Private spy plane patrols border

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...igilante_x.htm Private spy plane patrols border
By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
For years, U.S. officials along the southwestern border have done a peculiar dance with local ranchers and other residents who, without the government's help, have captured thousands of illegal immigrants from Mexico.
Publicly, authorities have discouraged citizen patrol groups, which civil rights advocates and Mexican officials have accused of being abusive "vigilantes." But in an approach that the critics say encourages vigilantism, U.S. agents routinely accept immigrants caught by such patrols, and return the immigrants to Mexico.

Now Glenn Spencer, a retired oilman from Sierra Vista, Ariz., is adding a new chapter to the increasingly tense debate over citizen border patrols. This month, Spencer launched a small, unmanned spy plane that includes cameras and a global positioning system to help him and other members of a private group called American Border Patrol identify illegal immigrants who try to slip into the USA across Arizona's vast desert.

Spencer says the $20,000 drone, which has a wingspan of 6 feet and still is being tested, will take off when one of dozens of ground sensors placed along the border detect foot traffic. The drone then will take photographs that will be relayed to U.S. authorities.

Besides reflecting the lengths to which some residents along the border will go to catch illegal immigrants, the remote-controlled drone shows how the government's push for increased border security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has emboldened citizen groups such as American Border Patrol.

For critics of such patrols, the drone symbolizes what they call a potentially dangerous escalation of civilian involvement in border policing.

Immigrant advocates and Mexican officials say they have documented dozens of armed confrontations and assaults on immigrants by citizen patrols in recent years. They say the U.S. government's tacit acceptance of such patrols has increased the chances for abuse.

"The potential for tragedy here is enormous," says Isabel Garcia, co-chairwoman of the immigrant rights group Derechos Humanos in Tucson. "These groups are raising the notch on aggressiveness. We've created an atmosphere of a war zone."

'Maybe I am a vigilante'

Spencer's organization and similar groups such as Civilian Homeland Defense and Ranch Rescue say they do not mistreat immigrants. "The feedback we get (from U.S. border officials) is very supportive. Border Patrol agents give us a lot of 'attaboys,' " he says. "There is a tremendous attempt (by critics) to smear us like we are vigilantes."

Tighter security along the 2,000-mile southern border and a sluggish U.S. economy has resulted in dramatic declines in the number of immigrants detained in the past three years.

Even so, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans continue to try to slip into the USA. As of April 8, the U.S. Border Patrol had recorded 331,141 arrests in the southwest this year.

Most of those arrested were seeking work or were trying to find family members in the United States. The deaths of 19 immigrants this month in a sweltering trailer in South Texas were a vivid reminder of how desperate some Mexicans are to escape poverty back home.

U.S. officials do not count the immigrants who are brought in by citizen patrols, but such immigrants are included in the official arrest totals.

Roger Barnett, a rancher who lives near Sierra Vista, Ariz., about 15 miles north of the border, says U.S. Border Patrol agents have accepted about 10,000 illegal immigrants from him in the last four years.

Barnett says he and a brother caught many of the immigrants on his 22,000-acre ranch, which runs along the border for 7 miles. Barnett says he has forced captured immigrants to march as far as three miles to spots where they were picked up by U.S. agents.

"Maybe I am a vigilante. I don't know," Barnett says. "I'm not a racist. I'm an American citizen. If people could see from my perspective how the border is so unprotected. ... Everyone who loves this country ought to be doing something about it."

Although civil rights groups and some officials in the region have expressed concern about the government's acceptance of citizen patrols, Mario Villarreal, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, says U.S. officials have openly sought help from local ranchers. He says the ranches have been urged to report suspicious activity, and to give U.S. agents access to their properties.

"We don't want to give the indication we are looking the other way," Villarreal says of the controversy surrounding citizen patrols. "We definitely do not want any group to take matters into their own hands. It could be quite dangerous. The potential for somebody getting injured is there."

But, he says, "If a situation occurs when a group is illegally in the United States without proper documentation, we will take them into custody," regardless of who caught the immigrants.

Authorities will consider accepting information gathered by Spencer's spy drone, Villarreal says.

Drone concerns Mexico

Meanwhile, Mexican officials expressed concern that the drone might fly illegally over their country. Mexico has "no official position," on the drone, says Miguel Escobar, Mexico's consul in Douglas, Ariz. But "I don't think anybody is very happy about it."

Escobar says that since April 1999, his office has recorded 48 incidents in which illegal immigrants have been confronted or roughed up by armed civilians on the U.S. side of the border. On Jan. 19, Escobar says, an immigrant was kicked and rapped with the butt of a flashlight after a citizen patrol group found him near a highway in southeastern Arizona.

"All of these activities tend to inflame the climate here," Escobar says of the drone. "It makes this area all a bit more tense."

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., has asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate the private patrol groups, and says U.S. officials should do more to disassociate the government from such groups. "Every time the government accepts something from these groups" Grijalva says, "we further embolden them and give them credibility."

Grijalva plans to meet with the U.S. attorney in Phoenix to discuss the citizen patrols.

Grijalva believes the patrol groups are behind a death threat his office received by e-mail in January. "They use scare tactics and baiting to intimidate," Grijalva says. "There is a political reluctance, I think, to do anything against them. We wouldn't tolerate this kind of activity anywhere else."

Spencer and Barnett say they do not know about any threats to government officials, and say their efforts stem from a desire to improve national security, not racism or any need to pretend they are law enforcement officers. Spencer says he has spent about $170,000 of his own money on patrol efforts, and says that last year his group received about $50,000 in donations to support border patrols.

The drone, and others that could follow it, could offer the best defense yet against "the greatest threat to national security," Spencer says. He adds that he hopes the drone will show that citizens "are within reach of developing an independent capability to monitor the entire southern border and show the American people every time it is violated.

"When this thing catches on, there will be nothing to stop us."