Runnin’ the Border

                Running the Bo

     It’s been five long years since we moved away from the border. I miss it, but it’s still only 20 miles away. It is a wild and crazy place, full of contradictions. Cultures collide, then mix and sometimes even meld. People are sociable, opinionated and thorny as the Cholla cactus. One minute they are cussing the illegals, the next they complain about the Border Patrol as they pour salsa on their chorizo. Life is never dull. The Border Bandits we had in the beginning turned out to be from our side of the line. Life in our rural county attracts people that don’t like rules. Sagging trailers and falling down shacks sit within sight of mansions. Nobody cares. Life is as good as it will ever get for most.     Want to know more about life on the Arizona border? I figure I own about 80 miles of it between Naco and Nogales. Good country, full of adventure. My favorite way to run the border was on my dirt bike. I made it marginally street legal for the highway sections. Come along on one of my rides.

     Let’s start at Paul’s Spur, east of Naco. Limestone plant, CTI, whatever that stands for. You can wash the white dust off later, it’s just where you turn to hit the wall, err… border fence. This is one of the few places you can drive right beside the international border. About fifteen years ago the Feds put in a multimillion-dollar Bollard fence. It’s steel posts with concrete footers. For a while a couple of local welders were kept busy mending holes in it. Those battery-powered cut-off tools can get through the steel in a Hong Kong minute. Still, it’s easier to use a ladder or find a wash that can’t be fenced. The more agile simply climb it. In towns like Naco and Nogales, they tunnel under it. At least the “wall” keeps the 18 wheelers out. Five miles north of the border is Highway 80. If you stopped your van there in the 90’s, a half dozen illegals would have tried to jump in. There are dozens of Border Patrol Agents in the area. One on every ridge, plus untold numbers of electronic sensors. I always feel I’m being watched here, because I am.  Back in 2012 there was a big shootout in the hills between the border and the highway. Three agents checking on a sensor alert got in a shootout in the dark. One agent fired, hitting his partner. The third agent killed the shooter. We also lose a lot of agents due to off-duty accidents. One made the mistake of telling his drinking buddies in Cananea, Sonora where he worked. They dumped his body in the desert.

      About 8 miles down the road I hit the twin Nacos. Naco Sonora was the scene of numerous battles in the Mexican Revolution. In 1928, Naco Arizona gained the distinction of being the first American city to be bombed from the air. The tiny border crossing at Naco is a good place to cross. You never have to wait in line. The first person you meet on the Mexican side is a soldier with an M-16. He’s wearing a ski mask. He’ll rotate out in a week or so. They don’t want the cartel getting to him. The locals and the snowbirds go to Naco to get cheap prescriptions and dental work. Others go for the night life.

     In the old days, the Naco border fence was made out of recycled steel runway panels. I once watched a guy sitting on top of it one block from the border crossing. When the coast was clear, he signaled and two guys jumped over the fence. They ran to an abandoned car in someone’s back yard. The best use anyone in Naco ever found for the fence was the annual cross-border volleyball game. The Border Patrol officiated.

     Just west of Naco is a place you have all seen on TV news. John Ladd has a ranch there. No politician comes to Arizona without visiting his ranch for a photo op. Ladd may tell them a few tales about people crossing his land, but lately, they mostly get caught. Afterall, there are 900 agents stationed at the Brian Terry Station, hardly a mile away. You may remember Terry as the agent who was killed near Nogales in the botched “Fast and Furious” gun tracking episode in 2010. Critics of “Fast and Furious” completely lose sight of the fact that the project demonstrated that the Mexican cartels were arming themselves at Arizona gun shops.

     Nearby Bisbee, like all of the towns along the border, gets a lot of cross-border shoppers, eager to stimulate their economy. Every few months, Bisbee has an auction of seized vehicles. Human traffickers from across the line normally buy older cars in Arizona without bothering to register them. It can get a bit dicey if the former owner tries to reclaim the vehicle. Once, while drinking my morning coffee, I saw two unmarked trucks chasing a Cadillac across an irrigation ditch. It bounced to a stop in my neighbor’s yard after tearing out his fence. Five illegals bailed out, only to be quickly captured with the help of a helicopter. Bob, my neighbor, was fuming about who was going to pay for his fence. An agent ran a vehicle check and found that the car hadn’t been reported stolen. Since it landed on private property, Bob got to keep it. I bought it and my wife and daughter drove it for years. We called it “Cruella’s deVille.”

     On my way out of Naco, I pass a small remnant of the Mexican Revolutio0n. After Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico, General Pershing set up Camp Naco to secure this part of the border. Much of it still stands. Passing the camp, I head north toward Highway 92, cross it and enter the foothills of the Mule Mountains.  I can no longer follow the border because it is all private land and John Ladd doesn’t like people like me scaring his cattle. As I look back over my shoulder, I can see the ugly scar that is the rusting border fence crossing the valley. Picking my way through protruding rocks in the unimproved road, I feel less like I’m being watched. All the sensors and cameras are pointing back toward the border. Behind me is a flapping blue pennant denoting a water station. Thank you, good Samaritans. None of us want to see people dying in the desert. The agents who got filmed kicking over water jugs were thankfully not ours.

