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Despite so much attention, border remains a death trap
S.A. writer Robert Flynn spent six days on the Arizona-Mexico border, one of the battlefields of the immigration struggle. This is what he saw.


Web Posted: 01/15/2006 12:00 AM CST

San Antonio Express-News

Senior Border Patrol agent Jim Hawkins and I sat on a low hill south of Tucson overlooking thick brush surrounded by distant mountains.

Three groups of eight people had been seen in the brush, and agents on horseback were looking for them. A local woman stopped her car to tell Hawkins that she had seen two suspicious cars near where the groups had been spotted.

Hawkins waited to intercept the cars, monitoring the radio. A helicopter was coming to help locate the fragmenting groups.

"If they know we are tracking them, they 'grenade,'" Hawkins explained.

Other agents had been called to a Motel 6 and were wanted at a presumed "stash house" in another part of the city.

Seven walkers were spotted near Little Tucson, or Ali Chukson, on the Tohono O'odham reservation, nearly 3 million acres straddling the border, a unique problem. Tribal members have dual citizenship, making it difficult for agents to identify undocumented ones.

The tribe also has a legendary reputation for hospitality, although Hawkins believed the tribe did not want smugglers, drugs, trails or the Border Patrol on their land.

Two "quitters" waited to be picked up on a ranch road. Sick or exhausted, some used cell phones to call Border Patrol for help.

A citizen reported a maroon pickup with suspicious people in the back at Three Points.

A trail that had gone cold was being pursued by another team.

Six walkers were reported on the road near Arivaca. A citizen reported an illegal entrant in downtown Tucson.

A quiet morning, Hawkins called it.

In the year that ended in September, the Border Patrol apprehended 438,832 illegal immigrants in the Tucson sector â€â€