Tohono O'Odham: Dealing With Border

Smugglers Pathway

Clandestine Movement Of Drugs, People Engulfs Area

Smugglers are endangering this border village and much of the Tohono
O'odham Nation by tempting residents with cash for helping move people and
drugs, residents say.

The creeping corruption has even overcome some children, who have dropped
out of school to join the smugglers' payroll as spies, said resident Ray
Mattia.

"These kids get paid a lot of money to watch the roads for them. They sit
on the mountains over here," Mattia said, waving to a range east of this
village, which is about 100 miles southwest of Tucson.

The same temptations that have co-opted some Menagers Dam residents are
available across this vast reservation west of Tucson, which has a 75-mile
border with Mexico, said residents and law-enforcement officers. It is the
hottest area in Arizona for illegal border crossings, and marijuana
seizures are at a record pace on the reservation this year.

Apprehensions of illegal entrants made by the two Border Patrol stations
that serve the Tohono O'odham Nation nearly doubled in the first six months
of this year over the same period last year, rising from 34,522 to 60,270.

Marijuana seizures way up

In the first nine months of this fiscal year, U.S. Customs Service agents
working on the nation have seized more marijuana than in all of last fiscal
year, 94,956 pounds compared with 76,285 pounds last year.

"That is a hotbed of activity out there," said Kyle Barnette, associate
special agent in charge of customs' Tucson office.

Increases in smuggling activity anywhere create an increased demand for
certain services from local residents, said Carlos X. Carrillo, assistant
chief of the Border Patrol's Tucson sector. Smugglers are willing to pay
locals for stashing illegal entrants or drug loads in their houses, for
driving people or drugs across the border or into the interior, and for spying.

Unemployed people are especially vulnerable to the suggestion, Carrillo
said. The Tohono O'odham Nation has an unemployment rate of about 25
percent, Chairman Edward D. Manuel said. It also suffers from social ills
such as alcoholism, he said.

"There's a lot of people who are willing to do anything - money is the
issue," said Wilbert Thomas Sr., a rancher in Vamori, a village about 60
miles southwest of Tucson, who has been overrun by border crossers. "They
want the easy money."

A cash incentive

In the most recent marijuana-smuggling case to come out of Menagers Dam,
two local men said they were planning to split the $500 they were to be
paid for stashing 320 pounds of marijuana in a house, according to a
criminal complaint filed against them June 6. One man, Tony L. Mattia (a
distant cousin of Ray) said on a financial affidavit that he has nine
dependents and hasn't worked since 2000. The other man, Felix F. Aguila,
said on a financial affidavit that he hadn't held a job since 1972. Both
have pleaded not guilty.

On July 28, Border Patrol agents arrested two Sells residents who were
transporting five siblings, including three children under age 9, in the
trunk of a Dodge Stratus, according to a criminal complaint filed against
them. The driver, Leigh C. Miguel, told agents she was to be paid $800 for
the trip, and front-seat passenger Norman J. Johnson said he was expecting
to make "beer money," the complaint said. They too have pleaded not guilty.

Teen took up with smuggler

Young women in Menagers Dam have faced temptations beyond money, said
resident Katherine Moreno, 64. Smugglers have professed their love, then
moved into the village with the women, then used their houses for smuggling
people or drugs, she said.

One 18-year-old village resident, Trinette Buterbaugh, took up with a young
smuggler from Mexico two months ago, then disappeared across the
international line, said her grandmother, Juanita Mattia, who is Ray's aunt.

"She left her newborn baby," said Mattia, 72.

The last time Buterbaugh was seen in Menagers Dam, she was in a pickup that
came north up the 3/4-mile, sandy road that connects the village to Mexico,
then turned back, apparently checking the road for law- enforcement
vehicles, Juanita Mattia said.

"As a community council, we tried to kick these smugglers out, but that
didn't work because they have people who will defend them," Ray Mattia said.

What has convinced smugglers to move to the Tohono O'odham Nation and
adjacent lands is the focus that the Border Patrol has put on other
Southern Arizona corridors, near Nogales, Douglas and Naco, Carrillo said.
The "west desert," as the patrol calls the area between Sasabe and Yuma
County, is comparatively unguarded.

"You've got some Border Patrol presence, but not a lot, and some of our
presence but not a lot," said Barnette of customs agents. "The smugglers
have just been taking advantage of our weaknesses."

Vast area to patrol

The Tohono O'odham police have 48 of their 71 officers assigned to patrol
the reservation, an area the size of Connecticut, acting chief Richard
Saunders said. The department has tried to avoid becoming an enforcer of
immigration laws while at the same time responding to community calls about
illegal entrants or drug smugglers.

