Patrolling the route of smugglers
by Jim Cross/KTAR (July 26th, 2010 @ 1:45pm)
Comments:6

PINAL COUNTY, Ariz. -- It's been called everything from a drug smuggling super highway to a pipeline for illegal immigration that leads straight to the Valley. News/Talk 92.3 KTAR's Jim Cross rode along recently with Pinal County Sheriff's Deputy Scott Abernathy on patrol.

Pinal County is the size of Connecticut. Most of the county is ranches and wide-open desert.

"They'll come out here and then there's hundreds of thousands of ways they can come up through here," said Abernathy, looking out over the barren land.

Smugglers fear very little and that includes law enforcement, Abernathy said.

"Ten or 15 years ago, a lot of coyotes and smugglers, they would go the other way and sneak around. Now, they don't care. They don't care if you see them."

As they travel down a remote dirt road about 75 miles from the Mexican border, Abernathy and Cross see two men sitting roadside under one of the few shade trees. They pass them by and, as they return 15 minutes later, the men have vanished. Not uncommon, said Abernathy.

"Sometimes, you'll have fake irrigators. You'll drive by and, all of a sudden, they'll disappear, just like those guys that were sitting on that corner."

Abernathy knows exactly where they go -- following the Santa Cruz River south of Casa Grande.

Before he goes there, he says, "I'm going to grab my gun because it's pretty bad in here."

Along the river, the branches hang low as Abernathy and Cross fight their way to an area where illegal immigrants camp. At the camp, there are abandoned clothes, empty water jugs and food cans.

"See all those garbage bags they use, those black garbage bags. They carry those all the way from Mexico," Abernathy said.

A rancher agreed to talk to Cross, but only on the conditions that he not be taped and that his name not be used because he fears retaliation from smugglers.

On many occasions, the rancher said illegal immigrants have kicked in the windows of his home, cut his barbed wire fences, and held him in the gunsights of an AK-47.

The brutality of smugglers knows no bounds, Abernathy said.

"If they think they're going to get caught or whatever, the coyotes (human smugglers) will just leave them. Most of the females who come across will usually get raped, several times."

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