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Sunday, January 29, 2006

Border standoff
Dangers grow along Rio Grande

Ramon Renteria
El Paso Times
Sunday, January 29, 2006

SIERRA BLANCA -- Lolo Lopez keeps a low profile when Hudspeth County sheriff's deputies patrol the border near his ranch.

Lopez fears that armed Mexican drug smugglers, often concealed by thick 15-foot salt cedar shrubs on the banks of the Rio Grande, might mistake him for an informant.

"They might shoot me when I'm alone," Lopez said.

Lopez, a rancher on the border for 20 years, is always fixing fences that smugglers knock down.

"The narco-traffickers must think they own the river," Lopez said. "They don't even let (undocumented workers) pass through here."

The anger in Lopez's voice is also detected in Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West, who worries that his deputies might soon end up in body bags.

Escalating confrontations with armed Mexican drug smugglers are sowing fear and frustration, anger and insecurity in rural Hudspeth County, the state's third-largest, with almost 5,000 square miles.

"We're going to get somebody killed," West said.

West, 40, an outspoken Sierra Blanca native with a pit-bull temper, has been bombarded by national media attention since his deputies chased three sport utility vehicles loaded with marijuana to the river six days ago.

Sheriff's deputies said they encountered Mexicans in military uniforms on U.S. soil, armed with high-caliber weapons and driving a military-style Humvee. Mexican authorities denied their soldiers were involved in guarding illegal drug shipments.

"Let's clarify that it was the Mexican military. There's no doubt in my mind," West said. "Let's quit lying, work together and stop this crap."

Though many politicians have requested formal investigations into the Hudspeth County incident and other reported intrusions along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, federal officials had not contacted West three days after the latest incident.

In November, Border Patrol agents and sheriff's deputies confronted men dressed in Mexican military uniforms, driving military vehicles and dragging a dump truck loaded with 3 tons of marijuana back across the Rio Grande with a bulldozer, earlier reports said.

The most-recent incident happened along an unguarded and isolated section of the border, 12 miles south of the Tiger Truck Stop on Interstate 10, where the river is so shallow and narrow that drivers trying to avoid import duties sometimes drive 18-wheel trucks from the United States into Mexico. Here, drug runners use rarely patrolled dirt roads in desertlike terrain to safely transport drug shipments to Interstate 10 and then to stash houses in El Paso or markets in other major cities.

Hudspeth County Deputy Sheriff Kelly Legarreta said he saw a military-style Humvee with an armed man in military garb on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande. One SUV became stuck in the river. Civilians unloaded marijuana and then set the vehicle on fire. Another SUV made it into Mexico, and a third was abandoned with 1,474 pounds of marijuana on board.

"I had never seen them do that before," Legarreta said.

West acknowledged that his 11 deputies, armed with side arms and shotguns, cannot match drug smugglers heavily armed with automatic and high-caliber weapons. He often accuses Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff of neglecting to give local law enforcement agencies adequate resources to protect the border.

"This moron has no clue of what's going on down here," West said. "He micromanages the U.S. Border Patrol, does press releases and reports to the president and says these are the issues when he's never been down here."

West refuses to embrace the Minutemen border watchdog group, preferring instead that trained personnel do the job.

The sheriff suggests federal law enforcement agencies compete too much for the credit for intercepting drug shipments.

"It's a dog-eat-dog game out there now," West said. "The glory is irrelevant to us. My guys get paid the same whether they catch one load of dope or 100,000 loads."

The evidence room that West cleaned out a month ago is filled again from the floor to the ceiling with marijuana and other contraband.

Estimates of drug seizures in Hudspeth County last year were not immediately available. The Drug Enforcement Administration says on its Web site that drug-trafficking organizations move significant quantities of cocaine and marijuana through West Texas and Southern New Mexico.

West credits Texas Gov. Rick Perry with giving sheriffs seed money to help secure the border. West has been able to pay his men overtime with the extra money, he said, but the extra workload is straining his deputies.

"I've screamed, I've hollered, I've cussed," West said. "There's solutions to these problems, but it's a matter of getting everybody working together to get it done."

In Sierra Blanca, population 500, artist and gift-shop owner JoAnn Elder and her family find themselves talking more about what's been happening south of town.

"This is a big deal, and it has gradually gotten worse. But I don't know if people are up in arms and scared about it," Elder said. "The Mexican government is disowning these people in uniforms, but who knows?"

Her son, Joe Elder, goes fishing along the border once in a while but now worries about his safety.

"It kind of worries everybody," Elder said.

Misty Wilbourn, another Sierra Blanca resident, worries that drug smuggling is making life in Hudspeth County more dangerous.

"You don't feel safe anymore," Wilbourn said. "The Border Patrol, sheriff's office and state troopers help each other, but still they are outmanned and out-gunned."

At Angie's Restaurant in Fort Hancock, diners talk about how drug smuggling is old news in the small farming town near the U.S.-Mexico border, about 50 miles east of El Paso.

"I haven't seen much change in the last 20 years," said Gene Henderson, a Fort Hancock farmer who says drug smugglers routinely cross his property.

Henderson has sometimes spotted men in uniform up and down the border on the Mexican side.

"It's all politics, all the way to the top here and the other side," he said.

Henderson also wonders whether simply injecting more money and personnel into border law enforcement is a realistic solution.

"How much money are we going to have to fork out to keep our borders safe?" he asked.

Ramon Renteria may be reached at rrenteria@elpasotimes.com; 546-6146.