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AsiaOne
4 days ago
- Politics
- AsiaOne
Soldiers, Strykers and 100-degree temps: Inside Trump's border military zone, World News
SANTA TERESA, NM — The weapons system atop a drab green US Army Stryker swivels, its camera shifting downward toward a white Ford F-150 driving slowly along the US-Mexico border. Under the watchful eye of the 26-ton armoured vehicle perched on a sand dune above them, humanitarian volunteers are driving the dirt road next to the border wall to see if they can continue to search for migrant remains inside one of two military zones established along the border by the Trump administration in April and May. Soon, they get their answer. It's not long before an unmarked gray pickup appears, makes a U-turn in the sand, and puts on its siren, here in the desert 5.6 miles (9km) west of the Santa Teresa, New Mexico border crossing. The driver pulls alongside, introduces himself as a US Border Patrol agent, and tells the volunteers they can no longer be there. James Holman, founder of the Battalion Search and Rescue group, whose volunteers also hand water to migrants through the bars of the barrier, acquiesces. Then he vents his frustration. "We're ramping up all this military and taking this public land away, it doesn't make sense, and it's theatre, it's deadly, deadly theatre," says Holman, 59, a former Marine, who is concerned the military zone will push migrants west into even more dangerous desert crossings. They are in one of two so-called "National Defence Areas" set up along 260 miles (418 km) of the US southern border in New Mexico and Texas as part of the Trump administration's military buildup on the border. US President Donald Trump has long shown interest in using the military for civilian law enforcement, sending Marines to Los Angeles this week in their first domestic deployment in over 30 years. The border military zones are one of his most audacious attempts yet to use troops trained for overseas combat in roles normally carried out by Border Patrol or local police. The Army has not made public the zones' boundaries. The New Mexico area may run over three miles into the United States, in places, based on "restricted area" warning signs in English and Spanish posted along State Road 9 parallel to the border. The zones are classified as US Army installations, giving troops the right to temporarily detain and question migrants and other civilian trespassers caught in the areas. Their primary mission is to detect and track illegal border crossers as part of the Trump administration's quest for "100 per cent operational control" of the border at a time when migrant arrests are near an historic low. Along the international boundary, Reuters saw warning signs posted inside the United States around 45 feet north of the border barrier around every 100 metres, facing south. That meant if you had crossed the border and could read them, you were already in the zone. Migrants caught illegally crossing the border into the zones face new trespassing charges on top of unlawful entry to the country, with combined penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment. Attempts to prosecute them for trespassing have floundered. Starting in May, federal judges in Texas and New Mexico have dismissed trespassing charges against migrants caught within the area and acquitted a Peruvian woman brought to trial, ruling there was no evidence they saw signs before entering the zone. Illegal border crossings fell to a record low in March after the Biden administration shut down asylum claims in 2024 and Mexico tightened immigration controls. Trump, who banned people from claiming asylum on the southern border shortly after starting his second term in January, nonetheless says the military areas are needed to repel an "invasion" of human traffickers and drug smugglers. Border buildup In the past four months Trump raised the number of active-duty troops on the border to 8,000 from 2,500 at the end of the Biden administration, according to the US Army. Presidents since Richard Nixon have used regular troops and reservists for support roles on the border. Trump has taken it a step further. The Bureau of Land Management in April transferred 110,000 acres of land in New Mexico, an area seven times the size of Manhattan, to the US Army for three years to establish a first zone. A second was created in May with a transfer of International Boundary and Water Commission land in Texas. The areas are satellites of the Fort Huachuca and Fort Bliss Army bases in Arizona and Texas, respectively. That gives troops the right to hold and question civilian trespassers without the need for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. The law lets a president deploy federal forces domestically during events like civil unrest. Some 105 Stryker combat vehicles and around 2,400 troops from the 4th Infantry Division deployed from Colorado Springs in March. They rove in armoured personnel carriers across New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. Reuters saw Strykers concentrated in a roughly 20-mile ribbon from El Paso west to Santa Teresa, one of the 2,000-mile border's busiest and most deadly areas for migrant crossings. The 8-wheeled vehicles, used by Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now by Ukraine in its war with Russia, can be seen parked under a bridge to Mexico, atop a landfill and on a ridge above a gap in the border wall. Their engines run 24/7 to cool crews in the 100 °F (38 °C) plus heat. Vehicles are unarmed but soldiers have personal weapons. Crews take shifts operating the joystick-controlled camera systems that can see for two miles (3.2 km) and have night vision, according to the Army. A person familiar with Strykers, who asked not to be named, said the work was "monotonous" but said it gave soldiers "a sense of purpose." Troops have alerted Border Patrol to 390 illegal crossings in the nearly two months since the first zone was established. They made their first detentions on June 3, holding 3 "illegal aliens" in New Mexico before handing them over to Border Patrol, according to Army spokesperson Geoffrey Carmichael. Border Patrol arrested 39,677 migrants in the El Paso sector in the fiscal year to April, down 78 per cent from the year-earlier period. 