Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, U.S...
...Later, the supervisor will tell investigators he saw four men, all dressed in black or dark-colored military type clothing...
...A Forest Service ranger who won't visit certain parts of his forest without an escort...
...A confidential Department of Homeland Security study found 261 crossings by suspected military or police organizations between fiscal years 1996 and 2005...
...law enforcement does...
...The man told the deputy that he was a Mexican customs officer...
...They're in the U.S...
...A man and his son running into a line of drug-hauling immigrants-mules-while bow-hunting in the mountains outside Tucson...
...truck driving up to refill the ranch's fuel tanks, the Tres Bellotas Ranch being 13 miles south of anywhere with regular gas service and right up against the Arizona-Sonora border...
...I know I don't...
...Those incidents don't include the number of times Hudspeth County deputies or state Department of Public Safety officers have pulled over truckloads of Mexican soldiers who have crossed the Rio Grande illegally to head to the Tiger Truck Stop on Interstate 10 to get food and sodas...
...There have been denials by the Mexican government, accusations of racism, and lies...
...There's another postscript: A week later, a Hudspeth County deputy and a camera crew from the Fox affiliate in El Paso were out at Neely's Crossing...
...Ayers rounds a corner...
...Five of them are in full assault body armor, arrayed in a defensive position--rifles out-around the sixth man...
...Man down...
...It blamed the January incident in Hudspeth County on drug cartels...
...On October 24, 2000, Border Patrol agents who had just climbed out of a marked BP helicopter were fired on in Copper Canyon, east of San Diego...
...He and his men surrender their weapons...
...Or they could have been u.s.For a county of 5,000 square miles-including about 100 miles of international border--there are a total of 12 sheriff's deputies...
...A guy is in the back in olive drab fatigues with a cap on, holding a heavy-caliber machine gun mounted on a tripod...
...The cops and the BP talk him down...
...In at least three cases since 2000, the crossers have been confirmed to be in the employ of the Mexican government...
...This March, one of Sheriff West's deputies pulled over a man in a Mexican customs service uniform driving along Interstate 10, which parallels the Rio Grande at a distance of two or three miles through much of the county...
...It's not Customs-they fly the bigger Black_9 hawks...
...Mexican army troops crossing the United States border to escort drug loads...
...Getting high-powered weapons in Mexico and Central America doesn't take much effort...
...I f you erased the international border from the county, we'd be Mayberry...
...g ~ SEQUIEL LEGARETTA, A DEPUTY with the Huds~-~ ,peth County Sheriff's Office, is bouncing down _ l _ J a dirt road 50 miles west of E1 Paso...
...Mexican officials said those soldiers were investigating the earlier incident, but gave no explanation as to why their troops crossed the border...
...12:15 P.M...
...The agent takes what cover he can find, but the truth is there isn't much on Duquesne Road in southern Arizona in July when the sun is at its height and the guys shooting at you are on the higher ground...
...JUNE 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 27...
...At one point, the Mexican foreign minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, implied that perhaps an incident in which suspected Mexican troops crossed the border to defend a drug load was actually corrupt American soldiers...
...There's a Tucson Fuel Co...
...He identifies himself, they keep coming...
...One of the agents saw them inside the U.S., 20 yards or so north of the border...
...In at least one case, it can be proved...
...No military units were operating in the area, they said...
...The six men in the helicopter have deployed...
...The soldiers are processed as undocumented immigrants and sent back to Mexico...
...But how can he be sure it wasn't a Bell 206 or a Bell 412, both of which are civilian variants of the UH-1 Huey...
...Pinned down...
...A GPS rig...
...When they c a n ' t - t h e efforts included trying to pull it out with one of the Humvees and one of the other drug vehicles pushing it from b e h i n d - t h e men in civilian clothes offload the bales of marijuana from the back of the truck and then set the vehicle aflame...
...If the person is in assault gear, that person might be a soldier...
...The chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector said there might never be proof the group of men actually crossed the border...
...His partner's on the radio...
...but he was awful curious about what his man was doing drMng the interstate...
...It was March 14, 2000...
...VcN, one a f t e r t t l e other, blood coming out of the holes in their green duty pants...
