Thread: Texas officials facing fight on two fronts

http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_3479497

Border watchers want issues heard
Sara A. Carter, Staff Writer

SIERRA BLANCA, Texas - Sheriff Arvin West sat behind his desk, winced and realized he was in one of the biggest battles of his life. He is heading to Washington next week to testify before the Subcommittee on Homeland Security far from his home on the Texas plains - far from the cotton fields, Rio Grande Valley and the small town that he holds dear.
West, sheriff of Hudspeth County, is considered a giant in his neck of the woods, and he'll need all his strength to battle the international incident that has landed at his front door.

"It's a two-way battle we're fighting between the drug wars, which includes Mexico's corruption," West said Saturday from the sheriff's office. "And we're also fighting the American government to get them to listen to us.

"I have yet to find in the federal government who swings the big stick," he said. "In Hudspeth County, if my deputies get out of line, the buck stops with me. Where does the buck stop in Washington?"

In the western border areas of El Paso and Hudspeth County, law-enforcement officials are making their last stand. They are in a fight to save their own communities and a nation from what they believe is a serious national-security risk at their southern border.

What used to be generations of American families living peacefully with their southern neighbors, mainly migrant farm workers crossing the desolate frontier, has now become a portal for drug cartels, human smuggling and international gang members who have discovered the United States' most vulnerable doorway.

Next week, members of the Texas Sheriffs Border Coalition will also be facing what they describe as Washington's apathy.

Salvador Zamora, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said that border security is of the utmost priority and that efforts to beef up technology and security along the border are already under way.

"We understand the concerns about border security," Zamora said last week. "Specifically along our southern border. Border agents depend on the vigilance of law-enforcement officials and vice versa. Our job is to be the front line against terrorism and work to secure the nation's border."

But the sheriffs of the Rio Grande Valley vowed they will not back down.

They said they will stick to their guns and testify that Mexican military officials have assisted cartel leaders, they will warn Washington leaders that the border is a national-security risk, and they will plead with Americans to listen.

Last week, several of West's deputies' families were verbally threatened by narcotics traffickers. The families were told to back off or they would be physically harmed or killed, West said.

"I told the deputies that we would move them," West said, of his 11 deputies. "But none of them or their families would budge. This is a community that won't give up and won't back down. What are we supposed to do to get someone to listen, put a head on a platter and deliver it to Washington?"

Violence increasing

On Jan. 23, deputies with the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department and Texas Department of Public Safety Troopers had an armed standoff with men wearing Mexican military uniforms, carrying military weapons and driving a military vehicle at Neely's Crossing, 50 miles east of El Paso, along the Rio Grande. No shots were fired, but the men in military uniforms appeared to be assisting a group of men smuggling marijuana across the border, West said.

Mexican government officials deny that Mexican military officials were involved in the incursion incident and insist it was drug smugglers or American military personnel dressed as drug smugglers to ruin foreign relations with the United States.

Hudspeth County sheriff's Sgt. John D. Schuller, 61, walked through the brush Saturday where the Mexican military incursion took place. The tire tracks of the Humvee were still imprinted on the rough ground. On the Mexican side of the border, the road used by the drug smugglers still had the markings of the struggle that took place.

Schuller, who has lived in Texas most of his life, said the event was just one in a series of increasingly violent encounters on the border and an example of how dangerous the border has become.

"This is no longer a game of cat and mouse," he said. "This is a game of life and death."

Out of the shadows

In El Paso County, the feeling is similar.

Deputy sheriffs confront drug runners in the pecan-tree fields that stretch for miles along the county's southern corridor. Farmers plow their fields only yards from their Mexican neighbors, watching as trucks filled with narcotics wait patiently to blow through the open border.

Near Fabens, a small farming community in El Paso County, Deputy Ryan Urrutia patrols the dirt roads making intermittent stops to watch people he suspected were drug runners on the other side preparing to cross.

Two Border Patrol vehicles in the distance are also watching the trucks, one hiding in the brush and the other blatantly situated on the border watching law-enforcement officials in the midafternoon.

