“One step—that’s all it would take to be in Mexico right now,” I thought as I stared through an open gate of the Arizona border wall, and seemingly into a different world.
Cochise County is a stunning 6,300 square miles with 83 miles of border backed up against Mexico. The mountains are rocky and beautiful, the towns are small and quiet, and the locals are kind and hospitable. It speaks to the unique spirit of small-town America. It has also been dealt a hand it wasn’t prepared for, but local law enforcement has stepped up to the plate.
I’m just the social media girl. I’m no policy expert, I don’t have my masters or doctorate, the last time I conducted any original research was for influencer marketing. But my time in Cochise County, speaking to local law enforcement and natives, and seeing the border wall myself, has helped me realize you don’t have to be an expert to recognize a deadly fact… our southern border is dangerously open.
Day 1 in Cochise County: We kicked off our Border Security Coalition trip in a conference room filled
with local law enforcement and Sheriff’s departments from 17 different states. Brave men and women who have had to step up when the Biden administration forced the Border Patrol to stand down. When I looked around the room, I saw the faces of husbands and wives, daughters and sons, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, who are beaten down, desperately trying to be heard. They are tired, and yet they show up every day to protect their counties.
And they aren’t just protecting their territory. They are protecting all of us. As I’ve come to understand by shadowing the Cochise County Sheriff’s department for two days, they are increasingly the first line of defense at the U.S. border. These small towns are not the final destination for most migrants. I learned that the migrants who are crossing to work will stay in towns and cities across America. But others cross to do harm—to carry drugs, including the deadly fentanyl, weapons, and victims of human trafficking. And because the border is so porous, every town is a border town now. The danger is real.
The Cochise County sheriff’s department drove us up to the border wall. The subject of so much division in our country was staring right down at me, but so was someone else. A cartel lookout station, manned 24/7 for the last 10 years, was eyeing every move we made as a group, no doubt phoning in our activity to coyotes on either side of the wall.
Just behind me, laying abandoned in the scrubland, were miles and miles of unused panels for the border wall—paid for by our taxes, but rotting away.
Our group noticed used water bottles scattered in the brush, discarded carpet shoes that every migrant is given to cover their tracks in the dirt, and we notice dates written in chalk on almost every pillar of the wall. We come to learn that each date is a marker for re-welding where the metal had been cut from below where cameras can track movement. By cutting the bottom of a metal pillar, coyotes can move it over 10-12 inches for migrants to slip through. These markings go on for miles.
The landscape is no stranger to heavy rain; monsoon season causes the border wall to dam up without
openings. When the downpour begins, heavy metal gates are opened for the free flowing of water. Here’s the kicker: they don’t close for months. And there is no security watching these openings.
Day 2 in Cochise County: Our day began at the Sheriff’s Office, in a roundtable where we heard about local law enforcement’s experiences and statistical findings based on the last few years. Record breaking spikes in crossings, apprehensions, got-aways, drugs, and violence. But what caught me off guard were the individual stories told.
Stories of 12-year-old migrant girls crossing the border with the “morning after pill” because there was a 100% chance she would be raped during her travels. Local kids as young as 14, recruited through social media apps, stealing their parents’ cars to drive migrants for the cartel. There have been car accidents and fatalities caused by these teenagers because their directions from the cartel are to run from law enforcement. A mother was killed in one of these accidents while her teenage son waited at a restaurant for her to celebrate her birthday. There are military-aged men crossing in camouflage. It’s not just the women and children that the leftist media likes to focus on.
As a conservative, I am disgusted by the policies that have brought this crisis about. As a human being, I am heartbroken and distraught for every single person involved in this mess at our border—law enforcement, citizens, and migrants alike.
We then traveled with the Sheriff’s department up the mountains to Montezuma pass, where several migrant hotspots were pointed out to us along the way. At the very top is the beginning of the Arizona trail leading to Utah. Over one side of the mountain, you can see the border wall that we had visited the day before. On the other side, you see only valley. There is no wall. No fence. No line. You can’t tell where Arizona ends and Mexico begins.
That is the reality of our Southern border. Dangerously open, deadly, and only getting worse with every passing day.
I knew this trip would be eye opening and emotional, what I didn’t expect was walking away with a feeling of being indebted to the brave men and women in local law enforcement of Cochise County—how their bravery, sacrifice, creativity, and tenacity keep me and those I love safe from miles and miles away. An open border means that every town is a border town, but the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department and every border county like it is working tirelessly to ensure that our entire nation is safer.
To Cochise County law enforcement, thank you. We owe you a debt we can never repay.
