http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=572811

At the border, a second front
With drug runners and immigrant smugglers in their sights, Wisconsin National Guard members build and patrol a wall along parts of the Mexican border.
By MEG JONES
mjones@journalsentinel.com
Posted: March 3, 2007
San Luis, Ariz. - Brandon Nesset's eyes widened.

Peering through infrared binoculars, the Wisconsin National Guard private watched as seven green shapes made their way in the darkness through the mesquite bushes, creosote and sand to an irrigation canal filled with Colorado River water. The figures jumped into the water and stayed put for 45 minutes.

The canal was in the United States. The seven had walked from Mexico a few hundred yards away here at the confluence of Arizona, California and Mexico. Between the seven illegal immigrants and American soil were Nesset and other National Guard soldiers who volunteered for duty here.

"I was running around like a little kid and calling it on the radio" to U.S. Border Patrol agents, who arrested the seven, Nesset recalled later about his first night on patrol.

President Bush launched Operation Jump Start last year to send thousands of National Guard troops such as Nesset to the southwest border, boost the ranks of the U.S. Border Patrol by 6,000 agents and build a fence between Mexico and the U.S. About 600 National Guard soldiers from several states have volunteered to serve as long as two years in Arizona. Hundreds more are in Texas, New Mexico and California.

Operation Jump Start is costing U.S. taxpayers $815 million this fiscal year, according to the National Guard.

Border Patrol officials say the influx of military might appears to be working. Fewer illegal immigrants have been arrested and more illegal drugs seized since the first National Guard soldiers began arriving. Wisconsin was the first to send troops to Arizona when 85 arrived last summer.

Arrests are down because word has gotten out that it's becoming more difficult to cross, said Jesus Rodriguez, a Border Patrol supervisor. Meanwhile, more drugs are being confiscated now that more border agents are on patrol instead of building fences and operating road graders - work now done by the National Guard.

Another factor along the Arizona border is the Minuteman Project, an anti-immigration group that has conducted volunteer citizen patrols. Whatever their effect, the Border Patrol doesn't condone or support civilian efforts to police the border, said Rob Daniels, an agency spokesman based in Tucson.

High tech and old school
Though border agents have the latest technology - GPS, night vision, trucks with infrared cameras, underground sensors that detect footsteps and Predator drones flying overhead - sometimes their job is old-fashioned tracking, like a 21st century Daniel Boone. The signs can be obvious, such as trash or clothing left behind, or barely perceptible, such as slightly disturbed stones, bent blades of grass or tiny burlap bits stuck to bushes.

On a wet, sloppy day in Nogales, Border Patrol agent Jim Hawkins watched two young men and a young woman squat glumly on the ground as they answered questions from other agents, who had stopped them after noticing their wet, muddy jeans and sweat shirts.

They likely had squeezed through a hole in the 15-foot-high fence that divides the Mexican and American communities of Nogales.

Hawkins looked at his watch.

"What time is it? 12:32? They'll be back in Mexico by 2, providing they don't have a criminal record," he said.

A border agent in Arizona for eight years, Hawkins has had his regular customers, including one man he arrested several times in one shift.

"The fourth time I arrested him he said, 'When are you going off duty?' "

While most border crossers try to evade agents, some don't. Hawkins once watched a pregnant woman walk up to the fence on the south side and sit for several hours. When her water broke, she climbed over the fence and asked for an ambulance.

After giving birth, Hawkins said, women are sent back to Mexico with their children, who are American citizens. When they reach 18, children born in these circumstances can petition the U.S. for their parents to legally migrate.

Sometimes it seems as if there's a revolving door on the U.S.-Mexico border, though the path can depend on the whims of drug traffickers and people desperate to come to the United States.

The desperate will pay their life savings - the current rate is as much as $3,000 for a Mexican, more for someone from Central or South America - to men called coyotes who help them get across by any means necessary.