To Ray Mattia and other residents of Menagers Dam, the nation's police
haven't been patrolling the western parts of the reservation enough.

"I feel there's no protection here," Mattia said. "We either go to the
Border Patrol or protect ourselves."

Saunders told a hearing in Gu Vo last week, "We're doing the best we can
with the limited number of people we have."

He and the nation's director of public safety, Richard Clifton, noted that
officers may be doing work there that residents don't notice, and that
residents do not always learn the results of investigations in their areas.

subhead here

The solution, tribal chairman Manuel said, lies in improving roads and
fences along the international border on the Tohono O'odham Nation.

"We're trying to get Border Patrol to deploy on the international boundary
so they can deter the drug smugglers and illegal aliens that are coming
through," Manuel said.

The Border Patrol is limited not just by its numbers but also by the fact
that the international boundary established in 1854 cuts across traditional
O'odham lands.

System of informal crossings

Under federal law, agents can make tribal members go to the official ports
of entry at Lukeville or Sasabe, rather than crossing the border through
unofficial border gates on the reservation. But for years agents have
allowed tribal members to pass through the gates after questioning them on
their tribal status and travel plans, agents said.

"It's up to the agent's discretion to use a little common sense," said
Edward "Bud" Tuffly, president of the Border Patrol agents' union local in
Southern Arizona.

Tribal members working for the smugglers have taken advantage of that
informal system, Ray Mattia said.

"They would come to the border, drop all their people (illegal border
crossers) off, come through, and have their people walk around," Mattia said.

Saunders, the nation's acting police chief, said tribal members make up a
small minority of smugglers working on the reservation, most of whom are
from Mexico or other parts of Arizona. Of 138 drug arrests his department
has made since the beginning of the year, 35 were of tribal members, he said.

Role of tribal members unclear

What's unclear is how many of the nation's approximately 17,000 residents
have helped smugglers. The main police forces arresting smugglers of people
and drugs on the nation are federal agencies, and they said they do not
keep records of how many tribal members are among the people they arrest or
prosecute.

Even if they did, that figure might be misleading because a traffic stop of
a vehicle containing illegal entrants does not necessarily lead to a
prosecution or even an arrest.

"We'd stop tribal members all the time with 10 or 15 people in the car.
We'd call Border Patrol, and they wouldn't do anything. They would say the
U.S. Attorney's Office won't prosecute," said Joseph A. Patterson, a former
tribal police officer.

Patterson said he was fired in June 2001 after he punctured the tires of a
vehicle parked at Little Tucson, in an effort to keep people- smugglers
from using it.

"There are a whole lot of people stopped down there with illegal aliens who
over the long run are not prosecuted for smuggling," said John M. France,
who was the patrol agent in charge of the Border Patrol's Casa Grande
station from October 1995 until February last year.

LImited number of prosecutions

Casa Grande agents patrol much of the Tohono O'odham Nation.

France, who is now the deputy chief of the patrol's Detroit sector, said
the reason for the limited prosecutions was that federal prosecutors had
such large caseloads they could accept only strong cases.

"The U.S. Attorney's Office vigorously prosecutes alien-smuggling cases,"
said office spokeswoman Camilla Strongin. But she acknowledged each case is
accepted or rejected on its own merits.

During the first five months of this year, the U.S. Attorney's Office in
Tucson filed 144 alien-smuggling cases. Over the same period, agents of the
Border Patrol's Tucson sector apprehended 187,583 people. That's one
smuggling case per 1,303 apprehensions.

Sudden change in lifestyle

Residents of the tiny, isolated villages that dot the Tohono O'odham Nation
say they know when a neighbor has gone to work for smugglers, with or
without an arrest. Involvement tends to run in families, and it often
becomes apparent through their activities, said Delma Garcia, of Hickiwan,
a village in the northwestern reservation.

"Every few months someone will be driving a new car - and they don't have a
job," Garcia said.

Some face threats

To those residents who aren't co-opted by money, the smugglers issue
threats. In the days after April 7, when U.S. Customs Service agents seized
8,500 pounds of marijuana from a Menagers Dam home, a man came into town
from Mexico waving a rifle and threatening residents whom he suspected of
informing. His targets included 64-year-old Katherine Moreno, she said.

"I told him to go back and tell these mafia people to hurry up and do
something before I shoot them," Moreno said.

She and other O'odham who speak out about smuggling among their own people
say they are breaking with O'odham custom by airing their complaints. But
they hope it is to a productive end.

"A lot of stuff is happening here, and people are not acknowledging it,"
Ray Mattia said.