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| CSI Tohono: Shadow Wolf Gary Ortega finds a fiber left behind by a group that traveled through this stretch of the Tohono O'odham Reservation
just hours earlier. Jamie Daughters/Special to The Christian Science Monitor |
'Shadow Wolves' track drug smugglers the native American way
An elite team hunts drug traffickers in the Southwest using generations-old techniques.
By Faye Bowers | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the July 5, 2007 edition
Page 1 of 3
Sells, Ariz. - Gary Ortega slowly maneuvers his Silverado 4 x 4 down a two-rut road euphemistically called the Rose Bowl. As he does, he leans out the window, searching the dusty terrain for telltale signs of smugglers.
After a couple hours of jolting across the desert floor, which has his passenger's teeth chattering even though it's 110 degrees outdoors, Mr. Ortega stops abruptly and bolts out. He's hit pay dirt – fresh footprints of what may be "mules" (drug smugglers) – carrying bales of marijuana from Mexico into the US.
He squats next to the tracks in a sandy area that will become a raging river when the monsoons hit in a week or so. For now, though, the soft sand serves as a sort of CSI Arizona: evidence, in the form of footprint patterns, that reveals a great deal to his well-trained eye.
Ortega is a member of an elite group of native American trackers called the Shadow Wolves. The team, made up of 12 men and three women, tries to ferret out drug smugglers sneaking across tribal lands in the southwestern US.
Though created by Congress in 1972, the Shadow Wolves have become an increasingly integral part of the nation's overall border security strategy in the wake of 9/11 and as narcotics traffickers try to find more remote backdoors into the US. The unit patrols the sparsely populated 5,000-square-mile Tohono O'odham Nation, which includes 72 miles of border on the reservation in Arizona and another 68 miles that stretches west to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and east to Sasabe.
In an era of night-vision scopes, aerial surveillance, and other elements that make up "virtual fences," the Shadow Wolves rely on ancient tracking skills, known as "cutting for sign," that have been passed down for generations. By analyzing footprints, fractured foliage, remnants of clothing or burlap snagged by the thorns of the ubiquitous cacti, the trackers have been successful in confiscating illicit drugs.
So far this fiscal year, they've nabbed more than 50,000 pounds of marijuana, the predominant drug transiting the reservation. For the past several years, they've seized about 60,000 pounds of marijuana per year. Members of the unit have been flown around the world, including to Croatia, Uzbekistan, and Poland, to teach others their tracking techniques.
"The Shadow Wolves are very valuable in our overall strategy to combat smuggling on the southern border," says Alonzo Peña, special agent in charge of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Arizona. "Being of native American descent ... they are able to develop a deeper rapport with tribal members living on the nation. This has proven to be very successful in developing intelligence concerning smuggling trends and methods used by drug and human smugglers."
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