Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee get something of a show-and-tell presentation regarding border violence. The members include (from left) Sens. John Huppenthal, Jonathan Paton, Russell Pearce, Richard Miranda and Meg Burton Cahill. Sen. Chuck Gray attended but is not pictured. (Photo by Bill Coates)
Elements of the Mexican drug and human smuggling trade are spilling into Arizona with alarming frequency, state and federal officials have warned members of a Senate committee.
Last year, raging wars among drug cartels claimed the lives of more than 5,300 people in Mexico, Department of Public Safety Commander Dan Allen told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The cartels often fight for control of smuggling corridors and hubs.
And now, Arizona law enforcement officials are increasingly confronting crimes related to Mexico's $132 billion drug-smuggling industry, Allen said while standing in front of a display of firearms favored by the country's five drug cartels.
Last year, law enforcement officials in Phoenix investigated approximately 370 incidents of kidnapping, a number that ranks the state's most populated city second in the world, trailing only Mexico City, he said.
"These trends aren't going down, they are going up," he said on Feb. 23.
An event of particular concern for Arizona law enforcement occurred in April of 2007 when 70 Gulf Cartel members in paramilitary gear stormed a police station in Cananea, Mexico, where they killed 22 people, including five police officers. Within days, about almost half of the station's assigned officers resigned, Allen said.
In a strikingly similar home invasion in Phoenix in 2008, the invaders dressed in full gear and armor to masquerade as a Phoenix Police tactical unit. The suspects also engaged in a military-style strategy to storm the house by dividing into teams; one to lay suppressing fire to freeze the occupants and another to enter the home, Allen said.
A slideshow presentation accompanied the DPS presentation and included disturbing images of executed cartel victims in Mexico, and another man found slain in the deserts of southern Arizona.
The victims were wrapped in duct tape before execution, and Allen showed the committee's lawmakers similar photos of rescued drop-house hostages in Phoenix with their hands and faces bound in the exact fashion.
A portion of the presentation was labeled as "astonishing," by the committee's chairman, Sen. Jonathan Paton, while Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican from Mesa, used the occasion to castigate Arizona media, which he blamed for minimizing the state's immigration-related dangers.
"I hope this wakes some people up," he said, later accusing former Gov. Janet Napolitano of ignoring illegal-immigrant related violence.
Attorney General Terry Goddard told the committee members that Mexican smugglers often work in tandem with individuals in Phoenix, and he advocated the use of warrants to seize suspicious wire transfers of cash destined for Mexico.
He said court-obtained warrants to allow law enforcement officials access to details of the wire transfers had a dramatic impact on reducing the amount of cash wired to Mexico during the short time they were used in 2006. The practice, though, was suspended by the courts shortly thereafter as a lawsuit filed by Western Union went through a lengthy appeals process. The Arizona Supreme Court recently heard arguments in the case and is expected to issue a decision soon.
Goddard said used-car dealers frequently collude with smugglers, who buy vehicles to assist smuggling operations. Smugglers are known to purposefully default on the car payments, so if seized or recovered, the vehicles are returned to the dealers.
"We found that many coyotes were buying used cars in gross," he said. "They would buy out the lot."
He also touted his office's work to break up syndicates that shipped illegal immigrants across the county and others that set up "straw purchases" of firearms in Arizona that were destined for use by Mexican cartel enforcers.
The committee received presentations from DPS officials, Goddard, Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall, U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Agent George Gillett, and Anthony Novitsky, the major crimes chief of the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.
The officials spoke in front of a backdrop of assault weapons, including AR-15 and AK-47 semiautomatic rifles and a light-weight Belgium-made handgun known ominously among smugglers as the "mata policia," or cop-killer, which refers to the pistol's ability to pierce body armor.
But the "elephant in the room," according to Gillett was the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle, seized by law enforcement officials in Yuma. Using ammunition bigger than an index figure, the high-powered semiautomatic rifle is commonly used by military forces to penetrate and disable armored vehicles.
It is unclear what effect the border crimes meeting held by the Senate Judiciary Committee will have, but Paton, whose district in Tucson extends to seven miles north of the Arizona-Mexico border, is the prime sponsor of three pieces of immigration-related legislation.
The legislation criminalizes the harboring of illegal immigrants, increases penalties for smugglers that threaten smuggled immigrants with deadly force and expands sex trafficking laws to include coercive techniques such as blackmail, threats and the confiscation or destruction of identification and passports.
A representative with the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement was scheduled to address the committee but did not appear at the meeting, which drew local and national media as well as casual spectators.
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