Aid workers, contract crews evacuated from border wall due to gun battle in Mexico

A violent conflict between criminal factions in Sonora came unusually close to Arizona this week in a remote area of the border wall, east of Sásabe, Arizona.

An intense gun battle just south of the border wall on Wednesday prompted the rapid evacuation of wall-construction crews hired by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Humanitarian aid workers said border agents also told them to leave the area, about 12 miles east of the Sásabe port of entry and about three miles past Cerro de Fresnal, which bisects the border wall.

Aid workers reported seeing a caravan of Spencer Construction crews speeding out of the area on Wednesday, amid the sound of semi-automatic gunfire and helicopters circling low overhead.

Humanitarian volunteers at the border wall have previously heard gunfire in the mountains east of Sásabe, Sonora, but it’s unusual for it to come so close to the wall, they said.

Around mid-morning on Wednesday, members of the Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans were cleaning up discarded Mylar emergency blankets at the border wall, south of Arivaca, when they heard the gunfighting.

“We heard ‘rat-a-tat-tat’ in the distance, rapid fire,” said Laurel Grindy, a volunteer with Green Valley Samaritans. Soon after, a border agent drove by, coming from the east.

“He told us that he was evacuating the road. I could already see the construction workers driving out,” she said. “He just told me the gunfire had been getting closer, and he had seen someone armed come to the American side. He said it wasn’t worth our while to be out there, that it was just too dangerous.”

A CBP spokesman said one Mexican man, who appeared to be involved in the shooting, crossed into Arizona and surrendered to border agents. When agents encountered the armed man on the U.S. side of the border, he put down his weapon while gesturing toward the armed combatants behind him in Mexico, a CBP spokesman said.

CBP couldn’t comment on the status of the man.

While it’s not clear if the man intended to request asylum, or was just trying to escape the gunfight whatever the consequences, as a single adult male he would likely be placed in detention, said Alba Jaramillo, co-executive director for the Immigration Law and Justice Network.

All migrants are initially detained by border agents as their cases are evaluated. But asylum seekers deemed not to be a risk to the community, and especially those who are part of a family unit, can be released quickly to temporary shelters like Tucson’s Casa Alitas and from there, travel to family or sponsors in the interior of the United States to await their asylum hearings.

The man detained by border agents Wednesday would be more likely to remain in detainment, even if he requested asylum, because he had a weapon, Jaramillo said.

“If they do detain him they’d still allow him the opportunity to request asylum. However, in that scenario, he would have to fight his case inside of a detention center, unless he could hire an attorney that could fight for him to show he’s not a threat to anyone,” she said.

In volatile parts of Mexico, including northern Sonora, young men can be forced into working for organized crime groups, Jaramillo said.

“The majority of the time, they don’t make that choice willingly. For them it’s often a matter of life or death,” she said. “They (criminal groups) will burn down the home, threaten the family and say, ‘If you don’t join, we’ll kill you and then we’re going to kill your family.’ It’s a lot different than what’s portrayed in movies.”

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On Wednesday, as they evacuated the border wall, the Samaritans saw six unmarked trucks speeding eastward, which appeared to part of Border Patrol’s special tactical units, said Paul Nixon of the Samaritans.

“They’re the real heavy metal guys that BP uses when things get really rough,” he said.

Due to the volatile situation, Border Patrol’s Tucson sector deployed a special-operations detachment to the scene, according to CBP.

Aid workers say the Border Patrol doesn’t routinely patrol this remote area, past Cerro de Fresnal and south of Arivaca, and usually only ventures there in response to reports of migrant arrivals from humanitarian aid workers.

But this spot has become an increasingly popular place for human smugglers to drop off asylum seekers, who end up stranded far from border-enforcement infrastructure. Some migrants have waited for days without food in frigid overnight temperatures.

The asylum seekers arriving at this part of the wall are mostly from Mexico and Central America, and often include large groups of families with babies or young children, aid workers say. The migrants report having been without food or shelter on the Mexican side of the border for days, before crossing into Arizona and waiting longer to turn themselves over to border agents.

Many of the asylum seekers are now deciding to walk the more than 10 miles towards the Sásabe, Arizona, port of entry, rather than wait for an unknown period of time for agents to arrive. And now, many are walking out to escape the violence raging just south of the wall, aid workers report.

Migrant arrivals this far east of Sásabe started surging after violence broke out in Sásabe, Sonora in October, disrupting established migration routes.

Thousands of local residents have fled Sásabe, Sonora, some securing humanitarian parole in the U.S., leaving only about 100 residents in the besieged community. Criminal groups have burned houses, detained and tortured residents during interrogations, and at least for a time blocked the southern exit from Sásabe.

That left residents trapped between two warring factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, reportedly fighting over control of the lucrative human smuggling routes in the region.

Often aid workers find hundreds of people waiting in this hard-to-access area, beyond roller-coaster steep hills that Border Patrol’s two-wheel-drive transport vans struggle to ascend.

Humanitarian groups hope Border Patrol will establish a more permanent presence in that part of the wall.

“There’s no reason they can’t set up at the two widely used gaps (in that area). They know people are going to be out there,” Nixon said. “They have a $17 billion budget, and I don’t know what they’re doing with it if they can’t show up 10 miles from their base.”

Nixon and Grindy said the Samaritans were back out at the border on Thursday, with volunteers reporting 400 migrants in the area that was evacuated Wednesday.