'Covered by desert sand' Sitting outside his juice bar in Sunland Park, Harold Gregory says he has seen a sharp drop in migrants entering his store or asking customers for a ride since Strykers arrived. "We feel safer," said Gregory, 38. "They do kind of like intimidate so there's not so many people come this way." In neighbouring Santa Teresa, trade consultant Jerry Pacheco says the optics of combat vehicles are not good as he tries to draw international firms to the town's industrial park. "It's like killing an ant with a sledgehammer," says Pacheco, executive director of the International Business Accelerator, a nonprofit trade counselling programme. "I think having the military down here is more of a political splash." About 90 miles (143 km) west, New Mexico rancher Russell Johnson said he saw five Strykers briefly positioned in a gap in the border barrier on his ranch. [[nid:719122]] He welcomes the zone as an extra layer of security and has testified to the US Congress on illegal border crossers destroying barbed wire fences, cattle thieves driving livestock into Mexico and a pickup stolen at gunpoint by drug smugglers. He is unsure if his home, or over half his ranch, is inside the area but has been assured by US Border Patrol he can continue to work land ranched by his family since 1918. "I don't know, I don't think anyone knows," says Johnson, 37, a former Border Patrol agent, of the zone's boundaries. He says the Army has not communicated rules for hunters with permits to shoot quail and mule deer this fall in the military area, or hikers who start or end the 3,000-mile (4,800km) Continental Divide Trail within it. The Army has been seeking memoranda of understanding with local communities and agencies to continue activities in the New Mexico zone, said Nicole Wieman, a US Army spokesperson. "The MOU process for commercial and recreational activities, such as hunting, mining and ranching, is complex," Wieman said. Jenifer Jones, Republican state representative for Johnson's area, said Americans can keep doing what they did before in the zone. "They can carry their firearms as they would have prior," said Jones, who welcomed the troops to her "neglected" area where only a barbed-wire fence separates the two countries in places. To the east in Las Cruces, the state's second largest city, State Representative Sarah Silva, a Democrat, said the zones have created fear and apprehension "I see this as an occupation of the US Army on our lands," said Silva. Back in desert west of Santa Teresa, Battalion Search and Rescue leader Abbey Carpenter, 67, stands among dunes where the group has discovered the remains of 24 migrants in 18 months, mostly women. She is concerned the area could be absorbed into the military zone. "Who's going to look for these remains if we're not allowed out here," she said, showing the jaw and other uncollected bones of a woman her group reported to local authorities in September. "Will they just be covered up by the desert sands?" [[nid:719147]]
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Yahoo
After El Paso joined Abbott's border crackdown, the number of dead migrants in the New Mexico desert surged
Editor's note: This story includes images of skeletal human remains found by volunteers in the desert. This article is co-published and co-reported with the Source New Mexico, an independent, nonprofit newsroom and affiliate of States Newsroom. SANTA TERESA, New Mexico — On a hot morning in September, after hours of trekking through the Chihuahuan desert, Abbey Carpenter and her partner James Holeman spotted a pile of scattered bones. Near a yucca plant, a human jawbone lay partially buried in the sand. Around it were vertebrae, femurs and ribs. Next to the bones, they saw a woman's purple underwear with two tiny hearts on the corner and a Salvadoran passport. The bones were among six sets of human remains they found that month. Carpenter and Holeman founded a volunteer group in 2020 called Battalion Search and Rescue to search for migrant bodies in this patch of desert just west of El Paso. They took photos and recorded the coordinates on their cell phone. They tied a pink ribbon to a nearby branch. Later, they mailed the passport to the Salvadoran consulate and reported the body to the Doña Ana County Sheriff's Office in New Mexico — even though the sheriff sometimes doesn't respond and has accused volunteers of planting bones in the desert. Since September 2023, the group has found 27 sites with human remains in the desert, Holeman said. 'How did we get to this place as a country that we think so poorly of migrants?' Carpenter said during a recent search in the desert. Historically, Border Patrol's El Paso sector — which includes all 180 miles of New Mexico's border with Mexico and 84 miles of El Paso and Hudspeth counties in West Texas — has had among the fewest migrant deaths across the southern border. That changed in late December 2022, according to an investigation by The Texas Tribune and Source New Mexico, when the city of El Paso joined forces with Gov. Greg Abbott to participate in his signature border mission, called Operation Lone Star. By 2024, the El Paso sector had become the deadliest place for migrants to cross along the entire U.S.-Mexico border. From January 2023 to August 2024, 299 human remains were reported in the El Paso sector, the most of any sector along the southern border, according to the most recent data available from federal government data. That's more than double the number of cases reported during the 20 months prior, when 122 remains were recorded before El Paso had adopted Operation Lone Star. Since El Paso joined Texas' border mission in 2022, migrant remains discovered in the El Paso sector have increased every year, even as they have declined in every other part of the border. 'We have people dying in New Mexico deserts because of Texas policies,' said New Mexico state Rep. Sarah Silva, a Democrat from nearby Las Cruces. Though many factors determine where and when someone crosses an international border — including federal immigration policies, organized crime and natural disasters — experts and advocates say any policy that pushes migrants into the desert will likely cost lives. Immigrant rights groups and researchers say more migrants are taking deadlier routes to enter the country since Texas launched Operation Lone Star in 2021 — flooding the border with state troopers, National Guard and miles of razor wire — as the federal government's ever-changing immigration policies have delayed or blocked migrants who want to claim asylum in the U.S. 'Any state lawmaker or local leader should be aware that these policies come at a human cost,' said Aimée Santillán, a policy analyst at the Hope Border Institute, an immigrant rights advocacy group in El Paso. 'So anyone that decides to approach this type of enforcement is making a decision that they can live with these deaths.' Meanwhile, bodies lie in the desert, unidentified, for months at a time. Eight months after Carpenter and Holeman's group reported the set of six remains to authorities, many of the bones were still there. It remains unclear how New Mexico state and local officials intend to address the need for more resources to retrieve and identify the bodies. The striking increase in deaths in the New Mexico and West Texas desert is part of a global surge in migration. According to United Nations statistics from 2024, the number of immigrants worldwide has doubled since 1990, with 304 million people living in a country other than the one in which they were born. Last year was also the deadliest on record for migrants worldwide, according to the UN's International Organization for Migration. 