Drug-trafficking and crime victimize residents and destroy the
environment along the Southern Arizona-New Mexico border
By LEO W. BANKS
Sept. 11, 2008
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/the-chiricahua-corridor/Content?
oid=1092390
Leo W. Banks
These peaks above Portal are called Twin Peaks. The illegal alien
trail goes along Horseshoe Saddle and drops to the base of the peaks
into South Fork.
Leo W. Banks
The remains of a dead cow at Jackwood Pass, high in the Chiricahuas.
Illegal aliens walk over the mountains in the background.
Leo W. Banks
Medications and supplements used by illegal aliens in the Chiricahua
Corridor.
Leo W. Banks
An illegal alien camp at Burro Springs in the Chiricahua Mountains.
Leo W. Banks
Part of the illegal dumpsite at Burro Springs in the Chiricahuas.
The roar of an ATV is hard to miss at 3 a.m. on a dark night in the
Chiricahua Mountains. The sound carries a mighty distance,
ricocheting through the canyons--and to anyone living in that place,
in these times, it's recognized immediately as the sound of trouble.
So it was the night of July 16, when an ATV, almost certainly loaded
with drugs, rumbled north across the Mexican border. It likely
crossed the line on the west end of the San Bernardino National
Wildlife Refuge, east of Douglas, came north along Black Draw through
the heart of the San Bernardino Valley, then swung west across State
Highway 80 into the Pedregosa Mountains.
From there, the smuggler bulled his way north through draws and
washes up to Rucker Canyon on the west side of the Chiricahuas,
possibly as far as Turkey Creek. It was a mad dash for sure, and the
best evidence indicates he rode the entire distance, as much as 40
miles, in a single night, his wheels turned backward to foil trackers.
Residents view the ATV incursion, the first of several, as an
escalation in an already intense battle with smugglers working the so-
called Chiricahua Corridor. Perhaps optimistically, some view this
pathway through southeast Arizona as one of the last wide-open border
smuggling routes, and they fear the traffickers will grow more
desperate as they fight to keep it open.
Already, residents have had to make room in their lives for
everything the traffickers bring with them--suspicion, constant
watchfulness, vandalism and break-ins. As a matter of course, few
people dare leave their homes without a sitter. Alex Stone, a
helicopter specialist for the Forest Service who owns a house near
Portal, on the east side of the Chiricahuas, says flatly, "If you
leave your house empty, it will be occupied."
Law enforcement? Border Patrol might be an hour away on a good day,
and on a bad day, residents have to fend for themselves when the
agency dispatcher in Douglas says, as sometimes happens, "Sorry, we
have nobody to send."
The traffic has also brought to the Chiricahua Mountains, one of
Arizona's special places, the same ugliness we see in other
sanctuaries closer to the border: Piles of trash now foul major
canyons and waters in the northeastern part of the range. Erosion
bedevils established hiking trails, and illegals are making new
trails in areas as high as 9,000 feet.
What's happening in the corridor challenges the government's campaign
of using this year's decrease in arrests, nearing 25 percent in some
areas, to convince citizens they're finally getting the border under
control. It also shows the relentless northward march of the
smugglers. After all, those who cross the Chiricahuas and walk all
the way to Interstate 10, at the northern end of the corridor, have
trekked nearly 70 punishing miles--evading law enforcement--putting
them deep into the United States.
The siege of the Chiricahuas can best be described as a low-level
guerilla war, intermittent but always simmering, the scenes of
trouble shifting regularly.
How much it affects your life depends in part on luck. One family can
live in relative peace while a close neighbor, a mere mile away,
finds himself caught in a genuine nightmare, because his home sits
along a smuggling trail. It's that way in Portal, on the northeastern
slopes of the Chiricahuas, a quaint and cool town of pickup trucks,
funny hats, a general store from a different century and bird-
watchers from a different planet. They flock to this part of the
Chiricahuas hoping to catch a glimpse of the Elegant Trogon, or some
other airborne superstar, and to them, Portal looks like paradise.
