Residents' proximity to the Mexico border brings smuggling problems right to their doorstep

LUKE TURF

ARIVACA - People who live here are in a tough spot.

They are tired of being run off the roads at all hours of the night by speeding trucks hauling dope or illegal immigrants. They're sick of the same smugglers ripping down fences to get loads of drugs across their properties. And the trash left behind by the smugglers and smuggled is turning their desert oasis into a dump.

Smuggling is an ugly business in this small ranching community. The pot import business is no longer the friendly hippie operation it once was.

Margaret Clark remembers. She's 51 and moved to this tight-knit community 29 years ago with tons of trust and a free spirit.

Smuggling was always big business in the area, but residents previously didn't fear for their lives, she said.

Today, she fears.

"We get caught in the middle of a lot of crap," said Clark, wearing sandals, jeans and silver lizard earrings. "What are we all supposed to do, leave? I don't think so."

So much is being smuggled through here that it's too much for one law enforcement agency to handle, said Lt. Gerardo Castillo of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department, which patrols areas around Arivaca.

So much that Santa Cruz deputies and state and federal officers together conducted a 24-hour intelligence-gathering operation in Arivaca during the weekend.

"One agency can't do it alone," Castillo said. "We try to be an influence so the guys that are coming across and doing the drug smuggling don't feel comfortable in that area."

Castillo couldn't discuss what kind of intelligence was gathered, but said the operation yielded one arrest for an outstanding warrant, another for marijuana possession and several traffic citations.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department also patrols around Arivaca, and it's getting business there, too.

In January, Pima County deputies responded to a domestic dispute in Arivaca. A search revealed 4,953 pounds of marijuana.

Stuck in the middle

Clark sits outside a small coffee shop with some of her fellow Arivacans on a recent afternoon. The shop is closed, but pots of coffee stand alongside a "karma jar" filled with $1 bills - the honor system. Clark and friends tell smuggling stories they've heard - and what they've seen.

"That's what it is, a gang warfare, if you want to call the Border Patrol one gang and the gangs in Mexico are the other," Clark said. "And we're caught in the middle."

There's no local police station, no sheriff's station. And despite a heavy presence, there's no Border Patrol station. People come here for peace, tranquility and to be left alone.

Some locals complain of the heavy Border Patrol presence. Others, like Ted Voss, 47, want more.

Voss has lived in the area most of his life. But in the past year, he has been run off the road by smugglers' trucks 10 times. Twice he says he contacted the Border Patrol when men in masks carrying automatic weapons and satellite phones crept onto his property.

About a year ago, he reported what he says was a Mexican helicopter flying over his home.

"When I was a youngster it was the last haven of the hippies. I think things have become very violent," Voss said. "This thing is not the good old days of a load of dope and two Mexicans looking for work."

Voss is a self-described "old hippie" and he insists he doesn't support vigilantism. But he carries a gun.

"It's kind of required, and that's not good because I'm a passive kind of dude," Voss said.

Voss would like to see a full-time presence of Border Patrol in Arivaca, perhaps a new station. A Border Patrol spokesperson in Washington said that's not currently being considered.

Though an Arivaca station isn't on the way, Andy Adame, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, said the agency has a strong presence in the area.

From Jan. 1 through Feb. 23, the Border Patrol made 8,041 apprehensions in Arivaca and Amado, a small town just down the road, Adame said. In the same period, agents nabbed 14,854 pounds of pot in the area.

"That's something we've been trying to address for a long time, the Arivaca area," Adame said.

The Border Patrol has agents watching the area with night-vision equipment. But smugglers' equipment can be just as good, Adame said.

"They've got the money to do it," Adame said.

Nick Wyatt is another Arivaca resident concerned about safety and destruction of property during what he describes as the smugglers' daily routine.

The 58-year-old has lived in Arivaca for 10 years. The problem, he says, is the Border Patrol doesn't keep agents on the border to keep the smugglers out in the first place.

"They're not down on the border," Wyatt said.