'The rise in deaths is terrible in and of itself, but the fact that thousands remain unidentified each year is even more tragic,' said Julia Black, coordinator of IOM's Missing Migrants Project. Neither the Trump administration nor elected officials from Texas or New Mexico have addressed the issue, even as the number of bodies discovered has skyrocketed. Abbott's office blamed former President Joe Biden's 'open-border policies' for the loss of life when asked for comment. 'The heartbreaking increase in deaths is the direct result of the chaos President Biden unleashed on the border,' said Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott's press secretary. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham also laid the blame on the federal government. 'While state officials are sometimes called upon to respond to emergencies, immigration remains a federal responsibility. Gov. Lujan Grisham has consistently called on every administration — Trump, Biden, and now Trump again — to fulfill federal obligations at the border and provide adequate resources for humanitarian and law enforcement efforts,' her spokesperson Jodi McGinnis Porter said in an email. Holeman, 67, started volunteering with a search and rescue group in 2018 named Aguilas del Desierto — which is Spanish for 'the Desert Eagles.' Holeman, a retired Marine veteran, said that as part of his military experience, he saw other countries returning dead American soldiers back to their families. He recognized the U.S. government doesn't provide the same benefit to the families of migrants, so he wanted to help fill this gap. He and Carpenter, 60, chose the New Mexico-Mexico border because it's an area where groups in California, Arizona and Texas don't come to regularly. They named the group Battalion Search and Rescue, named for St. Patrick's Battalion, an Irish immigrant military unit that defected from the U.S. to fight with the Mexicans in the U.S.-Mexico War. Once a month, a group of self-trained volunteers scours the desert for lost and missing migrants. The goal is to help save lives when they can, but for those who can't be saved, they hope to provide closure for families who want to be reunited with their loved ones and given an opportunity for a proper burial. 'We're just trying to fill a gap where the government is falling short,' Holeman said. Among those whom the group has helped reunite with family is Ada Guadalupe López Montoya of El Salvador, who died at the age of 33 last year. The last time her family heard from her, López Montoya was in Ciudad Juárez, preparing to cross the border into El Paso — her second attempt to enter the United States. When she stopped responding to her family, they called the Armadillos Search and Rescue, a San Diego-based humanitarian group. Cesar Ortigoza, 51, who co-founded that rescue group, called Holeman in New Mexico to ask if their group had found López Montoya, who had been reported missing since July 2023. Holeman searched his records and found that he had come across her passport, located next to human remains in September. Two months later, Ortigoza flew to El Paso, drove to Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and hiked 3 miles to the site. He called the Doña Ana County Sheriff's Office to report that the remains may belong to López Montoya, whose family had been searching for her for over a year. The Sheriff's Office sent officials from the New Mexico Office of Medical Investigator, who arrived about eight hours later to recover the remains. 'As an immigrant myself, it's important that families know what happened to their loved ones,' Ortigoza said. Countless other families are still waiting for news of relatives who have disappeared while crossing the border. Some turn to Facebook, creating groups titled 'Desaparecí cruzando la frontera,' Spanish for 'I disappeared crossing the border,' with fliers depicting loved ones. Among them is 41-year-old Laura Tavares Vazquez of Guanajuato, Mexico. For nearly three years, her family has repeatedly posted a flyer with the coordinates of where she was last seen near Santa Teresa. Tavares Vazquez, who left her children behind, had called a relative from the desert to tell her she wouldn't make it, the family wrote in a post. She felt weak and had an unbearable thirst that kept her from walking. A group she was hiking with through the desert left her behind on June 11, 2022. 'That's when our nightmare began,' the family wrote on Facebook. 'It's such a hopeless feeling not knowing what happened to her, where she is, if she's okay, who has her and why, or where did they leave her behind.'. A relative, through a family spokesperson, declined to be interviewed, explaining that over the years, people have attempted to extort the family — offering to find Tavares Vazquez if the family pays an undisclosed amount of money. In March 2021, Abbott announced Operation Lone Star, a military mission to deter immigrants from crossing the Rio Grande illegally. As part of this multibillion-dollar mission, Abbott sent hundreds of National Guard soldiers and state troopers to different parts of the 1,200-mile Texas-Mexico border. At the end of fiscal year 2022, six months after the state border mission began, Border Patrol reported finding 651 bodies along the Texas-Mexico border, more than triple the total from just three years prior. Maverick County, home to Eagle Pass, quickly saw an increase in migrant bodies washing up onto the American side of the Rio Grande. In summer 2023, Abbott deployed a 1,000-foot barrier there, made up of buoys to block migrants from crossing the river. That same summer, Mexican authorities reported a migrant had been found dead — stuck to one of the floating orange spheres. The number of migrant bodies discovered on the riverbank of the Rio Grande in Maverick County jumped from 51 in 2021 to 132 the following year, according to data compiled by Stephanie Leutert, the director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin and a former State Department official under Biden. El Paso, a binational Democratic stronghold, resisted for more than a year issuing a disaster declaration that would have resulted in joining Operation Lone Star, in part because officials disagreed with Abbott's military approach. That changed toward the end of 2022, when thousands of migrants crossed the border from Juárez into El Paso, forcing the county and city to scramble to find enough shelter space for those sleeping on the streets after Border Patrol processed and released them. Texas border cities and counties were incentivized to join the border because they would get state funding and other resources. By joining Operation Lone Star, then-El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser hoped to get state-sponsored buses to transport migrants out of the city and take the pressure off the overflowing shelters. Abbott quickly sent state police and National Guard soldiers to El Paso and rolled out miles of concertina wire on the banks of the Rio Grande between El Paso and Juárez. The soldiers also began firing pepper balls, a chemical irritant, at migrants to deter them from crossing the river. Sophia Genovese, an attorney with the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, said last fall she represented a man in his 30s who was deported to Mexico and later crossed the Rio Grande from Juárez into El Paso. She said the man, who had grown up in Tennessee, tried to explain to soldiers that he was seeking asylum and wanted to surrender to Border Patrol agents. The soldiers, Genovese said, shot him with rubber bullets. He was eventually able to get past soldiers and turn himself into Border Patrol, Genovese said. 