by Kari Lydersen
12.15..03

"Blood, Sweat & Tears" Series Introduction

Part 2 of 3

"It's not Alpha, so it must be beeps or the illegals," says Chris Simcox in a hushed voice, speaking into his walkie talkie from his perch on a small rise in the brushy, dry Arizona desert about a mile north of the US-Mexico border.

By "Alpha," he means one of his compatriots in the Civil Homeland Defense organization that he founded last fall, based in Tombstone, Arizona.

By "beeps," he means Border Patrol agents; about 1,800 of them patrol this area 24 hours a day with helicopters, motion sensors, night vision devices and other high tech equipment.

And by "the illegals," he means undocumented immigrants crossing the border from Mexico. Since the borders have been increasingly militarized and in some places effectively sealed in much of California, Texas and much of Arizona, this strip of desert south of Tuscon has become the most popular place for immigrants to cross—Mexicans as well as Central and South Americans and Asians, Eastern Europeans and even Africans who fly to Mexico en route to what they hope will be a better life in the U.S.

Along with being the most popular place for immigrants to cross the border, it is also the most deadly.

The Border Patrol reports that 320 people died crossing into the US in 2002. About 150 immigrants died along the Arizona border this summer, from thirst, heat exposure and other problems. The Border Patrol said there were 135 known deaths between Oct. 1, 2002 and early September 2003, with the bulk of those occurring in the summer. Combined figures from the different Mexican consulates in the state put the number at 152. And it is likely that many deaths went unreported.

During the winter, more will freeze to death after being caught in sub-freezing temperatures and rain.

Simcox claims that he and the other Civil Homeland Defense (CHD) members who patrol the desert several times a week are trying to "save lives."

"When we see a group of immigrants, we shine a light on them and say, 'Alto, por favor, sientense,' ("stop, please, sit down.')," said Simcox, 42, who came to Tombstone from LA, where he was a teacher at a private elementary school. "Usually they sit down. Sometimes the young males run, and we let them run. This is community service as well as political activism. We have a lot of compassion for these people, especially the women and children."

Simcox's group then calls the Border Patrol, who usually come fairly quickly. Once they come, the immigrants are taken to a nearby detention center, processed, and usually deported back across the border within 48 hours.

Simcox says his group has apprehended 1,750 immigrants between November 2002 and September 2003, including many Mexicans from Puebla and the southern state of Chiapas as well as Brazilians, Poles and people of other nationalities.

"This summer we encountered 40 plus Chinese with a Mexican smuggler over here," he said, referring to a certain part of the desert as his truck rumbles by. "It's well known that it's an easy ticket into America."

While Simcox touts the number of lives his group has saved, immigrants' rights advocates describe Simcox's group and other civilian patrol groups, like Glenn Spencer's American Border Patrol, which also operates in the area, and Jack Foote's Ranch Rescue based in Abilene, Texas, as vigilante groups who hate immigrants and aren't afraid to take the law into their own hands, sometimes with violent results.

"These vigilante groups chase people with dogs, threaten people with guns, and beat people," said Isabel Garcia, a legal aid lawyer in Tucson and a leader of Derechos Humanos, a human rights and immigrants' rights group. "We first encountered them in the '70s and '80s, but now they've begun to band together. They issued a declaration to the feds saying if you don' take control of the border, we will, and blood will be shed."

Members of Foote's group have been accused of detaining, torturing and shooting immigrants. On May 29, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and MALDEF (the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund) aided six Mexican and Salvadoran migrants in filing a lawsuit against five ranchers or Ranch Rescue members who are accused of imprisoning, violently assaulting, threatening and robbing them. Foote, a Gulf War veteran and perhaps the most virulent of the high-profile vigilantes, has referred to Mexicans as "dog turds" in articles published in local media. (Foote was further quoted as saying Mexicans are "ignorant, uneducated and desperate for a life in a decent nation because the one they live in is nothing but a pile of dog shit made up of millions of little dog turds”).