But Adame said the terrain on the border 12 miles south of Arivaca makes that impossible. He said canyons and hills limit agents' vision. And an agent patrolling alone in that terrain could be jumped by smugglers and no one could respond for up to two hours, Adame said.

And wide stretches of the land along the border are national forest and the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, which prohibit the agency from making new patrol roads, Adame said.

"The national forest and the wildlife refuge make it a little more difficult," Adame said.

Agents are better off waiting farther north where illegal traffic ultimately ends up and the terrain allows for better sight, he said. Sometimes it's three days before walking immigrants make it from Mexico to Arivaca Road.

Voss said the Border Patrol is "totally cool," and responds to all his calls. Others in the community disagree.

"It's like a police state. They act like they have all the authority in the world to do whatever they want," said Sheila Wallen, a 41-year-old Arivaca native.

Wallen said she was speeding down the winding Arivaca Road Feb. 1 when a Border Patrol agent rolled up behind her. Bright headlights reflecting in her rearview mirror blinded her, Wallen said.

She said she almost lost control of her vehicle trying to slow down. Wallen said she got out of the car, yelling, and told agents to "call a real cop," if they wanted to give her a ticket.

Angry, Wallen said she got in her truck and tried to leave. But an agent reached in her window and hit her with "a fist or an elbow" when he grabbed the keys.

She said her foot slipped off the clutch, the truck jerked and she was pulled out through the passenger door by another agent. Wallen said she was thrown to the ground and handcuffed while they searched her truck.

"It's really warped my sense of security, it's really frightening," Wallen said.

Wallen filed a complaint with the Department of Justice. Adame said it's being investigated.

Halfway there

When Border Patrol agents pulled up to a mobile home Feb. 11 in the area, five people ran into the desert. It was a dead giveaway for agents, Adame said.

While chasing the suspects, the agent smelled marijuana, Adame said. The agent called a canine unit, and more than 3,300 pounds of marijuana were found in another mobile home and in an old, burned-out Winnebago parked nearby.

According to the criminal complaint, Linda Lee Nielsen admitted to agents that she was paid $1,500 to store the 313 pounds of marijuana found in the Winnebago. Nielsen, 60, is a U.S. citizen. She denied knowledge of the 2,995 pounds of pot found in the trailer, according to the complaint.

In another Arivaca trailer in a separate incident about a month earlier, Border Patrol agents found almost 5,000 pounds of pot, Adame said.

Marijuana is smuggled to stash houses and abandoned trailers in the area, but sometimes it's left in open spaces, as evidenced by the 88 pounds of pot voss found near his property and turned over to Border Patrol.

Adame said smugglers usually use stolen vehicles to pick up the pot or immigrants. The goal in the smugglers' eyes, Adame said, is to get the loads out of the "high intensity" enforcement area in Arivaca and onto Interstate 19 as quickly as possible.

But there's only one road out of town. And Arivacans often get caught up in the chases. Adame said agents often have to drive faster than the 45 mile per hour posted speed limit to catch up to smugglers.

The Border Patrol is working with residents and other agencies to form a neighborhood watch.

Evidence rots

Up and down the rolling hills, spread throughout the prickly pears, hanging from the mesquite trees and rusting on the bumpy roads, the evidence of the smuggling siege rots.

The beautiful desert oasis that is Arivaca is scarred with trash, clothes, broken fences, and human waste. Abandoned vans and trucks rust away, leftovers of failed smuggling missions.

Down the road from Nick Wyatt's house sits an old van with flat tires. All that remains in the musty van is a roll of toilet paper and the trademark illegal immigrant one-gallon water jug.

Like dozens of other abandoned vehicles in the area, this van suddenly became part of the landscape one morning. It sat stalled at the bottom of a large hill. A neighbor says its occupants returned one day and moved it a short distance farther up the hill, where it now sits, rusting away.

Wyatt sees it as a blot on an otherwise scenic landscape.

"That's my concern, is the destruction of the beauty," Wyatt said.