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TOMBSTONE, Ariz. -- Desperate to escape poverty, more than a million Latin American migrants make a perilous trek through the deadly desert every year. Hundreds die annually from heat and dehydration. And as the Center's Intelligence Report found in a six-month investigation published in its spring issue, migrants now face a growing threat from armed vigilantes and anti-immigration groups determined to halt what they call an "invasion" of the United States.
While thousands of migrants still cross through Texas and California, Arizona has been the most popular crossing point since the late 1990s. It is also the most dangerous. Local ranchers have a long-standing reputation for taking the law into their own hands, vigilante-style ý especially when Hispanic people venture onto their land.
"If I had my way," one rancher reportedly bellowed at a meeting with U.S. Border Patrol officials last summer, "I'd shoot every single one of 'em."
The Intelligence Report obtained documentation of nearly 40 incidents since 1999 in which citizens appear to have been illegally detained in just one Arizona county ý Cochise, which sits in the southeast corner of the state. Some of the detentions were made at gunpoint. In at least five cases, migrants said they had been shot or beaten.
But migrants rarely report abuses, and law enforcement officials have been reluctant to crack down on vigilantism, despite pleas from human rights advocates and local elected officials. "If you don't prosecute these people for beating Mexican nationals or killing them," says Tombstone Mayor Dusty Escapule, "then it's kind of like open season."
Most dangerous is Ranch Rescue
The most dangerous group on the border is Ranch Rescue. Led by Jack Foote, who has referred to Mexicans as "dog turds," Ranch Rescue is a Texas-based paramilitary operation that boasts 250 international members, including several mercenary soldiers.
In October, 35 Ranch Rescuers conducted a heavily armed hunt for migrants in southern Arizona. They were investigated, but not charged, in connection with a migrant's execution-style murder near the tiny town of Red Rock, where a pair of masked gunmen opened fire on 12 migrants napping by a cattle pond.
The violence continues to escalate. In March, two Ranch Rescue members ý this time in Texas ý were arrested after an El Salvadoran migrant accused them of pistol-whipping him. (See Migrants Sue Vigilantes.) And in just the first four months of this year, dozens of physical assaults against migrants were reported to Mexican consulates.
Two other anti-immigration groups ý Voice of Citizens Together/American Patrol and Civil Homeland Defense ý have also conducted armed patrols along the border.
SPLC Report
June 2003
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