'We're really concerned. We've had clients in the past who enter through the El Paso port of entry, or near the El Paso port of entry, who are being subjected to really intense violence by the National Guard,' she said. 'Texas is very keen on participating in those enforcement operations. We're going to see more loss of life.' Leeser declined to comment. El Paso City Council member Josh Acevedo, who has opposed the city's participation in Operation Lone Star, said the effects of the border mission in this area should serve as an example that this type of enforcement causes more harm than good. He said Abbott should collaborate with New Mexico in preventing these deaths. 'But how do you get the governor of Texas, who is full of theatrics and lacks solutions, to be collaborative?' he said. Adam Isacson, a regional security expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, said smugglers take advantage of such clampdowns on the American side, making promises to vulnerable people, who are desperate to enter the U.S., that they can guide them around the blockades for a fee. 'The use of New Mexico in particular, really seems to have increased when Operation Lone Star put more people on the line, and it was just harder to turn yourself in the El Paso city limits,' he said. The trend has repeated itself for decades across the southwest border under Democratic and Republican administrations. 'The prediction is that with traditional entry and smuggling routes disrupted, illegal traffic will be deterred, or forced over more hostile terrain, less suited for crossing and more suited for enforcement,' according to a Border Patrol plan from 1994 signed off by Doris Meissner, the former commissioner of U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. In 1993, El Paso Sector Border Patrol Chief Silvestre Reyes launched Operation Hold the Line, which at the time used a novel approach to deter illegal immigration in the popular crossing point: a visible blockade of Border Patrol agents spaced along the border with Juárez. The approach sent apprehensions plummeting by 76% by the end of fiscal year 1994 in the sector. The Clinton administration decided to try it in the San Diego sector, which at the time accounted for 42% of apprehensions along the southern border. But the new vigilance in San Diego and El Paso quickly shifted the migrant flows to the Tucson sector in Arizona, which saw apprehensions increase by nearly 600% between 1992 and 2004, according to Border Patrol data. Migrants increasingly looked for other places to cross, and that often led them through remote terrain where they could easily run out of water and die of dehydration. A 2009 congressional report found that these operations led to more deaths in rural areas of the border. 'One unintended consequence of this enforcement posture and the shift in migration patterns has been an increase in the number of migrant deaths each year; on average 200 migrants died each year in the early 1990s, compared with 472 migrant deaths in 2005,' the report said. Meissner, who is now a senior fellow and director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the nonpartisan think tank Migration Policy Institute, has said she regrets this strategy because of the increase in migrant deaths. 'The Border Patrol expected that there would be crossings in areas that were more dangerous. They didn't expect that it would be in the numbers that ultimately materialized. Migrants are in desperate circumstances, they make desperate choices,' she said in a 2019 interview with The New York Times. It's nearly impossible to determine how many people have died trekking through the desert. In part because bodies will deteriorate over time if they're not found. Congress requires Border Patrol to collect data on how many migrants have died. But the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the Border Patrol 'has not collected and recorded, or reported to Congress, complete data on migrant deaths.' Bryce Peterson, a volunteer and researcher with No More Deaths, an Arizona search group, said such groups have taken on the responsibility of collecting data because the federal government isn't doing its job. 'Things like the El Paso sector migrant death database are really filling in for what should be a government function, but government has failed miserably at it,' he said. As deaths continued to increase year after year, New Mexico's border counties and state agencies have been unprepared for the task of finding and collecting migrants' bodies — or unwilling to tackle it. New Mexico's 180-mile border with Mexico is rural Chihuahuan desert, and the rough terrain should be a deterrent for many, said Michael Brown, a Luna County Sheriff captain, who has found migrant bodies. But with the border crackdown in Texas, Brown said his state needs to prepare itself because he expects more immigrants crossing through. 'The [New Mexico] governor is going to have to come to the realization that this is something that potentially could happen,' he said. 'The federal government is going to have to realize that they've created a vacuum. They're going to have to deal with this eventually themselves.' In a statement, a spokesperson for the governor's office said State Police perform more than 100 humanitarian rescues each summer in response to reports, demonstrating her office's commitment to preserving life 'regardless of circumstances.' But the governor's office did not address questions about whether officials have a plan to search for, identify and repatriate remains when local or federal officials won't. More than one in four bodies found in New Mexico since 2021 is unidentified, according to an Tribune and Source analysis. In Texas, just under 7% of the people found in that period are unidentified. Lujan Grisham's office did not respond to a question about why that might be, though a spokesperson said that sites where bodies are discovered are often potential crime scenes. As a result, proper investigative protocols must be followed before repatriation can occur. In Texas, counties spend an average of $13,100 per case to collect, investigate and bury remains, according to a May 2020 University of Texas report. Though, some border counties have taken shortcuts to reduce that cost, such as not ordering an autopsy or DNA test, the report says. In New Mexico, the medical investigator's office said it has not tracked migrant deaths in the past because the number of bodies was so low. But with the recent increase in remains being found, the state will need to address the issue soon by hiring more medical investigators to avoid a backlog that would delay the identification process, according to a research article by New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator. New Mexico Sen. Crystal Diamond, R-Elephant Butte, who sponsored a failed bill in the last legislative session that would have appropriated state funds to help with humanitarian efforts, said border counties in the state need help addressing the large increase in deaths at the border. 