It doesn't look like a bull's-eye in the border war. But illegals and
drug smugglers have opened trails that spider-web the town, 46 miles
north of the line. Those who live in the village proper will tell you
life is good, and on most days, it is. There are enough people, and
enough eyes, to keep the worst of the illegal elements at bay. Move
into the outlying areas, though, and it's a fight for survival.
In March 2007, Stone, whose house sits a mile and a half outside
Portal, went on a bicycling vacation in the east, leaving his place
empty. Drug runners broke in and basically took up residence for five
days. They found Black Angus steaks in a freezer and grilled them on
the stove. They dismantled Stone's 8-inch mirror telescope, pulling
out lenses and undoing all of the tiny screws, possibly because they
were stoned. They left a brick of marijuana atop his desk in the
living room.
They drove away in his pickup truck, loaded down with two
motorcycles, a stereo, pots and pans, 30 years worth of tools and his
shower curtain. They made $1,700 in calls to Agua Prieta, Mexico, and
left the place trashed. No one noticed. The nearest neighbor lives
800 feet away, and that house faces the other way.
"I built the house myself, and that was hard to come home to," says
Stone, adding that he got none of his stuff back, although MCI did
forgive the phone bill. "But break-ins are a fact of life now in that
vicinity."
Some in the area have responded by turning their homes into forts.
One man described for the Tucson Weekly the steps he has taken to
secure his house--installing metal shutters over windows and doors;
burying gas lines and a propane tank; concealing all water valves or
placing them under lock and key. He also rigged his vehicles so
they'll turn over but not start, tricking thieves into thinking the
battery is dead.
"I've spent a lot of time the past few years trying to think like a
criminal," he says.
Like many of the more than 35 people interviewed for this article,
this man asked for anonymity. Everyone in the Chiricahua region
follows the cartel violence in Mexico, where grotesque blood-letting
has become routine. In June and July alone, four Mexican cops were
murdered in Agua Prieta, Douglas' sister town, and several more
crossed into this country for asylum, according to a recent
Washington Times article. The paper cites a report--by the Arizona
Counter Terrorism Information Center and the High-Intensity Drug
Trafficking Investigative Support Group--warning that cartel turf
wars are spreading into the United States.
News like that travels the corridor like a virus. So do reports of
traffickers threatening ranchers if they work with law enforcement.
It has happened. The legal Mexican workers of some ranchers have also
been compromised--by druggies threatening to kill their families in
Mexico--which flips a cowboy's loyalty. Bottom line: Everyone in the
corridor knows that cartel soldiers could be in their backyards tonight.
Even so, the man quoted above doesn't base his desire for anonymity
on fear. He's not afraid. But between 2001 and 2006, his home on the
east side of the Chiricahuas was broken into 15 times, and he
believes it's important to live defensively.
He says: "People in cities have no idea what's happening out here.
The volume of traffic is huge, and we never know who we're dealing
with. We don't know who's coming into the country, and we don't know
who in the community is sympathetic to illegal activity. These break-
ins usually occur when they know people are gone. So I assume they're
watching our homes. Everything is blurred. A lot of these illegals
are also drug mules. When people say it's just someone looking for a
job, I always ask, 'Why would you break into someone's house if
you're looking for a job?'"
And if you're looking for a job, why steal someone's guns? Ed Ashurst
manages an 84-square-mile ranch on the east side of the Chiricahuas,
near the tiny town of Apache. On March 6, thieves broke into his home
and made off with $5,000 worth of guns, including an AK-47, as well
as jewelry, credit cards, Social Security cards and all of his clean
socks. The thieves were never caught, and Ashurst's guns are still
out there.
But the episode continues to rankle because of what happened later
that day. Ashurst called the Border Patrol to tell them he'd found
the thieves' tracks, and to ask if they could please send agents
back. No one came. Three hours later, Ashurst called again and asked
the shift supervisor why they hadn't responded. "I was told if
there's somebody out there with an AK-47, don't bother calling us,
because we're not coming," says Ashurst. "He wouldn't put his agents
in that kind of jeopardy. I said, 'Then what good are you?'"
