The United States Department of Homeland Security came into being for the most part after the September 11 attacks. One of the departments which operates under its auspices is U.S. Customs and Border Protection. People like myself who live in the southern U.S. near the Mexican border and are more aware of its day-to-day operations simply call it the Border Patrol, and that’s how I’ll refer to it for this piece. Protecting the 373 miles of border that Arizona shares with Mexico requires a lot of agents. Most of that border is protected by the Tucson Sector, which has a total of 3,700 agents based out of stations in these cities: Nogales; Ajo; Tucson; Naco; Sonoita; Douglas; Willcox; Casa Grande; Three Points. The Yuma Sector protects the rest of our border and has 700 agents operating out of stations in Yuma, Wellton and Blythe.

I have so much personal history with the Border Patrol that it’s hard to know where to begin, but I suppose at the beginning would be a good place to start. How well I remember my first encounter – it was February 17th of 1988. I was camped at the end of a road a mere 700 feet from the Mexican border. At dusk, a vehicle pulled up to mine and a BP agent stepped out. He was naturally suspicious about what I was doing camped so close to the border. When I told him that I was going to head up the hill and into Mexico at daybreak and spend the day following a series of ridges to climb a peak several miles into the country, he told me that it was a galactically stupid idea, that the entire area was overrun with very bad men who worked for the Mexican drug cartels. I told him that I needed the peak to finish a list I was working on, and when he saw he wasn’t going to change my mind, he pleaded with me to be extremely careful. That was back in the good old days when you could get away with such a stunt. Nowadays, even if you are a US citizen, if you try to cross the border back into the US anyplace other than at an official border crossing and are caught, you are subject to prosecution and a hefty fine.

Another time back in the 1980s, I was camped a mile north of the border. During the night, I thought I heard a light plane flying over me but with no lights. The next day, after sneaking across the border to climb a Mexican peak, I was back at my truck and a BP vehicle pulled up to mine. He told me it had been their plane during the night, checking me out with their infrared technology – one warm body, and they weren’t worried.

Nine years ago, I was doing a bunch of climbing both north and south of the Camino del Diablo. One afternoon, I heard a lot of commotion – it was a chopper buzzing the top of Bates Benchmark, a big peak north of the road. A BP agent happened by and stopped his vehicle so we could talk. I asked him what was going on. When I told him I was going to climb the peak in the morning, he offered that they were trying to flush some cartel guys down off of the peak and that I should keep a watchful eye while up there. I thanked him for the info. The next morning, I found the summit littered with all manner of trash, indicating that the Bad Guys spent some serious time up there keeping an eye out for BP movements in the valley below.

A few decades ago, I decided to go out and climb a peak that was down close to the Mexican border. I parked my truck in an out-of-the-way spot and headed out on foot, wearing a light day pack. To reach the peak itself, I had to cross a couple of miles of woodland that was fairly open. I had been walking along for a while, and when I was in an open stretch with no trees, I had a strange urge to turn around and look behind me. Imagine my shock to see a man close behind me, only 50 feet away, who was following me. He approached me as I stood and waited for him, and I saw that he was wearing a Border Patrol uniform. He was armed, and I was not. He asked me who I was and what I was doing there. When I told him I was a climber and was on my way in to climb a nearby peak, he seemed relieved. He proceeded to tell me that it was a dangerous area, that plenty of illegal activity took place there – Mexican drug cartel members were bringing in loads of drugs and groups of undocumented immigrants. He told me to be extremely careful, and that it would be wise to carry a firearm in such a place. He had a radio, and made a call to his fellows to tell them that everything was okay, that the incident was a Code 4. At least I think that was the code he used, and he said it meant that it was a friendly encounter with a US citizen who was not breaking any laws. I complemented him on his stealthiness, admiring how he got so close to me without my knowing he was even there. He appreciated the praise, and said that they got a lot of practice. He said to remain vigilant and be safe, and he went back the way we’d come in while I continued on to my peak.

