Tucson Region

Arizona tops entrant busts

More illegal entrants were caught along the Arizona-Mexico border this year than in California, New Mexico and Texas combined, officials said. While Arizona has been known to be the busiest crossing point for illegal immigration for the past seven years, the new high in the number of people captured in the Border Patrol's Tucson and Yuma sectors accounted for about half of all of the agency's apprehensions along the border with Mexico. Arizona's trend to No. 1 in the Border Patrol's apprehension rate appears to be on track to continue next year. Since the Oct. 1 beginning of the agency's fiscal year, there have been 97,731 apprehensions in Arizona. That's more than half of the Border Patrol's 186,713 apprehensions all along the Mexican border. U.S. Border Patrol officials say this year's spike in apprehension figures is the result of the Arizona Border Control Initiative, a massive enforcement effort launched last spring. The initiative brought more than $13 million in additional resources to the state, including more agents, helicopters and an unmanned drone to patrol even the most remote areas of Arizona's nearly 400 miles of border with Mexico. As of Wednesday night, the Yuma Sector had apprehended 22,843 illegal border crossers, mostly in Arizona. That's nearly three times the number for the same period a year ago. The addition of 25 agents to the existing force of 300, additional resources and a summer that was busier than usual are among the factors contributing to the increased apprehensions around Yuma, said Joseph Brigman, a spokesman for the sector. "Based on trend we saw through summer this year, there's no indication that the numbers will subside," he said. "We're just now going into our busy period." The Tucson Sector's accounting for an increasing rise in the proportion of the national apprehension rate - from less than 20 percent a few years ago to more than 50 percent now - is an unflattering distinction, some immigration policy critics say. That's especially true when the apprehension rate is coupled with the rising number of illegal border crosser deaths along the same stretch of Arizona's border with Mexico, said Robin Hoover, pastor of Tucson's First Christian Church and founder of Humane Borders, a human rights advocacy group. The Border Patrol's official count for known illegal entrant deaths in Arizona was 171, but an Arizona Daily Star database compiled from medical examiner and Mexican consulate reports shows the number to be more than 200. Hoover said the rising number of apprehensions indicates that the Border Patrol efforts are not working and that a comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration policy is needed. "This is where the game is going to continue to be played, and the Border Patrol right now is incapable of enforcing our border laws," he said. "They certainly don't have the ability here to put in place the infrastructure, technology and people to deter and interdict people here in the way they have in other places." There's no question that Arizona's empty terrain, abundance of federal and protected lands and networks of well maintained border roads have complicated the implementation of Operation Safeguard. That is Arizona's version of heightened border enforcement efforts, like those that have been successful in places like El Paso and San Diego, said James G. Wainer, the assistant chief patrol agent for the Tucson Sector. Still, he said Arizona's effort will eventually bring the state's border under control, as was the case in Texas and California. "When you begin an initiative . . . and allocate a significant increase in resources, the initial impact is that you're going to see apprehensions rise. . . . It just shows we're being more effective," Wainer said. Enforcement efforts elsewhere have shut down older smuggling routes and displaced smuggling networks to the Sonora-Arizona border, which has come to be viewed as the last available route for people-traffickers, Wainer said. The pressure made people-trafficking more lucrative and allowed it to evolve from the mom-and-pop efforts of a decade ago into today's international networks. "We encounter smuggling groups from all along the Southwest border. As we make it harder for them, the price to pay the smuggler goes up," he said. "At one time, it may have cost $100 to be smuggled across the border, but over time, as we've become more effective in taking this avenue away from the smugglers, the price has gone up to the point that now it's thousands of dollars." The Border Patrol will continue to ratchet-up the enforcement in Arizona as it did in California and Texas, said Wainer. "You're going to see a big difference coming up here soon," said Wainer. "You may see more fencing, double fencing in the urban areas of Nogales and Douglas. In San Diego there is already double- and triple-fencing, it's already a proven model there. . . . Arizona is the focus now and Arizona is where this is all coming."