In recent months, the worst of the traffic has shifted to the west
side of the Chiricahuas, where the number of break-ins has been
shocking. Those who commit them are either illegals or drug mules
who've gotten lost, or perhaps Border Patrol has jumped them and
they've quailed in 10 directions. After a while, they get hungry and
start kicking in doors looking for food. Nobody who breaks into a
house is harmless, and that's especially true in border country. As
Border Patrol reports, 10 to 15 percent of arrested illegals have
criminal records in the United States.
This new boldness jacks up the nerve level. Twice last year--in
January and December--an elderly woman living on the corridor's west
side encountered men she believes were druggies trying to break into
her house--while she was inside. In the first episode, at 10 a.m.,
two men tried to force open the glass door in her dining room. In the
second, they pounded on her carport door, planning, she believes, to
rush in if she opened it. The woman says she now lives frightened in
her own home.
The December episode occurred days after home break-ins in nearby
Pearce and Elfrida, both of which abut the corridor to the west, and
a third in Willcox to the north. The four thieves, who'd crossed from
Mexico, stole firearms in the Elfrida and Willcox jobs and used them
in the Pearce episode, which proved especially dangerous. Three of
the men invaded the guest house of a 58-year-old woman and tied her
up in her bathroom at gunpoint. She was able to get free after the
men left. The alleged perpetrators were caught the next day, Dec. 6,
and charged with a number of felonies.
Several west-side ranchers talked to the Weekly about this new wave
of trouble. One rancher, sitting at his kitchen table, told of
suffering three break-ins between June and August--one at home, two
at his garage. This fellow also rattled off the names of neighbors
similarly besieged. One has been hit three times in the past three
months, another twice. A third, the prize winner, has had nine break-
ins over the summer.
This rancher, who doesn't share Ashurst's view of Border Patrol,
says: "We're targeted here on the west side of the Chiricahuas,
because Border Patrol is few and far between. They're busting their
butts trying to help us, but they have no backup, and they're
frustrated to no end. There aren't enough of them.
"What really worries me is what's happening in Mexico. The cartels
are going into ranches on the Mexican side, around Juarez,and saying,
'We're taking over; shut your mouth, or we'll shoot you.' We're
afraid that's going to start happening on this side.
"If we get our names printed, we might wind up on some cartel list.
We're not scared, and we're not running. But the situation is getting
worse, and we need to be very careful."
The Chiricahua Corridor has for decades been a major pathway into the
U.S. from Mexico. It begins at the Mexican line east of Douglas, with
the Geronimo Trail forming much of its southern boundary. This 32-
mile gravel road runs along the border east from downtown Douglas out
to the New Mexico state line.
The corridor's eastern boundary extends beyond the state line into
Hidalgo County, N.M., and north beyond the little town of Rodeo, N.M.
Arizona's Swisshelm Mountains and State Highway 181 form the
corridor's western side. The north is bordered by I-10 and the
tumbleweed towns of San Simon and Bowie, which the coyotes use as
pickup destinations.
In its early years, in the '60s, '70s and into the '80s, the
corridor's main trail was Stateline Road, a dirt track running north
from the border along the boundary between Arizona and New Mexico.
Most of those walking it were farm laborers from Chihuahua.
Louie Pope, who has lived in the Chiricahuas all his life, says that
up until 1986, when it became illegal to hire them, he'd sometimes
offer these men wages to do jobs around his ranch. He says they were
good workers and good people; the Popes gave them the run of the
place. They taught his children how to speak Spanish and how to cook
tortillas, and the family never had a worry.
He tells of once hiring some of them to build a cattle guard. The
workers included an older fellow whom Pope called the Maestro. He was
returning to Mexico after doing seasonal labor in the fields around
Safford. With the cattle guard complete, the Maestro resumed his trip
home, not realizing he had Pope's tape measure in his pocket. The
next year, on the way up to Safford again, he stopped at Pope's house
to hand over the tape measure.
