Thread: Arizona Military Testing Range a Hotbed of Border Smuggling Activity

Originally Posted by Judy

Okay, well, just remember, Trump didn't become President until 2017.

Aid workers leave water for border crossers in the Arizona desert. Now, the U.S. is banning them for it
Alex Devoid, The Republic | azcentral.com Published 11:38 a.m. MT Dec. 28, 2017 | Updated 7:03 p.m. MT May 23, 2018


A USA TODAY Network investigation finds the number of migrants who died crossing the U.S. border with Mexico since 2010 is higher than what federal officials have reported. A USA TODAY NETWORK video production.


In the July heat, Caitlin Deighan and three other humanitarian-aid workers hiked back to their trucks on the U.S. Air Force's Barry M. Goldwater bombing range where they left gallons of bottled water.


The water, they say, is a stash to help save the lives of border crossers dying of thirst in the desert heat.


As Deighan tells it, bombing-range security guards and a deputy sheriff were waiting for her group by their trucks. They had watched Deighan and the others return with less water than when they left, Deighan said. One of the security guards, she says, told the group they would be banned from the bombing range for leaving water behind and threatened trespassing charges if they came back.


He put Deighan on a growing list of banned aid workers from the Barry M. Goldwater bombing range or the adjacent Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. Their violation? They say they left behind potentially lifesaving supplies, such as food and water, for distressed undocumented border crossers.


A few days later, the refuge also banned Deighan after an official caught her driving on a closed road during a search-and-rescue mission for a lost migrant, she said. Others have had similar experiences, according to aid workers.


The bombing range and refuge span a vast desert area where border crossers enter the U.S. far from more fortified and patrolled urban areas.


The remoteness that makes the areas lightly patrolled also makes them deadly: This year, aid workers say they have found 27 bodies or skeletal remains in the area. And a USA TODAY NETWORK examination of records border-wide found the actual number of border deaths is far higher than has ever been previously documented.


But public access to the Arizona bombing range and wildlife refuge is restricted. To enter, aid workers obtain the yearly access permits available to the general public by signing a waiver — live warheads are among thepotential dangers on the range —and agreeing to certain rules.


This summer, even as the Trump administration reiterated promises to build a wall and seal off the U.S.-Mexico border, the bombing range and the refuge added a clause to their access-permit application threatening to sue, fine or ban visitors for leaving behind food, water, medical supplies, blankets, footwear and other supplies humanitarian-aid workers leave for distressed border crossers.


Resource managers at the departments of Interior and Defense say the aid workers degrade the environment and that the restriction isn't new. All visitors to these federal lands, they note, already had to pack out anything they brought in.


But banning aid workers has not deterred them from entering these federal lands again to leave behind humanitarian-aid supplies or to search for lost, undocumented border crossers.


Beefing up the permit
The clause isn't a new rule, said Sid Slone, the manager of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. “We beefed (the access-permit application) up to make it really clear so there’s no question in someone’s mind what the rules are.”


The refuge has banned fewer than a dozen people for leaving behind supplies such as water, Slone said.


The new clause in the access permit caught aid workers at No More Deaths off guard. They say they had been trying to work out an arrangement with the refuge and the bombing range for more access to drop humanitarian aid and conduct search-and-rescue missions.


Another non-profit humanitarian-aid group, Humane Borders, has a long-standing arrangement with the refuge to maintain stationary water tanks for border crossers to replenish their empty water bottles.


Everything the No More Deaths aid workers leave in the desert winds up as trash, Slone said, while the water tanks don’t generate added trash on the refuge.


Leaving supplies has a negative impact on the area’s habitat and wildlife, said Aaron Alvidrez, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Air Force at the bombing range.


Aid workers say they clean up empty water bottles and other discarded items every time they leave fresh supplies.


Water tanks are good, but they are limited to areas with road access so a water truck can fill them, Deighan said. No More Deaths aid workers, on the other hand, leave water in remote areas on migrant trails.


A long-standing battle
This isn’t the first time the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has accused No More Deaths aid workers of trashing a wildlife refuge with supplies. In 2008, for example, officers charged aid worker Dan Millis with littering for leaving gallons of water on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in southern Arizona.


