Last week, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson claimed that the border was becoming more secure. This week, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Deputies and SWAT, responding to a phone call, discovered two dead men and two more wounded in a cave outside of Gila Bend.
On April 27, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office received a 911 call at 12:30 pm from an unidentified male, stating that he had been shot in the desert, along with three other men in his group. The caller said the incident had occurred one hour before, and it was unclear as to why he had delayed calling. Sheriff’s deputies, and US Border Patrol (BORTAC) responded to the scene by vehicle and helicopter, which was in a mountainous area south of Gila Bend, and found the men in a cave. Two were already dead, and two more were airlifted to the West Valley Hospital in Goodyear. It was determined that two more members of the group had abandoned the others, and were presumably somewhere in the desert.
Sheriff’s homicide detectives arrived on the scene and investigated the scene for the rest of the day and through the night, finding weapons and other evidence. Sheriff’s SWAT was dispatched to set up a perimeter around the area, and protect the investigators from any threat. A number of bales of marijuana were found in the area, though a link to the men in the cave had not been established.
The two men in the hospital remain in serious condition. One of the men has begun talking to detectives about what happened in the desert.
This came in a week when deputies, working in concert with Border Patrol, made three significant seizures of drugs in the desert, also near Gila Bend. Both loaded onto all-terrain-vehicles and carried by drug violators, narcotics traffic from Mexico into Arizona has increased in recent weeks.
“Before the heat of summer becomes overwhelming,” Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said, “cartels intensify their smuggling efforts, and we are witnessing that here. Our deputies and Border Patrol agents have arrested twelve suspects in three operations within the past week, accounting for more than one-half ton of marijuana. Additionally, just yesterday, two men were murdered in the desert, two more were seriously wounded and airlifted to hospitals and two more remain at large, in an apparent drug dispute gone very bad.”
Last Tuesday, April 21, seven suspects, walking through the desert in the same area in the dead of night, were apprehended with seven bundles of marijuana totaling about four hundred pounds. The street value of the drugs is judged at $356,000. The men were booked into the 4th Avenue Jail on charges of transportation of marijuana.
One day later, around 2:30 in the morning, five more men were detained, also near Gila Bend, along with 163 pounds of marijuana, valued at almost $150,000. The suspects were also booked into the 4th Avenue Jail.
On Sunday, April 26, again in the dark of night, law enforcement seized an all-terrain-vehicle, (a/k/a an AV or quad), loaded with four hundred pounds of marijuana. The driver had apparently fled into the desert.
“After twenty-six years in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration,” says Sheriff Arpaio, “including serving as regional director in Mexico, Central and South America, and then Texas, and then Arizona, I can’t say I’m surprised by these events. Violence and the drug business go hand-in-hand, and unless we intensify our efforts to stop the traffic coming in from Mexico, violence will escalate.
“These three seizures alone represent almost 1,000 pounds of marijuana, worth $500,000 wholesale. With that kind of money at stake, you can be sure the cartels will not stop unless we force them to.”