DAYTON–There's a lot going on at the southern border, says Abbie Broughton Marsh, a former Columbia County Deputy Prosecutor who is now a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix, Ariz., in a program presented at Dayton Kiwanis January 12.

Broughton Marsh currently supervises 12-18 prosecutors who not only work with the organized crime/drug enforcement task force, but also handle border crimes, white collar/public corruption/civil rights, national security and have jurisdiction over matters on Indian reservations. She emphasized that the the information in the presentation was used in court proceedings and that her remarks were on her personal behalf, not on behalf of the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The highest volume of crimes that come through Broughton Marsh's office include immigration-related offenses and drug trafficking and narcotics offenses that come through the port of entry on the southwest border.

"The drugs that enter the United States primarily come through our southwest border," Broughton Marsh said, "and are distributed in a very effective business model through different hubs and up to many outlying states. I've even had a case where the drugs were headed for Canada. They start in Mexico, get trafficked through Los Angeles. We happened to make a traffic stop in Arizona and it was a large amount of cocaine headed for Montreal."

"If a person comes to the United States and does not have permission to be here," she said, "they will be handled, typically, through the civil immigration enforcement side. They'll be identified as someone who does not have permission to enter the United States. They'll see an immigration judge; they may be detained for a short period of time, but, typically, then they will be removed from the United States.

"If that person continues to return to the United States without permission, or otherwise to have committed offenses within the United States, different crimes, then they would qualify for prosecution for criminal immigration offense," Broughton Marsh said.

There are several types of smuggling: aliens or illegal drugs being smuggled into the U.S., and weapons and bulk cash being smuggled out of the country.

In the year between the fourth quarter of 2021 and 2022, encounters with immigrants attempting to enter the U.S. in the Yuma sector went from 2,980 to 74,238, a 2,391.2% increase. In the Tucson sector, the numbers were 34,804 in 2021 to 56.464 in 2022, a 62.2% jump.

"There's a variety of ways drugs are smuggled, she said. "When marijuana was more prevalently smuggled, it was smuggled in back packs and people walked across the desert with it. Now it's much more smuggling through the ports of entry. People conceal or hide drugs in their automobiles and on their bodies. I want to say we catch them, and we try really hard, but despite everyone's best efforts, it really a pretty small percentage that we interdict."

While illegal drugs or people are being smuggled in, weapons are being smuggled out of the U.S., Broughton Marsh said.

"It's common for individuals to buy guns in the U.S. and then traffic them, concealed, in their vehicles, or by a different means, out of the U.S., across into Mexico. "I'm sure you've heard of 'Fast and Furious,' which was a, um, problematic prosecution that came through my district before I was here," Broughton Marsh said.

"We have to be careful with how we handle these cases because we don't want to let guns go to Mexico to be used in other crimes there," she said. "I've had cases where a semi-automatic or automatic weapon is purchased in the United States for $10,000, which is still a lot of money, but it might go, on the black market in Mexico, for $50,000. There's a lot of motivation to traffic weapons to Mexico."

Bulk cash is also smuggled out of the U.S., she said. The money is the proceeds of drug smuggling going to the drug traffickers and cartels to get paid.

"Title 42," she said, "was enacted during COVID, and it allows agents to not do the full processing of individuals who are apprehended at the border, but instead can just expel them. It's not a removal, it's not an immigration proceeding...they are just stopped at the border and turned around, expelled. A 'Title 42 expulsion' is the language that we use."

There are pros and cons to that, she said. "I'm not going to get political about it but I definitely will note that it was really necessary when it was enacted. And it's been interesting to see some of the deterrent effect, or lack of deterrent effect, that's happened there. It impedes us for the future criminal prosecutions because there has not been a record of their removal from the United States. It's made it much harder for us to then charge people criminally, who would be otherwise eligible for criminal charges, who are returning again and again."

It does serve a deterrent purpose in that people who are removed immediately should, in theory, not want to come back," she said.

"But what we know is happening in practice is that people are just staying in Mexico, waiting to come back the next day, because they're not detained, they're not held, they're just sent back to Mexico, and they keep trying and trying to get through."

The same cartel-the same criminal organization that's smuggling drugs into the United States for profit, are smuggling humans into the U.S. for profit. A high price is paid in human and economic costs, including an estimated $2.2 billion a year to travel regularly and irregularly, Broughton Marsh said. Some El Salvador migrants have paid $15,000 and Guatemalans have paid as high as $117,000 to come to the U.S.

Some Russian, Iranian and European migrants have come across, Broughton Marsh said, but 90% are from Mexico or Central America. "They are a commodity," she said.

The business model has changed from a price per attempt to a flat fee which provides the migrant two or three attempts at entering the U.S.

A report by the Migration Policy Institute indicates that poverty, food insecurity, climate shocks and violence has pushed an estimated 378,000 Central Americans to migrate to the United States over the past five years.

There is more of a wall in the Tucson sector, she said, creating a primarily single male population of migrants. Single males are willing to try to get over the wall, compared to family units, which tend to cross at shallow parts of the river, or a dam near Yuma, where they surrender to authorities, Broughton Marsh said.

"The physical crossing shapes the demographic," she said.

Broughton Marsh grew up in Dayton, graduated from Garfield-Palouse and attended the University of Washington and University of Arizona.