Border fences deter smuggling in east county

March 21, 2009 - 8:38 PM

BY JOHN VAUGHN, SUN ASSIGNMENTS EDITOR

Fencing and other barriers along the border appear seem to be forcing smugglers to go on foot to haul loads of marijuana across east Yuma County deserts.

In the past week, agents assigned to the Border Patrol's Wellton Station have seized a total of more than 1,500 pounds of marijuana that had been bundled up and carried on the backs of smugglers in separate attempts, the patrol said.

Smugglers are having to hoof it because the fencing, steel posts and other vehicle barriers that have been put up along the border in the past couple of years are blocking sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks that previously carried across the loads, said Agent Laura Boston, a spokeswoman for the patrol's Yuma Sector.

"Now they're using the backpacks. Even through there are vehicle barriers, there are places people can get in on foot."

The barriers were put up by the federal government as part of overall efforts in recent years to fortify the border against smuggling of drugs and illegal aliens from Mexico. Of the 125 linear miles that extend from the Yuma Sector's west end to the east end at the Yuma-Pima County line, Boston said that more than 100 are covered by fencing or barriers.

Smugglers do occasionally exploit the unprotected portions of the border.

Early Friday morning, Wellton-based agents discovered the tracks of vehicles that had skirted the border fencing by driving up and over a mountain southwest of Foothills Boulevard, the patrol said.

Agents followed the tracks until finding two abandoned vehicles, a Chevrolet 1500 pickup and a Dodge pickup. The drivers had fled back to Mexico, the patrol said, but agents confiscated 67 bundles of marijuana left in the vehicles. The marijuana weighed a total of 1,355 pounds with an estimated value of $1.084 million.

Still, the patrol said, the barriers have contributed to a sharp drop in the number of illegal "drive-throughs" from Mexico into the Yuma Sector in recent years. A drive-through occurs when a vehicle crosses the border at a location other than an established port of entry.

In fiscal 2004-2005, there were 2,739 drive-throughs into the sector, followed by 1,155 in fiscal 2005-06, 594 in 2006-07 and 240 in 2007-08, according to the patrol's statistics.

The patrol can't establish as a certainty that everyone of those drive-throughs involved a smuggling attempt, Boston said. "We can infer that they were, but we can't say that for sure."

That fact that the smugglers are having go on foot in more cases means they are traveling slower and giving agents more time to locate them, Boston said.

"They're slowed down to the point we can catch them."

The task of packing loads of marijuana on foot theoretically could be even harder as summer arrives as temperatures exceed 100 in the east county, but Boston said she can only speculate about whether heat will slow down smuggling.

"We'll have to wait and see," she said.

Wellton Station agents cover the area from the Gila Mountains to the Yuma-Pima county line. From March 1 through this week, agents assigned to the station have seized more than 3,000 pounds of pot - much but not all of which was carried across on smugglers' backs. During the same period last year, the station's agents seized a total of 617 pounds.

In one of the more recent smuggling incidents on Wednesday, agents on patrol south of Wellton found and followed footprints for about 19 miles before they located and arrested nine people who carried on their backs bundles of pot weighing a collective total of 432 pounds, the patrol said. The pot was valued at $346,160.

The nine, all Mexican nationals, had illegally entered the country, the patrol said.

And the day before, Wellton Station agents found tracks south of Dateland and followed the footprints for 13 miles to some underbrush where they found eight pot bundles fashioned into backpacks, the patrol said.

Near the packs, the agents found eight Mexican nationals who had entered the country illegally, the patrol said. They were arrested.

The marijuana from that seizure, weighing 400 pounds, was valued at $320,240, the patrol said.

The seizures followed the seizure of nearly 700 pounds of pot by agents on Monday. That pot was valued at more than $500,000.
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John Vaughn can be reached at jvaughn@yumasun.com or 539-6850.

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