Stewart Loew applies a temporary fix to a barbed wire fence on the Agua Linda Farm at Amado. The fence may have been damaged by entrants seeking to avoid the Border Patrol's I-19 checkpoint .

KELLY PRESNELL / Arizona Daily Star

More Photos (6):

Other articles by Tim Ellis:

Surfing on the Wi-Fi wave Biz licenses, permit fees going up Sahuarita's wish: more spots to shop Sahuarita's wish: more shopping Senior homes could face legal action Making Sahuarita homes affordable Sahuarita's crime-fighting windfall Sahuarita councilman seeks to launch affordable-housing programCarroll: State, feds tie locals' hands on water Town wants role in water efforts

General
CORT
Warehouse Supervisor Education
Assessment Technology, Inc
Social Studies Content Writer General
CORT
WAREHOUSE/DRIVER Construction
Komatsu Equipment Co
Mechanic Health Care
Rio Salado College
PA's/Online Instructors

Everyone in Amado, Arivaca and other small communities south of Green Valley agrees that something must be done to stem the smuggling of illegal immigrants and drugs through the area.

But most think it should be done closer to the U.S.-Mexico border — not 30 miles to the north, where the Border Patrol has proposed building a permanent checkpoint on Interstate 19.

"There's this feeling that if you're against the checkpoint, you're against the Border Patrol," said Stewart Loew, a lifelong resident who manages his family's Agua Linda Farm near Amado.

"That's not true. They have a very difficult job … we support them 100 percent," Loew said. "But we don't support them doing it 30 miles from the border."

Kent Bader, who lives in nearby Aliso Springs, agrees — and, she said, so does just about everyone else who lives in the area.

"Every time I talk with my neighbors, every meeting I go to, that's the first question that people are asking: Why isn't it (the checkpoint) closer to the border?

"It's like our government is giving 20, 30 miles of our country back to Mexico," she said. "I don't know of one person who's for it. Not one."

Border Patrol officials say a permanent checkpoint north of the border is essential because no matter how many resources the agency places along the border, some smugglers will get through — especially in rugged areas, as in the Pajarita Wilderness, where agents can't easily go.

Jesus Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, uses a football analogy to explain the need for a checkpoint north of the border, comparing the Border Patrol with a team playing defense.

"If you have all your players on the front line and no one as a backup, then if a player breaks free from that first tier of defense, they're home free," he said.

Danger in neighborhoods

The shootouts between smugglers and the Border Patrol and other law-enforcement agencies — and between rival smuggling gangs — have soured the locals on the idea of checkpoints, permanent or temporary.

Bader said the temporary checkpoint at kilometer post 42 "is making it very dangerous to live here."

"Two or three weeks ago, there was a high-speed chase on Tubac Road," Bader said in an interview last week. "They were chasing a guy in a car, right in the middle of Tubac Road, like 2 in the afternoon.

"People use that road like a sidewalk to go around to the shops," she said. "Can you imagine what would've happened if a bunch of tourists were out on the road when that happened?

"It's outrageously dangerous. It's very scary for the residents, very scary for the businesses, very scary for the tourists," Bader said.

"It's like living in a war zone."

Loew, 38, said he and his neighbors believe they're innocent victims in the battle against smugglers.

During a recent telephone interview, a Customs and Border Patrol helicopter was hovering somewhere nearby, clearly audible to the caller on the other end of the line.

"There's a helicopter flying over me right now," he said. "They're doing their interdictions, and they're doing it in the bedroom communities around here."

Border Patrol officials acknowledge that some of the violence in the area over the past few months is caused by criminals trying to get around the checkpoints by cutting through the communities scattered along both sides of I-19 south of Green Valley.

The officials have been trying to assure the locals that the flanking activity caused by smugglers' trying to evade the temporary checkpoint will stop once a permanent checkpoint is built around kilometer post 50.

"You're not seeing the benefits of a permanent checkpoint. You're seeing the impacts of a temporary checkpoint," John Fitzpatrick, agent in charge of the Nogales Border Patrol station, told a group of about 100 residents at a recent meeting in Green Valley.

The need for the checkpoint is clear, he said. There are more illegal-immigrant and illegal-drug busts in the Tucson Sector than in any other along the U.S.-Mexico border —and it's the only sector without a permanent checkpoint.

A permanent checkpoint would provide facilities for more sophisticated equipment, like a new radar system that will soon be deployed along the border, Fitzpatrick said at the May 14 meeting of the Community Workgroup on Southern Arizona Checkpoints.

The group, formed earlier this year by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., allows members of the public a chance to voice their opinion on where to build the checkpoint.

Rodriguez, the Border Patrol spokesman, declined to say last week when federal officials will make that decision, and when the checkpoint will begin operating.

But, it will be built somewhere around kilometer post 50, because it's a strategic chokepoint just north of where several smaller roads converge and where smuggling activity can be detected far to the east and west of I-19.

Rodriguez also could not say how long it would take for criminal activity to stop once the permanent checkpoint is built.

"We can't tell you when, but it's going to calm down," he said. "It will have that effect.

"Once you saturate the area with agents and technology . . . over time, if you keep knocking down loads of narcotics or loads of illegal aliens, they'll go someplace else," he said.