...Someone shoots at the BP agent...
...Coming Across the Border Outside ?vbgale~ Arizona...
...And that he was lost...
...And besides, the Mexican military isn't supT HERE WAS ANOTHEP, IN('IDENT a few months earlier in Hudspeth: after a chase, drug smugglers had abandoned a dump truck full of an estimated 10,000 pounds of marijuana on the U.S...
...The cops had unloaded about 1.800 pounds worth when heavily armed men in Mexican military uniforms came across the river and took over the scene, attaching a tow cable to the front of the dump truck and pulling the truck across the river" while the outmanned and outgunned U.S...
...Enlisted service in the Mexican army is only a step up if you're dirt poor...
...They'd gotten an Oscar hit--one of the electronic bugs the Border Patrol plants in the ground had sensed pressure...
...He's changing magazines for the pistol...
...One of the Humvees follows the BP truck down a dirt road, to abarn where the BP stables its horses...
...In two of those cases, the soldiers fired on Border Patrol agents...
...The commander of the Mexican detachment thinks he's in Mexico...
...About that," West says, "we had a meeting of the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition right after the chief made that statement...
...Tell your husband to stay offthe river," the driver said...
...Dressed the same but holding a smaller weapon...
...Judd Slivka is a freelance writer and former newspaper reporter based in Phoenix...
...The radio call went through, electrifying southern Arizona...
...He's under fire, too...
...Overwhelming pain...
...One of them was carrying a highpowered rifle...
...Man down...
...Twice more, the man in black asks Ayers about the truck...
...And then you have an international incident...
...A couple changes of clothing...
...T h e Mexican government claims--has J_always claimed--that these are drug Getting high-powered weapons i n smugglers who are dressed up...
...The deputy brought the man in to the sheriff's office in Sierra Blanca...
...They called for the agents to come out of the brush where they had taken cover...
...The U.S...
...JUNE 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 23 CROSSED LINES Take Ayers's incident...
...He claims he saw a military Huey...
...Does anyone speak English...
...There's a postscript to the jeep-in-the-Rio Grande story...
...Legaretta, a Marine reservist, watches uniformed men pile out, move into the brush, and take up firing positions...
...Another BP agent on horseback sees what's happening...
...gQuignes son usted?Who are you...
...He empties a 15-round magazine...
...Of the 1,200 crimes committed in the county last year," Sheriff West says, "between 1,100 and 1,150 were directly related to the border...
...It's lonely spaces and random stations picked up through static on the car radio...
...You have to leave...
...Ayers is left standing on Tres Belottas with the fuel truck driver, heart pounding, wondering what just happened...
...That assumption may be reasonable, considering that real troops getting caught using army equipment to smuggle drugs would most likely force an inquiry, which would be bad for everyone, even for a corrupt commander...
...Two soldiers in the Humvee get out and make a run for the border...
...Three vehicles...
...They were making their way back to Mexico...
...And so it might just be T F YOU'RE LOOKING FOR ANSWERS, there a r e n o n e . gang kids with guns...
...Cavalry catalog...
...Or maybe they're just silhouetted against the blue sky...
...There's a Hueylooking chopper flying low, coming out of the south, circling the ranch...
...Ayers positions himself between the men and truck, walking backwards...
...And so it might just be gang kids with guns...
...And that's why Hudspeth County has become the recent epicenter of the apparent Mexican military incursions into the country...
...The BP agent in the truck calls for backup...
...side of the Pdo Grande...
...A few weeks later, Rick Glancey, the interim executive director of the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition, was out along the border with some of the E1 Paso County Sheriff's Office narco guys...
...Lights flashing, sirens blaring...
...There's an aftermath, of course...
...Such a low number of officers is not uncommon in the Rio Grande country...
...The men in black assault gear with "MEXICO" patches on their arms and "AFI" labels on their vest could have been with the AFI--the Mexican acronym for the Federal Investigative Agency, the Mexican anti-drug trafficking organization...
...Often, the smuggling cartels have better equipment than the Border Patrol or other agencies working the border...
...The agents had been tracking the mules...
...Published reports in the last few years have linked Los Zetas with training camps run by former members of the Guatemalan special forces, the Kabiles...
