…with panels torn out of the roof to allow the human cargo to breathe, however uncomfortably, so they don’t die en masse of suffocation, as others have in the past. Just taking the photos gave me the creeps.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/05_31_10_02.jpg\" "\\"05_31_10_02\\"")
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I recently spent the better part of a sleep-deprived week in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona. The reduced snooze time was due to teaching a MAG-40 program that went ten to eleven hours of class and range time per day, and another couple hours per with staff prep before and staff debrief afterward. (It\u2019s an immersion course, 40-plus hours in four days, done over a weekend so more people can attend without burning a week of family vacation time.) Then, after class, it was time to drive to area law enforcement agencies and sit down with the cops on the sharp end of this whole Border Situation, and get the straight stuff.<\/p>\n
Gunfights in the area between police and lawbreakers are increasing in frequency, cops there agree. It\u2019s largely involving criminals from south of the border. The Sinaloa Cartel and Zeta Cartel are fed up with their drug shipments being confiscated by gringo cops, and some informants say cartel leaders have told the drug mules that if they allow the dope to be snagged by Yank LEOs, they can expect reprisals upon their loved ones and death for themselves. This has upped the likelihood of homicidal armed resistance by drug runners stopped by our police. Cartel-sponsored dopers are also believed to have been behind the recent murder of an Arizona rancher who tipped the local law to one of their drug caches.<\/p>\n
In Pinal County, Arizona recently, a deputy sheriff came under heavy weapons fire when he interdicted some drug smugglers. He was severely wounded, but returned a barrage of gunfire that sent his assailants running, one or more of them leaving blood trails.\u00a0 The officer has survived and is expected to recover. No word on his assailants, who may already have given their all to feed desert wildlife on one side or the other of the US\/Mexican border.<\/p>\n
Border Patrol Agent Matthew Boyd, a firearms instructor for his agency, told me that each agent has an AR-platform rifle and an ample supply of Winchester 62 grain softpoints, and a Remington 870 pump shotgun well supplied with 12-gauge buckshot and slugs, to back up their issue HK P2000 .40 caliber pistols. I saw USBP personnel wearing four spare pistol magazines, two being the mandatory minimum. (I can remember seeing Border Patrolmen carrying .357 Magnum six-shooters with six spare cartridges in belt loops. Those days are over.)<\/p>\n
In Huachuca City, Arizona \u2013 16 miles from the border \u2013 Chief Dennis Grey, Lt. Jennifer Fuller, and Officer R. Thomas Allen showed me their current inventory of confiscated \u201chuman traffic\u201d vehicles, enough to stock a good-sized used car and truck lot. They told me that the self-styled \u201ccoyotes\u201d who smuggle their human cargo across the border charge from $1,000 for ordinary Mexican citizens up to $35,000 for members of the Russian Mafia, and the coyotes tend to carry AK47s to keep their \u201ccargo\u201d in line, but are fully prepared to use their weaponry against US police. They\u2019ve stopped Chevy Suburbans and Ford Excursions with 15 or more people packed on board, compact sedans with three people stuffed in the trunk trying to breathe, and sixty illegal immigrants packed like sardines in a relatively small Freightliner. A 15-passenger van carries twice that human payload when smuggling people across the border. It\u2019s about the money.<\/p>\n
The coyotes are bringing in people far more dangerous than undocumented fruit-pickers trying to feed their families, and we\u2019ll talk about that here soon.<\/p>\n
Officer Allen of Huachuca City PD shows confiscated Freightliner, a vehicle known to pack sixty or more “illegals” packed like sardines standing up…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n …with panels torn out of the roof to allow the human cargo to breathe, however uncomfortably, so they don’t die en masse of suffocation, as others have in the past. Just taking the photos gave me the creeps.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n