'I think what people don't want to talk about is the cost of the humanitarian efforts, and it is the counties bearing that weight,' she said. McGinnis Porter, the governor's spokesperson, said in a statement that another challenge is that migration patterns are complex and ever-changing, 'driven by multiple factors, with cartels and human trafficking organizations choosing routes and drop-off locations that change frequently.' 'Any loss of life is a tragedy, and our hearts go out to the families of those who have died crossing into New Mexico,' McGinnis Porter added. Meanwhile, Doña Ana County, which is immediately west of El Paso, has 10 field deputy medical investigators — the most of any county in New Mexico — but 'they may be overwhelmed by the increased numbers of deaths,' a medical investigators' research article says. Carpenter and Holeman say that they've called the Doña Ana County Sheriff's Office to report remains they've found. But her office has told them they don't have deputies to respond, they said. Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart has said that bodies found in her jurisdiction are not her priority. She has also dismissed Carpenter and Holeman's efforts, saying she believes they are spreading misinformation and planting bones. She has also suggested the volunteers are discovering prehistoric bones. Stewart's office did not respond to requests for comment. 'I don't know where they come from. I don't know how long they've been there. I don't know if they've been planted there,' she told KTSM, a local TV station. 'If [the volunteers] are not going to stand by until we arrive, because [they] are too busy roaming the desert looking for I don't know what, we're not going to take these very seriously.' Longtime rancher Nancy Clopton is still haunted by the sight of a dead woman she found on her property years ago. Clopton was tending to the water tank for her cattle in the New Mexico desert 100 miles west of El Paso. Temperatures in that stretch of desert near Hachita hit 110 degrees that week in 2021. She walked along the curved edge of the 50,000-gallon steel tank and was startled to see a person, dressed in camo, seated on its concrete skirt. She couldn't quite make out the person's face, but she guessed she was looking at a young woman. 'I yelled at her several times and got fairly close, maybe from here to that fence,' she said in a recent interview near her ranch, pointing about 20 feet away. 'She wasn't responding in any way, and I didn't feel comfortable going up and actually touching her or trying to do something. Because to me, it was fairly obvious that she was dead.' Clopton rushed inside and told her husband about the body and then called a contact at the Border Patrol. Soon after she led the agent to the water tank, a parade of border patrol agents, state troopers and medical examiners arrived. They interviewed her and collected the woman's remains. In the days following, an agent told her the woman was from Mexico, but that's all she ever learned about the woman, whom she still thinks about regularly. After authorities left, Clopton was unsure what to do with the woman's belongings and what she described as possible biohazards left behind. A crime scene cleanup company in El Paso told her it would cost up to $6,000 to clean the area. So she felt she had no choice but to take drastic action, she said. 'My husband took a bucket with five gallons of gasoline in it, and he lit it on fire,' she said of the woman's final resting place. Ranchers who raise cattle near the border wall said there is no protocol for who to call when they find a person's body, and they pointed to Clopton's experience as an example of how ranchers are left on their own to deal with the humanitarian crisis. They also echoed calls for better cell and radio tower infrastructure in the area. The woman Clopton found is Gabriela Ortiz Moreno, according to the autopsy report. She was 30 years old, from Mexico. Among her belongings was a notebook, jewelry and a pack of cookies. Whether her family ever learned of her passing is unclear. A spokesperson for the Mexican Consulate said that the information is confidential. Investigative summaries also suggest she was seeking shade at the water tank, because 'No rain or any type of cloud covering was available to the decedent,' an investigating officer wrote. 'It's terribly sad that people would be that desperate to come and that ill-prepared,' Clopton said. 'They really don't understand at all what they're facing. This is the Chihuahuan Desert.' Justin Hamel contributed reporting to this story. Disclosure: Facebook, New York Times and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. Big news: 20 more speakers join the TribFest lineup! New additions include Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center; Michael Curry, former presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church; Beto O'Rourke, former U.S. Representative, D-El Paso; Joe Lonsdale, entrepreneur, founder and managing partner at 8VC; and Katie Phang, journalist and trial lawyer. Get tickets. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
Time of India
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Soldiers, Strykers and 100-degree temps: Inside Trump's border military zone
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Remove Ads BORDER BUILDUP 'COVERED BY DESERT SAND' The weapons system atop a drab green U.S. Army Stryker swivels, its camera shifting downward toward a white Ford F-150 driving slowly along the U.S.-Mexico the watchful eye of the 26-ton armored vehicle perched on a sand dune above them, humanitarian volunteers are driving the dirt road next to the border wall to see if they can continue to search for migrant remains inside one of two military zones established along the border by the Trump administration in April and they get their not long before an unmarked gray pickup appears, makes a U-turn in the sand, and puts on its siren, here in the desert 5.6 miles (9 km) west of the Santa Teresa, New Mexico border driver pulls alongside, introduces himself as a U.S. Border Patrol agent, and tells the volunteers they can no longer be Holman, founder of the Battalion Search and Rescue group, whose volunteers also hand water to migrants through the bars of the barrier, he vents his frustration."We're ramping up all this military and taking this public land away, it doesn't make sense, and it's theater, it's deadly, deadly theater," says Holman, 59, a former are in one of two so-called " National Defense Areas " set up along 260 miles (418 km) of the U.S. southern border in New Mexico and Texas as part of the Trump administration's military buildup on the border.U.S. President Donald Trump has long shown interest