"It doesn't surprise me; we see this all the time," Urrutia said. "It's getting worse. The drug runners don't hide anymore. They confront us head on. The government has the opportunity to do something right now. If someone gets shot from across the border here or in Hudspeth County, with the way things are going, it will be too late."

On private farmlands near the border, a small faction of a Texas volunteer border-watch group, called the Texas Border Regulators, assists border agents and law-enforcement officers.

The group of men and women strategically placed along the border, some on horseback, watch the border for drug runners and migrants. In the early afternoon Friday, more than seven runners were apprehended when Ken Muise and Bob Masling, both of El Paso and organizers of the group, called in the sighting to Border Patrol officials.

"They were spitting distance from the barn there," Masling said. He pointed to the newly plowed cotton field where the border crossers were spotted.

"Come election time, the American people are going to base their vote on who in Washington is paying attention to this border crisis," Masling said. "Our community has suffered for too long, and we're just not going to take it any more."

In Fabens, abandoned homes have become drop-off facilities for narcotics and human smugglers. One home still had fresh orange juice on an old counter, rotting egg shells and a Spiderman-shaped plastic bank. Throughout the house, freshly muddied clothing laid strewn across the wooden floors and dirty, empty backpacks became signs that the home was recently occupied by runners from Mexico.

"It's impossible to keep up with the flow of people and narcotics coming across the border," Urrutia said. "We know the houses, and we check them frequently, but there's only so many of us out here patrolling. We need the federal government to fund for more law-enforcement officers. We need somebody to pay attention."

Funding on its way?

On Friday, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, met with members of the Texas Sheriffs Border Coalition, an organization of 16 county sheriff's agencies guarding the southwest border. After interviewing the sheriffs on Friday in Houston, Sensenbrenner said upon his return to Washington this week he will ask for $100 million in funding for border security, said El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego.

Samaniego added that $34 million of the full funding would be earmarked for Operation Linebacker, a project started in January by the coalition, to assist Border Patrol agents in guarding the southern border.

The meeting was candid and an eye-opener for Sensenbrenner, said Rick Glancey, interim executive director of the coalition.

"I think it is safe to say Chairman Sensenbrenner understands that border security is the third part of the equation," Glancey said. "Without it you don't have homeland security and national security."

Sensenbrenner's support of Operation Linebacker was loud and clear, Glancey said.

"Operation Linebacker is the modern-day version of a COPS program aimed at border security," said Glancey, who will also testify in Washington. "I think Chairman Sensenbrenner gets the picture."

The coalition has 16 members, and all plan to have the same voice in Washington on Tuesday, Glancey said.

"I've been informed as of late Friday that I'll address the committee about the independent analysis of the photos from the first Hudspeth County incident," he said.

'As porous as it gets'

Chief Deputy Michael Doyal and Schuller drove across the dusty gravel roads that wind around the small town of Fort Hancock in Hudspeth County. The town, population 4,500, is mainly made up of Mexican migrant farmers and scattered old-Texas families.

It's a place where neighbors know one another, Schuller said.

Doyal said protecting those families from drug runners using the river as a crossing point is something he doesn't take lightly.

"This is about as porous as it gets," Doyal said. "The river is so shallow that trucks drive across it without a problem. In years past, it hasn't been an issue, but when it starts getting into organized crime and threats against our deputies, it becomes personal."

Doyal and Schuller parked their Ford truck on the gravel road only two miles from town.

They walked to the river bank where an unguarded walking bridge about 2 feet wide led straight over the rushing water into Mexico.

"I've been on this border all my life, and I don't know what it will take to change what's been happening here," Schuller said, as he looked across the bridge. "There's no telling who's sitting in the brush over there watching us. I guess those who haven't seen it for themselves couldn't believe it."

With rifles flung over their shoulders, the men headed back to their truck.

"One thing's for sure," Doyal said. "This time we're not backing down. This time the incident won't just be washed under the bridge."

It's sad when heroes like those Sheriff's Deputies on the border are just left to the wolves, by our Federal government.