Sheriff, NPD defend spending on border crime

Operation Stonegarden, the federal program that funnels money to border law enforcement agencies recently came under fire for handing out $165 million with purported lack of oversight and unclear goals.

After a seven-month investigation, two reporters from the Arizona Daily Star wrote that the program offers “little tracking of how the money is spent, no clear objective and no benchmarks for success.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) forged the partnership with local sheriffs, highway patrol, and city and tribal police in 2004. It aims to combat crime on the border, especially human and drug smuggling, according to a news release from DHS.

In Santa Cruz County, Sheriff Antonio Estrada sees Stonegarden funds as a long-overdue reimbursement to local law agencies that cope with crimes unique to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Everything that spills over the border is a federal responsibility,” Estrada said. “We don’t have the budget to deal with federal issues, but we’re confronted with them on a daily basis. It’s a little too much for a small agency like us.”

His office has 42 commissioned deputies to cover 1,240 square miles, including 50 miles of border with Mexico, Estrada said.

Only after the 9/11 terrorist attacks did the federal government begin to reimburse border law enforcement for these extra responsibilities, Estrada said. “It puts more people out there and reduces the potential for crime.”

Stonegarden pays for overtime so deputies can respond to reports of drug and human smuggling, Estrada said. This includes assaults on at least 34 illegal migrants in remote areas since the beginning of the year.

Border Patrol calls the sheriff’s office to interview the victims, Estrada said. When patrol agents find a person who died in the desert, deputies recover the body, notify the Mexican Consulate, and arrange for transport to the Pima County Medical Examiner in Tucson.

In Nogales, police use Stonegarden funds to “target Homeland Security’s goals and objectives” said Chief William Ybarra.

This means watching for drugs and people crossing illegally into the United States and money and weapons going south into Mexico, he said. NPD officers have worked with the Border Patrol to uncover smuggling tunnels under the border fence.

Estrada and Ybarra dispute the allegation that there is little oversight for spending Stonegarden funds.

“We have a system in place to properly document how those funds are spent,” Ybarra said. Officers volunteer to work overtime on “Stonegarden shifts” where they patrol the border area instead of responding to routine calls, unless an emergency occurs nearby.

The sheriff’s office keeps tabs on the amount of overtime billed to its grant and documents what each deputy does on a Stonegarden shift, Estrada said.

Deputies in Santa Cruz County are not cross-trained to work as Border Patrol agents, Estrada emphasized. “It’s not our job to do immigration work, but we definitely partner with Border Patrol and other agencies.”

Estrada denied that his deputies engage in “racial profiling,” an issue the Arizona Daily Star raised in its report. More than 80 percent of the Santa Cruz County population is Mexican, according to U.S. Census reports. The mostly Hispanic patrol deputies look for suspicious behavior and people who don’t belong in a particular area, Estrada said.

“We’re not here to deal with illegal immigration,” Ybarra said.

Neither does Border Patrol investigate a homicide, he said. But officers and agents will detain a suspect until the designated agency arrives to question and perhaps arrest the person.

Omar Candelaria, special operations supervisor for the Border Patrol, praised the Stonegarden partnership.

“When we have to shut down the Interstate 19 checkpoint (usually due to weather), we call DPS (the state Department of Public Safety) and the sheriff to patrol the highway.”

A lot of smugglers use vehicles that have equipment problems or they commit traffic violations, Candelaria said. DPS and the deputies can pull them over and often discover the illegal load.

“The cooperation we’ve seen in the last few years has been outstanding,” Candelaria said.