in using the military for civilian law enforcement, sending Marines to Los Angeles this week in their first domestic deployment in over 30 border military zones are one of his most audacious attempts yet to use troops trained for overseas combat in roles normally carried out by Border Patrol or local Army has not made public the zones' boundaries. The New Mexico area may run over three miles into the United States, in places, based on "restricted area" warning signs in English and Spanish posted along State Road 9 parallel to the zones are classified as U.S. Army installations , giving troops the right to temporarily detain and question migrants and other civilian trespassers caught in the primary mission is to detect and track illegal border crossers as part of the Trump administration's quest for "100% operational control" of the border at a time when migrant arrests are near an historic the international boundary, Reuters saw warning signs posted inside the United States around 45 feet north of the border barrier around every 100 meters, facing south. That meant if you had crossed the border and could read them, you were already in the caught illegally crossing the border into the zones face new trespassing charges on top of unlawful entry to the country, with combined penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment. Attempts to prosecute them for trespassing have in May, federal judges in Texas and New Mexico have dismissed trespassing charges against migrants caught within the area and acquitted a Peruvian woman brought to trial, ruling there was no evidence they saw signs before entering the border crossings fell to a record low in March after the Biden administration shut down asylum claims in 2024 and Mexico tightened immigration who banned people from claiming asylum on the southern border shortly after starting his second term in January, nonetheless says the military areas are needed to repel an "invasion" of human traffickers and drug the past four months Trump raised the number of active-duty troops on the border to 8,000 from 2,500 at the end of the Biden administration, according to the U.S. since Richard Nixon have used regular troops and reservists for support roles on the border. Trump has taken it a step Bureau of Land Management in April transferred 110,000 acres (172 square miles) of land in New Mexico, an area seven times the size of Manhattan, to the U.S. Army for three years to establish a first zone. A second was created in May with a transfer of International Boundary and Water Commission land in areas are satellites of the Fort Huachuca and Fort Bliss Army bases in Arizona and Texas, gives troops the right to hold and question civilian trespassers without the need for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. The law lets a president deploy federal forces domestically during events like civil 105 Stryker combat vehicles and around 2,400 troops from the 4th Infantry Division deployed from Colorado Springs in March. They rove in armored personnel carriers across New Mexico, Texas and saw Strykers concentrated in a roughly 20-mile ribbon from El Paso west to Santa Teresa, one of the 2,000-mile border's busiest and most deadly areas for migrant 8-wheeled vehicles, used by Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now by Ukraine in its war with Russia, can be seen parked under a bridge to Mexico, atop a landfill and on a ridge above a gap in the border engines run 24/7 to cool crews in the 100 F. (38 C.) plus heat. Vehicles are unarmed but soldiers have personal weapons. Crews take shifts operating the joystick-controlled camera systems that can see for two miles (3.2 km) and have night vision, according to the Army.A person familiar with Strykers, who asked not to be named, said the work was "monotonous" but said it gave soldiers "a sense of purpose."Troops have alerted Border Patrol to 390 illegal crossings in the nearly two months since the first zone was established. They made their first detentions on June 3, holding 3 "illegal aliens" in New Mexico before handing them over to Border Patrol, according to Army spokesperson Geoffrey Patrol arrested 39,677 migrants in the El Paso sector in the fiscal year to April, down 78% from the year-earlier outside his juice bar in Sunland Park, Harold Gregory says he has seen a sharp drop in migrants entering his store or asking customers for a ride since Strykers arrived."We feel safer," said Gregory, 38. "They do kind of like intimidate so there's not so many people come this way."In neighboring Santa Teresa, trade consultant Jerry Pacheco says the optics of combat vehicles are not good as he tries to draw international firms to the town's industrial park."It's like killing an ant with a sledgehammer," says Pacheco, executive director of the International Business Accelerator , a nonprofit trade counseling program. "I think having the military down here is more of a political splash."About 90 miles (143 km) west, New Mexico rancher Russell Johnson said he saw five Strykers briefly positioned in a gap in the border barrier on his welcomes the zone as an extra layer of security and has testified to the U.S. Congress on illegal border crossers destroying barbed wire fences, cattle thieves driving livestock into Mexico and a pickup stolen at gunpoint by drug is unsure if his home, or over half his ranch, is inside the area but has been assured by U.S. Border Patrol he can continue to work land ranched by his family since 1918."I don't know, I don't think anyone knows," says Johnson, 37, a former Border Patrol agent, of the zone's says the Army has not communicated rules for hunters with permits to shoot quail and mule deer this fall in the military area, or hikers who start or end the 3,000-mile (4,800 km) Continental Divide Trail within Army has been seeking memoranda of understanding with local communities and agencies to continue activities in the New Mexico zone, said Nicole Wieman, a U.S. Army spokesperson."The MOU process for commercial and recreational activities, such as hunting, mining and ranching, is complex," Wieman Jones, Republican state representative for Johnson's area, said Americans can keep doing what they did before in the zone."They can carry their firearms as they would have prior," said Jones, who welcomed the troops to her "neglected" area where only a barbed-wire fence separates the two countries in the east in Las Cruces, the state's second largest city, State Representative Sarah Silva, a Democrat, said the zones have created fear and apprehension"I see this as an occupation of the U.S. Army on our lands," said in desert west of Santa Teresa, Battalion Search and Rescue leader Abbey Carpenter, 67, stands among dunes where the group has discovered the remains of 24 migrants in 18 months, mostly women. She is concerned the area could be absorbed into the military zone."Who's going to look for these remains if we're not allowed out here," she said, showing the jaw and other uncollected bones of a woman her group reported to local authorities in September. "Will they just be covered up by the desert sands?"
