EYES AND EARS Tim Foley’s team members take time off work and away from families to obtain intelligence to share with the U.S. Border Patrol.
which point the federale sighed and told him that, in that case, the cartel was going to raise the price on his head from $100,000 to $250,000, a rich bounty that luckily no one has collected. While much of the border atten-
tion has fallen on Texas, authorities in Arizona seized at least six tons of fentanyl at the entry point of Nogales in just four months between October and January. While AZBR has a mailing list of
50, Foley’s intelligence-gathering mis- sions involve no more than a dozen vetted volunteers, about the size of a Marine Corps infantry squad. Some of them, like Foley, are ex-
military, including a former Green Beret. They camp and run trail camer- as in high-traffic areas where migrants and smugglers regularly traverse the treacherous desert seeking a new life or a drop-off point for the contraband they have carried into the U.S. The AZBR team members take time
off work and away from their families to come out to the border and obtain intelligence to share with the U.S. Bor- der Patrol. Foley notifies federal and local law enforcement contacts before AZBR teams head out, indicating where they will be operating. Some migrants who
have entered the U.S. illegally have mistaken AZBR volunteers for government officials and tried to surrender to them. More often, they are led a few hun-
MAYORKAS
dred meters into the U.S. and then abandoned by the cartel coyotes who promised to get them to Tucson, about 70 miles away. With no help, they will die of expo-
sure quickly, but AZBR provides food and water while waiting for Border
SPECIAL INVESTIGATION
While the figures for May when Title 42 ended have not been compiled, monthly records for illegal crossings have been set and shattered repeatedly under Biden.
Patrol to pick them up. In terms of drugs, AZBR has found several kilos of drugs in stashes near Arivaca, Ari- zona, and on cartel mules in the U.S. The patrollers’ practice is to imme-
diately notify Border Patrol and turn over the contraband. While two square miles is but a post-
age stamp on the southwest border, it is an immense area for small teams to patrol and Foley is under no illu- sions about what is happening there or AZBR’s ability to make a major dent in the traffic. “I have no regrets, only frustra-
tions,” he said. O
pen borders opponents are also frustrated with the way President
Joe Biden began lifting immigration restrictions the moment he took office in January 2021. Arizona sued Homeland Security Secretary Alejan- dro Mayorkas, who has supervised the Biden adminis- tration policies of paroling hundreds of thousands of asy- lum seekers, to keep in effect Title 42, a COVID-19-related
border restriction launched by the Trump administration. On May 18, however, Arizona’s case
was rejected by the Supreme Court, with Justice Neil Gorsuch ruling the government cannot apply an emer- gency decree for one crisis, COVID-19, to another, illegal immigration. Another court case filed by Florida, however, has been more successful in
trying to curb the Biden administra- tion’s efforts to relax border controls and facilitate the passage of more immigrants. While the figures for May when
Title 42 ended have not been compiled, monthly records for illegal crossings have been set and shattered repeatedly under Biden. In April, U.S. Customs and Border
Patrol had 211,401 encounters at the southwest border, up 10% from March and 20% more than they encountered in April 2021. The southwest border accounts
for more than 85% of port-of-entry encounters, which can include recrossing illegal immigrants but does not account for “gotaways,” those that Border Patrol agents do not see. More than 5 million people are estimated to have now entered the U.S. across the southwest border during the last 2.5 years.
Numbers like that and the skyrock-
eting fentanyl overdoses in the U.S. can make the work of AZBR volun- teers seem inconsequential. But this does not dissuade them
from what they see as their duty to protect the small sliver of the U.S. border they consider their “backyard.” The hope is that the U.S. govern-
ment will deploy more federal agents to the border to quell the surge, but it may take the efforts of citizens work- ing alongside federal authorities to disrupt the flow of illegal drugs and migrants into the United States.
Heath Hansen, a military and police veteran, joined with Arizona Border Recon on assignment for Soldier of Fortune and RealClearInvestigations.
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