Back in May 1999, I was staying at the Gadsden Hotel in Douglas, working on a series about the impact of illegal immigration there, when I got an early-morning tip from a source: Get up and go to Naco.
Photographer Jeffry Scott and I headed west, arriving to find the raid had already begun. A customs helicopter flew overhead and the little town crawled with federal agents, who had just revealed a cross-border tunnel. (Of course, my colleague Nacho Ibarra, who lived nearby, already was there, darn him!)
The story of that tunnel became a big focus of my worklife for the following couple of years. Today, with the extradition of yet another suspect in the tunnel conspiracy, I'm suddenly flooded with memories. Permit me to tell a couple:
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• Billy Dillon was the name of one of the ringleaders. He was interesting because of his evocative name, for one thing, and because of his strange fugitive status. Dillon had already fled the country when the tunnel was busted, and he remained technically on the loose for three more years. But during those years, people regularly reported seeing him at bars in the Bisbee area.
Finally, he was arrested by Mexican authorities in July 2002 and handed over to U.S. officials at the Douglas Port of Entry. In October 2003, Dillon pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent do distribute and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
• Rumors circulated of an interesting scenario that I've never been able to pin down 100 percent. So take it for what it's worth. In 1998 or 1999, before the raid occurred, Steve McCraw announced he was leaving his post as the head of the FBI's Tucson office. He had a going-away party, of course, and it was during an after-party that surveillance information came in from Naco: The smugglers were moving a load through the tunnel. But with the party in full-swing, insufficient agents were in a condition to respond, so that load got away. I checked today with a person in a position to know the veracity of this story, but the person wouldn't say yes or no, simply noting that tons of cocaine from the tunnel were seized. Hmmmm.....
• In 2001, the other leader of the tunnel operation, Jose Loya, was called to testify in the trial of a co-defendant. Testifying about how he learned some information related to the case, Loya pointed into the audience and said something to the effect of "It was him, Tim Steller, from the Arizona Daily Star, who wrote it." Suddenly sweating profusely, I struggled to look back down at my notebook and keep scribbling notes.
Ahhh, memories.....