"That's how honest these guys were," says Pope.
But those days are gone. Residents stressed to the Weekly that these
farm workers have been, to a large extent, replaced by drug mules and
their handlers--men with tattoos, piercings, AR-15 assault rifles,
black camis, expensive boots and water bottles painted black to keep
them from glowing in the moonlight.
They'll do anything to get their loads through, including roaring
down Geronimo Trail at high speeds, sometimes running citizens off
the road. Nothing is beyond being stolen. In February, a $270,000
Caterpillar road grader belonging to Cochise County disappeared from
Geronimo Trail. The thieves got it started, but couldn't figure out
how to raise the blade. So they drove it a handful of miles into
Mexico on a cattle trail, making gouges in the ground as they went.
Life isn't much better on the corridor's east side. Retired Judge
Richard Winkler saw his home outside of Rodeo broken into three times
in 2007, and he had 10 break-ins at his second residence in the
Peloncillo Mountains, part of his cattle operation. At his mountain
home, Winkler leaves the door unlocked with food out in an effort to
win the bad guys' favor. "You don't want to be seen as too mean, or
they'll retaliate," says Winkler, a well-known figure in southeast
Arizona. He worked for 12 years as a Superior Court judge in Bisbee,
often handling drug cases, and for 10 years had a law office in Douglas.
Winkler endured a particularly harrowing day in the fall of 2007,
when he returned from Douglas to find his Rodeo home had been broken
into. That same night, about 8 p.m., after sheriff's deputies and the
Border Patrol had departed, an exhausted Winkler retired to his
bedroom for the night. While on the phone with a neighbor describing
the events of the day, Winkler heard noises at the far end of the
house. He said, "Wait a minute; I hear something. I think they're
breaking in again."
Determined to defend himself, Winkler, 69, grabbed a gun and started
down the hallway. Luckily, the thieves departed the house before he
reached them. Back came law enforcement. From assorted evidence,
investigators determined the criminals were drug runners who probably
hid in a nearby wash after their first effort, waiting to return
after dark.
Winkler now has big dogs and a fence around his dream house.
North of Winkler, Randy and Sheila Massey operate a farm with land in
Arizona's San Simon Valley and in New Mexico. Their home is near
Animas, N.M., just east of Portal, Ariz. In February 2006, the
Masseys made a disturbing discovery in a bunkhouse where illegals
often hole up during their treks north: Someone had tagged the door
with the words La Mara Salvatruca-13, a hyper-violent Salvadoran gang
commonly referred to as MS-13. It now has branches in cities across
the U.S.
"To think my grandbabies are growing up not a mile from where these
people were," says Sheila Massey, who no longer leaves the kids alone
at the farm, even while driving a mile to Animas to pick up the mail.
"It curls your toenails to know the kind of people that are coming
into our country."
The Border Patrol once believed that mountains were its salvation, a
natural barrier. The theory was: Cover the valleys, and leave the
crossers no choice but to trek over the mountains, and they'll quit
and go home. It hasn't worked--not in the Huachucas and the
Baboquivaris near Sierra Vista and Sasabe, or in the Peloncillo and
Chiricahuas inside the corridor. The traffickers want in too badly,
and the profits are too big.
So into the mountains they've gone, into ever more remote terrain,
pushed there by the Border Patrol themselves. Even if law enforcement
flies over in a chopper and spots them, the agents have no option but
to wait until they come out. And the traffickers can decide where and
when they emerge.
To understand how the traffickers use the corridor's mountains, look
at a map of the terrain east of Douglas. The San Bernardino Valley
stretches north from Geronimo Trail, with State Highway 80 angling
northeast across it, eventually blending with the San Simon Valley
farther north. The San Bernardino encompasses a vast area, much of it
crossed by smuggling trails that follow the natural cover of
drainages and underbrush.
