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Soldiers report immigrants to Border Patrol

Louie Gilot
El Paso Times

COLUMBUS, N.M.-- Soldiers with machine guns and Stryker armored vehicles are watching the border west of Columbus, N.M., but it's only temporary.

The soldiers are welcomed by some local residents.

"In my time, we weren't doing things like that, but the situation on this border has gotten really bad. They're going to have to do something. The Border Patrol don't have the manpower. The military people are cheaper," said Charles Sipes, a retired soldier who lives in Columbus.

Residents learned about the operation when they spotted the Stryker vehicles parked by the side of the road, like stalled cars, in groups of two.

Officials overseeing the operation wouldn't say how long it would last, or how many vehicles or personnel are involved, for security reasons. A quick count between Columbus and Hachita on N.M. Highway 9 found nine Strykers and two Humvees.

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The soldiers, from the 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment at Fort Lewis, Wash., are not authorized to search, seize, detain or make arrests because federal law prohibits the use of the military to enforce civil law.

"The mission is to observe the border for suspected transnational threats, and we will limit activities to reporting suspect activities to Border Patrol agents," said Armando Carrasco, the spokesman for Joint Task Force North, an interagency program based at Biggs Army Airfield.

Joint Task Force North provides military support for law enforcement agencies such as the Border Patrol working on homeland security missions. In exchange, the soldiers get training in a terrain that resembles Iraq and Afghanistan.

Joint Task Force North's previous operation in Columbus was in January and February, when more than 400 soldiers from an Alaskan brigade were paired up with the Border Patrol. That reconnaissance operation unfolded without incident and resulted in the arrest of 2,500 undocumented immigrants and the seizure of more than 6,000 pounds of marijuana, officials said.

Joint Task Force North soldiers also built a vehicle barrier west of the Columbus port of entry to stop smugglers from simply driving into the United States.

Columbus Mayor Martha Skinner said residents are accustomed to the occasional sight of military men in their neighborhoods.

"We're pretty used to it," she said. "I had some out-of-town visitors recently and we went to look at them (the soldiers), and they (the visitors) were alarmed. I guess tanks tend to alarm people. But I'm not alarmed."

Other residents raised the case of Esequiel Hernandez Jr., the 18-year-old goat herder who was killed by U.S. Marines at Presidio in 1997.

"As we learned, or should have learned, from the killing of the boy in South Texas a few years back, military operations overlapping into the civilian population is simply a disaster waiting to happen," said John Lanning, a retiree who lives near Columbus.

In another incident, four U.S. Marines died in a helicopter crash in South Texas in 2002 during a drug-interdiction mission on the border.

The operation in Columbus has soldiers, many of them Iraq war veterans, training their long-range surveillance equipment on the desolate mountains half a mile away in Mexico, west of the derelict hamlet of Las Chepas.

Undocumented immigrants used to congregate in Las Chepas, waiting for rides to take them as far as possible into the mountains before they started walking toward the United States. However, because of the recent enforcement on both sides of the border, Columbus residents report seeing almost no action on the Mexican side. They also said Palomas, the Mexican town across the border from Columbus, is filling up with people who may cross into the United States with no place to go.

On N.M. Highway 9 from the soldiers' position, the Minutemen have turned the Hachita Community Center into their headquarters. The group of volunteer patrollers who vowed to watch the border this month have been calling for the militarization of the border. They celebrated the soldiers' arrival, but it was bitter-sweet, because the military just about put them out of business.

"It's been quiet. (The immigrants) are just not coming through with the extra Border Patrol and the state police and now the military. They've set up like they're watching a border in a war," said Steve Studley of the New Mexico chapter of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps. "It's been quiet."