USA Today
01-06-2025
- USA Today
At the US-Mexico border, volunteers conduct a grim search for human bones
At the US-Mexico border, volunteers conduct a grim search for human bones Remains of 176 migrants were recovered near the US-Mexico border last year, a shocking jump from 20 in 2019. With crossings down, volunteer searchers hope for fewer this year. Show Caption Hide Caption Human remains are found by volunteers near the border wall Battalion Search and Rescue volunteers have found dozens of human remains in the desert in Santa Teresa, New Mexico in ares used by organized crime Editor's note: This story contains reporting and images that some readers may find disturbing. SANTA TERESA, N.M. – Human bones, white against the orange sand, are hard to miss and harder to forget. Once a month, retiree Abbey Carpenter leads volunteers through a field of dunes near the border, searching for the remains of migrants. She has located 27 sites in southern New Mexico in under two years, artefacts of a wave of migration that has ebbed to a trickle. But the bones – femur, rib, jaw – take her breath away each time. In them, Carpenter, who taught English as a Second Language, sees the journeys made by her former students ‒ migrants who live and work in the United States and learned English in her classroom. Men in construction. Women in service industries. When she first joined the desert searches, she said, "I just felt like I was walking in their footprints. I could see them: their backpacks, their shoes, their clothes." President Donald Trump's border crackdown has helped push illegal crossings to record lows over the past four months. With triple-digit summer temperatures looming here, there are growing hopes that the decline in migration could bring relief from the horrific death toll of the past two years in Border Patrol's El Paso Sector. Last year, border agents found the bodies of 176 migrants in the 264-mile sector stretching from West Texas across New Mexico. They discovered 149 remains the year before. The toll represented a shocking increase from the 20 deaths recorded in 2019. The sector has become a focal point. That's in part because of the rise in deaths and in part because local Border Patrol leaders shared the sector statistics during two deadly years, when the Biden administration failed to provide broader numbers – despite a congressional mandate. U.S. Customs and Border Protection didn't respond to a USA TODAY request for the missing data for fiscal years 2023 and 2024. Along the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, migrant deaths climbed five years running through fiscal 2022, the last period for which data is publicly available. Deaths rose to 895 from 281 over that time, according to CBP. The numbers include human remains found by Border Patrol and other federal, state, local and tribal agencies. The climbing death toll prompted CBP to create the "Missing Migrant Program" in 2017, under the first Trump administration. The goal was "to help rescue migrants in distress and reduce migrant deaths along the Southwest border," according to an Government Accountability Office report. The program also helped facilitate the identification and return of migrant remains to their families. Under the new Trump administration, the effort has been renamed the "Missing Alien Program." The vast majority of migrant remains in El Paso Sector have been found in a single county, New Mexico's Doña Ana, in an area painfully close to life-saving assistance: main roads, a cluster of factories, residential neighborhoods. Looking north from the border fence, the desert appears flat, the bare Franklin Mountains in the distance to the northeast. New Mexico's two-lane Highway 9 parallels the border about three miles to the north. The proximity to the urban footprint is in part what made this region such a heavily trafficked crossing point. But within minutes of hiking into the desert, creosote bushes and mesquite pull the sand into disorienting mounds that can, without warning, block the view in every direction. Should a tired migrant collapse in their scant shade, the sand can run as hot as 150 degrees in the summer. "We were wondering why these individuals, or these bodies, were found very close to the border," Border Patrol Agent Claudio Herrera, a sector spokesman, told USA TODAY. "The saddest thing," he said, is that migrants who survived told us "they'd been in a stash house for weeks … without proper food and without water. So by the time they made the illegal entry, they were already dehydrated." An 'open graveyard' New Mexico's Office of the Medical Investigator is tasked with investigating reports of unattended deaths, including those in the desert near the border. In 2023, the agency officially began tracking remains that could belong to a "probable migrant." Last year, the agency positively identified 75% of migrant remains recovered in southern New Mexico, or 112 individuals, according to data provided to USA TODAY. Carpenter and her partner, Marine veteran James Holeman, organize the desert searches through a nonprofit, Battalion Search and Rescue. On a Saturday in May, as temperatures climbed toward 90 degrees, nine volunteers met Carpenter and Holeman at a Love's truck stop. They donned fluorescent orange-and-yellow shade hats. They readied their radios and turned on a cellphone GPS-tracking app, for safety and to map the terrain they covered. "It is a straight-up open graveyard," Holeman said of the 10- by 20-mile section of border they've been covering little by little since late 2023. Mary Mackay, a local school teacher, volunteered with Carpenter for the first time that day. "Emotionally, it was more than I expected," she later told USA TODAY. "You feel like you would be prepared to see a body, but then you actually see it and you realize that's a real person with an entire back story and family and wishes and dreams. And it all just ended there alone in the desert." The Battalion's search for migrant remains in New Mexico follows the footsteps of other volunteer teams working in deadly stretches of Arizona and California. Search volunteers typically try to comb through areas Border Patrol or local law enforcement might otherwise miss. The volunteers don't touch the bones, said Carpenter, also a former college administrator. They mark the sites with brightly colored tape tied to the brush. They record the precise location and alert local law enforcement in hopes that officials will come to collect the bones that remain. Sometimes they do; too often they don't, Carpenter said. Animals or wind sometimes scatter the remains, before volunteers or officials can reach them. Still, she said, each one matters in the quest to identify a missing migrant. A chipped bone could hold a clue. "It takes some time and effort to work wider circles around the site to identify everything," Carpenter said. "But that's important. Which family member wouldn't want all of their family's remains recovered?" Lauren Villagran can be reached at lvillagran@
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Army control of U.S.-Mexico border buffer zone may funnel migrants to 62-mile stretch of tribal land in Arizona