...Border 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 2006 J U D D S L I V K A Patrol agents identified themselves and then called for backup after gunshots were heard...
...It's been spotted by a BP agent on horseback...
...When acknowledged Mexican troops have come across, the Mexican government has said they were lost...
...Mexican police...
...Mexico and Central America doesn't take much effort...
...But with the border getting harder, Hudspeth County is understaffed and overwhelmed...
...And for a county of 5,000 square m i l e s - including about 100 miles of international b o r d e r - there are a total of 12 sheriff's deputies...
...It was drug gangs, they said, and offered up four suspects...
...He can be reached at tojudd@juddslivka.com...
...And then he sped away...
...The Huey banks and swoops low over the tanker truck...
...He identifies himself, yells at them to stop...
...Getting BDUs and night-vision goggles requires an lnternet connection and a credit card...
...Legaretta's gaining ground when he comes around a turn...
...The incidents add to the ethereal, violent weirdness of the border area...
...They yell at him to stop, start following him...
...posed to be within three miles of the border...
...Getting BDUs and night-vision goggles requires an Internet connection and a credit card...
...But of course, you can't erase the Rio Grande out of the state...
...Ayers sees a name on the back of their tactical vests: AFI...
...Two months after the original incident, David Aguilar, the Border Patrol's chief, said he was convinced the incident did not involve the Mexican military...
...The sheriff's dispatcher asks the Border Patrol for help...
...Ayers sees the word "MEXICO" on their sleeves...
...The topic is a sore spot with the United States government, because it involves alleging that a strategic ally's military is corrupt and actively breaking American laws...
...And it doesn't include the yew strange case of the lost Mexican customs officer...
...January 23, 2006...
...Earlier this decade, the Mexican army's Special Airmobile Forces Group, an elite, U.S.-trained rapid deployment force, defected en masse to the Gulf cartel...
...The agent pulls out his .40 caliber pistol and starts returning fire...
...trained commandos who defected from the Mexican military in 2000 to go to work for a large drug cartel...
...They shoot...
...If they are that worried about getting a load bad enough they are willing to risk their lives for it, then that's on them," the shift supervisor at the local Border Patrol substation radios back...
...There have been congressional hearings in which county sheriff's deputies have talked about a Humvee with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on the back providing cover for infantrymen doing a flanking maneuver while drug runners offloaded bales of marijuana from a truck that got stuck trying to recross the Rio Grande...
...The man in charge ignores Ayers...
...Finally, the man in black turns around and motions to his men...
...The ranch's owner, a veterinarian, is out and Ayers is there visiting a sick dog...
...Mexican officials said those soldiers were investigating the earlier incident, but gave no explanation as to why their troops crossed the border...
...military had a rate under 1 percent...
...He's chasing a suspected drug load through the Texas scrub country, headed south back towards the Rio Grande...
...They watched Mexican soldiers cross the river into the United States...
...A BP agent spotlights them with his flashlight...
...The proven case happened in Santa Teresa, New Mexico...
...The low pay and the bad conditions contributed to a 9 percent desertion rate in 2005 (the U.S...
...They're in Mexico...
...There needs to be an English speaker there to find out why they've landed...
...Twice more, Ayers gives the same answer...
...Who knows...
...Usted estd en los Estados Unidos, no en Mgxico...
...The other Humvee, though, that's where the problem is...
...has given 21 Hueys to Mexico to help in drug interdiction--five of them based in Sonora state in 2005-how can Ayers be sure exactly what he saw...
...Prosecuting and jailing illegal immigrants in Cochise County, Arizona, for example, costs the county $5 million of its $49 million annual budget...
...One of the suspected drug cars is already across the Rio Grande, climbing up the Mexican bank...
...It comes down to this: On the U.S.-Mexico border, how do you really know what the hell you saw...
...Ayers sees six guys inside, dressed in black...
...Two possible drug mules, hightailing towards the line, dressed like cholos, gang members...
...You're in the United States, not Mexico...
...SWAT teams pile into trucks, helicopters, driving south...
...Call for backup...
...Defections out of the Mexican military aren't unheard of, either...
