Special to WorldTribune.com
Monday, August 2, 2004
[Out of control: Holder seeks legal team for flood of illegal immigrant children, June 9, 2014]
U.S. Border Patrol agents detained 53 Arabic-speaking males in Arizona near the Mexican border on June 13, according to a report by a small-town newspaper in Tombstone, Arizona.
The same report detailed a second incident on June 21 in which 24 Arabic-speaking males were seized after a chase of a larger group of border-crossers, most of whom are still at large.
Both incidents involved agents from the Wilcox, Arizona Border Patrol station.
The agents said they encountered the 53 men on June 13 as part of a larger contingent of approximately 100 illegal aliens in the Chiricaucha Mountain foothills.
The agents said they were able to detain 71 of the aliens, of whom 53 were described as males of Middle Eastern decent. The men spoke poor English and no Spanish, sources told the newspaper.
One of the agents, who speaks Arabic and Farsi overheard the detainees speaking Arabic through an air vent in the transport vehicle after their detention according to the story in the Tombstone Tumbleweed.
The June 21 incident occured in the area of Pierce and Sunsites approximately 25 miles northeast of Tombstone and not far from the Chiricaucha foothills.
A border patrol spoksman officially denied that any Middle Eastern aliens have been detained in the area. However he did confirm that since Oct. 1, 2003, 5,510 illegal aliens “other than Mexican” (OTM) have been detained crossing the border into southern Arizona. The term actually means”other than Mexico or other central and South American countries,” the spokesman, Andy Adame, told the newspaper.
Such OTM aliens are “people from all over the world,” he said. “We apprehend them, process them, and turn them over to [the U.S. Department of] Homeland Security and the FBI and that is all I can say.”
Vouching for the small newspaper report is J. David Galland, deputy editor for DefenseWatch, a defense-oriented Internet publication headed by retired Army Colonel David H. Hackworth.
The border patrol has in recent weeks stepped up its enforcement in the southeast quadrant of Arizona, which includes the area of the Huachuca Mountains in Cochise County, Galland wrote on July 23.
“The Cochise County seat is in Bisbee, an artsy copper mining town, with a colorful past, located just a few miles north of the America’s southern border with Mexico. At the foot of the Huachuca Mountains lies Fort Huachuca, the home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Command and school.”
On July 20, 2004, Geostrategy-Direct.com reported that the U.S. Homeland Security Department had deployed the Israeli-made Hermes 450 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) “to help border surveillance in southern Arizona.”
Galland’s article implied that the UAVs were deployed because of the threat posed by OTM aliens from the Middle East.
The agents involved in the June 13th incident said the men were dressed like ordinary border-crossers – baseball caps, jeans, sneakers and t-shirts. What distinguished the Middle Easterners was the fact that their clothes were as new and fresh as their identical haircuts and mustaches.
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Copyright © 2004 East West Services, Inc.
Flashback: Report said U.S. seized 77 Mideastern aliens in southern Arizona added by World Tribune on
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