Border agents to tighten security
By Daniel Gonzalez, The Arizona Republic
Uniformed Border Patrol agents today will begin patrolling Sky Harbor International Airport, which federal immigration officials say is the nation’s most popular transportation hub for smuggling undocumented immigrants throughout the United States.
The crackdown is part of a larger effort by federal immigration officials to deter smugglers from transporting undocumented immigrants through Arizona during the hottest and most deadly months.
Officials also hope that the crackdown will help reduce the number of deaths of undocumented immigrants, as well as reducing smuggling-related violence against migrants.
Immigration officials estimate smugglers are transporting 200 to 300 undocumented immigrants a day through Sky Harbor, taking advantage of the airport’s proximity to the border, cheap airfares to cities in the East and access to a network of “drop houses” in Phoenix.
Since Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year, 52 migrants have died in the Arizona desert, including two women from Mexico who were found Thursday and Saturday on the Tohono O’odham Reservation, officials said.
In the past eight months, 13 murders in Maricopa and Pinal counties have been linked directly to organized smuggling of humans.
“The overall goal is to deter smuggling organizations from utilizing the airport,” said Thomas DeRouchey, newly appointed special agent in charge of the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Hopefully, the word will get out to smuggling organizations that they should not use Sky Harbor Airport to transport human cargo,” he said.
Dubbed “Operation Triple Strike,” the crackdown at the airport coincides with stepped-up enforcement on both sides of the border.
Last week, Robert Bonner, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, announced that two more helicopters and 200 more Border Patrol agents will be stationed along the Arizona border to help deter illegal immigration and prevent migrant deaths.
Last month, the Mexican government nabbed 27 suspected migrant smugglers, part of one of the largest crackdowns on immigrant smuggling south of the border. More than 400 smugglers sit in Mexican jails, officials said.
DeRouchey said 14 uniformed Border Patrol agents assigned to the Tucson sector will patrol Sky Harbor at least through the summer.
“Their uniforms send an immediate message,” DeRouchey said.
In addition, an additional 46 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including 20 agents who temporarily have been reassigned from elsewhere in the United States, will enforce immigration laws at Sky Harbor, DeRouchey said.
Michele Waslin, of the National Council of La Raza in Washington, D.C., applauded efforts to catch smugglers who prey on the desperation of undocumented immigrants.
But she said crackdowns like the one at Sky Harbor Airport do not address the root causes of illegal immigration and migrant smuggling, and may threaten the civil rights and liberties of innocent people.
“What is needed is a very comprehensive solution, and simply putting uniformed Border Patrol agents at an airport is not a comprehensive solution,” Waslin said.
She worries that the crackdown will mean civil rights violations as well, especially of Latinos.
“If they are going to stop people by their appearance or are just asking people for their documents by making assumptions based on their appearances or their surnames, then that’s racial profiling,” Waslin said.
DeRouchey said immigration enforcement officers will rely on intelligence gathering, observation, training and experience to catch migrant smugglers at Sky Harbor Airport.
“We don’t intend to inhibit legitimate travel,” DeRouchey said, adding that the crackdown “won’t be based on one’s race or color.” Migrant smuggling at the airport all but stopped after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. But immigration officials say they now are seeing an increase in those numbers at Sky Harbor.
That increase coincides with a rise in illegal immigration along the Arizona border, the nation’s most popular crossing for undocumented immigrants. “The traffic has increased to pre-9/11 days,” said Patricia Schmidt, assistant special agent in charge of the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Immigration enforcement officials also are targeting drop houses in the Phoenix area.
“That’s what we would anticipate seeing is an increase in the use of drop houses” as smugglers are cut off from using the airport to transport undocumented immigrants, DeRouchey said.