...Last year, the chief of the agency's office in the Caribbean-side state of Quintana Roo was charged with protecting the drug trafficking business...
...The soldiers in the Humvee see him and start pursuing him...
...It's a standoff...
...And lots of maps...
...Ayers hears something else...
...They went down Duquesne Road outside of Nogales, where there is nothing but cattle guards and spiny mountains...
...It's not an exact analogy, but it describes the same basic motivation--money talks...
...Everything's confused...
...While Legaretta, another deputy, and a Texas Department of Public Safety officer watch, the men try to get one of the suspected drug trucks out of the riverbed, where it's mired...
...Soldiers pile out...
...It's been an ongoing problem--one congressman documented more than 60 crossings between 1995 and 1999-but what's changed is how brazen the crossings have become...
...He was chasing a drug smuggler, he tells police...
...agents involved in the incidents are reticent to discuss them for fear of being punished...
...Then-something in his lower right leg...
...News and World Report, and the Wall Street Journal...
...p ~ D. AYERS HEARS THE whornp-whompwhomp of rotor blades, leaves the house, and looks to the sky...
...states...
...It's our 'don't ask, don't tell,'" groans a Border Patrol official...
...This is the border, after all, and only two things are assured: violence and ambiguity...
...And in another case, it's suspected...
...After the Hudspeth County incidents, the Mexican high command announced army units would be moved back from the border...
...I f a Border Patrol agent returns fire after being shot at by someone in civilian clothes, it is, purely, a shooting...
...We saw the Mexican military over there on the Mexican side of the river in what we know is a known narcotics trafficking area," Glancey said...
...In fact, Mexico's chief anti-drug officer in the 1990s was convicted of working for one of the cartels...
...T HE PAtrINEI/S WENT D...
...He can hear the bullets hitting around them, he can see them ricochet off the ground...
...Two Humvees have just broken the border fence near Santa Teresa, New Mexico, after seeing a Border Patrol (BP) vehicle...
...The Hudspeth County Problem Neely's Crossing, Texas...
...Each shot in the ieg, bleeding out in the Arizona dust just 20 yards north of the U.S.-Mexico border...
...He's on the radio to his partner and his supervisor...
...JUNE 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 25 CROSSED LINES Two Border Patrol agents down...
...The guy saw the agent and started shooting...
...gHabla Inglds?Ayers asks in his border Spanish...
...Sunland Park, New Mexico police, the closest law enforcement, come in...
...Personally, it looked to me like he was GPSing the roads off the highway that run to the river"--i.e., scouting escape routes back into Mexico...
...BP agents are all around, swarming...
...Or maybe they're something entirely different...
...They took off from the highway and onto Farm Market Road 192 at over 100 miles per hour...
...The men get back in their helicopter and fly off to the south...
...ranches...
...We totally reject any assumption that pretends to involve the Mexican army in this incident," Juan Carlos Foncerrada Berumen, the consul general in E1 Paso, told the Et Paso Times...
...And if someone else is doing it, wouldn't the Mexican authorities want to stop them...
...The agency issued a terse press release: an unknown group of people entered Copper Canyon...
...Such a low 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 2006 J U D D S L I V K A number of officers is not uncommon in the Rio Grande country...
...They often have a better idea of how far away backup is than U.S...
...Hudspeth County is not alone...
...Or it mayj ust be the cholos with a U.S...
...If it's not the Mexican military involved in narcotics trafficking, then who is it...
...Bribery and other forms of corruption are widespread through Mexico, giving foreign intelligence services numerous opportunities to recruit sources...
...This is the United States...
...Everyone's shouting...
...T HE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER has always been a dangerous place, dating back to the Chiricahua Apaches dashing into Mexico after raiding U.S...
...law enforcement officers at the scene could only sit and watch...
...Even the new agency, the AFI, is not immune...
...Two shooters, suspected drug mules, still pinning down the agents...
...The two agents were dispatched...
...Were they military...
...No one really knows the answers...
...After this incident hit the media-Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West and his deputies testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security on February 7--the spotlight was on Hudspeth...
...All have masks over their faces...
...It's Texansized...
...And then Legaretta sees it--a Humvee parked on the American side of the levee road...
