Cochise County illegal crossings surge

Gustavo Soto, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, said agents at the Naco, Douglas and Willcox stations captured more than 13,000 illegal immigrants last month, a 30 percent increase from March 2006. Before the spike, Border Patrol apprehensions in the county were down 13 percent since Oct. 1. That decline followed a 45 percent drop during the previous year.

Sgt. Taron Maddux, spokes-man for the Bisbee Police Department, also noted a recent spike in local border crossings.

"From Jan. 1 up until about three weeks ago, we had apprehended a total of maybe 100 to 150 (illegal immigrants)," Maddux said. "And then, in a two-week period, we apprehended something like 255."

Maddux thought warmer temperatures were affecting immigration flow, and he also suspected that some of the human smugglers pushed out of the area two or three years ago by a Border Patrol buildup are returning for another try.

"It's almost like they've come back to see if they're able to get groups across again," Maddux said. "We're starting to see some of the same spots popping up again where we used to get reports of load-up vehicles or a lot of foot traffic."

Even so, Maddux doubted human smuggling would return to the levels of three or four years ago when Bisbee police were finding as many as 200 illegal immigrants a night in the Warren neighborhood alone.

"I don't think it's going to get to that because the Border Patrol has so many more personnel here," he said. "I just think that for some reason, they're starting to target this area a little bit to see if they can get groups through, and when it's not effective, they're going to move and start going someplace else."

Soto said the 3,000 increase last month is a relatively small number compared with the 1,500 arrested on a typical night in the entire Tucson Sector.