The Sierra Club, a national environmental-advocacy group, hired Millis even after he was convicted of littering because he stood up for humanitarian aid, Millis said. The Sierra Club holds that the refuge should cooperate with humanitarian-aid workers.


“We know that people are part of the environment and we recognize the grim and pressing humanitarian crisis that exists on the U.S.-Mexico border and therefore we support humanitarian-aid work,” Millis said.


In 2010, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Millis’ conviction, ruling that sealed gallons of drinking water are not distinctly garbage. Judge Sidney R. Thomas did note in the majority opinion that the officers likely could have charged Millis with “abandonment of property or failure to obtain a special use permit.”


The new clause in the access-permit application for the Cabeza Prieta refuge forbids visitors from abandoning “personal property or possessions,” which it lists as water, food, medical supplies and other humanitarian-aid supplies.


Although the court left room for U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials to again bring charges against aid workers, Millis argued in court and still maintains “humanitarian aid is never a crime,” an argument still displayed on signs in some southern Arizona yards in support of No More Deaths.


How to save a life
The Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and the
The Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force bombing range have threatened to sue, fine or ban visitors for leaving behind humanitarian aid. (Photo: Paige Corich-Kleim)


The refuge and aid workers are on the same side, Slone said. Both want to save lives. Only Slone says, aside from trashing the desert, the aid workers may give border crossers a couple more days of hiking only to wind up back in harm’s way farther north.


The aid workers could also inadvertently help drug smugglers, he said.


Deighan's bottom line is to stop people from dying, she said. For some migrants, the only way they can afford passage across the border is by carrying drugs.


Describing humanitarian aid as aiding drug smugglers is a way to prevent people from feeling empathy and shock over the high number of deaths in the desert, she said.


Water may encourage border crossers to travel farther north and traverse the active bombing range, said Susan Gladstein, a spokeswoman at the Air Force’s Range Management Office.


But aid workers blame border-security strategy for funneling border crossers into the area.


“People in the desert aren’t tragedies. They’re dying for a reason and there is a policy at fault,” said Geena Jackson, a No More Deaths aid worker.


Border Patrol strategy relies on the desert's rugged, deadly terrain to deter undocumented migrants from crossing the border illegally.


In the Tucson Border Patrol Sector, for example, Operation Safeguard aimed to push these border crossings away from urban areas, according to a 2014 Congressional Research Service report.


This operation was part of a larger Clinton-era "prevention through deterrence" strategy, which anticipated that undocumented border crossers, when faced with remote and deadly areas, would be "deterred, or forced over more hostile terrain, less suited for crossing and more suited for enforcement," according to a 1994 agency plan charting future strategy.


In April, the Tucson sector Border Patrol held a media event in Nogales, Arizona, to dissuade would-be undocumented border crossers by amplifying the dangers of the desert journey.


They encouraged distressed undocumented migrants to use rescue beacons placed in the desert or to call 911 “for those determined to gamble with their lives,” the agency said in a statement.


These rescue beacons are a better solution than leaving supplies or maintaining water tanks to prevent border crossers from dying because they don’t trash the desert or allow border crossers to travel farther north, Slone said.


The Border Patrol has about seven beacons on the Cabeza Prieta refuge, he said.


They have blue lights, which are visible 10 miles away at night. When border crossers press a button on the beacons, Border Patrol agents arrive.


The rescue beacons aren’t inherently bad, but they aren’t a good enough solution, Deighan said.


Some are hidden from view, nestled in places like Charlie Bell Pass, aid worker Jackson said. And when a beacon’s blue light does shine unobstructed for 10 miles, it feels disorienting. It may seem close when it’s actually miles out of a distressed migrant’s reach.


“It’s like if you have a sea full of drowning people and you throw out one life vest and say that it’s the solution. It’s not.”


Roads: Good or bad?
The same day a bombing-range security guard banned Deighan, the No More Deaths missing-migrant hotline rang. Deighan and the others set out to find a group on the Cabeza Prieta refuge.


