The first figure strides purposefully out of the bushes. Dressed head-to-toe in camouflage fatigues he is likely the guide.
Six more people follow, some looking down at the trail as they go, each carrying a rucksack.
Maybe they are migrants, maybe they are drug mules, said Tim Foley, founder of Arizona Border Recon, a volunteer group of mostly military veterans who are trying to plug the holes in the frontier with Mexico.
‘The ones coming through here are the ones that don’t want to get caught,’ he said puffing on an American Spirit cigarette as he reviewed footage from two trail cams, set up on spots that see the most traffic.
‘These are the ones that aren’t just going to hand themselves into Border Patrol.’
Tim Foley founded Arizona Border Recon, a volunteer group of mostly former military veterans, in 2011. They run patrols to intercept migrants and smugglers
There is a pattern to the movement. The cartel that controls the crossings is not even waiting for darkness, but sending people through between four and six in the afternoon.
It was almost 4pm as Foley, a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division, watched the video on his laptop.
He quickly gathered his men, forming them into two squads to head out for observation missions. They left, chambering rounds in their assault rifles with a loud clacking as they went.
The men have no authority to make arrests, but for years they have patrolled a network of trails around what they call ‘Baby’s Head Gap.’ The other side of the hill is run by the Sinaloa dug cartel, which uses gaps in the border wall to send migrants and drugs on to American soil.
If they spot someone crossing the border illegally, Foley’s men will chase them down and stay with them until Border Patrol can arrive.
This area of dried creeks and cactus-studded hills is far from the nearest legal crossing. And the vast bulk of illegal arrivals are delivered by their coyotes — or guides — elsewhere along the border, such as close to Lukeville, where .com saw more than 550 people making their way through holes cut in the border wall in a little over an hour last Thursday.
There, a disenchanted Border Patrol agent described how officers were reduced to being ‘babysitters’ for the arrivals, calling up buses and processing paperwork.
Last month the total number of ‘encounters’ along the entire border hit a new record of 270,000.
The arrivals are fewer and further between around Baby’s Head Gap. But Foley, who finances operations by working as a carpenter for the rest of the year, points to the time he passed trail cam footage to law enforcement officers and it made its way up to the Pentagon.
Foley inspects a gap in Donald Trump’s border wall that is used by cartels for smuggling. On Saturday, he began a seven-day mission to prevent cartels smuggling people and drugs
The group set up observation posts and laid concealed cameras on trails that will start recording footage when they are triggered by movement
Members of Foley’s team are seen providing security as their leader looks for tracks
He had caught a Syrian national on camera who turned out to be on a terror watch list. He was arrested six weeks later in Washington D.C.
At other times their mission is more humanitarian. Last year they came across two young women who had been directed across the border and told to meet someone in Tucson.
When asked how much their passage had cost — often as much as $5000 — they said they had paid nothing. For the veterans of Arizona Border Recon, that meant they were almost certainly destined for the sex trade.
Other times Foley’s team is a straightforward deterrent. On a recent patrol they ran into about 20 armed men close to 50ft gap in the border wall that is one of the cartel’s favorite entry points.
‘They saw us in our gear and with our weapons and must have thought we were federal,’ said Ryan, an eight-year veteran with Arizona Border Recon. ‘They turned and left.’
Ryan, who asked that his second name not be used, was one of seven men who joined forces with Foley on Saturday for a seven-day mission.
They established their base in a natural depression, hiding them from people arriving from Mexico.
Foley examines one of his six trail cams and changes its memory card
The cameras are tucked away along trails that are known to be used by smugglers
The trail cams picked up footage of migrants and smugglers moving through the area
Smugglers cover their shoes with carpet to hide their tracks when making crossings
Foley sends out two squads of men to areas used by smugglers in the late afternoon
After setting up a communications antenna, they headed out on a patrol of their patch, checking in on trail cameras and scanning for sight of cartel scouts on hills across the border.
As he walked, with a Bushmaster rifle slung across his chest, Foley said he was playing three games at once with the cartel.
‘First is hide and seek. So we have to come out and find them. That’s what the cameras afford. And that’s what tracking also does for you,’ he said.
‘Once you find them, then it turns into a game of chess. I put my pieces in front of their pieces to block their movement, and then they try to get around us.
‘The third one is Whac-a-Mole. When you hit them there, and they pop up over here, and you hit them there and they pop up over here.’
There were fresh footprints along one of the trails. One set ran into Arizona, another ran back out — perhaps a guide heading back to Mexico.
Foley pointed out a shoe abandoned beside the trail. Its sole was covered with carpet, a trick designed to foil trackers.
On Saturday, Foley was setting up his base at the start of a seven-day mission
Foley has 250 volunteers he can call on, including Todd, 58, who works in construction
The group patrols around an area they call ‘Baby’s Head Gap’ that rubs up against the Mexico border and is a favorite used by the feared Sinaloa drugs cartel
That has not stopped Foley becoming a thorn in the Sinaloa cartel’s side since he launched his patrols in 2011.
Last year a go-between called him offering a deal. He could have all the weapons, ammunition, and body armor he needed in return for turning a blind eye to much of their activities.
‘”We will tell you when the load is coming in that you can grab,'” said the caller, according to Foley. ‘”And then we’ll tell you a load to leave alone.
‘And I said, so why would you give your nemesis guns, ammo, body armor. He says: “Well, you wouldn’t be our enemy.”‘
Foley turned them down along with an offer of $15,000-a-month to let them know where Arizona Border Recon was operating. For his refusal, the bounty on his head more than doubled.
‘Well then they call back again and say, well, the boss is pissed off.’ said Foley.
‘You just went from $100,000 to $250,000.’
A few miles from where Foley was running his patrols, .com witnessed at least 550 people crossing into Arizona in little more than an hour on Thursday evening
CBP’s total encounters along the border in September were 269,735, bringing the total number of encounters for the recently concluded 2023 fiscal year (black line) to 2.48 million
Foley has had a mixed reception on his own side of the border, where senior law enforcement officials take a dim view of armed men launching unsanctioned operations.
‘I don’t give much credence to any of these outfits,’ one former official told .com, suggesting they were more interested in having fun and reliving their military days than really making a difference.
For his part, Foley said he generally got more support from rank-and-file agents than the top brass, who worried their inability to police the border was being exposed.
‘I’ve been called everything: racist, vigilante, Nazi, domestic terrorist, extremist,’ he said.
‘If getting off my couch and doing something for the country makes me an extremist then call me an extremist.
‘What should I be doing? Watching ‘Dancing with the Stars”‘