I took this series of photographs on April 24
and 25, 2005,
while Brad Beebe and I worked the Minuteman Project line
near Naco, Arizona, on the Mexican border.
To keep the size of the file manageable there are only a few
images per page. Use the scroll buttons to see them all.
Mobile observation towers were positioned strategically, several
miles into U.S. territory, to spot streams of illegals who had made
the border crossing and were passing through open desert terrain
enroute to their destinations nationwide. Sparse wilderness vegetation
provided them with some cover but not much. Tinted glass made it
impossible to see into the towers, and I had to wonder how well
the agents could see me as I trekked a ways to get a close photo.
Was it hot in there?
Long and lonely, the main two-way road into Naco is arrow straight
and a tough route for illegals since they would be easy to spot
here. The small town, visible in the distance, straddles the international
border, but both sides have pretty much the same impoverished and
run down Mexican look, feel and population. Naco has a sheet-metal
fence through it to prevent wholesale transfers across the borderline,
but since the fence ends a short way outside of town it's a joke.
The portable observation towers were a common sight. In the yard
next to the Naco Border Patrol office,
a bunch of them sat, ready for deployment, folded down.
