Many AMBER Alert Coordinators know the challenges that can arise when a child abductor takes a victim across a state border. Those difficulties can be compounded if the child is taken across a state border, a Tribal reservation border and then across the border into another country, a scenario that is very possible because 30 Tribes are situated along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The issue of Tribal lands on border issues is becoming more important,” said Jim Walters, FVTC Consultant on the AMBER Alert in Indian Country initiative. “It presents some particular challenges for us.”
Walters presented some of the challenges facing border tribes at the Southern Border Initiative meeting in San Diego. He said border Tribes are seeing more drugs and children being transported across Tribal lands. The cases become even more complicated because of Tribal membership laws.
“Parental abductions are complicated by Tribal authority and whether parents are both Tribal members,” said Walters. “It creates a situation where federal, Tribal, and Mexican authorities have to understand the legal issues.”
The U.S. has about 550 Tribal communities, nearly 300 with law enforcement agencies. Most Tribal agencies are undermanned. Walters said, “the solution is to have protocols and relationships in place before an abduction occurs.”
Sergeant Karin Ashby works for the Tohono O'odham Tribal Police Department along the Arizona-Mexico border. A total of 85 sworn officers provide law and order for 2.9 million acres of land, roughly the same size of Connecticut. Sometimes it can take an officer more than an hour to respond to a crime and another hour for a back-up officer to arrive.
“The terrain we have to travel is very rough and not very accommodating,” said Ashby. “We have very high statistics for travel crimes and abuse against the native people but the people who commit these crimes are not always the native people.”
For the most part the Tohono O'odham Tribe does not rely on billboards, electronic signs, the Internet or telephones for communications. “I cannot impose my culture on the people we serve,” said Ashby. “We have means of communication, but it is more face to face. We spend time getting to know each other.”
Ashby shared some of the issues she has faced on the border: rates of violence and victimization are double on Tribal communities compared to other communities; delays in reporting missing children happen because Tribal members often believe their family can find the child; children may be transported great distances across the desert; and the drug trade has led to many children being sexually exploited, including one 7-year-old girl who was found dead in the desert after she had been sexually assaulted.
“We have our challenges and we have our hurdles,” said Ashby. “But we also have many positive aspects.”
Walters added that a roadmap is in place to offer more protection for abducted children in border areas. “It's a team effort,” said Walters. “We have to open up the lines of communication on the northern side and southern side of the border. By bringing both communities together on both sides of the border, they will be aware of what's going on and know how to respond.”