The small town of Sierra Vista, Ariz., learned firsthand of the rising violence in 2004, when police chased a pickup carrying 24 illegal immigrants on the border town's main drag, Buffalo Soldier Trail. Speeds reached up to 100 mph. The truck went airborne, hit half a dozen cars and killed a recently married elderly couple waiting at a stoplight.
"It was just the worst kind of tragedy," said Cochise County Atty. Ed Rheinheimer. "The coyotes [smugglers] are just more willing to either shoot at the police, fight with the police, or to try to flee."
Even more brazen have been several kidnappings of 50 to 100 immigrants by rival cartels, which hide them in stash houses in and around Phoenix until families pay a ransom. One captive's face was burned with a cigarette, another person nearly suffocated in a plastic bag. A woman was raped. Fingers have been sliced off and sent back to families with demands for money.
The border-crime issue became so urgent in Arizona that top officials met in Tucson in June with their counterparts from Sonora, Mexico. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano agreed to help train Sonoran police to track wire payments to smugglers. Sonoran Gov. Eduardo Bours agreed to improve police communications with U.S. authorities.
In the first nine months of the fiscal year, Tucson officials have surpassed last year's record of 4,559 arrests over migrant smuggling.
And so far this year, in tiny Douglas, Ariz., the Mexican consulate has identified the bodies of five Mexican nationals who died under suspicious circumstances while crossing into the United States, and he is awaiting the identification of another five he presumes were Mexicans as well. There were only seven such deaths last year.
Statewide the picture is equally bleak. Homicides of illegal crossers is up 21% over last year.
Another visible effect of the cross-border crime wave is the flood of drugs into the country.
Anthony J. Coulson, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA in Arizona, said records indicated that cocaine and heroin seizures may end up twice as high as last year. Marijuana seizures are increasing 25%. Nine months into the current fiscal year, he said, his team had already seized more pot than all of last year. "And 2006 was a record year," he said.
In the Tucson sector alone there has been a 71% increase in marijuana seizures over the last fiscal year, with the Border Patrol reporting 648,000 pounds confiscated since October.