During a day of climbing in the Copperosity Hills, I had occasion to drive south on an obscure road west of Copper Benchmark. I was shocked to see 7 young Hispanic men riding north on bicycles coming in my direction, and I pulled over to let them by. They didn’t even look me in the eye, and passed me and continued north. It was obvious that they were undocumented border-crossers. I got on my cell phone and managed a call to the BP, telling them where I was and how, some miles to the north, those guys would reach the gas pipeline road. They thanked me and must have radioed an agent in the field to apprehend them. A month later, I was driving the pipeline road, and right where those guys must have reached it, the BP must have been waiting for them. Off to the side of the road, I saw 7 bicycles, quite mangled. It is common practice for BP to run over bicycle wheels to ruin them so they can’t be used again.

I was camped at the south end of the Granite Mountains in 2014. Near a faint road and down in a wash, I was hidden from view. The sound of a vehicle approaching in the middle of the night woke me from a sound sleep. I watched as it drove past me, obviously going to the end of the road a mile away where a crude rain-water catchment was located. Half an hour later, it was coming back down the road towards me. By then, I figured it could only be BP, so I turned on my headlamp and flashed it at him, as I felt like talking – it was around 4:00 AM. I walked towards him and he slammed on his brakes. Exiting his vehicle, he shouted at me to stop, and asked where were the others (in Spanish). I replied that I was a US citizen, there to climb mountains, and there were no others. He was incredulous, as I was far away from any road that the public was allowed to drive. When I told him of my plans for the next 10 days of climbing, he was gob-smacked. Since I was legally there, all he could do was wish me luck and avoid Bad Guys at all costs.

One late April day twenty-plus years ago, I was exploring in the Tecolote Valley. On a whim, I decided to pull into the aptly-named Tecolote Ranch, which I believe was a working ranch at the time. To my surprise, I saw a BP agent parked in front of the ranch house. He drove up to meet me and we recognized each other immediately from previous encounters. “What are you doing way out here?” he asked. “I could ask you the same thing” I replied, each of us with a big shit-eating grin on our faces. This young agent was a very personable fellow and we set to talking in the shade of a big mesquite tree. He told me that if I ever felt in danger or threatened in any way by Bad Guys, I could call on any BP agent for help, either by 2-way radio or in person.

He went on to tell me a story to illustrate how dangerous this area of desert was. Not long before, at a place called Serapio’s Gate, only 6 miles south of where we were, down at the Mexican border, an eye-popping incident had occurred. BP surveillance showed that a vehicle carrying a big load of drugs had been escorted right up to the border at the gate by marked vehicles of the Mexican Federal Police. The BP’s aerial surveillance watched as the drug-runners had driven through and north into the US. They allowed them to get several miles north and then they pounced, seizing both drugs and smugglers. Back in the day, before the border had been reinforced, most of it was nothing more than a simple barbed-wire fence like you see in this picture.

You could drive through any number of simple wire gates, or cut the wire anywhere and just drive through. Crazy, huh?

More recently, only about a decade ago, Jake and I decided to climb a peak in the Sand Tank Mountains. Since we were doing this in late June, which many would consider utter madness due to the summer heat, we decided on a bitterly-early start. On the drive in, we passed a couple of BP vehicles parked on the east side of the White Hills – we paid them no never-mind and just blew right on by. We finally reached the road’s end near Bender Spring, parked and set out for the day’s climbing. Many hours later, our peak in the bag, we drove all the way back out and arrived at the place where the BP vehicles were still parked. I decided to talk to the agents, and was surprised to learn that one of them had followed us in all the way to our parking spot deep within the range. He said that when he reached our vehicle, he knew right away that we were not Bad Guys. “They don’t drive vehicles with personalized plates.” Our conversation started a friendship which has lasted to this day (he still reads the stories I post on this website).

About 20 years ago, Dave and I went down to the border to climb a few remote peaks. Because we didn’t make it all the way down there on the first day, we camped a couple of miles north of Stan Shuatuk for the night, each of us sleeping in our own vehicle. In the middle of the night, I heard a helicopter flying around nearby – I recognized the signs of a pursuit, as the chopper flew in tight circles and hovered down close to the ground. What a racket, and it went on for the better part of an hour! The next morning, I asked Dave how he had fared with the loud disturbance. He said he hadn’t heard a thing – I was incredulous. “How could you possibly have slept through all that racket?” We made ready to leave and headed over to the main road. There, we saw a BP vehicle flipped over on the edge of the road. Agents were there, and I asked them about the chopper flying all around during the night (it was close to where we were camped and they saw us sleeping there). They said they caught the Bad Guys, but were much more tight-lipped when it came to the flipped vehicle.