http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=3720925

Authorities believe immigrant smugglers have shifted routes
Aug 14, 2005, 11:34 PM
Nearly a third of the dead illegal aliens found this year perished in a 45-mile stretch from Three Points to the Arizona-Sonora border, leaving investigators to conclude smugglers have shifted their routes to the eastern side of the Baboquivari Mountains 50 miles from Tucson.


Neither the Mexican Consulate nor the U.S. Border Patrol keeps track of how many of the more than 200 bodies found this federal fiscal year in Arizona were reported by citizens but both agencies acknowledge many calls come from private citizens and Mexican citizens who sneaked across the border.

"By the time they get this far, they're in bad shape," said Pat King, whose husband's family has owned 50,000 acres along Arizona 286 for three generations.

During the last several years, at least five bodies were recovered on the property by sheriff's deputies and federal agents, King said.

Apprehensions of illegal aliens in the Border Patrol's Tucson station, which covers this stretch of Arizona desert, grew by 60 percent. The agency's Nogales station, which shares the area, saw arrests drop by 4 percent, said sector spokeswoman Andrea Zortman.

The two stations cover 53 miles of the sector's 280 miles of border with Mexico, and so far are responsible for more than a third of the 390,575 apprehensions made between the start of the fiscal year Oct. 1 and last Thursday.

"We believe the smugglers have changed their routes," said Geronimo Garcia, an investigator with the Mexican Consulate's Tucson office. "Before we'd see numerous deaths in Little Tucson, Sells and Big Fields," all on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation. This year, the number of bodies discovered on the reservation is about 30 for an area the size of Connecticut.

"Now Three Points is the route the smugglers have chosen."