Smuggling humans is as lucrative as smuggling drugs into Arizona, Hawkins said. Because crime lords and gangs control much of the border land on the Mexican side, few illegal immigrants come to the United States on their own. The coyotes make a lot of money off what they call pollos - chickens - and are unlikely to allow immigrants to pass freely through their turf. And they run less risk of losing their cargo for good.

"If we jump a marijuana load, it's gone," Hawkins said. "If it's humans being smuggled, they'll get their aliens back."

In announcing Operation Jump Start, President Bush cited a need for better security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But Thomas J. Archdeacon, a University of Wisconsin-Madison history professor and immigration policy expert, thinks the underlying reason is undocumented immigration. The number of unauthorized migrants in the U.S. in 2006 was estimated by the Pew Hispanic Center at 11.5 million to 12 million, with more than two-thirds from Mexico.

Creating a system that would stop a determined terrorist from entering the country would be almost impossible, Archdeacon said, "not that you shouldn't try."

Whether those coming from Mexico illegally are simply people looking for jobs and a better way of life, marijuana traffickers or terrorists doesn't matter to the Wisconsin troops.

"I just wanted to be part of something bigger than myself and see the world," said Nesset, who volunteered for Operation Jump Start after basic training last year.

See the world?

"Yeah, I know - pretty lame," Nesset said as he gazed across a concrete-lined irrigation canal at scrub brush and sand. His entry identification team outpost where he pulls 24-hour shifts consisted of a green Army tent, a beat-up sport-utility vehicle, camouflage netting, portable toilet, junk food and a burn barrel for a nightly bonfire. But he said the only thing he left behind in Phillips, where he worked at his stepfather's masonry business, was a car payment.

The reasons Wisconsin National Guardsmen volunteered for Operation Jump Start vary: To earn more money; gain experience; see a part of America they had never visited; learn new skills; possibly join the U.S. Border Patrol; or because they didn't have anything better to do back home.

Staff Sgt. Corey White, 27, is a St. Croix County sheriff's deputy from Hudson who works with Nesset at the border. White is saving his cash for an engagement ring. Though he's arrested plenty of people as a deputy and spent a year in Iraq, White wanted to try something new.

"I just like doing the duty, going out here," White said as he watched the sun set. "You don't really feel like you're doing a lot, but then you hear the apprehensions are down and you know you're having an effect."

Because Wisconsin was the first state to send troops to Arizona, its soldiers are spread out among nine cities. They fill jobs ranging from welders, road graders and camera room operators to entry identification team members, medics and "scope truck" operators who drive Border Patrol pickup trucks with infrared cameras.

Of the 85 who came in July, roughly 20 have returned home, while 25 have replaced them. They range in age from 19 to late 50s. Fifteen are women. A couple dozen have already served in Iraq or Afghanistan. They come from about 25 Wisconsin National Guard units, said Lt. Bill Barthen of Superior.

With full-time military pay plus food and housing allowances, many are earning more money in Arizona than they were back home.

They did not, however, volunteer to come to Arizona to avoid going to a war zone. If their Guard unit gets mobilized, they would have to go with their unit.

"This doesn't save you from Iraq," said Spc. Matthew Beckendorf, 26, of Buffalo City, who served in Iraq in 2004 and 2005.

Agency recruits soldiers
Still, it's likely that some Wisconsin National Guard members won't return home.

The U.S. Border Patrol hopes to add 6,000 agents by October 2008. Outside its headquarters in Tucson is a large "Now Hiring" sign, and National Guard soldiers who come here receive recruiting videos and brochures.

One soldier considering the move is James Coppenger, 26, a National Guard sergeant who was managing the Red Steer restaurant in Minocqua when he volunteered last summer for Operation Jump Start. He also knew he someday wanted to wear a Border Patrol uniform.

While the National Guard and U.S. Border Patrol are both involved in homeland security, Coppenger, who is stationed in Douglas, on the eastern edge of Arizona, said border agents get a much closer perspective.

"It's more of a direct impact on the security of our nation," he said. "They're literally on the front line every day, stopping drug traffickers and illegals."