ARIZONA
BORDER MILITIA (SCHIFRIN/FANNIN) -- PBS NHWE 1/29/2017
PRODUCER/CORRESPONDENT: ZACH FANNIN/NICK SCHIFRIN
ASSOCIATE
PRODUCER: TOM RITZENTHALER
VIDEOGRAPHY: ZACH FANNIN
EDITOR: ZACH FANNIN/JASON STENECK
NICK
SCHIFRIN: Tim Foley likes to describe himself and his men
as a kind of neighborhood watch. And these 600 square miles along the
Arizona-Mexico border are their backyard.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: For the last 7 years, the 57-year-old former
Army soldier, firefighter, and construction worker has led the Arizona Border
Recon. Foley describes it as a surveillance group, but members are armed with
military style rifles that are legal in Arizona. They’re prepared to intercept
or capture anyone crossing the border illegally.
TIM
FOLEY: When friends come to your house, they come to
the front door and ring the bell and announce themselves. They don’t wait ’til
you’re not home, and then climb through your back window, and make themselves
at home.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: This desert land is a well-worn route for
Mexican cartels. Border Recon members want to try and secure the border because
they say the government has failed to do so.
TIM
FOLEY: Basically what we’re trying to do is just hurt the cartels’ pocket
book. This area is pretty much theirs. And we’re coming back in and going, it’s
not yours. It’s ours.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: To try and catch the cartels, Foley hides motion-activated
cameras.
TIM
FOLEY: I can see what times of day they come by, what
days of the week, and start to see if there’s any type of pattern.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: Late last year, Foley’s cameras recorded these men dressed in
desert camouflage walking from Mexico into Arizona. Smugglers bring in
marijuana, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and, sometimes, people. The last
man carried a broom to sweep up their footprints.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: Some wear these booties with carpet soles to
avoid leaving tracks.
TIM
FOLEY: So if I’m wearing this.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: Can’t see anything.
TIM
FOLEY: There’s nothing there. They’re actually very
good. It’s very ingenious.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: Foley says this fight is personal. At an early
age he started abusing alcohol and drugs, everything from heroin to sniffing
glue.
TIM
FOLEY: For 30 years I was higher than a kite. And then
I came down here, I was going, I know what this stuff does. And I want to keep
as many people as possible away from it.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: Foley has no interest in being a U.S. Customs and Border
Protection agent, but he told us he works with them. At one point during our
visit, he said this call was from an agent.
TIM
FOLEY: You missed the group by about an
hour-and-a-half.
BORDER
PATROL AGENT: You guys have a good one,
and let us know if you see anything.
TIM
FOLEY: Roger that, will do.
TIM
FOLEY: They know that I have so much intel.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: C.B.P
declined our request for an interview, but said in a
written statement it “does not endorse or support any private group or
organization from taking matters into their own hands, as it could have
disastrous personal and public safety consequences.”
NICK
SCHIFRIN: In Arizona, there are more than a dozen
self-described militia groups. None of which were created or sanctioned by the
state.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: The Arizona State Militia posts YouTube videos
of its training to become quote, “the last line of defense” against everything
from illegal immigration to an outbreak of disease.
MILITIAMAN
(NAME REDACTED): I prepare for things such as
a pandemic or something of that nature. In a medical situation, we may be
required to secure a hospital, so there’s not a run on supplies there, so
people can get proper treatment.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: 30-year-old (NAME REDACTED) joined eight months ago. He trains on radios,
handguns, and military-style rifles.
MILITIAMAN
(NAME REDACTED): There’s a lot of situations
you can dream up in your head that may be possible, where you may be called to
defend in a situation where just simple hands, hand-to-hand won’t do.
BRYAN: NAME REDACTED’s our corporal. That was his promotion after
his 90 days for all the work he does on our website.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: The Arizona State Militia is led by this
42-year-old named Bryan, who wouldn’t give his last name. He says he served in
the military, but we couldn’t verify that.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: He and many people here make the unproven assertion that illegal immigration has
increased crime and taken away American jobs.
BRYAN: When
you got possibly in the hundreds a day coming across. That’s eventually going
to have an impact. It spiked.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty
Law Center is one of the country’s leading authorities on militia groups. He
calls them out-of-control vigilantes.
MARK POTOK: These people are incredibly dangerous. They’re running around
like a bunch of GI Joe’s, darting from cactus plant to cactus plant, armed to
the teeth, and essentially playing war.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: He cites the example of Shawna Forde, the leader of the
Minuteman American Defense militia that took it upon itself to patrol the
border. In 2009, Ford planned and helped rob and kill a Latino man, Raul
Flores, and his 9-year-old daughter Brisenia.