Photos taken by Britt Allen
This opinion is right on! I am hoping more US citizens will read the article. Little do most know about life on the Border, as “we” are not given this info. Thank you for posting this.
Thank you for writing this article. I live in Cochise County and live through this border nightmare every single day. Finally someone speaks up and tries to help us. This author nailed it and we surely appreciate it. I wish everyone in the US could read it. I am sharing it on Facebook and hope others will do the same.
As a resident of Cochise County, thank you so much for your well-written opinion piece. It isn’t just the Rio Grande Valley in Texas! The wider this can be shared, the better. The “Load Car” issue you mentioned has had almost daily impact on county residents here. I have been compiling the official reports from official social media sources here with the following numbers to date for 2022. Bear in mind that these numbers ARE ONLY FOR human smuggling incidents involving vehicles that are caught within Cochise County. Incidents of foot traffic or drug busts are not included in these figures: CY 2022 Totals to date 7/9/2022: 235 apprehensions/incidents
1197+ Undocumented Aliens (UDAs) (avg. 4 per day – 13/month)
1 Fatality (US Citizen)
I live in this area, 12 miles from the border. Your article is spot on. It sickens me to know our President does not care to protect this great country. If this open border remains for 2 more years we will no longer be looking at a great and safe country. Thank you for looking at the REAL problems at the border. Our law enforcement and Border Agents are so appreciated, they need to be reinforcements.
There has always been a wall. The railroad tracks welded together you cannot drive over unless you have a tank. You went to Motezuma and stopped. You can step over the rails, but from the top of Miller or Carr peak you can see the path folks will take and cannot take due to lack of water. Copper canyon was cleared by the Forrestry service, Bear Springs pretty much always has water. America is a good place, that is why people come here. The electronic surveillance sees all. USSR put up a wall separating east and West Berlin. That where were are now? I am a-political, both parties are a disgrace to America
Can’t compare Berlin wall, it’s apples and oranges. Unlike our wall, it was not to protect their sovereignty from folks illegally entering their nation. I used to live there, I saw it first hand, the Soviets built it to keep the Germans in the East from leaving the oppression, to keep them prisoners, to keep them away from the Germans in the West.
I’m a volunteer doing surveillance on the border and the mountains that are used to smuggle CARTELS terrorists WEAPONS DRUGS and people into AMERICA. I track observe chase apprehend and facilitate arrests by various enforcement agencies, my body armor saved my ass when I got shot by cartel snipers! I have taken knives and guns away from these camouflaged illegals. I have found prayer rugs and Ammo written in middle eastern dialect and Arabic red and white head covers with black rope like things to hold them in place, these things belong to FOREIGN TERRORISTS not the so called immigrants, Real immigrants come in the legal way through the legal portals and anybody that comes in where there are no walls are in reality invaders and when they come in groups that’s an invasion and invasions are acts of war I really want them to stop be stopped at the border preventing them from stepping across into America in the first place our enforcement doesn’t prevent them from that our enforcement only chases them at higher rates of speed through all our towns killing people or killing them with the drugs that they brought in like rainbow fentanyl!!! 87,000 armed IRS agents? They should be sent to line up along the border and keep the old that they took and prevent these people from crossing over, and all our enforcement agents should be doing the same thing and when they are apprehended if they’ve crossed over They should be immediately deported back to their countries of origin and not be shipped anywhere in the United States and all those that have already gotten should be rounded up from all the Democrat run state cities and sanctuary and they too should be sent back to their countries of origin our borders in Southwest Arizona on the west side of the Huachuca mountains have no wall whatsoever and they are coming in and crossing over that Mountain and I for one am tired of catching the same cartel members or or invaders repeatedly, knowing that our enforcement with their hands tied are just releasing them I’m not a fisherman I don’t do catch and release I am an American that took an earth to defend this country from foreign and domestic enemies and by the way the Biden administration is a domestic enemy and that’s all I got to say on that
I LIVE IN WHETSTONE. A PILE OF SHIPPING CONTAINERS IS FORMING A MIGRANT HOLDING CENTER OF SOME KIND. HOW ABOUT HOLDING THEM SOUTH OF THE BORDER.
I also live in Whetstone. The shipping containers are there as a part of a staging area. Those containers are going to placed on the border as an attempt to finish the border wall that Biden refuses to finish himself. This is all to happen before Dec 2022 as Ducey will no longer be office to get it done.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Cochise County. It is not unkind to state how this article lacks diligent research on the topic. The utter failure of “the wall” and much more.