There was a time not long ago when the Border Patrol thanked Arizona officers for their cooperation with barbecues and practice ammunition. Now, departments get millions a year in paid overtime, with some officers nearly doubling their salaries and dozens more marked cars out patrolling the streets.
Operation Stonegarden is an 8-year-old federal program that pays for overtime shifts and lets agencies buy related equipment such as radios and night-vision goggles — all aimed at enhancing border security.
In fiscal year 2013, agencies within 100 miles of the Arizona-Sonora border received $12 million through the program. All of the agencies the Star reviewed participated.
While reluctant to say immigration enforcement is anything close to a priority, border chiefs with small staffs and tight budgets said they are grateful for the funds.
“It gives me higher visibility inside the community, so it’s almost like a force multiplier,” Sahuarita Police Chief John Harris said.
In Nogales, one or two officers work a four-hour Stonegarden shift on any given day, boosting the number of officers on the street to as many as 10.
Yuma County Sheriff’s Office used Stonegarden money to create a regional system to communicate in real time with the Border Patrol.
The Homeland Security grants have tightened relationships between local and federal agencies, but also blurred the boundaries between the two.
A Santa Cruz County deputy wrote in one report, “One of our duties while on regular patrol is to patrol rural areas to detect, deter and apprehend illegal entrants, narcotics and weapons from entering through the Santa Cruz County.”
That is word for word the mission another officer wrote in a Stonegarden report.
Border Patrol agents who live in Sahuarita regularly park their service vehicles at the town’s Police Department overnight.
Agents working undercover will sometimes ask local officers to knock on the door of a suspected drop house or pull over a car they believe is filled with drugs.
“We are not necessarily asking them to stop drug smuggling, alien smuggling, weapons of mass destruction,” Customs and Border Protection spokesman Andy Adame said of local police. “Where we are getting our bigger bang for our buck is where they continue to use their traditional jobs of patrolling instead of making them Border Patrol agents.”
But deputies sometimes track footprints in the desert and provide backup at checkpoints.
In one case in April, an undercover agent asked Nogales police to approach suspected illegal immigrants sitting in the McDonald’s in the Walmart Supercenter. An officer working Stonegarden responded and saw two men matching the description, looking around as if they were waiting for someone.
The officer identified himself and asked to speak with them. After the men were unable to produce a U.S. ID or immigration documents, he detained both 30-year-olds from Oaxaca and turned them over to the Border Patrol.
The cooperation goes both ways. “The requests to assist our federal partners are significantly fewer than our requests to them for assistance,” said Douglas interim Chief Kraig Fullen. “We have received help from Border Patrol, CBP and ICE with traffic control at an accident, perimeter security at a crime scene, searches for burglary suspects in a neighborhood, K-9 assistance, and the list goes on.”
As Santa Cruz County Sheriff Estrada puts it, “Without BP, obviously we would be overrun.”
Chad Matthews, a Santa Cruz County sergeant, regularly drives through Tubac to look for open doors, broken windows, people running from a house — anything that looks suspicious. Matthews knows that Kino Springs is popular for smuggling because of the paved roads.
The smugglers “know they can outrun us,” he said. “We’re not out here to catch UDAs; we are patrolling the area.”
Since 2010, Santa Cruz County’s 39 deputies have referred more than 1,200 people to the Border Patrol. Incidents classified as assists to federal agencies in the county make up about 7 percent of the total.
Estrada attributed the numbers to geography: The county shares 50 miles of border with Mexico. It has three ports of entry, rugged canyons and a river valley — and one of the nation’s highest concentrations of border agents.
“With 1,000 Border Patrol agents,” Estrada said, “I can think of 1,000 reasons we may assist.”