Spencer, meanwhile, has installed at least 27 sensors in the ground near the border, which set off alarms in his Sierra Vista home whenever immigrants (or Border Patrol agents or cattle for that matter) walk over them. He has cameras set up to film the immigrants, and posts the images on the internet. He has stated that his goal is to have 500 sensors in place, at a cost of about $350,000, and to purchase an unmanned aerial drone to photograph and locate immigrants. (The Border Patrol has also announced plans to use the unmanned drones, which have been used heavily by the military in Iraq and other recent wars.)

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which lists the patrol groups as hate groups, has documented almost 40 incidents since 1999 in Cochise County alone (which includes Tombstone and the area Simcox ‘patrols’) in which immigrants were illegally detained, and at least five cases where they were shot or beaten. The SPLC's June 2003 Intelligence Report notes that in October 2002, 35 heavily armed members of Ranch Rescue conducted a hunt for migrants in southeastern Arizona and were investigated in connection with the murder of an immigrant near Red Rock, Ariz., where two masked gunmen opened fire on a group of 12 immigrants napping by a pond. In May, the Border Action Network kicked off a campaign to locate "victims of vigilante violence," noting that Mexican consulates in Arizona had taken reports of 29 incidents of violence against immigrants in the first four months of 2003.

Simcox, 42, started CHD in October 2002 after working as a hired security guard for ranchers and even as a gunslinger in the re-enactments for tourists of the battle of the OK Corral.

In August, Mexican officials demanded an investigation of an Aug. 1 incident in which Simcox and other CHD members held 29 immigrants at gunpoint. None of the detainees would testify, however, so no charges were filed.

Simcox maintained that the immigrants mistook their walkie talkies for guns. However, the members of Simcox's patrol do carry side arm pistols in holsters on their hips, which is fully legal in Arizona. And there are plenty of clues that Simcox and his cohorts aren't exactly fond of immigrants. There is an upside-down Mexican flag pinned to the wall in the small desert office that CHD operates out of, with hand-lettered signs saying No Invasion and No Drugs and a God Bless America sticker on the window. One member of the group, who is known as Two Gun, wears a Savage Nation hat, referring to far right wing shock jock Michael Savage.

A dry erase board in the office notes a complaint made by an immigrant who felt his civil rights were violated, rights that he "just acquired after squeezing under the border fence," the board says.

As the group gets ready to go out on patrol on a Friday evening in September, dressed largely in camouflage or hunting gear, Simcox, wearing a bulletproof vest, says, "Where's the rescue water? It's been a warm day, we need at least two gallons."

The other members don't seem too concerned about finding the water; when only one gallon is found, one jokes, "Oh well, I guess some of them will just have to die."

Simcox has also publicly defended two men charged with detaining a group of immigrants at gunpoint and assaulting them on July 31, 2003. The group included three children and a 16-year-old smuggler.

Simcox is the editor and owner of The Tombstone Tumbleweed, a local newspaper with all headlines printed in the same Old West font that adorns most of the storefronts and signs in Tombstone. Simcox says he spent all his retirement savings to buy the paper, which bills itself as the voice of "The Town Too Tough To Die," to have an outlet to alert the public about the immigration problem. And every issue of the 12-page paper is dominated by the immigration debate, with a strange mix of concern at the labor exploitation and deaths of immigrants along with what can only be labeled as anti-immigrant sentiment. In countless interviews with the press, Simcox has demonstrated a similar schizophrenia—his published quotes range from denunciations of employers who exploit immigrants and declarations of support for hardworking immigrants to outbursts that "They are evil people," as he said in an interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"They are hardcore criminals," he is quoted as saying in the SPLC Spring 2003 Intelligence Report. "They have no problem slitting your throat and taking your money or selling drugs to your kids or raping your daughters."

In the July 10, 2003 issue of the Tumbleweed, Simcox issues a "call to arms" for citizens to join him in patrolling the border.

"Where is Uncle Sam when you need him?" the paper asks. "Powerful government officials unable to solve border problems. More citizens needed to assist border patrol. Civil Homeland Defense recruiting new volunteers. Help save lives during the summer of '03."