But a group headed for Portal, and walking strictly in the San
Bernardino and San Simon Valleys, would have to expose themselves at
points along the way. To avoid that, more sophisticated crossers
might jump the border on the east end of Geronimo Trail, go into the
shelter of Guadalupe Canyon, then over the Peloncillo Mountains,
which straddle the Arizona-New Mexico line. The group walks north
through the Peloncillos about 25 miles before exiting to the west
through Skull Canyon.
Before them stretches 6 to 7 miles of mostly flat ground across San
Simon Valley. They walk that, crossing Highway 80 between mileposts
402 and 423, and head straight into the shelter of Horseshoe Canyon
or Jack Wood Canyon in the Chiricahuas. From there, it's due north
through the high, rugged mountains to their pickups in Portal, or off
Forest Road 42. An equal number walk north all the way to Interstate
10, 28 miles above Portal.
The traffickers have a big advantage here, because the corridor's
east flank runs along the seam between the Border Patrol's Douglas
and Lordsburg sectors. Military tacticians have long understood the
advantage of riding the divide between adjacent enemy commands and
exploiting the resulting confusion in communication and coordination.
Louie Pope's wife, Susan, sees that situation firsthand.
She works at the schoolhouse on Highway 80 in Apache, about 35 miles
north of Douglas. She also drives the school bus and often sees
illegals walking the highway. She estimates that between her and the
other woman at the school, they call Douglas Border Patrol 30 times
each school year. "Douglas usually tells us they have nobody to
send," says Susan. "I'll call Lordsburg, and they'll say, 'We're 2
1/2 hours away; do you still want us to come?' I'll say yes, and they
come. Lordsburg saves us. This area is Douglas' responsibility, but
90 percent of the time, they don't come."
The reason, as Susan has learned, is that agents' cell phones quit
past a certain point on 80, and their truck radios lose contact with
dispatch. The traffickers know this as well. And they know that
residents' cell phones don't work, either, and the Cochise County
Sheriff's Department doesn't regularly patrol that far south on
Highway 80.
As a result, the traffickers ride the corridor's eastern seam through
a kind of law-enforcement no-man's land.
Located in the spot where the Rocky Mountains, the Sonoran and
Chihuahuan deserts and the Mexican Sierra Madre Mountains all come
together, the Chiricahuas are a special place. Many consider them
Arizona's most beautiful mountains, and photogs would certainly
agree. They've made the range famous worldwide with images of their
soaring cliffs and teetering stacks of boulders that seem to grow
from the ground itself into the sky.
But tourist photographers steer clear of the alien garbage piling up
in the mountains. Although the dumps aren't of monster size, as they
are in the Huachucas or around Sasabe and Arivaca, they're still
gross and depressing.
"People in Tucson need to know the illegals have moved into the
Chiricahuas, and if we don't get a handle on it, they'll ruin them,"
says Louie Pope, who worked for the Forest Service in the Chiricahuas
for 35 years and probably knows the range better than anyone. "All
the pristine waters are trashed. It's nasty. On the major creeks, you
see clothes, milk jugs. When it rains, all that junk goes down the
canyons."
Three years ago, Burro Springs--pictured above on this page--was a
crystal-clear water source in the Chiricahua Wilderness. Now it's a 2-
acre garbage dump.
Located in Horseshoe Canyon on the east side of the range, the site
is a scatter of backpacks, tin cans, sanitary napkins and more. Some
of this debris floats 2 feet deep in the waters of the spring. The
only way to get it out would be by pack mule, and it'd take 10
animals to get it all. The illegals have also dragged to the site
half of a metal water tank. Flipped upside down, it becomes a hooch
for sleeping and shelter.
Burro Springs is 33 miles north of the border, at 6,800 feet. Another
dumpsite scars the ground at Horseshoe Pass, half a mile above Burro.
Many of the main canyons in the Chiricahuas have a place as bad as
Burro Springs, and some of these dumps are at 9,000 feet or higher.
