| law enforcers. |
[Sep. 25th, 2006|08:18 pm] |
In his downtown office, where a side table is spread with baseball hats from other lawmen's offices, Sheriff Leo Samaniego looks like a courtly grandfather, tall, 70-ish, smiling, at ease with his reputation as master of one of the best-regarded departments in the country. A civil-rights lawyer who has sparred with him legally says, "His roadblocks were a bad call, but this guy's a great sheriff." Samaniego is unrepentant about his "traffic stops" and insists they "will start again." He halted them only temporarily, he says, to "cool off" the rights groups and citizens like Camaron, who had begun receiving attention with their complaining. The fact is that 9/11 has "definitely" changed his job, the sheriff says, and there's no going back. "I'd rather be accused of overstepping my authority than sitting on my butt and doing nothing while we're in war," he says. Sherriff Leo Samaniego
If the lines between local and federal authorities are blurring, so are lines between civilian and military operations. This landscape looks like Iraq. Units have arrived to assist the Border Patrol before going to the Middle East. "You can bet it can be beneficial to them," says Mosier. "They're getting used to a desert environment you can't get at a base in the East or the Midwest." Troops bring advanced military technology, different and better than what the Border Patrol has, and which only the military has the training to run. "Equipment such as that tried and tested in the Middle East can be beneficial in this kind of topography," Mosier says. "If that technology is applicable and feasible (there is) no reason to think it won't be considered for future use."
For Mosier, having soldiers on the border is not militarization, but "homeland security in support of a very real and vital mission." From the Border Patrol to the National Guard, the word is consistent: Soldiers in Operation Jump Start, President Bush's initiative, have no direct law enforcement duties. They are here to provide force protection, free up Border Patrol agents until more can be trained, bring technology, to be "more eyes and ears." But the reality is that soldiers are trained to kill and deal with an "enemy." Local residents understand this. When the nearby city of Sunland Park, New Mexico, received a request from the Border Patrol's El Paso sector to station National Guard soldiers on the city's hill of Cristo Rey, a pilgrimage site topped by a monumental white cross visible from Mexico and frequented mostly by faithful from Texas, residents rebelled. The City Council voted to deny the right-of-entry permit. "Militarily trained is not Border Patrol trained," says a 35-year-old El Paso native who picnics on the hill. "The Border Patrol doesn't walk up to you with a weapon pulled-people are afraid of others running around there with M-16s." Nighttime is the busiest time for agents, photo by Jana Birchum
There is another reason more military personnel will be coming to El Paso: Fort Bliss is set to receive 20,000 new soldiers in the next five years (present number: 13,000). Spokesmen say the influx is not part of a strategy to strengthen military presence on the border, but due instead to re-stationing of units from overseas and from installations closed in the armed forces' Base Realignment and Closure process. Did the strategic border location of Fort Bliss affect the BRAC decision not to close it, when the process eliminated so many others? "Not to my knowledge," says Public Affairs Officer Jean Offut. Furthermore, the base "has nothing to do" with National Guard stationed in and around El Paso, or with their assignments.
No matter what the reason for supersizing Fort Bliss, the effect is a sensation of further militarization of the community, says Timothy Dunn, a border scholar (The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border 1978-1992) and sociologist at Salisbury University in Maryland. "Also, that means there's a much bigger pool to draw upon for border duty by JTF North." Originally called JTF-6, in 1997 Marines in the anti-drug joint task force, supporting the Border Patrol, shot and killed an 18-year-old American named Esequiel Hernandez as he tended family goats in rural Redford, Texas. The Marines were never charged. JTF-6 morphed into JTF North, based at Fort Bliss, now charged with supporting law enforcers such as the Border Patrol with "interdiction of suspected transnational threats." That's fence and road building, but it's also training, and that's "not innocuous," says Dunn. "It's militaristic stuff including interrogation techniques, booby traps and weapons. A large part of low-intensity conflict doctrine always has been U.S. military units training local forces. What happens is that military thinking comes to have a role in civilian enforcement."
Nearly half the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States entered legally and overstayed visas. Most illegal drugs enter in otherwise legitimate cargo and traffic. Operations Jump Start and Linebacker don't affect them. Meanwhile, the poor of Mexico and Central America continue to regard work in the United States as a lifeline, even if they must come illegally to grab it. Absent coherent domestic and multilateral policy, the war on the border, like the war on terror, is endless, and increasingly dangerous. "It's like two tsunamis, one coming up from the south, and increased militarization coming from the north, set to clash at the border," says University of Texas at El Paso political scientist and border researcher Tony Payan. "There is a need for a way to accommodate the flow."
