Word: sectoral
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...Tucson Sector: Wild, Wild West "Yuma has a lot of it controlled, thanks to the fence, but that has probably just funneled the action our way," said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Billy Dart, a chopper pilot in the Army/Air National Guard. His voice in the headset seemed far away through the muffled roar of rotors. In nine months of patrolling Tucson Sector as part of Operation Jump Start--which deployed National Guard troops to bolster border security--Dart has, by his rough estimate, helped stop "thousands of tons of marijuana, tons of methamphetamine" and countless human beings...
There's a lot of fence going up here in central Arizona too, but conditions are less favorable along this 264-mile (425 km) stretch. In the sector's largest border town, Nogales, homes and businesses crowd so close to the border that nothing like the triple barrier in San Luis can be built unless buildings are bought and knocked down. Tucson Sector also has more paved roads through its desert, making it easier for walkers to reach pickup points. And there are more hamlets along its border. Smuggling is a major part of the local economy in Arizona towns...
...hear many complaints about boredom from Tucson Sector agents. Lukeville is getting a double barrier, Dart explained, but "as fast as they put it up, on the southern side they take plasma torches and cut holes." There's a vehicle barrier south of the tiny town of Menninger's, but drug smugglers use hydraulic ramps to boost cars over for a quick dash into town. In the rolling pasturelands east of Nogales, the fence is a so-called Normandy barrier of crisscrossing railroad iron. Smugglers like to cut this fence with torches, then carefully put everything back in place...
...pilot headed back toward the thicket, his sharp eye spotted a flash of silver under some trees in a dry wash. Turning for a closer look, he found a clean, late-model sedan, slightly askew, apparently left in haste. Barely 10 a.m., yet it seemed the entire sector--a classic Western landscape of rimrock, saguaro and sage--was already swimming with fishy activity...
...before being caught. Standing with their plastic jugs of water, a few meager supplies on their backs, they looked dazed by the array of force that had gone into their capture: the trucks, the ATVs, the radios, the guns, the bird. If they had been picked up in Yuma Sector, they would have been headed for jail. But there aren't enough courtrooms and cells to handle Tucson Sector's traffic. "They'll probably be on the bus back to Mexico by noon," Dart said...