The September 18 issue of the paper has a front page story about increases in drug smuggling across the border, a story about an anti-immigration protest in North Carolina, and letters defending Simcox—"If a man has the guts to put his livelihood on the line for a cause, by golly shouldn't you be able to stop worrying what your neighbors might think about you?" writes Carmen Mercer. "And Corporate America, you are not helping your country by being greedy and paying cheap labor to illegal immigrants! You are taking away jobs from our own people who have had the education to fill these spots."

(Never mind that “these spots” are mainly low-wage jobs in agriculture, meatpacking, landscaping and industry that most US citizens are unwilling to do, education or no.)

After parking their trucks and jeeps off a dirt trail near the spot where they will set up their patrol for the night, the CHD members point out scores of footprints in the dust and the empty water bottles and other scraps of trash the migrants have left behind.

Among other things, Simcox says, the migrants cause environmental destruction, a charge echoed by many environmentalists, particularly in this part of the country, who take anti-immigration stances even though they may be to the left of center on other issues.

"They go through national conservation areas, and you should see the environmental damage they leave," Simcox said. "Human feces, feminine sanitary napkins, diapers, these are biohazards."

This night Simcox's shift on patrol is quiet, despite the footprints that show many immigrants made their way through earlier in the day. The group theorizes that maybe coyotes (immigrant smugglers) are bringing their groups by in the early morning instead of the night, or maybe they have found a different route.

Simcox blasts President Bush and his immigration policy for allowing immigrants to keep crossing the border illegally. He would like to see the border completely sealed off with thousands of military police and a support staff of thousands of volunteers like himself.

"It's embarrassing that the greatest super power in the world can't stop poor immigrants from breaking into our country," he said. "National security is a joke. It's obvious that there's economic oppression going on in Mexico, and it's gotten worse since NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). But we're caught in the middle. The American taxpayer is not supposed to be the social welfare system for all of Mexico. This is a tax revolt."

Open Commerce, Open Borders

Isabel Garcia and other immigrants' rights advocates in the Tucson area and around the country are also no fans of Bush's immigration policy. But they have a far different solution in mind than Simcox. They want to see the millions of undocumented immigrants who labor for low wages often in unsafe conditions in the US to be given legal residency and full workers' rights. They would also like to see an opening and liberalization of the borders, which seems only natural given that NAFTA and other free trade measures have virtually obliterated any restrictions on the flow of commerce across borders.

"We're living a human tragedy here at the border," said Garcia. "Everyone knows about the Berlin Wall, but we lose more people every year at the US-Mexico border than in the entire history of the Berlin Wall, and it seems like no one knows about it. These are horrible, unnecessary deaths. People have to go through a deadly obstacle course to pick our fruit and make our clothes."

Immigrants started streaming into Arizona in the mid-1990s, after the borders in Texas and California were heavily secured through Operation Gatekeeper in California, Operation Hold the Line in the El Paso area and Operation Rio Grande in South Texas. These operations included the militarization of the borders with increased numbers of agents and high tech surveillance technology, as well as the literal building of walls, many times out of surplus military steel.

In 2002, 40 percent of the Border Patrol's apprehensions were in Arizona, according to the agency. There is a steel wall along the Mexico-Arizona border in the southeastern part of the state, driving migrants into the rough mountainous terrain and harsh weather of the state's West Desert corridor, which is in roughly the center of the state.

While the smugglers and the media often blame the coyotes—(smugglers) for the deaths of immigrants crossing the border, immigrants and immigration advocates place the blame firmly on US immigration policy, which bolsters an economy dependent on immigrant labor and yet supports a border policy which makes crossing so deadly.

Robin Hoover, pastor of the First Christian Church in Tucson, has dedicated his life to "taking death out of the immigration equation," as he is fond of saying.