In a new study, The Three U.S.-Mexico Border Wars: Drugs, Immigration, and Homeland Security, Payan suggests that the "real failure" of 9/11 was the lack of intelligence coordination to detect and apprehend potential terrorists entering anywhere. Mexican border security became a special focus, with law enforcement redefined as a matter of national security. The focus carries hostility not only to crossers but those who live in the area, "an escalation that has not paid off" because workers and drugs are coming at the same rate as five years ago. What has changed toward undocumented workers since 9/11, as Payan puts it, is "the perception of intentionality," that "this is not someone coming to take a job, but someone who will harm America."
Under a midday sun, the skeleton of a big river crab lies intact on the flat, baked earth. Which of the twigs coming out of the ground are motion sensors? Which are bare plants? A green and white Border Patrol car appears out of nowhere. The agent asks a few questions and seems in no hurry to drive away. He's been on the job 16 years, he says. Sure, it's fine that the Guard are here, but he doesn't figure it will change his job much, endlessly patrolling this line. Has he ever been in danger? Well, the drug runners have taken to throwing big rocks at the patrol cars, which is dangerous if one hits while he's driving fast. Sometimes the rocks smash right through the windshield, which cuts off the chase because it's all you can do to keep the car from flipping. He wants to make sure I'm not confused, not thinking it's the migrants trying to sneak into the country who throw the stones. "It's the drug ones, you know, not the ones coming to work." Later, on another part of the line where bushes grow, where it's possible to climb down to the cool river, where a Mexican family on the other side has spread its cloth to eat lunch, another agent drives up, this one brusque. "Be careful around here, like if you go down to the river, because if we see you coming up, we don't know who you are," he says.
On another day, as light fades in the August sky, Texas National Guardsmen inside a windowless camera room are intent on a bank of full-light screens and pink-toned night vision screens, working joysticks to pan the views, watching "bodies," as they call them, figures on the Mexican side of the river. "I was doing basically the same thing in Iraq, entry points, vehicles, looking for suspicious activity," says a 33-year-old from El Paso back from Tikrit. "There they were penetrating the wall around our base. This is like they're penetrating our home. We don't want terrorists to come in." Another soldier watches for "massing," a gathering of several figures who might come across in a group and overwhelm a single agent. But El Paso has been flooded with rains, and the same river that was low just a few days before runs full and treacherous now. "You'd have to be crazy to try that river tonight," says a 20-year-old Specialist 4. "Or desperate." A soldier in a secure observation outpost at night, photo by Jana Birchum
Nevertheless, hours after sunset Senior Border Patrol Agent Rogelio Garcia is driving the levee roads, amid tumbleweeds that blow up in the dark, catching jackrabbits in the headlight beams, his radio crackling with traffic from soldiers in the camera room and agents on the borderline who are spotting the crazy, or desperate, crossers. Visual on six to eight subjects... Changing clothes... Bodies up on the levee now... Those bodies are running back now... Garcia throws the SUV into four-wheel drive, driving expertly, ready for sinkholes on flats near the marsh. Another radio voice. Five to six subjects. Goin' up. Running north from Duty exit. "Well, night is the busiest time," says Garcia, who joined the Border Patrol six years ago. Two spotters... Four guys crouching... Agents respond. Outside San Elizario, Garcia rolls to a stop. From the levee an agent in a patrol car is "cutting" north across the sand with his flashlight beam, looking for tracks. Dogs are barking; other agents search a yard with flashlights. Garcia peers into a ditch. For now, they get away. Watching these agents, it's clear that they are well trained, ready for anything. Some have specialized degrees, many served in the armed forces themselves. Deterrence through ubiquity and obvious surveillance is the policy, but if someone breaches the line, they know the pathways. It seems tonight that only the sheer number of those who try to cross the border illegally means some get through.
Garcia drives more miles along the borderline, until he pulls up alongside a white pickup. Inside, an agent is behind the wheel, watching a small, green screen divided into quadrants mounted on his dashboard. Standing high in the truck bed is a FLIR, or forward looking infrared camera, trained south. Only days before, a lone patroller nearby captured a group of 10 migrants, and two drug runners with 90 pounds of marijuana in duffels. Without the FLIR, says the agent at the dashboard screen, that lone patroller would have caught the escaping drug runners, but missed the drugs they jettisoned, which the FLIR's eye saw. Garcia is thoughtful. "Every day what we're doing out here is a war against terror-after 9/11 that became number one," he says. And "you can't say it's militarizing the border" to have the soldiers here. "You don't see military vehicles running up and down the line, and again, the Guard has no direct power to arrest." The desert is silent except for the cry of cicadas. The FLIR agent never takes his eyes off the screen, and suddenly he is sending a message. One spotter trying to get on the river... Should pop out any minute...
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