     About 20 years ago we were inundated with a force of militia-like border watchers. They came to show the government how to stop them damn Meskins. They brought enough weapons to start a small war. Luckily, they didn’t shoot anyone or cause any international incidents. (I saw a Mexican TV station interviewing a few of them across the border fence.) They happily waved at passing cars, not knowing that some of those waving back were probably illegal border crossers. (Amateurs can’t tell the difference.) The leader of the effort was Chris Simcox, publisher of the Tombstone Tumbleweed. He called his group the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. He used conservative media to hype the event. Not long after the event, Simcox was ousted from the organization he had formed. In 2016 he was convicted of child sex abuse. We still get small groups of self-appointed vigilantes monitoring the border. They claim they give intel to the Border Patrol, but they mostly just shoot up the local cacti. In 2016 an undercover reporter for Mother Jones infiltrated a camp of the Three Percent United Patriots on my route to Nogales. What he wrote was a bit unsettling.  I Went Undercover With a Border Militia. Here’s What I Saw. – Mother Jones

     O.K., let’s get back to the highway for a mile in order to cross the San Pedro River. The river flows north out of Mexico providing a natural highway for wildlife and, yes illegal border crossers. It is the only free-flowing river left in our part of Arizona. With its lazy flow and tall cottonwoods, it has the feel of an oasis. Birders love it. Beaver were returned to it in the ‘90’s. The riparian area is protected by the Bureau of Land Management and monitored by the Border patrol. Until recently, the BP did a good job of surveilling the river without damaging its sensitive eco-system. To impede vehicle traffic, they placed some huge boulders in the river bed and a steel rail fence on the bank. Sensors and cameras ensured that any illegal pedestrians were caught. That wasn’t enough for the Trump Administration. The government installed a huge Rube-Goldberg set of gates across the river. They failed to consult with the BLM, the county and apparently any hydrologists before erecting this monstrosity. We all expect one of our powerful monsoon rains to take it out any day. The resultant flash flood may wreak havoc downstream.

     Crossing the river, we now arrive at beautiful downtown Palominas where I lived for 21 years. Highway 92 runs parallel to the border here. It’s only three miles away. All of the hills and the big San Jose Mountain you see to the south are in Mexico. Coronado decided this was a good place to enter the U.S. in 1540. Perhaps the Apache should have asked him for his papers. The faith healer, A.A. Allen, set up the headquarters of his ministry here in 1958. He called it “Miracle Valley”. People came from all over to receive their healings from Allen. In 1970, Allen turned up dead in the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco. His followers had a hard time accepting that he died of alcohol abuse. One of Allen’s disciples started the Christ Miracle healing Center in Miracle Valley in the Eighties. Their cult-like behavior led to a big shootout with the Sherriff’s Department in 1982.  Two died at the scene and two others, including a Deputy Sherriff, died later from their injuries. Many of my neighbors witnessed the melee. Palominas is a weird place, but interesting.

     One of the fun things to do in Palominas is to watch car chases. An agent turned his cruiser over at our Cana Street turnoff once. He had run over the spikes thrown out for the guy he was pursuing. Another time we were sitting in the Morning Star Café when a truck with four blown tires slid into the parking lot barely missing my truck. The driver bailed out and started running. He didn’t get far. The truck, probably stolen in Phoenix, was full of bundles of marijuana. Sadly, illegal immigrants have caused a few fatal crashes as they try to outrun the law. In 2004, a crash near Sierra Vista killed six, including a local couple and injured another 22, all apparently border crossers.

     From Palominas, I head south on dirt roads approaching the border. When I hit Border Monument Road, I turn right following the border west. I pass Glenn Spencer’s “ranch”. Glenn is a retired Border Patrol Agent who feels like he needs to keep fighting the good fight. His small acreage sits right at the border. He runs an organization with the official-sounding name of The American Border Patrol. He used to get in trouble fairly often. One night he heard a noise and shot up his neighbor’s garage. Another time Air Force jets had to be scrambled when he overflew the international border. He also got caught with a prohibited weapon at nearby Coronado National Memorial. Lately, he seems to have reformed, concentrating on border surveillance technologies. He’s been trying to sell them to the Border Patrol.

     My next stop is Montezuma Pass at the southern end of the Huachuca Mountains. From here, I can see far into Mexico and for a long way along the border in both directions. At the foot of the mountains is the beginning of the Arizona Trail. The trail runs along the crest of the Huachucas before meandering off to the west. In the old days illegal entrants used to follow it to the various canyons on the east side of the mountains. There, they were picked up by smugglers, often American, who drove them north. These days, the Border Patrol has a significant number of agents and surveillance equipment at the pass. Nobody gets by and very few local hikers have ever followed the trail to its terminus the Utah line.

     About 15 miles to the north of Montezuma Pass is a tethered balloon called the Aerostat. Its radar can detect low-flying aircraft trying to sneak into the country. It has crashed three times that I know of. The last time it fell in someone’s back yard.

High above, an unmanned aerial vehicle looks for signs of smuggling. Years ago, I had a fixed wing Border Patrol aircraft circle me as I was loading landscape boulders into the back of my truck. I guess he thought they were bundles of weed. These days, the Border Patrol has a Blackhawk helicopter with a machine gun. (I have stopped collecting boulders in washes next to the border.)

     Well, I’ll stop at the pass, pausing to admire the beautiful, unspoiled San Raphael Valley to the west. I won’t make Nogales this time, but I can see the sacred Baoquivare Peak beyond the town. Don’t believe all the shit you hear on Fox News about the border. It truly is a wonderful place.

LDT Jun 26, ‘21