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 News from Around the Americas | August 2006 
Guard Member Dies After 104-Degree Heat
 Associated Press
| | Wisconsin National Guardsman Specialist Travis Arnold watches the US-Mexico border via remote cameras in the Border Patrol Command Center 02 August, 2006, in Nogales, Arizona. The deployment of National Guard to the US-Mexican border is an effective deterrent to illegal immigration and has boosted drug seizures and lowered apprehensions by 30 percent in the busiest area, said Tucson sector Border Patrol. (AFP/Tim Sloan) |
A Pennsylvania National Guard member died after collapsing in 104-degree heat on her first day patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border, a guard spokesman said Friday.
Spc. Kirsten Fike was two hours into the training mission near Yuma when she collapsed Wednesday. She died the next day at a hospital, guard spokesman Capt. Cory Angell said.
Angell said the guard has not yet determined the cause of death.
Fike, 36, joined the guard in June after having served on active duty in the Air Force. She was a member of the Greensburg-based detachment of the 28th Military Police Co. About 60 members of the company were serving their annual two-week training by working along the border.
All incoming National Guard soldiers are advised about the heat precautions before and after arriving in Arizona, said Maj. Paul Aguirre, spokesman for the Arizona National Guard.
Fike is survived by her 13-year-old son, Cody, Gov. Ed Rendell said in a statement.
President Bush announced plans in May to send 6,000 National Guard troops from across the country to support the Border Patrol. Bush said the mission would free up Border Patrol officers for active patrols while the guard members built fences, conducted routine surveillance and took care of administrative duties.
On the Net: http://www.dmva.state.pa.us/paarng
Guardsmen Fight Boredom on Mexican Border
Wayne Woolley - Newhouse News
Columbus, N.M. - New Jersey National Guard Spc. Luis Ataca had a bird's-eye view of America's latest war on illegal immigration. It didn't look quite like he expected.
For the better part of the past two weeks, the 28-year-old stood in a portable tower for hours at a time, staring through a pair of binoculars powerful enough to make out a rabbit running through the open desert two miles away.
From his post on a rocky outcropping, the soldier who spent 2004 patrolling Baghdad had an unobstructed view of the Mexican village of Palomas and a decrepit cattle fence that serves as the only barrier to entry into the United States.
Ataca, who works as a manager for a shipping company in New Jersey, watched everyday life play out in Palomas, children walking to school, farmers taking produce to market, and even suspected drug traffickers and human smugglers standing on rooftops and staring at him through their own binoculars.
The one thing Ataca didn't see - the one thing he expected to see - was illegal immigrants trying to make their way into America.
"It's been pretty slow," Ataca said one day last week. "Not much going on."
Ataca is part of Operation Jumpstart, a Bush administration initiative to put 6,000 National Guard soldiers and airmen on America's border with Mexico for the next two years to augment the U.S. Border Patrol.
Contrary to most people's perception, the troops aren't there to round up illegal border crossers and drug traffickers. That job is reserved for Border Patrol agents.
Instead, most of the troops are posted in lookout positions designated by the Border Patrol. They are supposed to act as the eyes and ears of a law enforcement agency that does not have enough manpower to sit and watch the border.
Nearly 30 states have contributed troops to Operation Jumpstart. New Jersey was among the first, sending a group of about 250 soldiers and airmen for a three-week span that ends Saturday. Gov. Jon Corzine agreed to the deployment on the condition that the border duty count for the troops' regularly scheduled annual training. The Pentagon is picking up the tab.
Maj. Gen. Glenn Rieth, the state adjutant general, said New Jersey will send more troops to New Mexico for a longer stay in the coming months after logistics are worked out.
On this deployment, the New Jersey troops - soldiers based with the 102nd Cavalry, 112th Field Artillery and 114th Infantry and airmen from the 177th Fighter Wing - have been assigned to the two westernmost Border Patrol sectors in New Mexico, one of the most remote and unguarded portions of America's 2,000-mile border with Mexico.
Half of the New Jersey contingent is assigned to the Lordsburg sector in New Mexico's Bootheel section, a 3,000-square-mile patch of desert that doesn't even have a fence separating it from Mexico in most places and is patrolled by fewer than 100 Border Patrol agents. The other half are just to the east, guarding the Deming sector, which runs north from Palomas, a known staging area for drug traffickers and human smugglers known as coyotes.
The New Jersey troops had one bit of action last week when two dozen lost and dehydrated illegal immigrants surrendered to a group of soldiers manning an observation post in the Lordsburg sector.
But for the most part, the troops have been watching and waiting, fighting boredom, trying to stay dry during through a stretch of unseasonable and torrential rains and doing battle with snakes, scorpions and nearly every variety of poisonous spider known to man.