Illegals have trashed the top of Pothole Canyon as well as the top of
Sulphur Draw, often called Sulphur Canyon, and both are next to
impossible to reach.
"The country they're walking in is so rough, you measure progress not
in miles per hour, but feet per hour," says Pope. "It's like walking
off the side of the Grand Canyon. It blows my mind. I tried to get up
to the alien camp in Sulphur Canyon with my hounds, but it was too
rough. I had to pull the dogs back. Those tall peaks above Portal?
They're coming over those."
The trails through Pothole, Sulfur and Horseshoe canyons constitute
the three main alien pathways over the east side of the Chiricahuas.
The trail over Horseshoe goes right into the picnic ground at the
South Fork of Cave Creek, one of the major tourist birding areas in
the U.S.
The heavy traffic has created an erosion problem, too, and this is a
serious and long-lasting issue for the health of the forest. In steep
terrain, instead of walking switchbacks, the illegals slide on their
butts from one switchback down to the next, and when it rains, the
water washes out the hillside. The smuggling trail that emerges at
South Fork bears the scars from hundreds of butt-sliders. The same
occurs on the aliens' hillside trails. When the water comes, the
trail becomes a flowing gully.
There's more: The traffickers have also begun painting rocks in the
Chiricahuas with black and orange Xs and dots, probably directional
signals for groups coming later or markers for GPS positioning.
Whatever they mean, they're vandalism.
Much of the badly impacted land, like Burro Springs, is in the 87,700-
acre Chiricahua Wilderness. It offers a preview of what could be in
store for the Tumacacori Highlands northeast of Nogales, if Rep. Raúl
Grijalva gets his way and wins a wilderness designation for that
land. Trash dumps will grow. Underbrush will expand. Trails won't be
maintained. The land will fall out of the control of the people who
should be managing it and under the control of those who don't belong
there.
Kimrod Murphy, a retired Arizona Game and Fish officer who lives in
the eastern Chiricahuas, says this has already happened in his area.
"The Forest Service has no field presence whatsoever in the
Chiricahuas," says Murphy. "They've turned their backs on the trash,
and they don't maintain established trails. Nobody maintains trails
anymore except the aliens. They make new trails, and good ones, too,
sometimes 3 feet wide."
Bill Edwards, the Forest Service district ranger in charge of the
Chiricahuas, says they do maintain "a few trails every year, but not
the hundreds of miles that are in the Chiricahuas." He says he lacks
the budget and manpower to do more, and that applies to the trash as
well. "You can't see what's going on and feel good about it," says
Edwards. "But we're limited in what we can do. A lot of times,
Congress dictates how we allocate our budget, and cleaning up after
illegals isn't high on their list."
Edwards predicted the situation will worsen soon. He says traffic
across the Peloncillo Mountains today mirrors what it was 10 years
ago in the Huachuca Mountains around Sierra Vista and in the Canelo
Hills, just before it exploded. "Because of enforcement elsewhere, I
think we're about to see a large increase across the Peloncillos and
the Animas Valley, and the Chiricahuas will draw some of that traffic."
Murphy says it's already there in spades. He regularly rides
horseback in the Chiricahuas and encounters so many illegals that he
usually doesn't call Border Patrol. "I'd stay on the phone all day if
I reported everything I saw," says Murphy. "People are moving north
all the time. If it's just illegals, Border Patrol isn't interested.
It's like swatting mosquitoes in a swamp."
But the Forest Service's Alex Stone appreciates what Border Patrol
faces in the Chiricahua region. "They're as good as they can be," he
says. "We're talking thousands of square miles."
The escalating trouble in southeast Arizona has drawn the attention
of Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, whose congressional district includes
the corridor. She has brokered meetings to bring landowners together
with Border Patrol to find solutions, and has generally won praise
for doing so. At its Douglas headquarters, the Border Patrol now
hosts monthly meetings at which citizens can offer suggestions and
air gripes.
