Published: 12.03.2007

Border Patrol saves entrants stranded along flooded wash
By Kimberly Matas
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Twenty illegal entrants had to be rescued late Friday night after being trapped by raging floodwaters on an embankment 20 miles south of Three Points.
"With the rain the other night, we had really bad weather to deal with in the Sasabe and Arivaca area," said Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman Rob Daniels. "There were lots of washes that were flowing with high levels of water and debris."
The area near Milepost 25 and Arizona 286 became impassable, Daniels said.
The Border Patrol received a telephone call from an area resident reporting that two illegal entrants — one, a woman possibly suffering from hypothermia — wanted to turn themselves in.
Half a dozen agents from the Border Patrol and Borstar, the agency's search, trauma and rescue unit, were at the scene on the north side of the flooded wash at about 11:30 p.m. trying to determine the best way to navigate the wash and take into custody the two border-crossers on the isolated south bank. Before the rescue effort could begin, another 18 illegal entrants joined the first two and needed to be rescued, Daniels said.
Agents employed swift-water rescue techniques using ropes to get to the south side of the wash and bring the people across. They were returned to Mexico.
The entrants were of various ages, Daniels said, and all were from Mexico's Chiapas state.

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/214476