THE BORDER REPORT

Sure seemed that way anyway, last week after I covered two arrests for the Nogales International. Fifty-five people in all, all low-level dope smugglers from Patagonia, Sonoita, and Naco, Sonora. Feds alleged the Naco ring moved some 40,000 pounds of pot across the border and annoyed the Christ out of me when they kept referring to this group of low-life smugglers as a "Cartel." Holding up mugshots of the gordito leader of the gang, the Feds made it sound like they'd popped Shorty Guzmán, himself. The Arizona Republic's reporter stopped the press conference and asked, "wait a minute, was this a cartel or a group of smugglers?" "Oh, it was a Cartel," said one of the seven federal officials standing before the room. You could hear the capital C in her use of the word. "Well, which Cartel?" I asked them. Keep in mind, you had Elizabeth Kempshall, DEA Administrator for Arizona, Dennis Burke, U.S. Attorney for Arizona, and Matt Allen, Special Agent in Charge for ICE in Arizona, all up in front of the room. Seven seconds of silence. "We prefer to only say it was a Sinaloa cartel," Kempshall finally says. Does the obvious doubt cast on the significance of this drug crew stop the news reporters from playing it up? Fook no. Here's Tucson's KOLD: "Investigators on Mexican Cartel: We Broke It's Back" Way to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable," there, you jagoffs. Now wipe your chin. The ringleader, Ignacio Alfredo Erives Martinez, it turns out, works for Marco Antonio Paredes Machado, head of the Agua Prieta narco-syndicate. I only got that because a Fed, a good one, slipped it to me later that day. Next up, the U.S. Attorney. "This was a sophisticated crew," Burke tells us. What made them sophisticated, you ask? Good question. "They used truck ramps as well as hidden compartments to breach our borders," he says. "They used counter-surveillance and two-way radios to monitor law enforcement in Cochise County." Two-way radios? You don't say. As opposed to one-way? The most interesting part of the story, the fact that these Naco narquitos had compromised the secretary of the Cochise County Attorney office's drug unit, Angelica Borquez, was limited. They tried to minimize her presence so much, they didn't even bring her charging documents to the press conference. I asked Allen, Kempshall, and Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard what her name was and none of them knew. Finally got it from Cochise County Attorney Ed Reinhammer. Keep in mind these people drove two hours down from Phoenix for this press conference and they didn't know the name of the most interesting person arrested in this fiasco. Borquez, I'm told later, was the girlfriend of the lead smuggler's nephew. Charging documents filed in federal court show her using Erives' cellphone to call the U.S. Border Patrol and asking if there were any public listing of people deported. Officials downplayed her involvement, saying she was merely support staff. She was not support staff; she was the Secretary. Of. The. Drug. Unit. Let's not make her out to be an elite drug mole/moll here, either. She proved equally inept. The Arizona Attorney General's Office popped her on a wiretap and worked with her bosses to make sure she only had access to  irrelevant information. About the only honest man in the room that day was Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever. Asked whether these arrests changed anything in regards to trafficking in Cochise, he simply responds, "no. "They adapt and adjust very quickly and additionally, we don’t. We’re very predictable; they are not.” Anyway.