For some, though, those sessions are too late. Ashurst, still
smarting from the Border Patrol's unwillingness to respond to his
second call for help, went to the first meeting in mid-April and says
he was treated "like a hot-headed cowboy with an anger problem."
"I'm not mad at the Mexicans," says Ashurst. "They've got a good deal
going: If you're starving in Mexico and running drugs, the U.S.
government purposely lets you run all over us. I'm mad at the
complete incompetence and indifference of the U.S. government. I
refuse to go to any more of those meetings and be sneered at."
Louie Pope is close to giving up on the meetings, too, citing the
Border Patrol's entrenched political bureaucracy, which he believes
keeps good agents from doing their jobs. Plus, his message is already
well-known: Rather than rotate agents to different sections of the
border, assign them to the same area for extended periods. That way,
they get to know the traffic, the trails, the people, the land.
"As it is, they've got new guys from New Jersey out here, and they
don't even know where they are," says Pope. "Then they quit or
transfer out. But if they had enough veteran agents to train them,
and they stayed in the same place long enough, a mouse couldn't burp
in those areas without them knowing it."
In spite of the problems, few residents of the corridor would
consider living elsewhere. They love their homes and cherish their
land, and face the challenges with a grim resolve--the border means
trouble, always has, always will.
A bit of gallows humor helps. Anna and Matt Magoffin live along the
Geronimo Trail, and they refer to the constant traffic past their
place as the Sonoran Hiking Club.
Others wear their frustration more openly, asking why the law seems
to protect aliens and smugglers more than American citizens and their
property. A number of those interviewed brought up the names Ignacio
Ramos and Jose Campeon. These are Border Patrol agents who, in an
incident near Fabens, Texas, in 2005, shot a fleeing drug-smuggler in
the butt and wound up going to jail for 11 and 12 years,
respectively. The U.S. attorney gave the drug-runner immunity to
testify against the agents.
When it comes to the law versus the smugglers, the message that sends
is crystal-clear. It's also difficult to reach any other conclusion
when you hear a federal judge rule that illegal aliens have a right
to interstate travel, as John Roll did in March, in a civil-rights
case involving high-profile rancher Roger Barnett, a corridor resident.
Roll would do well to discuss his views with those who live and work
inside the corridor, especially the Border Patrol, which evidently
has been violating the interstate travel rights of illegal aliens for
decades with their highway checkpoints and those handcuffs they keep
putting on.
And he'd do well to hear residents of the corridor talk about how
they'd love to have the same right to travel. These are, remember,
American citizens who can't drive to Tucson to shop, or to Phoenix
for a weekend, because there's a good chance their homes will be
broken into in their absence.
Roll also would do well to walk in the shoes of Richard Winkler, the
retired judge. After all, when you're in your late 60s, inching down
a hallway in the dark, gun in hand, not knowing what you'll face from
the thugs ransacking your home after enjoying their right of
interstate travel, you tend to have a different view of things.
"I was scared," says Winkler. "I'm thinking, 'Oh, I don't want to
shoot anybody.' I don't even hunt anymore. I did when I was young.
But I don't want to shoot stuff. But if they came through the door at
me, I would've fired. This was twice in one day, and I'd had enough."
That could serve as a motto for the whole Chiricahua Corridor--enough
is enough.
Winkler, a longtime Democrat, adds a coda to his story, about the
bias of the media. Asked how the press would've played it if he'd
shot one of the intruders, Winkler didn't hesitate in his answer:
"The headline next day would've been 'Retired Judge Kills Hungry
Mexican Immigrant.' That's just the attitude."
He continues: "I read the national press, and the articles are all
the same. I don't know how they get the idea illegal immigration is
OK. They mix it all together and put Lou Dobbs down for being against
illegal immigration. I'm against anything illegal, too. I was a
judge. The law means a lot to me. Both my grandparents came here from
foreign countries, and I love immigration. But you have to do it the
right way.
"The press makes it sound as if they're all hard-working, wonderful
people, and a lot are. But they have their bad people, too, who do
bad stuff, and that's what we live with out here."
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