AZMEX UPDATE 3 3 OCT 2012
Note: Have NOT, rpt NOT been able to confirm with sources in Sonora.
Report: Mexican troops arrest 2 in killing of U.S. Border Patrol
agent Nicholas Ivie
Posted: 4:01 PM
Last Updated: 25 minutes ago
By: ABC15.com staff
http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_central_southern_az/other/
reuters-mexican-troops-arrest-two-over-killing-of-us-border-patrol-
agent-nicholas-ivie
NACO, AZ - Reuters is reporting two suspects have been arrested in
the killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Ivie , who was shot
to death Tuesday.
The news source said a Mexican Army officer told them the suspects
are being detained in the city of Agua Prieta, Mexico, a few miles
away from where Ivie, 30, was shot to death.
ABC15 is working to confirm the information.
Ivie was killed after he and two other agents responded to a sensor
hit a few miles north of the Arizona-Mexico border just before 2 a.m.
Tuesday, seven miles east of Bisbee.
The two other agents involved included one who was shot in the
buttocks and ankle, but is expected to be OK.
Read more: http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_central_southern_az/
other/reuters-mexican-troops-arrest-two-over-killing-of-us-border-
patrol-agent-nicholas-ivie#ixzz28HXD9zXn
Note: By AZ and SON. standards, it is not that tough in that area.
Authorities face tough territory in border probe
Wed, 10/03/2012 - 10:16pm
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.svherald.com/associatedpress/332394
U.S. Border Patrol agents patrol the border fence near where a U.S.
Border Patrol agent Nicholas Ivie was shot and killed, and one other
was shot and injured, Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2012, in Naco, Ariz. (AP Photo/
Ross D. Franklin)
PHOENIX (AP) — Investigators searching a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico
border for clues into the fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent
face a treacherous territory that is heavily used by drug smugglers,
offers many hiding places and is close enough to Mexico for
traffickers to make a quick getaway.
Whoever killed Agent Nicholas Ivie and wounded another agent in the
sparsely populated desert in southeastern Arizona early Tuesday may
have done just that.
Those who carried out the shooting near Bisbee, Ariz., probably had
time to cross the border in the early-morning darkness before
authorities could seal off an escape route, said George McCubbin,
president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union representing
about 17,000 border patrol agents.
"I seriously doubt anybody would be laid up and hiding," he said.
Ivie and two other agents were fired upon in a rugged hilly area
about five miles north of the border as they responded to an alarm
that was triggered on one of the sensors that the government has
installed along the border. The wounded agent was shot in the ankle
and buttocks and released from the hospital after undergoing surgery.
The third agent wasn't injured.
Ivie is a 30-year-old father of two who grew up in Utah and was
active in the Mormon church. He has been an agent for four years.
Authorities have declined to provide other details, including what
they believe prompted the shooting and whether the agents were
ambushed. Still, they suspect that more than one person fired on the
agents. No arrests have been made.
The last Border Patrol agent fatally shot on duty was Brian Terry,
who died in a shootout with bandits near the border in December 2010.
Terry's shooting was later linked to the government's "Fast and
Furious" gun-smuggling operation, which allowed people suspected of
illegally buying guns for others to walk away from gun shops with
weapons, rather than be arrested.
Authorities intended to track the guns into Mexico. Two rifles found
at the scene of Terry's shooting were bought by a member of the gun-
smuggling ring being investigated. Critics of the operation say any
shooting along the border now raises the specter that those illegal
weapons are still being used in border violence.
A federal law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of
anonymity told The Associated Press that no weapons have been found.
The official requested anonymity because information on the search
hasn't been publicly released.
The shooting occurred in an area heavily frequented by drug
smugglers, though less so in recent years by illegal immigrants
crossing the border, said Dave Stoddard, a retired Border Patrol
agent who worked in the agency's station in the area for eight years.
"You're talking about cocaine alley," Stoddard said.
The area historically has been popular with smugglers because U.S. 80
comes within several miles of the border, allowing backpack-toting
smugglers to take loads of drugs to the highway for pickup by
vehicles. "It takes maybe less than a minute and everybody leaves the
scene," Stoddard said, explaining that the "mules" either get in the
vehicle or go back into the desert to return to Mexico on foot.
The desert where the shooting occurred is dotted with creosote and
other brushes that hamper visibility at ground level. Gullies and
ridges also provide cover for smugglers.
The area is part of the nation's busiest Border Patrol sector, which
received additional agents and fencing as the federal government
sought to improve border security in recent years.
To sneak drugs into the country, teams of smugglers who lug up to 40
pounds of marijuana each in backpacks made of burlap and flour bags
typically have to either walk over the border or scale the fence that
covers about 30 percent of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.
Agents patrol the fence by driving along roads beside the barriers
and monitor the area through surveillance cameras mounted on nearby
towers and sensors placed along smuggling routes after the fence.
Agents who may find it hard to spot smugglers in the brush use remote
sensors to detect illegal border-crossers so agents can be deployed
in response. Seismic sensors buried in the ground on paths and trails
in the desert and mountains north of the border are used to detect
the passage of people, animals and vehicles.
Each Board Patrol station monitors hundreds of such sensors and can
dispatch agents to the scene when the devices are triggered. "As
people walk over that, that will trigger the signal," McCubbin said.
"You go out and check it out."
Multiple sensors can be deployed along a path so agents can tell the
direction of travel and get an idea of how large a group is involved,
he said. Then agents can either get ahead of the group or come in
from behind and use night-vision goggle sand infrared cameras to spot
them.
Border Patrol agents often are posted several hundred feet and even
miles away from the border to look for people who sneaked into the
country. Once smugglers get past several layers of enforcement, they
typically hook up with a driver on a highway or ranch road and use
back roads to make their way around Border Patrol checkpoints.
In the county where the shooting occurred, checkpoints could be seen
on two highways that carry traffic to and from Interstate 10.
Drug-sniffing dogs and agents screen traffic passing through the
checkpoints, resulting in searches of vehicles if there are
indications of smuggling activity. But the checkpoints' real
enforcement purpose is indirect, Stoddard said.
"The real purpose of the checkpoint is to get the dope or people on
foot in a remote area where they can be picked up. It's gravy when a
load goes into the (checkpoint)."
Note: Wenden more west-central than SW, north of I-10 on Hwy US 60
Agricultural area.
More than 4,500 marijuana plants found in SW Ariz.
Posted: Oct 03, 2012 2:18 PM MST
Updated: Oct 03, 2012 2:18 PM
http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/19728688/more-than-4500-
marijuana-plants-found-in-sw-ariz MST
WENDEN, Ariz. (AP) - Authorities have destroyed more than 4,500
marijuana plants found growing along the Centennial Wash near Wenden
in southwestern Arizona.
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Arizona Department of Public
Safety officials say the plants were 3- to 6-feet high and were
located in four separate grows throughout the one-acre site.
They say the marijuana cultivation operation was located in the
middle of a grove of salt cedar trees, near the edge of a small
tributary in La Paz County.
Each of the four grows had its own irrigation system powered by a
pump that emitted water through an underground drip system.
Authorities say the field had a security fence that surrounded the
entire field and an abandoned rifle was found at the site.
No arrests have been made in the case.
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