"If guys are bored, that's OK," said Shem Peachey, the chief Border Patrol agent in the Lordsburg sector. "We don't want them to disguise their positions. We want them to be here as a highly visible deterrent."
It's hard to miss most of the dozen lookout positions the Border Patrol has staked out for the New Jersey troops, who work in teams of three or four.
At some of the positions, the soldiers stand in portable hydraulic towers that can rise 20 feet into the air.
At others, they peer through the thermal sights of Avenger anti-aircraft guns mounted on the top of parked Humvees. The menacing-looking guns aren't loaded, but the soldiers are armed with M16 rifles and 30 rounds of ammunition.
Any suspicious activity is to be reported to the Border Patrol, which tries to keep its agents in position to respond within two minutes.
In the months leading up to the arrival of the National Guard in mid-July, the Border Patrol was averaging about 300 arrests a day, said Doug Mosier, a Border Patrol spokesman in El Paso, Texas. In the weeks since, the number has fallen to between 50 and 75 arrests a day on average.
Even allowing for the normal drop-off in illegal crossings that comes with the heat of summer, Mosier said he sees the decline as evidence that the National Guard presence is leading to fewer attempted border crossings.
"What was once the busiest corridor is beginning at last to dry up a little bit," Mosier said last week.
Capt. John Orzol, 38, commander of the New Jersey troops based in Deming, said Border Patrol agents in his sector have offered an alternate theory.
"They think us being here is pushing them to the left and right of our positions, where fewer people are watching," said Orzol, who works for Allstate Insurance in civilian life.
Whatever the case, the dead time has made the New Jerseyans familiar with the credo of the New Mexico troops who train there: If it stings, bites or has venom, it lives in the Southwestern desert.
At least one soldier sought treatment for a spider bite. Others admit to checking the soles of their combat boots for scorpions every time they hear a crunch.
In civilian life in New Jersey, First Sgt. Chris Sheridan, 42, runs a small publishing company. As a top enlisted soldier in New Mexico, he recently found himself tangling with a 3-foot rattlesnake.
His battle began when one of his men found the snake coiled up a few feet from their Humvee.
"My guys just backed up," Sheridan recalled. "They were like, `You get it."'
Sheridan grabbed a long stick.
"Every time I pushed him away, he kept coming back," he recalled. "I finally managed to pick up him and carry him a few feet away. He still came back."
As night fell, and with the snake showing no signs of going away, Sheridan started to worry about someone stepping on it in the dark. He ordered the troops to try to scare it away by blasting it with a fire extinguisher. When that didn't work, the soldiers cut off the snake's head with a shovel.
"The experience gave me a lot of respect for nature. It also reminded me to keep looking down at the ground out here," Sheridan said.
For $1,000, a coyote will drive you through a hole in a cattle fence and a few miles into the southern New Mexico desert. For $2,500, you might get a ride far enough to have a reasonable chance of walking to Interstate 10, which is about 50 miles north of the border.
"The more you pay, the further you get," said Peachey, the Border Patrol chief in Lordsburg.
Most can't afford much. So they walk across a craggy landscape where daytime highs can top out above 100 and nighttime lows can fall below freezing. Freak thunderstorms can dump enough water to create whitewater rapids in small hillside crevices called arroyos.
It was in the waning minutes of one of those storms last week that a few soldiers from New Jersey finally saw some action.
Pfc. Isaias Castillo saw a mud-spattered man stumbling up a rocky trail a little after sunrise. They made eye contact. The man approached Castillo's Humvee.
"He said he was with 23 other people, their coyote took off in the middle of the night," said Castillo, who speaks Spanish.
Castillo, 29, said he told the man to tell the others to show themselves. He shouted and the rest of the group - women in dresses, men in sneakers and dress shoes and several children who appeared to be as young as 12 - materialized from behind rocks.
The soldiers on Castillo's team called the Border Patrol. Agents arrived a few minutes later to take the illegal immigrants to a local lockup and later processing in El Paso, where illegal crossers generally are held for about two weeks before being returned to Mexico.
Before the Border Patrol arrived, the illegal immigrants drank every drop of water the soldiers had.
"They had a half-gallon jug of water for 24 people," Castillo said. "They could have died."
Castillo, who works as a machinist, came to the United States from El Salvador with his family when he was 5.
Although Castillo's parents immigrated legally and ultimately became citizens, he said he felt a kinship with the people he detained.
"Being from a foreign country, it felt really good to help these people," he said. "It was pretty clear they were trying to come to America for a better life."
(Wayne Woolley is a staff writer for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He can be contacted at wwoolley@starledger.com.) |
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