In various spots throughout the desert one can see tattered blue flags waving against an equally blue sky, thanks to a group called Humane Borders that Hoover helped found. Below the flags are one to three 65-gallon tanks painted bright blue with the word "Agua" (Water) and a sticker showing the big dipper constellation filled with water and the words "Fronteras Compasivas" (Humane Borders). For the past three years, Hoover's life has revolved around these water tanks, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Hoover, a friendly Texas native who is always quick with a laugh and a slightly off-color joke, first got involved with immigration issues while working at the country's largest processing center for asylum seekers in Los Fresnos.

When he heard about all the people dying crossing the border, he realized his mission was to stop the deaths. He met with a group of other concerned people in June 2000 at the Quaker meeting house in Pima County, "on Pentecost Sunday," Hoover said.

"We asked what we could do to provide humanitarian assistance to the people crossing the desert, and what can we do to change the policies pushing them there in the first place," he said. "We decided to put water in the desert, and to organize to change the policies of the INS and Border Patrol."

The group got permission to place his first two tanks in the Organ Pipe National Monument in March 2001, thanks to the support of two park rangers, Bill Wellman and Dale Thompson, whom he calls "angels."

That spring Humane Borders, based out of the First Christian Church in Tucson where Hoover is the pastor, was petitioning the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge to place tanks there. In April, permission was denied. Then on May 23, 14 bodies were found less than a mile from the proposed site of the tanks. The dead were part of a group of 26 migrants who had been trekking through the desert for three days without water. A $42 million wrongful death lawsuit filed by the victims' families against the US Department of the Interior is still pending in federal court. That incident catapulted the border deaths issue, and Humane Borders, into the national media spotlight, and the project took off.

"It exploded like a bag of popcorn," Hoover said.

Now there are tanks in 44 locations in Cochise, Pima, Tucson and Yuma counties. The interfaith organization boasts over 30 member groups, and Hoover and his wife Sue, who quit her job as an administrator at the University of Arizona to help run Humane Borders, are assisted by an army of volunteers ranging from high school and college students to senior citizens. At least one group treks out every single day during the summer months to check on and refill the tanks, driving one of the group's three hefty white pickup trucks outfitted with water tanks, a motorized pump and the ever-present Big Dipper logo on the side. Hoover says tht since their inception, 250 volunteers have contributed 2,245 hours delivering 2,200 gallons of water.

On a Saturday in September, Mike Wilson drove several volunteers to the Little Wrench and Trico tank sites near the Saguaro National Monument park. Wilson is a member of the Tohono O'odham nation, an Indian reservation which straddles about 75 miles of the US-Mexico border east of Tucson and Nogales. The Trico and Little Wrench tanks sit right next to the mangled barbed wire fence which designates the start of the reservation.

Currently the reservation is the most popular place for immigrants to cross the border, likely because of the relatively low presence of Border Patrol agents there along with the stepped up Border Patrol and vigilante presence at other parts of the border. The Baboquivari Trail, as the corridor running through the reservation is known, is often called a Trail of Death because of the high number of fatalities there. Tribal officials estimate that 1,500 people cross the reservation every day. In the summer of 2002 there were 86 deaths on the reservation, tribal officials reported, and in 2003 there appeared to be just as many or more.

But in disputes which have frequently been played out in the local media, the Tohono O'odham leadership refuse to allow water stations on their land. As a legally sovereign nation they don't want outside interference; they didn't even allow Border Patrol on the reservation until several years ago. They also say the water tanks might encourage even more migration. Leaders of the nation say they are desperately overwhelmed by the influx, with the need for police and hospital services created by the immigrants overwhelming their already cash-strapped community. They also lament the fact that tribal youth are being recruited to participate in drug and human smuggling, and that drug use has increased as a result.

"When they're offering money some youth will get caught up in that," said Wilson, who is both a pastor, special education teacher in training and 21-year veteran of the US military in the Special Forces. He grew up in Ajo, a defunct copper mining town not far from the reservation.

Since Humane Borders is barred from the reservation, Wilson has taken to carrying out his own water operation. Several times a week he gets up before 5 a.m. to drive his own pickup truck near the seven sites he maintains, then he uses a wheel barrow to haul multiple one-gallon jugs of water to the sites. The goal is for immigrants to take the jugs with them, and he gets new ones donated from church members. During the summer he finds that people usually take 70 to 80 gallons a week. He noted that in mid-September he went with a young woman from the reservation to look at the spot where she had just found a migrant's body. The young man died just three miles from one of Wilson's water stations.

