Published: 06.22.2007

Officials recover five bodies of illegal entrants this week
By Brady McCombs
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Border Patrol agents have found five dead illegal border crossers since Monday, including two Thursday in the Interstate 19 corridor.

Early Thursday afternoon, agents were recovering one body south of Tubac near I-19 while Borstar agents - the agency's search, trauma and rescue team - were conducting what started as a rescue mission and ended up a recovery northwest of Arivaca Junction, said Richard DeWitt, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman.

An agent patrolling near a frontage road off of milepost 25 on I-10 found the first body at 2 p.m., a male of unknown age or origin, DeWitt said. Santa Cruz County Sheriff's deputies responded to handle the body, he said.

At noon northwest of Arivaca Junction, agents apprehended a male illegal entrant who informed them that his sister was sick and had been left behind. Borstar agents, with the help of a helicopter, found the body of a 38-year-old woman from Mexico City three hours later north of Arivaca Road at milepost 19. Initial indications are that she died from dehydration, DeWitt said.

On Tuesday, agents found three bodies - two on the Tohono O'odham Reservation and one near Naco.

At 9:30 a.m., agents encountered a male illegal entrant north of Arizona 86 near Nolic who told them he had left 15 people behind who had been without water for 15 hours. Borstar agents found the group at about 1:30 p.m. They were all in good shape but told the agents that they had passed someone who was unconscious on a trail further south. Shortly after, agents found the body of a 64-year-old man from Aguas Calientes, Mexico, DeWitt said.

At 4 p.m. that day, Tohono O'odham Police received a cell phone call from a person who had found the body of a person near Artesa on the Nation, DeWitt said. A Border Patrol agent went there and found the body of a 29-year-old Guatemalan woman, he said. It appeared as if her body had been there for some time.

Finally, at the same time near Naco, an agent discovered the body of a man of unknown age and origin, he said. The body was found about one mile north of the border, eight miles east of the Naco port of entry, DeWitt said. The body appeared to have been out there for a number of weeks, he said.

Agents have found 105 bodies since Oct. 1 in the Tucson Sector, about the same number as this time last year. Temperatures have exceeded 100-degrees every day since June 13 and the forecast calls for more of the same, increasing the risk of death for illegal entrants walking through the Arizona desert.

In other border news, agents found 133 bundles of marijuana weighing more than ton inside a blue Dodge pickup they stopped in the Ruby Road area near Rio Rio, DeWitt said. Border Patrol cameras saw the suspicious truck cross the border and agents matched the truck further north. They followed it into a residential area where the driver and passenger pulled into a driveway and fled.

They caught one of them and turned the person over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, DeWitt said. The 2,248 pounds has an estimated value of $2.248 million, according to figures from the National Drug Intelligence Center.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/printDS/188709


Any of these Bush good hearted family people would get involved with drugs too.