As Deighan tells it, both Border Patrol and No More Deaths searched separately for several days for one missing migrant in the group. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife official caught Deighan's group driving on a closed road during their search, she said. He recorded their information and the refuge later banned them.


Since the 1990s, federal officials have been monitoring the damage caused by unauthorized roads that off-road vehicles blaze in the area.


The National Park Service led restoration of nearly 200 miles of these roads in Arizona’s western deserts, although they mapped thousands across federal land including the Cabeza Prieta refuge.


Some roads are administrative and off-limits to the public, but open to refuge staff performing certain duties and federal border agents.


The Border Patrol has an agreement with the Department of the Interior to drive on other closed roads and off-road in protected wilderness under exigent circumstances. These include life or death circumstances and injuries, Christopher Sullivan, a Border Patrol spokesman, said in June.


That permission, however, does not extend to aid workers.


Aid workers asked for permission to drive on protected wilderness, Slone said, but that’s not something the refuge can grant.


Southern Arizona environmentalists and aid workers say that the Border Patrol loosely defines exigent circumstances resulting in lots of driving on protected wilderness.


"So the land really isn't even protected from being driven on," Deighan said. "They cite this rule that's not even effective in this area."


Slone said Border Patrol agents are serious about following the agreement between the two departments.


https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...ing/887542001/

(Older news is good for Alipac archives.)

There are reasons the borders have not been secured. We know that. It benefits many but not the United States as a nation or the citizens. There is no telling who the players are in allowing the invasion of people, drugs, weapons, etc.

President Trump must secure the borders however he can. He can if he wants. This invasion is an emergency.

There are those in our government that want the borders open, easy to cross. Foreign nations want to get rid of the least desired of their people and to profit from their criminal associations. Getting billions of dollars in remittances is a big incentive to send your undesirables.

This is very important in explaining how/why this is happening on our military base.

---------------------

Or private security, for that matter. Although the Range is a military facility, soldiers are not responsible for maintaining security across the property’s 1.7 million acres. In 2009, the 56th Contracting Squadron at nearby Luke Air Force Base awarded a $56 million contract to Chiulista Services, Inc. for the “operation and maintenance of Gila Bend Air Force Auxiliary Field (AFAF) and the Barry M. Goldwater Range (BMGR) for the period of 1 Oct 09 through 30 Sep 10 with four one-year options.” This contract included a very long laundry list of services that Chiulista was required to perform, ranging from civil engineering support, air traffic control, range maintenance, and environmental monitoring, to name a few. Security services were only one small part of this contract, for which Chiulista was granted all four one-year options.


It should come as no surprise that Chiulista–a subsidiary of Yulista Holding, LLC, which is a subsidiary of Calista Corporation–is running the show at the BMGR. Its parent company, Calista Corp., is one of roughly 200 Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs) that were formed after Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. According to media outlet ProPublica, in 1986, “Congress passed legislation that allowed ANCs to participate in the Small Business Administration’s disadvantaged business program, known as the 8(a) program, which sets aside federal contracts for minority-owned or other disadvantaged companies. With strong advocacy from Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, Congress later extended to ANCs additional special 8(a) benefits, such as the ability to win no-bid contracts for any amount and to own multiple subsidiaries in the program. Other participants do not have those advantages.”


Calista and its biggest competitor, Chenega Corporation, are known to almost everyone in the federal contracting business. According to Alaska Business Monthly, Chenega’s annual revenue grew from a mere $13 million in 2000 to $1.1 billion by 2009. Calista’s growth has been more modest during the same time period, growing from $14 million to $200 million annually, according to the ANC’s annual reports. Few ANCs are required to report financial data. According to ProPublica, Chenega and Calista have received nearly all their contracting revenue through no-bid contracts or in competitions restricted to small minority firms.


Looking through the requirements in the BMGR contract, there are only a handful of companies in the US that can meet all of them. The common solution for large government contractors would be to subcontract out different parts of the contract to other companies, but Chiulista kept all the work in-house–an impressive accomplishment. A call to the 56th Contracting Squadron on July 8 revealed that the contract will not be broken up into individual or smaller requirements when it comes up for renewal in September 2014.


