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Keeping an Eye on Migrants -- and Trying to Keep Up
Surveillance cameras cut crossings in some places, but much of the flow just moves elsewhere.
By Richard Marosi, Times Staff Writer
May 23, 2006


NACO, Ariz. — The immigrants jumped the border fence and darted behind heavy brush, unnoticed by U.S. Border Patrol agents. But miles away in an air-conditioned control room, their images appeared on a video screen.

A National Guard soldier watching the monitor radioed an agent and guided him through a vast desert expanse, telling him to stop his vehicle on a narrow road.

"They're in the bushes," he told the agent, who jumped out and arrested about half a dozen immigrants.

Surveillance cameras that can peer miles into Mexico have become a principal tool to defend the nation's largely unfenced 2,000-mile border.

Since the late 1990s, camera towers have been erected in many populated border areas, from Calexico in California's Imperial Valley to Brownsville, Texas. Next month, the San Diego area is scheduled to start camera operations on a volatile six-mile stretch of border across from Tijuana.

Arizona's experience with the cameras, however, illustrates the squeeze-and-bulge phenomenon of illegal immigration. When the Border Patrol seals parts of the frontier with fences, technology and additional agents, illegal immigration moves elsewhere.

The cameras helped produce a dramatic drop in illegal crossings in some border towns, including Naco, Nogales and Douglas in southeastern Arizona.

But the flow across the state's border hasn't slowed. Much of it merely shifted west to the Yuma area, the site President Bush chose last week to highlight his plans to beef up border security and to admit the U.S. did "not yet have full control of the border."

The region is now one of the busiest illegal immigration corridors in the nation.

Apprehensions of immigrants have jumped 75% since 2001. Assaults against agents also have surged, with smugglers even throwing rocks at a hovering helicopter.

In San Luis, a small border town 20 miles south of Yuma, immigrants swarm across the border in wild runs that overwhelm agents. Children no longer play Little League baseball at a field that is a long fly ball from the border because immigrants continually ran through the outfield.

"The umpire used to stop the games," said Sgt. Ernesto Lugo of the San Luis Police Department.

Bush said last week that he would send 6,000 National Guard troops to assist at the border, and both houses of Congress have proposed fortifying hundreds of miles of the frontier with fences and more high-technology tools.

The prospect of a beefed-up border is welcomed by most law enforcement officials and politicians in this beleaguered state; concentrated efforts, they say, have made a difference. But because of the ever-shifting nature of illegal immigration, many are not convinced that more cameras and fences will reduce the flow.

"It hasn't gotten any better," said Tony Estrada, the sheriff in Santa Cruz County in southeastern Arizona. "They sealed up the urban areas, but now the activity is in the rural areas."

Five years ago, the busiest border-crossing route in Arizona went through Douglas, a dusty town lying on a high plain in the southeast corner. Day and night, hordes of immigrants jumped the rusty fence and ran into alleys and neighborhoods.

"They even knocked on my door," said Mayor Ray Borane. "They would want water or want to use the phone."

Today, the second-biggest Border Patrol station in the country — housing more than 500 agents — sits on the highway into town, and more than a dozen towers equipped with remote video surveillance cameras rise 60 feet above the streets and surrounding desert. The number of apprehensions in the area patrolled by the station has dropped from 262,000 in 2000 to 71,000 last year.

Border buildups in Naco and Nogales also have cut migration flows through those southeastern cities. Many agents and local law enforcement officials credit additional staffing and high-technology tools, such as remote video surveillance systems.

The cameras can keep an eye on dozens of miles of border. Equipped with infrared capabilities, they can spot illegal crossers even at night. Thermal imaging outlines their bodies behind bushes and other vegetation. The cameras can zoom in on people climbing mountain trails five miles away.


Operators, often National Guard troops, scan a half-mile stretch of border in seconds using a control stick. A push of a button switches the screen to another stretch of border.

The smugglers and immigrants know they are being watched; sometimes they wave and make rude gestures at the cameras. If crossings aren't noticed by camera operators, motion sensors can alert them.


That's what occurred when the immigrants crossed into Naco.

The operator, alerted by the motion sensors, spotted them in seconds. Keeping them in his sights, he used another camera to guide the Border Patrol agent down narrow roads to their hiding place.

Without the camera, the operator said the immigrants would likely have evaded apprehension because the agent, a quarter-mile away, had not noticed them.

"I'm their eyes and ears in here," said the National Guard soldier, who said he was not authorized to give his name.

But hundreds of miles of the Arizona frontier don't have cameras or enough agents, and that's where the immigrant flows have shifted. About 30 miles west of Nogales, tens of thousands of immigrants cross an empty desert shadowed by Baboquivari Mountain.

The deaths of dozens of people from heat-related illnesses on the trails contributed to the record 473 deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border last year.

Immigrants also started coming across in the western corner of the state, in and around the town of San Luis, a fast-growing community of more than 15,000. Its sister city of San Luis Rio Colorado across the border is about 10 times larger and teems with smugglers and immigrants looking for openings.

Apprehensions in the Yuma Border Patrol station, which covers San Luis and other communities in southwest Arizona, jumped from 39,778 in 2002 to 78,014 last year. So far this year, the figure is up another 8% from 2005.

Border Patrol agents also are rescuing immigrants in the desert at a record pace, with the number nearly quadrupling to 420 over the last three years.

In San Luis, immigrants scale fences within yards of the official port of entry. They gather by the dozens and rush across at the same time. Some have run across the roof of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection station, police said.

Little League baseball games at Friendship Park were stopped a few years ago because of immigrant dashes through the field. Nearly half of all emergency calls to the police department are related to illegal immigration, said Lugo, and residents regularly make reports of thefts and immigrants hiding in their homes.

Though the Border Patrol installed cameras in the San Luis area a few years ago, they haven't made a significant difference because there aren't enough agents to respond to incursions, city officials said.

"You see 50 to 60 people at a time, day or night, crossing and see one or two Border Patrol agents trying to wrestle them down. They're outnumbered," said Mayor Nieves Riedel.

Recent months have seen some improvements, federal and local officials said. In the last year, the number of agents has doubled to 700 at the sector, which covers 125 miles of border, including the southeastern corner of California.

In San Luis, a row of high-intensity lights illuminates an area where many immigrants launch their runs.

Agent Richard Hays, a spokesman, said immigrants hadn't run across en masse in two months. "We've been able to frustrate their operations significantly," Hays said.

At the park, where immigrant workers catch afternoon naps on cardboard mats, people agree the activity has decreased. But immigrants are now crossing farther west, said Rafael Flores, a field worker who said he talked regularly with illegal migrants.

He said San Luis was a popular crossing point because other places along the border had too many agents.

"They say this border is the easiest," he said, adding that more border enforcement won't stop people determined to come to America. "Here, people will cross until the end of time."