Mistakenly thinking he was a drug dealer whose money she could steal to fund
her movement. A jury sentenced Forde to death.
MARK POTOK: This is a movement that tends to attract people who are quite
unhinged. This is a barrel with a whole lot of bad apples in it.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: Foley’s heard this critique.
TIM
FOLEY: It’s politically correct to call us racists
and everything else. That’s all right. I prefer the term domestic extremist.
Because if getting off the couch and doing something is extreme, then yeah. I’m
an extremist.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: To protect the border, in 2006, the Bush and then Obama
Administrations started building new, taller fences like this one in Arizona.
Today, some kind of barrier covers most of the states
370-mile southern border. The policy is meant to secure cities.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: This border fence was built about four years
ago. It goes all the way into the town of Nogales and beyond it. It runs for
about four miles until this point. Everything beyond here is just a vehicle
barrier. The idea is to force anything illegal, whether people or drugs that
are coming across, into these remote, rural areas. But even here, the local
sheriff says that those militia groups aren’t welcome.
TONY
ESTRADA: We have no way of vetting these people. We
don’t know who they are.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: Tony Estrada has been the elected sheriff of this county for
24 years. He’s a Democrat. He says Mexican
smugglers try and avoid people, and that keeps violent incidents low. He
believes aggressive militias increase the potential of violence.
TONY
ESTRADA: They may mean well, but it’s not going to
work. They’re going to put themselves in danger, and it’s going to create more
problems than it’s going to solve.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: 80 miles to the east, Mark Dannels,
a Republican, is the elected sheriff of the neighboring county, with six
thousand square miles of land and 80 miles of border.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: His office also has video of camouflaged drug
mules bringing bundles from Mexico into the U.S.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: His
new surveillance cameras can peer into the Mexican hills two miles away. He
says that little black structure on the top of the hill is full of cartel
scouts. Dannels says militias don’t have enough
technology or legitimacy.
MARK DANNELS: When you entrust a law enforcement agency, they’ve been
vetted through a community. A process. Militias are not vetted. If they want to
be eyes and ears like we talk about community policing, let it be. But it
always goes to the next level where they’re armed better than my deputies are.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: Just
down the road, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is completing a four-year-old
upgrade of the border fence. There’s a ranch that runs up to the border… and
it’s owned by John Ladd. His family has lived here continuously for 120 years.
He says despite the fence, drug smugglers cross his
property freely.
JOHN
LADD: Their backpack is 50-pound pack in the back
and 20-pounds in front. They’ll take their dope to the highway, go back and get
another load. They’ll do three loads a day. The dope will be picked up by a
vehicle on the highway.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: He would like to see more Federal border
agents, not militia groups.
JOHN LADD: If
you’re gonna be on the border, it’s gonna be a legitimate agency that is gonna
take care of the problem.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: There’s one more layer of criticism. Some local
residents told me they’re scared of Foley and the weapons he keeps in
his house.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: There are members of the community in general
who are kind of scared of you, I think. I mean, should they be
scared of you?
TIM
FOLEY: They shouldn’t be. Because we are protecting
them. And I told myself when I came down here, I wouldn’t leave until it was
secure.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: In his first week in office, President Trump announced his
proposals to secure the border: building a wall, hiring 5-thousand more border
agents, and increasing prosecution of illegal immigrants.
DONALD
TRUMP: “Beginning today, the United States of America
gets back control of its borders, gets back its borders.”
NICK
SCHIFRIN: But Congress still needs to authorize the money
and no one knows how much of the wall will be built, how many agents will
actually be hired, or how effective the plan might be.
NICK
SCHIFRIN: Foley isn’t waiting. He vows to continue
patrolling, no matter the critics.
TIM
FOLEY: I’m not doing this for myself. I’m not doing it
for fame. I’m not doing it for fortune, because I’m broke as hell. I’m doing it
for everybody. Because we do not know what is coming through that border.
###
|
TIMECODE |
LOWER THIRD |
1 |
0:51 |
TIM FOLEY Arizona Border Recon |
2 |
1:57 |
TIM FOLEY Arizona Border Recon |
3 |
3:17 |
MILITIAMAN
(NAME REDACTED) Arizona State
Militia |
4 |
3:43 |
“BRYAN” Arizona State
Militia |
5 |
4:31 |
MARK POTOK Southern Poverty Law
Center |
6 |
5:13 |
NICK SCHIFRIN Special
Correspondent |
7 |
5:51 |
TONY ESTRADA Sheriff, Santa Cruz
County, Arizona |
8 |
6:37 |
MARK DANNELS Sheriff, Cochise
County, Arizona |
9 |
7:18 |
JOHN LADD Arizona Rancher |