The problem remains that Chiulista’s contracted security agents are failing to stem the flow of drug smugglers and illegal immigrants across Department of Defense property. Inside sources at Luke AFB have told Breitbart Texas that base leadership is extremely unhappy with the security services being provided by Chiulista, but base contracting officials have made it clear that they will not be separating out the security portion of the operations and maintenance contract for the BMGR.


When contacted for comments on this story, Chiulista’s communications manager only referred Breitbart Texas to the Luke Air Force Base public affairs office and did not respond to additional requests for a statement from the company. Chas Buchanan, Director of the 56th Range Management Office, offered limited comments in conjunction with the base spokesman. Buchanan declined to comment on smuggling activity on the Range, referring Breitbart Texas to the US Border Patrol. He also declined to comment on the BMGR’s relationship with Chiulista, citing the fact the contract was up for renewal and didn’t want to interfere with that process. Buchanan did say his office has a solid relationship with federal and local law enforcement agencies, and when a smuggling incident is detected on the Range, contract security officers are the ones who respond and contact the appropriate local agency.


The fact remains that the Barry M. Goldwater Range is a US military facility that is supposed to be one of the most secure areas in the country, yet drug traffickers and illegal immigrants traverse the property regularly with relative impunity. Worse yet, security for the Range isn’t even a military responsibility; it has been contracted out to a company that has failed to identify–let alone slow down–the flow of illicit goods and people in the five years since they started providing services. The BMGR can now easily be added to a growing list of taxpayer-funded federal lands where violent drug smugglers and illegal immigrants have more access than the American public.


https://www.breitbart.com/texas/2014...ling-activity/

Originally Posted by Judy

Okay, well, just remember, Trump didn't become President until 2017.

So that means it's okay for his administration to turn a blind eye?

If you think trying to build a wall around the base to protect it and our country from illegal aliens is turning a blind eye, then I guess so.

Military Cover-Up? 100s of Migrants Feared Dead in Mass Grave at AZ’s Barry Goldwater Bombing Range


AUGUST 15, 2018


John Carlos Frey
award-winning investigative reporter with The Marshall Project and special correspondent with PBS NewsHour. He is recently back from reporting trips in Guatemala and Nogales, Mexico, where he spoke with asylum seekers waiting for days and even weeks to enter the United States.
As the Trump administration continues an immigration crackdown at the border, asylum seekers are being told to wait for days or weeks on end before being allowed entry into the United States. This practice is leading more and more immigrants to risk their lives on dangerous journeys through the desert to enter the country instead, says investigative reporter John Carlos Frey. We speak with the Marshall Project reporter about the Barry Goldwater bombing range in Arizona, a vast swath of land across the border from Nogales, Mexico. The area is part of an incredibly dangerous migrant path, but aid workers are not allowed access to the site. Frey estimates hundreds of immigrants could have died there in recent years but that their bodies have not been recovered.


Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: John Carlos Frey, can you talk about the Barry Goldwater bombing range?


JOHN CARLOS FREY: Sure. The Barry Goldwater bombing range is a 70-mile stretch of land, owned by the federal government, where the military, mostly the Air Force, performs military exercises and bombing runs, basically training pilots, for military exercises. It is a cordoned-off area of the southern Arizona desert. It happens to cross through very well-known migrant routes. Migrants who are coming through the desert on their way to the United States sometimes cross the Barry Goldwater bombing range. It’s almost impossible to get to a major highway, where migrants usually pick up their ride, without crossing this bombing range.


The bombing range is restricted from humanitarian assistance, because of, for obvious reasons, it’s a dangerous place. And so, individuals who care for migrants on their journey, by putting out water, by putting out food, or maybe even searching for lost migrants, are not allowed onto this stretch of land. I had been in contact with a search-and-rescue team over the past six months, and they have discovered over a dozen bodies on a very small section of the Barry Goldwater bombing range when they had permission to search in this general area. It is believed that there are hundreds, if not more, individual human remains still there on the bombing range, but the federal government is not allowing anybody on to search for these individuals. Migrants cross there on a regular basis. That has been proven. And these individuals believe, at least the search-and-rescue groups believe, that there are many, many more bodies there, and the federal government is barring that process.


