One of them is an 18-year-old college student who used his parents’ vehicle, according to Cochise County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Carol Capas.
“Now, he’s sitting in our jail on a class 2 felony, and he’s going to be there for a while.”
“These people can’t turn themselves in, they’ll get deported. These are the bad people. We’re dealing with the worst of the worst,” Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.
Border Patrol agents in that border sector record at least 10,000 such aliens—known as “gotaways”—each month, the highest in the country.
Since the anti-smuggling law took effect on Sept. 24, the price for smuggling has also increased, Capas said. Previously, a driver could make up to around $1,500 per person to get from Cochise County to Tucson or Phoenix. Now, it’s up to about $3,000 per person, she said.
Drivers are recruited via social media sites such as Tik Tok, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Snapchat, Dannels said.
“The cartels use social media to recruit the smuggler drivers to come here to Cochise County to smuggle out of here,” he said. “So [they] attract juveniles off social media, which is very sad. [They] attract repetitive criminals that see an easy dollar coming here, which is the majority of what we see.”
Capas said a 65-year-old and his girlfriend are also now in jail.
“[They] drove from Florida in a rental car two weeks ago. He and his girlfriend decided to come out and make some money. They failed to return the rental car and they got caught. So now he’s in our jail and she’s in our jail,” she said.
Arizona hasn’t had an anti-smuggling law at the state level since 2012 when the Supreme Court gutted its new state border security legislation.
In 2010, the state Legislature approved SB 1070 in an attempt to secure its own border after it said the federal government was failing in its duty. It included a section that made it illegal to transport, conceal, or harbor an illegal alien.
Until now, the Legislature had failed to create a standalone anti-smuggling law.
It had been a longstanding federal crime to smuggle illegal aliens, but that’s up to the U.S. attorneys to prosecute at the federal level, and they weren’t taking up most cases, especially those involving juvenile drivers, according to Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre.
“What appears to be a policy right now is [if you have] five or fewer aliens in your vehicle, then prosecution won’t be accepted,” he told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.
Dannels’s office had to apply any other state charge to smugglers that would stick.
“Anytime we can charge for pursuits, reckless driving, traffic violations, trespass—we’ll charge them,” he said.
Prior to the new law, one alleged smuggler was even charged with kidnapping as he tried to evade police by traveling at speeds of 100 miles per hour and driving erratically before the 17-year-old driver ultimately crashed the vehicle. The illegal alien passengers told police that they had repeatedly told him to stop. No one was seriously hurt.
Dannels said that since January, he’s booked into jail 1,016 people for border-related crimes. Since March, his officers have been involved in 144 vehicle pursuits and opened more than 700 border-related smuggling investigations.
“That’s unheard of here,” Dannels said. “We’ve always seen smuggling, but not to the level we’re seeing now, to the aggression with the pursuits, the fights, whatever they do to get away from us.”
He blames the Biden administration’s policies that quickly dismantled many border security measures in January 2021.
Since Biden took office, border officials have encountered or reported more than 5 million illegal aliens, including about 1 million gotaways, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
“Right now, the message is the border’s open. And the only winners are the criminal cartels that are exploiting Americans every day,” Dannels said.
“It’s so avoidable. That’s what’s frustrating to me. This is America’s border, not my border—America’s border.”
Dannels recapped the first 15 minutes of radio traffic that morning after he checked in at 6:45 a.m.
“We had 14 [illegal aliens] bail out of a car out here south of where we’re at right now. We had a suspicious vehicle [that] turned out to be a person there to pick up [illegal aliens]. ... And then we had suspicious activity up in our canyon. That’s just the first three calls that the first 15 minutes I was on this morning before I went to my first meeting,” he said.
“Find me a Border Patrol agent working on the front line that says this border is secure and I'll buy you a steak dinner, because I’ve never heard it.”
