Update On The Border Shooting

 Here is a quick bit of info to update everyone on the border shootings of the BP Agents. Seems the cartel shot these Agents in retaliation for a drug bust make the week before. Three cartel hit men came into the country knowingly tripping a ground sensor and then they laid in ambush for the Agents. Most likely one hit man had a rifle and the other two had handguns. Three BP Agents arrived on horseback and they were fired upon. Two were hit, one Agent died. The hit men then fled back across the border.
 The problem is that these Agents go out into the field with night vision devices mostly. While that is better than nothing, if someone is waiting for you in the night, you will not see him. With night vision everything looks green through the viewer. If there is movement you will spot it quickly most of the time, but if there is an ambush waiting to be sprung upon you, you will not notice until it is too late. BP Agents should be in the field with a thermal viewer like the FLIR PS32. I use this model on the border and NO ONE will go undetected if they are waiting for me within five hundred yards of me. The best thing about a thermal viewer like that is it is the same price, sometimes even cheaper, then the NVGs the bP is using now. 

Border Patrol Agent Shot and Killed, Another Wounded!

 Last night a U.S. Border Patrol Agent was shot and killed with another Agent wounded in a shooting near Naco, AZ. Just last week our group worked an area just west of where these Agents were shot. The second Agent has non life threatening wounds and is expected to survive. You can read the Fox news story http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/02/2-us-border-agents-shot-1-killed-near-major-drug-cooridor-in-arizona/ which mentions that two weapons recovered at the scene were linked to a smuggling operation involved with the Fast and Furious program. Not really sure how they could make that link so fast since this just happened last night.
 Keep in mind that Border Patrol is a law enforcement organization fighting a problem that only has a military solution. Some agents do come in to the Border patrol form the military but the majority of them do not. I have seen Agents walk in the field like they were in a mall. They have very little situational awareness and, while pretty good at tracking illegals, have no experience in detecting prime ambush areas and walk into these traps from time to time. Sadly, nothing will change in the future as neither political party wants to do anything of substance to secure our borders.

Exciting Day at the FOB!

 Today started out with a trip into indian country to check on some trails. One of the trails however is quite different from the rest. This particular trail is used mainly by drug traffickers both to bring drugs into the country and to bring money from the sale of the drugs back into Mexico. This is a very dangerous trail to watch because you have to watch it in two directions, north and south. We saw evidence of it's use within the last 48 hours however. Also, the do gooder human border groups were out today putting fresh one gallon water jugs on the trails for the illegals and traffickers. They also have nice welcome wagon type messages on them welcoming them and warning them about groups like ours that are out to stop them. These morons would rather welcome law breakers than help secure the nation. Just pathetic! We spotted three separate water drops, one from just an hour or so before we got to this particular trail and other water drops that look a few days old. We gathered our intel on this trail and headed back in to camp to resupply and get ready for night.
 The sun set and we were ready for whatever the traffickers had to throw at us. At least we thought that. They decided to throw a curveball when we were expecting a fastball. As we sat around waiting for traffic to start, Mexico decided to erupt in gunfire. Shots were being fired sporadically about a half mile south of us. After it died down, there was one lone gunshot. Guess someone had a very, very bad day down there. After things quieted down, border patrol checked the border fence up and back, then pulling into a set up spot across the street from our FOB(Forward Operating Base), the base owner decided to go have a chat with the agent to get some intel. While talking with the agent, an illegal decided for some strange unknown reason to come out of the brush and poke his head around the back of the vehicle. Both agent and fob owner were stunned and laughing at this illegal clown who actually was high on something as the agent took the illegal into custody. Turns out there were seven more out in the brush that had to be found. Once the fob owner came and got us we broke brush and looked with two additional border patrol agents that had responded for the call for backup. However, as of this writing, they are still not located but it is still over forty miles to the first main highway. Lots of agents and camera towers they will still have to avoid.

Border Traffic Pushed East

Well didn't take long for us to alter the crossing patterns of the bad guys. As it got dark last night, we noticed a strange silence coming from across the border. No vehicles driving, no dogs barking. Weird. Usually as soon as the night comes there is a beehive of activity involving cars, trucks and motorbikes. However, this was not the case last night. We finally talked to a border patrol agent who told us traffic was moving east of us. They had eyes on a group of 30+ out in the mountains. Seems the spotters out in the hills for these smuggling operations are doing their jobs quite well by keeping an eye on our base of operations. Oh well, the fight goes on.