AMY GOODMAN: A mass grave of migrants on the Barry Goldwater bombing range—


JOHN CARLOS FREY: Easily, easily.


AMY GOODMAN: —right over the border from Nogales in Mexico, this in the United States.


JOHN CARLOS FREY: Absolutely. That’s correct.


AMY GOODMAN: Hundreds of bodies?


JOHN CARLOS FREY: Without a doubt. This search-and-rescue group, called Aguilas del Desierto, which means the “Eagles of the Desert,” was given permission to search a very small section of the south end of the bombing range, where there were no exercises being performed. And they were looking for an individual who was possibly still alive. They had a missing persons report, so they were given permission, over a weekend—I’m sorry, over two weekends—to search for this individual. That individual was not found, but in the process of searching for that missing person, they found 13 human remains, just in the course of two weekends, in a very small section of the bombing range. That, to this group, was proof that there must be at least hundreds more, if not more than that. They were the first group ever allowed to search on the bombing range.


And as I said, this is a part of a corridor that migrants cross. And if you get to the bombing range on your way to this road, you’ve probably already been walking for about five days in the desert, so you’re in pretty bad shape by the time you reach the bombing range. And you’ll have 30 more miles to go. So, it’s pretty likely that, as you say, there are hundreds of human remains still there. And the federal government doesn’t believe that—at least that’s what they say on paper—and are not allowing groups in.


AMY GOODMAN: In 2015, John Carlos Frey, you reported on a mass grave in Brooks County, Texas, that held the unidentified bodies of more than 300 immigrants, the bodies gathered from the desert. Your report found many of the immigrants died after crossing into the United States and waiting hours for Border Patrol to respond to their 911 calls. What is the latest on this?


JOHN CARLOS FREY: The forensic team that uncovered the bodies, exhumed the human remains and started to take the DNA samples and analyze the human remains for possible reunification with family members, have tried diligently to get these individuals back to loved ones, mostly in Latin America, and they’ve had difficulty. The process is complicated. But for the most part, law enforcement in the United States keeps the names of individuals who are deemed missing. Missing persons reports are handled by law enforcement agencies in the United States. Those law enforcement agencies, if they like or if they want to, are responsible for turning those names over to the missing persons database. For the most part, sheriffs, police departments, police agencies in the United States do not count migrants who are missing as missing persons. So these individual names are not being turned over to the database. So there’s no way for someone in Latin America to search for their loved ones through a DNA sample, because those names have not been entered in the database.


So the organizations that have exhumed the bodies, that are concerned about migrants, have started their own database. There’s one that a forensic team from Baylor University has put together called Yo Tengo Nombre, which means “I Have a Name.” And they have posted the actual identifying features of the individual who’s lost, the clothing that they may have been wearing, the jewelry that they may have had on their person. Any signs of what these individuals may have looked like are on this particular website, so that people looking for their loved ones in Latin America may go on there and say, “My daughter or my son was wearing a pair of jeans and a blue shirt.” Those photographs would be up. It’s a needle-in-a-haystack way of trying to get people reunited, but that’s, at least at this point, without putting individuals’ names on the database, on the missing persons database, is about the only way that people are ever going to be reunited.


As you say, close to 300 people were exhumed from these mass graves. And as far as I understand, only one individual has been reunited with its family. So, there is not much a government effort. The federal government has washed its hands of these individuals and is not assisting, either financially or by allowing names to be put into the database.


AMY GOODMAN: John, we only have 30 seconds.


JOHN CARLOS FREY: So, these—sure.


AMY GOODMAN: But I want to ask about the connection between these mass graves, whether we’re talking about Brooks County or the Barry Goldwater bombing range, and people waiting on the border even still, even now, day after day, trying to come in legally and then giving up and coming another way and risking their lives even further.


JOHN CARLOS FREY: There’s a direct correlation. Individuals who are trying to make a claim of asylum have fled their countries because they don’t have a choice. They’re fleeing for their lives. If we are not allowing them in to make a claim of asylum, they will go another way. And the route that’s available to them are the deserts of the American Southwest. It is most likely now that individuals who cross that desert will be put in peril. They will suffer just going through, especially this time of year. We can count on the fact that many of these individuals may perish.