"The body was found at mile 24, and I have stations at mile 20 and mile 27," he said.

On this September day, when the heat has climbed to the high 90s before 10 a.m., the tanks at Little Wrench, sitting below the seemingly watchful eye of a thick saguaro cactus, are still full. But at Trico, a dusty drive off-road under a row of power lines, the three tanks are about half empty. Near them a gray van seat sits primly below a cholla cactus. Wilson notes that finding car and van seats in the area is common, since the smugglers who pick up migrants often tear them out of vehicles to make room to jam in more people.

Along with filling up the water tanks, the Humane Borders volunteers pick up trash left by the migrants, including countless empty water bottles, food wrappers, discarded clothes and other personal items. Hoover maintains a display of some of these items in clear plastic cubes: a package of Boots Mexican cigarettes, La India brand canned meat, a can opener, a baby's shoe, an empty bottle of Jimador tequila, a kerosene lantern with "Antony" written on it. The display has a chilling effect, inevitably bringing to mind the physical and mental states of the immigrants as they used and discarded these items.

The display serves as part of the public relations campaign that has helped Humane Borders bring the issue of migrant deaths and immigration policy problems to a national audience. Hoover has been featured in almost every major national media outlet, including an appearance on the Phil Donahue Show, where he debated American Border Patrol head Glenn Spencer. He says that overall, public support for the program, both locally and nationally, has been high. But they do have their critics. A number of the water stations have been vandalized (one in Cochise County, where CHD operates, had to be discontinued because it was vandalized so many times). And even worse, state legislators are discussing a proposed ballot initiative that would end county and state funding to organizations giving aid to undocumented immigrants. If passed, this would cut off the $25,000 a year the group receives from Pima County.

There are several other immigrants' rights and humanitarian groups working along this stretch of the border. Humane Borders shares its gathering spot in the parking lot of the First Christian Church with the group Samaritan Patrol, which was formed in July 2002 by nine faith communities. The Samaritans do regular patrols of the desert looking for migrants in need, and provide them with food, water, first aid, blankets and other supplies. The group BorderLinks and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) also operate in the area.

Casualties Continue to Mount

July 2003 was the deadliest month on record for immigrants crossing through Arizona, with at least 50 deaths. Recently the Border Patrol started an operation aimed at saving lives, called Operation Safeguard. The operation includes the use of 20 rescue beacons with call buttons for agents, two helicopters and 150 additional agents trained in rescue and first aid. Border Patrol statistics showed that as of late July the effort had likely contributed to an estimated 3 percent decrease in numbers of people trying to cross, but deaths were up nonetheless, with an average of 1.7 dead each day in July 2003.

In Tucson, activist Isabel Garcia notes that immigrants' rights advocates are also embroiled in a fight to prevent the Border Patrol and Department of Homeland Security from building a wall, in some places two walls, that combined with the existing wall in the western part of the state would effectively seal off most of the Arizona-Mexico border. In October 2002 the Border Patrol released a proposal for over 200 miles of fences, roads and 24-hour stadium lights along the border.

A coalition called Bring Down the Wall was formed to fight it, and the Border Patrol backed off the plan after getting thousands of letters in opposition. Border Patrol facilities director Jim Caffrey told the Tucson Citizen that the agency got "a little carried away" with the plan, and said it was more infrastructure than the state would need even in case of a war with Mexico.

While immediate plans for the wall have been shelved, Garcia is afraid the government will end up constructing it "piecemeal, like they always do, so people aren't aware of what they're doing until it's too late."

Garcia says that looking at the walls along the border in other parts of Arizona, she gets a sensation which mirrors the one Simcox and his friends are playing out with their camouflage gear, sidearms and walkie talkies.

"We should be grateful to the Mexican people," she said. "But you stand next to this wall, and there's no other feeling you get except we're at war."

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