Emma PatersonCronkite News WASHINGTON – Some Arizona border officials have welcomed President Donald Trump's order for a military takeover at the U.S-Mexico border. But migrant advocates fear that by sealing hundreds of miles of border in the Southwest, the troops will effectively funnel migrants to far more dangerous crossing points. And environmentalists warn of damage to habitats that support nearly two dozen endangered species. 'Militarizing the border has historically only ramped up deaths,' said James Holeman, founder of Battalion Search and Rescue, a group of volunteers who hike through desolate regions of Arizona and New Mexico searching for remains of migrants who couldn't survive the desert. 'You're talking about vulnerable people that are making very deadly choices,' he said. On April 11, Trump ordered the military to take control of the Roosevelt Reservation – a 60-foot wide strip of federal land along the border from the Pacific Ocean to New Mexico. Turning the border into a military base would get around the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from engaging directly in civilian law enforcement. Migrants would be subject to military arrest for trespassing within the federal zone. That zone and Trump's order cover Arizona's four border counties – Yuma, Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise – except for a 62 mile stretch of Pima County controlled by the Tohono O'Odham Nation. Holeman, among others, expects that gap to become an even bigger magnet for human trafficking. The tribe's ancestral lands span the border, and roughly 2,000 of 34,000 members live on the Mexican side. Tribal leaders declined opportunities to discuss the situation. Even before the military build-up to the east and west, the reservation was a hot spot for illegal crossings. The tribe's stretch of border is relatively flat. And it's secured with vehicle barriers and large-gapped cattle fencing that don't impede people, because the tribe refused to allow wall construction during Trump's first term. The Border Patrol operates from offices just outside the reservation. Tribal police work with federal authorities when they catch migrants, Mennell said, but response times can be long. As the military seals other parts of the border, the reservation will become a more attractive option, Holeman said, and smugglers will demand higher prices. 'Cartels have really taken over human trafficking,' he said. 'Crossing here is going to be more expensive. If you have thousands and thousands of dollars, they can drive you right in.' As of April 22, there were 10,281 troops assigned to the Southwest border – up from 2,500 before Trump's order, according to U.S. Northern Command. 'I welcome it. … Anything that can reduce the impact on taxpayer dollars in this county,' said Frank Antenori, a Cochise County supervisor. 'It's about time the federal government got serious about securing the border and protecting the citizens of this county.' Cochise, in Arizona's southeast corner, has a population of about 124,000, and its law enforcement and health resources have been stretched thin by illegal immigration, Antenori said. The day he was sworn in for a second term, Trump declared a national emergency at the border and ordered more military personnel and surveillance aircraft there. He expanded the effort with the April 11 order assigning the 'military missions of repelling the invasion and sealing the United States southern border from unlawful entry to maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States.' Four days later, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced that his department would transfer control of 109,651 acres of federal land along the border to the Army for three years. 'The American people gave President Trump a mandate to make America safe and strong again,' he said in his announcement. Having more troops at the border will allow faster expansion of the border wall, along with more roads, lights and surveillance systems, according to John Mennell, acting branch chief for the Tucson sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 'Whatever hasn't been done in the first term is getting done now,' he said in a phone interview. But there are critics in southern Arizona. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, whose department patrols Tucson and a vast stretch of borderland, said he's concerned that the expanded troop presence – along with Trump's immigration crackdown – will deter migrants from asking for help. 'There's fear out there that 'if I call 911, my family member or someone is going to be deported,'' he said. Nanos would prefer reform of immigration policies – such as providing an easier and more orderly way to become a citizen. Although officials elsewhere say undocumented migrants squeeze their budgets, Nanos said he hasn't seen that. 'Even if it did, isn't that our job?' Nanos said. 'We are here to protect people in this county. That's what we're here to do, no matter their status.' Environmentalists are concerned about the impact the extra troops and their equipment will have on Sonoran Desert ecosystems that are home to thousands of plant and animal species, of which 23 are endangered. The interior secretary said the troops' presence will actually help preserve delicate habitats and sites of archaeological importance. 'High-traffic illegal crossings can lead to soil erosion, damage to fragile desert vegetation and critical wildlife habitat, loss and damage to cultural resources, increased fire risk and pollution from trash and human waste,' Burgum said when he announced the land transfer to Army control. During Trump's first term, the federal government installed tall fencing along roughly a third of the U.S.-Mexico border. Before that, any barriers generally allowed animals to pass freely. Jaguars, ocelots, mountain lions, bears and other species whose ranges span the border have all been impacted, said Russ McSpadden, who leads campaigns for the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection. Surveillance lights and increased vehicle patrols also disrupt species that call the region home, he said, and military vehicles will surely inflict more harm. 'The devastation was on a grand scale the first time around,' he said. 'These walls are being built in really sensitive ecosystems.' According to Defenders of Wildlife, the Sonoran pronghorn, the fastest mammal in North America, is endangered partly due to fencing. Only 160 remain in the U.S., plus 240 in Mexico. Trump's efforts to seal much of the border with troops comes despite big drops in illegal crossings. Arizona has seen a huge decrease since last fall. The drop has been especially sharp since Trump took office three months ago. At the current rate of decline, the total for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 could be down 80 percent from the previous year. Even so, Battalion Search and Rescue found nearly 20 sets of human remains last winter. Much of the group's work is along the 'poor man's route' through the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, west of the Tohono O'Odham reservation – a trek through desolate and rugged terrain that avoids populated areas but claims many lives. 'This is where people go when they have the least amount of money, the least amount of options,' Holeman said. 'There is basically no water and it has the highest rate of apprehension. It has the highest risk and the lowest price.' For more stories from Cronkite News, visit
