On this part of the American-Mexican frontier the number of smugglers is growing fast. Massive Border Patrol operations partly staunched the flow of illegal immigrants into Texas and California, but that just funneled more into Arizona. The drug smugglers went with the current. In January alone, the Border Patrol recorded more than 70,000 apprehensions of illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into Arizona. The Customs Service can’t be sure how many smugglers were among them, but the amount of dope captured in Arizona during fiscal 1999 shows how big the problem has become: 11,249 pounds of cocaine, almost 3,000 more than in 1998; 168,000 pounds of marijuana, up 55,000 pounds; and $13.2 million in currency, more than five times as much as in 1998. In 1999 U.S. Customs arrested 1,130 people on drug charges, most of them along the border and almost all illegal immigrants.
The ramshackle border town of Douglas, Ariz. (population: 18,000), sees as many as 3,100 illegals go through every 24 hours. It’s become a warren of constantly changing stash houses for drug shipments. Douglas bustles with informers and spies, and the criminals keep the Customs agents there under surveillance. They know the agents’ houses, routines, even the color of their kids’ bicycles. “I cannot go out with my wife shopping at the Safeway without seeing someone I’ve arrested, someone I’m about to arrest or an informer,” says U.S. Customs Special Agent Lee Morgan II, who carries a pistol on his person and an M-16 in his pickup.
The town may be up for grabs, but out in the desert the Customs Service is having some real success, mainly thanks to its 19 Native American trackers. Men like Bryan Nez, 45, who has been tracking since he was 9, and Eleando, a 24-year veteran of the Customs Service, patrol a 175-mile stretch of the border that runs through the empty expanses of the Tohono O’Odham Indian reservation. They travel light, with an MP-5 submachine gun, a pocketful of hard candy, a two-way radio and a global positioning device so they can call in backup Blackhawk helicopters. Before starting out, they check the direction of the wind and study the sun. “At noon it’s hard to track,” say Eleando; “all that sand shines up at you.” Smugglers may mask their footprints only to be given away by their smoking habits. Eleando has tracked people down just with his sense of smell. “What really gets them,” he says, “is when we find them at night.”
The smugglers’ trails are distinctive because they carry heavy loads. Their feet dig deeper into the sandy ground. They need to take breaks, and trackers look for places where drug-laden knapsacks have been set down. Still, the smugglers learn fast. Informants read the police reports detailing how smugglers were captured. Loose carpet fibers are a clue? They switch to higher-quality shag that doesn’t shed as much. The smugglers now rest by passing knapsacks from person to person, never laying them on the ground. They backtrack, they walk in circles and they have the luxury of vast expanses of empty terrain.
But here in the desert, where technology has its limits, the ability to read the sand still gives these Customs officers an edge. “You need a lot of patience,” says Eleando, but there are rewards. “I like the look of astonishment and surprise when I tap them on the shoulder,” he says.
