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In a brazen demonstration of who controls the border, Mexican smugglers set up a make-shift ramp to drive a car over the southern border of the US in Arizona 'That's the international boundary on the Tohono O'odham reservation,' posted union vice president Art Del Cueto. 'Those extra things you see are ramps that the smugglers utilize to drive a car over the boundary and into the United States. The Native American nation is on record opposing the 30-foot high, steel wall that US officials say is a crucial layer in helping to stem the flow of migrants. In some places...

An AK-47-toting man smuggling illegal immigrants opened fire on ICE agents in Phoenix last week, sparking a shootout that left another member of his smuggling gang dead, according to court documents detailing the latest episode in what authorities say is growing violence in the illegal immigrant economy. The incident has drawn scant national attention, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and federal prosecutors have been tight with details, saying the April 11 shootout is still under investigation. But the picture that emerges from the court documents is of an abusive immigration-smuggling gang running a stash house on an Indian reservation...

SELLS, Ariz. – The reputed head of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel is threatening a more aggressive stance against U.S. law enforcement, instructing associates to use deadly force, if needed, to protect increasingly contested trafficking operations, authorities said. Such a move by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most-wanted man, would mark a turn from the cartel’s previous position of largely avoiding violent confrontations north of the border – either with American law enforcement officers or fellow traffickers. Local police and federal agents in Arizona said they recently have received at least two law enforcement alerts focused on Guzman’s reported orders that...

An Indian reservation along the Mexican border is prohibiting the Border Patrol from entering its land, which is a notorious smuggling corridor determined by the U.S. government to be a “High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA).” Homeland Security sources tell Judicial Watch that the road in the southeast corner of the reservation has been cordoned off by a barbed wired gate to keep officers out. A hand-written cardboard sign reading “Closed, Do Not Open” has been posted on the fence. “This is the location used most for trafficking drugs into the country,” a Border Patrol source told JW, adding...

American Indian Officers Use Traditional Methods of Tracking to Try to Capture Drug Smugglers TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION, ARIZ. -- In an era of unmanned drones, night-vision goggles and wireless sensors, Sloan Satepauhoodle scours the desert along the Mexican border for drug smugglers in the old ways. She is a tracker, a former Secret Service agent and customs inspector in Washington who traded in her desk and computer to work "intel" in the desert, employing sign-cutting -- or tracking -- skills once used by her Kiowa ancestors to hunt animals. Satepauhoodle (pronounced SAY-paw-who-dle) roams this vast Indian reservation in a four-wheel-drive...

A passenger in a truck hauling 66 bales of marijuana through the Tohono O'odham Nation was arrested Tuesday afternoon for his part in a fatal collision that killed a Tucson woman, an official said. Jose Miguel Ramirez-Soto, 22, was booked into Pima County jail on suspicion of first-degree murder under the felony murder rule, said Detective Marty Fuentes, the vehicular offenses supervisor for the Tohono O'odham Police Department. The felony murder rule allows suspects to be charged with murder if a person dies during the commission of certain felonies. Ramirez-Soto was also arrested on suspicion of a drug violation and...

ORGAN PIPE CACTUS NATIONAL MONUMENT — While politicians in Phoenix and Congress talk about building a tall fence along Arizona's border with Mexico, workers here are completing a shorter and more modest obstacle. This low-slung vehicle barrier will do nothing to stop people from walking into Southern Arizona illegally. But on public lands where the obstacles are popping up, officials say the devices have succeeded in stopping the so-called drive-throughs that can imperil law enforcement and scar the thin-skinned desert for decades. Homeland Security and other officials have disclosed plans to build similar barriers along most of the border between...

The Tohono O'odham Nation is grieving the death of a 20-year-old tribal member killed in action in Iraq. Pfc. Seferino Reyna, an Army combat engineer and father of two, died Sunday when his vehicle was hit by a homemade bomb near Taji, about 20 miles northwest of Baghdad. "This is a tragic loss for the Reyna family, and the entire Tohono O'odham Nation mourns," said Vivian Juan-Saunders, chairwoman of the nation. Reyna was the first O'odham member killed in Iraq. He is the 21st service member of American Indian or native Alaskan descent to die in Iraq or Afghanistan, according...

Forests, mountains, streams and valleys - 325 miles of them: this is the Polish-Ukrainian border. "It's easy to cross illegally without being watched. And if someone crosses it, the EU is open to them," says Jerzy Ostrowski, a group leader for the Polish border police. Help, however, in rooting out potential illegal immigrants - or, indeed, would-be terrorists - has arrived in the incongruous form of Indian scouts. Last week, three American-Indian trackers from the Navajo and Tohono O'odham tribes joined a 26-strong group of Polish customs officers around the small town of Huwniki, which lies about 250 miles southeast...

<p>Members of the Tohono O'odham Nation roamed freely on a reservation that stretches as far north as Gila Bend and as far south as Hermosillo, Son., for thousands of years.</p> <p>But crackdowns on border crossings in the past decade have impeded their ability to come and go on both sides of the international border.</p>