AMY GOODMAN: John Carlos Frey, this is incredible reporting. I thank you for being with us, award-winning investigative reporter with The Marshall Project. We’ll do the interview in Spanish at democracynow.org.


The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.


https://www.democracynow.org/2018/8/15/military_cover_up_100s_of_migrants
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This incompetent, corrupt company was awarded and new 4 year 7 month contract, so they are still there.

Where is our CIC while the illegals continue to invade a military base?

Press Release — Tunista Services, LLC is Awarded AEC Operation and Maintenance of Barry Goldwater Range at Gila Bend Auxiliary Field

For Immediate Release: 12 February 2015



On 9 February, Hawaii-based Tunista Services, LLC (TSL) was awarded the four year and seven month, firm-fixed-price contract valued at $46.7 million for the operation and maintenance of the Barry M. Goldwater Range and Gila Bend Air Force Auxiliary Field (BMGR O&M BOS). This award is the result of a competitive acquisition with multiple offers received.Our team has been executing the BMGR O&M BOS contract for over 9 years. In March of 2006, Yulista Management Services, Inc. (YMS) acquired the BMGR O&M BOS contract. In 2009, Chiulista Services, Inc. was awarded by direct source the contract after YMS graduated from the Small Business Administration 8(a) Program. This award complements Tunista’s existing contracts in Hawaii and throughout the continental U.S.TSL wants to thank the U.S. Air Force Contracting Office for allowing our family of companies to continue to provide services at Gila Bend for an additional four years. In the coming weeks, we are excited to welcome our Chiulista family employees to the TSL Team.

http://www.tunistaservices.com/bmgr-award.html

• © 2018 Yulista Holding, LLC.
  
• Terms o

That contract was awarded under Obama in 2015. That contract won't be up for expiration or renewal until November 2019. The whole idea of hiring a private security company to guard a military base is pretty Wack-O-Doodle to me, and the whole concept should be investigated. It has something to do with affirmative action and awarding minority-owned businesses contracts through the various government agencies including the US Department of Defense. It's just a source for corruption if you ask me. It's like the military saying "oh sure, you can count on US to defend the country, but we can't defend our own base installation". It's ridiculous.

Originally Posted by Judy

That contract was awarded under Obama in 2015. That contract won't be up for expiration or renewal until November 2019. The whole idea of hiring a private security company to guard a military base is pretty Wack-O-Doodle to me, and the whole concept should be investigated. It has something to do with affirmative action and awarding minority-owned businesses contracts through the various government agencies including the US Department of Defense. It's just a source for corruption if you ask me. It's like the military saying "oh sure, you can count on US to defend the country, but we can't defend our own base installation". It's ridiculous.

Yes, it was awarded in 2015 and doesn't expire until 2019. Does that mean Trump and Mattis hands are tied behind their backs and have to allow this invasion of a military base to continue? Contracts can be broken or Mattis can say to this incompetent private company, move out of the way our troops will do what you failed to do and protect the border.

Originally Posted by stoptheinvaders

Yes, it was awarded in 2015 and doesn't expire until 2019. Does that mean Trump and Mattis hands are tied behind their backs and have to allow this invasion of a military base to continue? Contracts can be broken or Mattis can say to this incompetent private company, move out of the way our troops will do what you failed to do and protect the border.

They would need current evidence that they aren't doing their job per the contract and unless we know what the contract requires them to do, we have no idea whether they're in breach of their obligations or not. Terminating a contract without valid cause is very difficult. And the President has no authority to do that under government procurement laws. Mattis might be able to lodge a complaint and open an investigation within DOD.

Based on my 15 years of working on this issue of illegal immigration, it's been my experience and conclusion that the US Department of Defense has absolutely no interest in the illegal immigration issue or its consequences on the American people. They're focused on Russia and regime changes in other countries and that's been the sad state of affairs for my lifetime.

Maybe you've observed something different.