RESERVATIONS POSE BORDER RISK

Potential U.S. Entry Through Indian Lands Raises Terror Alarms

TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION, Ariz. - Here in the shadeless valleys of the
Southwest, where the dust whips between patches of dry shrubs and
cactuses, the line between Mexico and the United States is a tattered
wire fence that pleases no one.

To the Tohono O'odham Indians, the fence is an arbitrary marker that
bars them from moving freely across ancestral land that long ago
extended into Mexico. To the U.S. government, the fence is symbolic of
a glaring weakness in its war on terrorism.

As U.S. officials worried about terrorists tighten security at ports
and borders, they have become concerned about the more than 20
American Indian reservations that line hundreds of miles of the
borders with Canada and Mexico. Neither the U.S. Border Patrol nor any
other state or federal agency has jurisdiction to patrol Indian lands
without permission.

The lands are often desolate and remote. But in recent years, a rising
number of smugglers and illegal immigrants have taken advantage of
such reservations to travel, virtually unnoticed, into the United
States. Here on the Tohono O'odham reservation, U.S. officials say,
more than 1,000 cross into the country each day.

Law enforcement officials who had never given much thought to the
Indian reservations on the borders are suddenly horrified by the idea
that terrorists could sneak through these reservations and into the
country with a four-wheel-drive vehicle, a snowmobile, or even just a
backpack and bottle of water.

"I woke up one morning shortly after Sept. 11 and said to myself, 'I
don't know how many of these tribes are on the border, but I know
there are a lot,'" said James W. Ziglar, commissioner of the
Immigration and Naturalization Service. "I knew we were going to have
to increase border security" at the reservations.

Ziglar said he and other officials regard the Indian tribes not as a
hindrance but as key allies in helping to seal the U.S. border against
terrorists.

"This is a grand opportunity to reach out to Indian tribes, who have
been segregated from our society, and integrate them into our society
and really make them feel part of the American experience," Ziglar
said, "because they have a very significant role in the protection of
this country."

U.S. officials have launched a broad effort to try to forge closer
ties with the tribes. Representatives of 19 reservations accepted
invitations to a conference last month in Washington that focused on
border security. Federal officials also have sent liaisons to talk
with tribe members. In those meetings, officials have urged the tribes
to lift curbs that limit patrols of Indian land by U.S. border agents.

So far, the path to collaboration has been anything but easy. Many
American Indian groups have gone to these discussions with age-old
stories of abuse and deceit at the hands of the U.S. government. To
some, the idea of welcoming federal agents to roam their land at will
is all but unthinkable.

Last month, Attorney General John Ashcroft told a meeting of American
Indian leaders, "We must establish permanent formal relations" with
Indian tribes "in order to secure the safety and security of all Americans."

But one tribal elder likened the process to trying to cross a river
where there has never been a bridge.

The issue is sensitive for the Tohono O'odham, who also go by the name
of Papago. In the early 1990s, when the number of illegal immigrants
crossing the reservation began soaring, the Tohono O'odham opened
their lands to more border agents. Tighter immigration policies had
effectively shut down the borders near San Diego, Calif., and El Paso,
Texas, so droves of illegal immigrants went looking for new entryways
across the desert.

The Tohono O'odham's ancestral lands have been desecrated by the waves
of people, who leave trash and trample vegetation. Their homes have
been left vulnerable to break-ins by travelers so hungry and thirsty
that dust cakes the crevices of their lips.

The reservation also has become a magnet for drug haulers. The Tohono
O'odham Police Department seizes more drugs each year than any other
local police department in the country. Last year, the department
confiscated 43,000 pounds of marijuana from smugglers.

But although the Border Patrol has helped stymie some of the traffic,
many Tohono O'odham complain of patrol agents who stop them three or
four times a day, mistaking them for immigrants and demanding U.S.
identification, which nation members do not have. Some also contend
that the Border Patrol's vehicles do more damage than illegal
immigrants do.

The tribe is divided about evenly between those willing to work with
the Border Patrol and those who reject the notion that a government
can impede people's movement across borders or any other land. Many
Tohono O'odham members feed and offer water to the immigrants making
the three-to four-day journey across the desert.

"The Border Patrol and the nation have come a long way," Henry Ramon,
vice chairman of the nation, said recently. "We have tried to make
them more aware of our cultural sensitivities, our sacred sites and
our beliefs - that the plants, trees, the cactus, the wildlife and the
universe are all interconnected. They cannot just come in and think
this is their land."

From a hill overlooking one of the Tohono O'odhams' many desert
valleys, police Chief Lawrence Seligman watches with night-vision
goggles as streams of illegal immigrants wind around the dry shrubs
and head toward state Route 86, where vans wait to carry them to jobs
picking vegetables or washing dishes. Each year, more men, women and
children try to cross.

"It's common knowledge in Mexico that this is the place to go,"
Seligman said. "In light of Sept. 11, if the concern is protecting the
border, this part of the U.S. border has a lot of illegal traffic.

"Those who are a direct threat, if they chose to, could more easily
cross here than many other areas to get into the country," he said.

Other Indian nations have been less willing to open their
reservations. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, which lines the border with
Canada, has declined the government's request to patrol its land.

That reservation, called Akwesasne, is but a dot on the map in upstate
New York. Yet over the past decade, a rising number of smugglers,
carrying drugs and human cargo, have sought to enter the United States
through the tribe's land and waterways to evade tighter patrols elsewhere.

In 1998, in the tribe's first attempt at working with federal law
enforcement, officials broke up a smuggling ring that was bringing 150
Chinese into the country each month. Despite that success, the tribe
won't let the U.S. government patrol its lands.

Rowena General, chief of staff for the Mohawks, said the tribe has no
history of trust with the U.S. government. Many tribal elders recall
decades past when, they argue, local and federal authorities would
harass them and juries would convict them for crimes simply because
they were Indians.

"Not by any means are we inviting federal agencies to come into our
territory and police our communities," General said.

The tribe appreciates the U.S. government's new emphasis on guarding
the border, General said, and suggests that federal agencies train the
Mohawk Nation's police force so it could patrol the border - which
some U.S. officials said they are willing to do.

Part of the difficulty in finding a solution to border security is
that the 21 reservations on the country's borders - and four others
that are within miles of a border - embody cultural experiences as
disparate as the lands they inhabit.

"They are each individual entities," said Robert Harris, an associate
chief of the U.S. Border Patrol who organized last month's conference.
"There is no cookie-cutter approach.

"It's an area of vulnerability. You've got a million people streaming
across the border each year unchecked," many coming across reservation
lands, he said. "Yes, most are only coming across for a better way of
life, but it only takes one [terrorist]."

Next to the Tohono O'odham reservation, at the Border Patrol station
in Nogales, Ariz., agents said they see mostly Mexican nationals
trying to cross. But, said Ben Johnson, a Border Patrol agent, over
the past several years they have also caught people from Chile and
Bolivia, as well as several from the Middle East.

Down in the desert, where the cactuses look like beacons calling
people home, it's hard to imagine a band of terrorists ducking under
the shrubbery and carrying gallon jugs of water, as illegal immigrants
do each day.

Yet Ramon, the vice chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation,
acknowledges that the threat exists. And so long as the federal
government respects the tribe's way of life, he said, it will do what
it can to aid the U.S. mission.

"The world is changing," he said. "We're scared, too."