Urgent request for anti-smuggling squad

Sheriff Paul Babeu formally presented a plan Wednesday asking the Pinal County Board of Supervisors to allow him to create a seven-member Anti-Smuggling Enforcement Unit.

Babeu’s proposal is designed to stop foreign cartels from engaging in drug smuggling and human trafficking through Pinal County’s remote desert areas, including those located south of Maricopa.

The establishment of the Anti-Smuggling Enforcement Unit, which would consist of six officers and one sergeant, would cost $1,044,219 for the first year and $501,716 for a second year.

Babeu said the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office would pay $540,000 of the proposal’s two-year price tag by using money that the department has confiscated during the arrests of drug traffickers who were eventually convicted. The sheriff is asking the three-member Board of Supervisors to allocate emergency funding to pay for the remaining $1 million for the Anti-Smuggling Enforcement Unit.

“I sincerely believe that this is a priority not only of the sheriff’s office, it should be ours as a county to say that we are standing up and pushing back,” Babeu said during a Board of Supervisors work session at the county administration building in Florence.

Babeu proposed that the county tap into its rainy-day funds to pay for the Anti-Smuggling Enforcement Unit. Board of Supervisors Chairman Pete Rios (D- Dudleyville) cautioned that using money from the budget stabilization fund might not be prudent for a county that likely will have to deal with the fallout from another round of expected state budget cuts during the coming fiscal year.

“I’m not saying that we’re not going to entertain the request that you made,” Rios said to Babeu. “I’m just hopeful that you understand, you’re responsible for the sheriff’s department, more power to you. We’re responsible for the county and a lot of other programs that come under it.”

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to discuss the matter further on Oct. 27 and could vote on it in November.

Details of the plan
During his presentation to the Board of Supervisors, Babeu described the unit as “literally a highly-armed, tactical, disciplined team that will immediately deploy.” He said the officers in the unit would be outfitted “in a subdued uniform, much like our SWAT team, appropriate for the desert and the terrain.”

A main goal of the Anti-Smuggling Enforcement Unit is to eliminate the mountainside and hilltop scouts who are employed by the cartels.

“People just don’t show up and get abandoned. They came here because they have guides,” Babeu said. “The guides were directed into Pinal County by these scouts.”

Removal of the scouts would hinder operations of the drug cartels in the county, according to the sheriff.

“The intent of this unit is to blind them, to blind their operations, to keep them out of Pinal County,” Babeu said. “Will they go somewhere else? Absolutely. But we’re keeping our citizens safe here.”

Babeu surmised that if the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office is successful in moving the scouts out of western Pinal County, they likely would move further west into bordering Maricopa County.

District 2 Supervisor Bryan Martyn (R- Gold Canyon) offered support for Babeu’s proposal.

“The number one role of government is public safety,” Martyn said. “If you don’t have public safety, you have nothing else. And I appreciate your choice of the path to take – a small unit taking away their eyes. This is not an immigration issue. This is an illegal drug and smuggling issue. We’re not trying to take everybody that comes across this line. We’re taking away the eyes of people that are moving illegal things through our county and harming our citizens and harming America, in general.”

Martyn agreed with Babeu that the county needs to act quickly in establishing the Anti-Smuggling Enforcement Unit.

“The reward is too great for the bad guys in money for us to assume that they will just stop,” Martyn said. “Our fight in Pinal County is to do all we can to slow and curb and deflect the bad guys from affecting our citizens.”

“Clearly it’s something we are going to look at,” Rios added. “I’m going to be meeting with the chief agent for the Tucson Sector of the Border Patrol next week. There is some information that he wants to provide with the Sawtooth Mountains and some of the caves and that type of thing. I want to have that piece of information as well before we bring it to the board to take a vote.”

The issue will be discussed at the board’s Oct. 27 meeting, when presentations are scheduled to be heard from the Tohono O’odham Nation and from Dennis Burke, United States Attorney for the District of Arizona.

Supervisors will likely vote on the proposal for the special unit in November.