Border Patrol

SAN DIEGO -- Seven people suspected of being illegal immigrants from Mexico were discovered in the Imperial Valley inside a chilled tractor-trailer that was carrying watermelons, the U.S. Border Patrol said. The vehicle was stopped for inspection at 4 a.m. Thursday at the checkpoint on Highway 86 between Salton City and Westmorland, on the edge of the Salton Sea. A Border Patrol dog alerted agents to possible illegal immigrants, the Border Patrol said. A woman and six men, ages 20 to 52, were found in the trailer, which was refrigerated to 48 degrees.

ARIVACA, Ariz. - When Jim Chilton tends to the cattle on his 50,000-acre ranch in southern Arizona, he packs at least two guns and no less than 5 gallons of water. A pistol and a rifle are to ward off the drug smugglers who encroach on his land abutting the U.S.-Mexico border. Drums of water in the bed of his Ford truck are for thirsty border crossers lured by U.S. jobs. RELATED: Is the border secure? Unlike much of the heavily fortified border fence in Arizona, the only barriers separating Chilton's ranch from Mexico are four strands of rusty barbed wire, strung along steel posts.

WASHINGTON - Immigrant rights groups filed a raft of legal actions on Tuesday alleging abuse and racial profiling by Customs and Border Protection officers in five states. Three lawsuits alleging illegal treatment by border patrol officers were filed in federal court in Washington, Texas and New York. Six separate legal complaints were also filed with CBP in those states as well as Ohio and Florida, seeking cash damages for immigrants who described harsh and sometimes violent conditions in confinement.

TUCSON - It's routine for immigration officials in Arizona to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally. Monday, however, the detention of two men - an immigrant rights activist and a father of six in Tucson - sparked protests, frustrated local authorities and illustrated the difficulties of complying with SB 1070, the state's controversial immigration enforcement law. "This is unjust," Alma Hernandez yelled in Spanish to...

TUCSON - A couple of weeks after a bipartisan group of senators declared that securing the border was key to enacting immigration reform, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer reiterated her call to beef up security along the U.S.-Mexico border. “It's pretty obvious that Arizona once again is a gateway for the drug cartels," Brewer told a crowd of reporters at a news conference Tuesday. Moments earlier, she had stepped off a Black Hawk helicopter, culminating an aerial tour of the U.S.-Mexico border.

BISBEE, Ariz. - For the last 20 years, they have descended on the sun-bleached desert lands in southeastern Arizona near the Mexican border. Longtime locals say they damage irrigation lines, tread on land without permission, alienate merchants and contribute to a sense of unease that didn't use to exist. But lately these complaints are aimed not so much at people arriving illegally from Mexico as they are at the federal forces sent to stop them. Residents say the deployment of hundreds of agents - armed, uniformed and omnipresent - and millions of dollars in new infrastructure have created a military-like occupation in their once-sleepy hamlets.

PHOENIX - A federal judge sentenced a Phoenix man Wednesday to nearly five years in prison for purchasing firearms for a Mexican drug cartel, triggering a chain of events that included the death of an elite Border Patrol agent and the unraveling of the failed federal gun-tracking operation called Fast and Furious. Jaime Avila Jr., 25, was a "straw purchaser" of the firearms for the cartel, and his purchases included two rifles found at the scene of the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry, who was killed two years ago this week in the desert south of Tucson.

Authorities detained 25 people early Monday riding aboard a panga boat that drifted ashore in Rancho Palos Verdes in the early morning dark in what's being investigated as a possible human smuggling operation. Two vans, one registered to a Ventura medical transportation firm, were discovered parked near a winding path leading to the Portuguese Bend shoreline. Authorities described them as possible pickup vehicles. The incident follows a fatal encounter last week off the Santa Barbara coastline in which a Coast Guardsman was killed when two men aboard a panga gunned their engines and struck the vessel he was riding in, tossing him into the ocean.

WASHINGTON - An Obama administration plan to install new cameras and improved ground sensors along the Southwest border has stalled, potentially creating unnecessary dangers for agents there. Officials say a false alarm from a ground sensor in southern Arizona was to blame when several U.S. Border Patrol agents rushed to the remote canyon on horseback Oct. 2, shortly after midnight. For reasons still unclear, the agents opened fire on one another. One was killed and another wounded.

The fatal shooting of a teenager suspected of throwing rocks at U.S. Border Patrol agents has prompted strong condemnations from Mexican officials and human rights groups amid a sharp increase in agent-involved killings along the U.S.-Mexico border. The suspected smuggler was shot Wednesday night by agents after they ordered a group of youths near downtown Nogales, Mexico, to stop throwing rocks, according to U.S. officials. Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, died at the scene from several bullet wounds, according to Mexican authorities in the state of Sonora, which sits across the border from Arizona.