New Border Op Commencing

Things are getting underway for our next border op in Arizona. We have a few new surprises for the illegal criminal element that likes to break our laws and scare our citizens! We're gonna give them hell this week! Will post updates as much as possible!

FINAL TALLY FOR OUR LATEST BORDER OP!

Conducting border operations as a volunteer is more than just putting on cool, kick ass equipment, grabbing a rifle and going out into the desert looking for trouble.  You need to be able to take what you learn while on the border and pass it along to people in your communities to help spread the word about what is really going on at the border.  Best way to do that is to talk to locals and Border Patrol Agents which is the best human intelligence (HUMINT) there is.  This particular operation we had a journalist from a popular magazine with us for the first half of the operation.  Our goal was to show him the gaps in security coverage in areas of the border.  We believe we were successful in this mission judging from some of the comments he made to us.  Two gaps that we proved were the easy way to sneak by the SBINet (Boeing made) towers that are in the desert.  Even with powerful night vision and thermal cameras on them, they are rendered useless when you walk in a wash or gully and have plenty of tree top coverage which those cameras cannot penetrate.  The second gap in security is the fact that BP does shift changes at the same times EVERY DAY!!  Well guess who knows exactly when this is?  The bad guys!!!  During shift changes we went out to show the reporter that there is a good 3 to 4 hour coverage gap in certain areas of the border.  This is ridiculous in my eyes.  BP should be altering their shift changes every day or every week of every year.  So I think we proved to the reporter that border security is not all that the pea brained Janet Napolitano says it is.  When we conduct operations, we try to have new individuals come and participate also.  We train them while we conduct operations so they get good hardcore on the job training.  There were a few first timers out this time.  Some completely new to the border watch game and some who while not new to it, were new to the terrain we work.  This terrain is the closest you will get to the mountains of Afghanistan that there is.  Some military units have even come down to train there before being deployed to Afghanistan.  So all in all it was a great week full of dedicated Americans who spend their own time and money to watch out for this country.  I couldn't be prouder of these dedicated souls.  Here are the tallies for the week.

1 illegal rescued who had maybe 24 hours to live. He was lost in the desert for 3 days in plus 100 temps.
2 drug cartel spotters captured on their way to their OP.
A total of 89 illegals apprehended in 4 separate groups that we had detected.

Latest word from a source that has friends on both sides of the border is that we definitely pissed off some bad guys in Mexico. Too bad!  Will post pics and vids soon. 

How The Battle Is Fought Here

The mission the other night was clear.  Keep a main smuggler trail under surveillance for drug or human smuggling trafficking.  Getting to the operations area was hard.  You needed to go up and over three steep hills at an incline of about thirty-five degrees.  Not easy if you are not used to it.  Especially not easy when you are carrying a vest and a pack.  Luckily a storm came in and knocked the heat down about twenty degrees or so.  Bad side of that is lightning and slick slopes to worry about.  Well we made it too the op area in one piece, after having to dodge a few rattlesnakes and cattle to get there.  However, our luck turned shitty before we even got there as our scanner picked up mexican radio traffic which could only mean one thing, we were spotted by cartel lookouts.  Oh well, on with the mission as our pickup was not for another fifteen hours.  We set up a team on either side of the trail on elevated ground and waited.  I used my FLIR PS32 thermal camera to be able to spot traffic and tell if it was a drug load or human smuggling load coming through.  We were dumped on by different storms coming through but no traffic.  As daybreak, we formed up and headed out to check the spotter location.  We hiked it to the base of the hill the shack was on that the cartels use.  Packs were dropped and the team headed up to check out the shack.  I stayed with the packs as rear security.  After about five minutes I spot two individuals coming out of a wash in a valley below me.  They immediately start climbing the trail to get to their OP.  I radio our team already up there to set up and wait.  At this point I am on my belly as our gear was dropped in a semi open area and did not want to spook the spotters.  As they walked up the trail, they took a break for about twenty minutes under a mesquite tree which obscured my view of them but not of one of our team.  Once they got rolling again, we got ready to spring the trap.  After a few minutes, the call came across the radio that the trap was sprung and the cartel spotters surrendered.  We radioed our base and they called Border Patrol.  BP asked us to bring the spotters out to meet them.  All and all it was a good mission and everybody came out of it safe.  More to follow.