Remote outpost helps Border Patrol agents police New Mexico desert
Posted Wednesday, Sep. 02, 2009
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By ALICIA A. CALDWELL



HERMANAS, N.M. — Smugglers and illegal immigrants have crossed a barren stretch of the New Mexico desert for years, wearing booties over their shoes to hide footprints in the sand even though there was little fear that a border agent would spot them.

To reach this remote and rugged area, U.S. Border Patrol agents had to drive 90 miles from the nearest office, in Deming.

If they caught anyone, the agents had to drive them back to the small southwest New Mexico town to be processed. In the meantime, the U.S.-Mexico border, which in some places is marked only by a private rancher’s fence, remained wide open.

With so much time spent on the road and so little out searching for illegal immigrants and smugglers, the Border Patrol set up Camp Ramsey this summer.

Agents hope that the outpost, about a mile north of the Mexico border, will give them a permanent presence in the desert that until now had been patrolled only as time allowed.

"It could have a big impact, just because of the fact that we’re out here and not losing time getting here," agent Paul Perez said after a quick workout at the base’s small gym. "It gives us more time to catch them out there."

About 16 agents split two 12-hour shifts a day on the 20-acre compound, which consists of three portable buildings with a full kitchen, a dorm-style barracks and a flat-screen TV, surrounded by barbed wire. The outpost is an hourlong drive along a winding, two-lane road from the village of Columbus and about 90 miles from Deming.

Agents at Camp Ramsey must cover nearly 30 miles of border and 210 square miles of mountainous desert terrain. At most, agents drive 30 minutes from the base on an all-terrain vehicle, or in a truck towing the ATVs, to start their work looking for illegal crossers, smugglers and abandoned loads of drugs.

When agents do find border crossers or smuggling suspects, they can detain them at Camp Ramsey, which has six cells and can accommodate dozens of people.

James Acosta, a field operations supervisor who helped set up the base, said that since the $2.6 million outpost started operating, the agency has discovered how popular a crossing spot the area had been.

In the first month of patrols, agents have found more than 300 pounds of marijuana, six suspected drug smugglers and six illegal border crossers. They’ve also found dozens of pairs of booties.

But since then, they’ve also noticed that the trails of footprints and silent alarms from buried motion sensors have decreased, Acosta said — an early indication that the outpost’s presence may be reducing illegal crossings.

Border Patrol officials in the El Paso sector, which includes two West Texas counties and all of New Mexico, plan at least two more stations farther west in similarly remote areas.

Camp Ramsey is the first permanent base, but agents in southern Arizona work from temporary bases run with generators and trucked-in water.

Agent Oscar Lopez, who was spending his first week at Camp Ramsey, said that before the base started op- erating, patrolling worked, but he acknowledged that the helter-skelter nature of it made consistent enforcement difficult.

"The old system worked, it still works, but this just enhances it," Lopez said as he stood in the kitchen, dressed in shorts, a T-shirt and sandals, after a rain- and mud-soaked shift. "To keep people out on the border will help."


http://www.star-telegram.com/texas/story/1583046.html