...The agent pulls out his .40 caliber pistol and starts returning fire...
...I went up to the BICE [Bureau of Immigration and Customs Entbrcementj representative and said if there's evidence, l'd like written proof of it...
...2 P.M...
...The county, just west of E1 Paso, is west Texas...
...You could take the state of Rhode Island and plop it down there and still have room around the edges...
...Once the issue hit the media, the Mexican government became apoplectic...
...There's another guy with the Humvee, the driver...
...Hudspeth County itself sits at a confluence-- an easy border crossing, low staffing levels, and the drug cartels nearly always having lnore firepower than the local police...
...They were in their uniforms and with their rifles over their shoulder...
...Need help...
...Usted tiene que irse...
...Ayers tells him the name of the ranch's owner, the veterinarian, and tells him again that the man, his troops, and his helicopter have to leave...
...The agent and the horse cut through the brush and into a draw...
...He had seen evidence, he said, that cleared them...
...The man crossed the border legally-Hudspeth County officials were able to track him coming over the bridge at El Paso two days earlier...
...It's created a dangerous, shadowy world of violence, and unbelievable stories...
...The agent takes what cover he can find, but the truth is there isn't much on Duquesne Road in southern Arizona in July when the sun is at its height and the guys shooting at you are on higher ground...
...Now known as "Los Zetas," the group is suspected in at least 600 border-related deaths and is believed to be operating in at least six U.S...
...The last of the suspected drug cars climbs over the levee and the Humvee follows...
...There's an unofficial gag order within the ranks about discussing the issue...
...Army, in a now-declassified assessment of the Mexican military of the 1990s, described the situation thusly: "The Mexican environment is relatively favorable for the conduct of intelligence operations by the US Armed Forces," the report read...
...With illegal immigration from the south on the rise, it's the nation's border counties that are taking it on the chin...
...They established sniper positions...
...They were armed with rifles and bayonets...
...How do you say it's one or the other...
...You know Andy Griffith's 'Mayberry" on TV...
...But the violence has grown in recent years as the stakes have gotten higher and as the border has increasingly fallen under the influence of human- and drug-smuggling cartels...
...But the Border Patrol union local issued a different statement: the men who crossed into Copper Canyon were wearing military BDUs...
...Legaretta got a tip on this load coming through, but then someone blurted out the information on the radio and the drug runners found out and got spooked...
...One day, the wife of one of the deputies involved in the chase was taking out the garbage when a large SUV pulled up next to her...
...The last one--Mexican military or paramilitary troops crossing the border--is the latest wrinkle in the nation's difficulties in securing its southern borders...
...CI know the smugglers have encrypted communications," a veteran ranger says...
...June 30, 2005...
...They went through his car: A bedroll...
...He points atthe fuel truck and starts walking towards it...
...More men come, dressed in civilian clothes, armed with long rifles...
...Even though the U.S...
...Their Humvee gets stuck in a sand dune on the north side of the border...
...Ayers knows there are a couple of 22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 2006 Spanish-speaking ranch hands out on Tres Bellotas' spread, but he figures the helicopter is from the National Guard or one of the other alphabet soup of agencies that work around the border...
...I haven't seen it yet...
...I called his coman&mge in Juarez," West sws, "and he said, 'He does work for me...
...It's brown and green desert scrub and tamales at Christmas...
...The problem is that you can't prove it or disprove it," said Roderic Ai Camp, a professor at Claremont College and one of the few people to actually study the Mexican military...
...Polic[a Mexicano...
...Cooler heads prevail...
...Phone calls to agency spokesmen about the issue are not returned...
...He's not...
...They watched Mexican soldiers cross the river into the United States...
...Or else...
...So it's entirely possible those folks spotted coming across protecting drug loads are some kingpin's personal army...
...The leader of the men in black tells Ayers the ranch is owned by someone that Ayers has never heard of...
...So who is it...
...The helicopter lands and Ayers walks over...
...They were new to the border and didn't know the area...
...They were part of a special federal antidrug patrol, the Mexican government said...
...And it's not the Border Patrol-they fly the smaller Cayuses and Eurocopters...
Vol. 39 • June 2006 • No. 5
