Wave of immigrants puts strain on Indian tribe on Mexican border

TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION, Ariz. — When the scorching daylight fades and dusk drifts into this Indian reservation, the Sonoran Desert begins to rustle. Mesquite trees become hide-outs and the deep washes turn into human freeways filled with illegal immigrants wending their way over worn trails that will carry them into America.

They move at night, when it's cooler and the moon's glow can guide them from Mexico onto an Indian nation so vast that many easily slip through a flimsy barbed wire fence unnoticed.

"It's like the desert doesn't sleep," tribal police officer Darrell Ramon says, peering into the night as he drives through the nation's isolated communities. "It wakes up at night. Bodies start moving out there. You see headlights way in the desert."

Despite a strong Border Patrol presence, the immigrants still come.

It's easier here, they say. Here, they find tribal police officers who are overwhelmed. Money is scarce for this tribe, and there is little help from the federal government.

The Tohono O'odham people are tired, exhausted with truckloads of immigrants trashing their land, raiding their homes and stealing their cars. The flow never stops. Not in a place that shares 75 vulnerable miles of the U.S.-Mexican border.

Deep into the Sonoran, Ramon drives over hilly dirt roads riddled with potholes, never sure of what he will find. Often, it's a group of exhausted immigrants waiting for their ride to freedom. Or lost, disoriented men who find their way to the main roads, begging for help. Occasionally, a family out of food and water. Then there are the bodies. Last year, 51 people succumbed to the pounding Arizona heat.

"It's an everyday thing out here. It's constant from sundown to sunup," he said.

Indian County makes up only 2 percent of the country, but tribal lands encompass more than 260 miles of international borders. Thirty-six tribes have lands that are close to or cross over international boundaries with Mexico or Canada.

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants cross these borders and disappear into the heart of Indian Country each year, according to the National Congress of American Indians.

And tribes feel they are on their own, left with easy routes into America and not enough money to do a job the government should be doing.