Shadow Wolves - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

**Immigration and Customs Enforcement**

Established:	March 1, 2003
Department:	Homeland Security
Assistant Secretary:	John T. Morton John T. Morton John T. Morton is the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the United States. The position makes him "the chief enforcer of US immigration policy" at "the second largest investigative agency in the federal government, with more than 20,000 employees and an annual budget of more than...
Budget:

The "Shadow Wolves" is a unit of Native American

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

trackers

Tracking (hunting)

Tracking in hunting and ecology is the science and art of observing animal tracks and other signs, with the goal of gaining understanding of the landscape and the animal being tracked...

. The law enforcement unit is part of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Homeland Security , responsible for identifying, investigating, and dismantling vulnerabilities regarding the nation's border, economic, transportation, and infrastructure security...

(ICE). The Shadow Wolves's primary task is tracking smugglers through a 76 miles (122.3 km) stretch of the Tohono O'odham

Tohono O'odham

The Tohono O'odham are a group of Native American people who reside primarily in the Sonoran Desert of the southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico...

nation territory that runs along the Mexico – United States border in the state of Arizona

Arizona

Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

History

The "Shadow Wolves" law enforcement unit was created in 1972 by an Act

Act of Congress

An Act of Congress is a statute enacted by government with a legislature named "Congress," such as the United States Congress or the Congress of the Philippines....

of Congress

United States Congress

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

, after the U.S. federal government agreed to the Tohono O'odham Nation's demand that the officers have at least one fourth Native American ancestry. The Shadow Wolves became the first federal law enforcement agents allowed to operate on Tohono

Tohono O'odham

The Tohono O'odham are a group of Native American people who reside primarily in the Sonoran Desert of the southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico...

land.

The unit is congressionally authorized to have as many as 21 members but, as of March, 2007, it consisted of only 15 members. Members of the unit come from nine different tribes, including the Tohono O'odham

Tohono O'odham

The Tohono O'odham are a group of Native American people who reside primarily in the Sonoran Desert of the southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico...

, Navajo

Navajo people

The Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...

, Sioux

Sioux

The Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...

, Lakota, Blackfeet

Blackfeet

The Piegan Blackfeet are a tribe of Native Americans of the Algonquian language family based in Montana, having lived in this area since around 6,500 BC. Many members of the tribe live as part of the Blackfeet Nation in northwestern Montana, with population centered in Browning...

, Omaha

Omaha

Omaha may refer to:*Omaha , a Native American tribe that currently resides in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Nebraska-Places:United States* Omaha, Nebraska* Omaha, Arkansas* Omaha, Georgia* Omaha, Illinois* Omaha, Texas...

, and Yaqui.

In 2003, the Shadow Wolves became part of the Department of Homeland Security when ICE

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

was merged into Homeland Security. ICE

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

officials are also considering creating a sister unit of the Shadow Wolves to patrol the Blackfeet

Blackfeet

reservation in Montana

Montana

Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...

, on the U.S. border with Canada.

Overview

The Shadow Wolves comprise a Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactical patrol unit based on the Native American Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona. Shadow Wolf officers are known for their ability to track aliens and drug smugglers as they attempt to smuggle their illegal commodities across the border. The unit boasts an esteemed history of tracking passed down from generation to generation. The name “Shadow Wolves” refers to the way the unit hunts like a wolf pack.
The Shadow Wolves were founded in 1972 as an initiative undertaken by the U.S. Congress to track drug smugglers on Native American lands in the American Southwest. Despite possession of high-tech equipment, the unit relies mainly on traditional methods of tracking, primarily a technique called “cutting for sign.” “Cutting” is searching for and analyzing “sign,” which includes any kind of physical evidence (footprints, tire tracks, thread, clothing, etc.). Officers may spend hours or days tracking in the field following a “sign” until arrests and seizures are made, or it has been determined that the contraband has been loaded into a vehicle and transported from the area.

Key Facts

The Shadow Wolves methodical approach has enabled them to track and apprehend smugglers in parts of the Southwestern U.S. across arduous desert terrain and rugged mountainous areas where tracks left by smugglers may be no more than an overturned pebble or an almost indistinguishable impression in the sand.
An experienced Shadow Wolf can spot small items snagged on branches, twigs bent or broken, or even a single fiber of cloth or burlap from a sack or bag that could be filled with drugs. They can read faint footprints in the dust and determine when they were made, where they came from and whether or not traffickers are carrying additional weight such as backpacks filled with drugs.
The Shadow Wolves are the Department of Homeland Security’s only Native American tracking unit.
The Tohono O’odham Nation, patrolled by the Shadow Wolves, covers 2800000 acres (11,331.2 km²) and is mainly made up of small, scattered villages.
The current unit consists of 15 Native American Patrol Officers representing 9 Native American tribes, (Tohono O’odham, Navajo, Kiowa, Sioux, Blackfeet, Yurok, Omaha, Yaqui and Pima) who employ traditional tracking skills combined with modern law enforcement technology to enforce immigration and customs laws on the 76 miles (122.3 km) stretch of land the Tohono O’odham Nation shares with Mexico.
The unit was transferred back to ICE from CBP’s Border Patrol in October 2006 and is being utilized to enhance ICE investigations and operations on the Tohono O’odham Nation.
Since transferring back to ICE in October 2006, the fifteen-member unit is responsible for the seizure of over 31,000 pounds of marijuana, over forty-three criminal arrests of smugglers and the seizure of 16 vehicles.
Officers estimate in recent years they have seized an average of 60,000 pounds of illegal drugs a year.

Global training missions

In addition to tracking smugglers on the U.S. border, the Shadow Wolves have also been asked to train border guard

Border guard

The border guard, frontier guard, border patrol, border police, or frontier police of a country is a national security agency that performs border control, i.e., enforces the security of the country's national borders....

s and customs agents around the world tracking smugglers, in nations including Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

, Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

, Moldova

Moldova

Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...

, Estonia

Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

, Kazakstan, and Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....

. The unit is also being used in the effort to hunt terrorists along the border of Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

and Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

by training regional border guards in Native American ancestral sign-reading methods.

Film

A film about the Shadow Wolves began production in southern Arizona in October 2009. Call of the Shadow Wolves centers on a story of the Shadow Wolves work in protecting the U.S. borders from criminals and terrorists. Director Brian Kosisky said in a news release, "Most people know very little about The Shadow Wolves. This is a tremendous opportunity for a storyteller to create a present-day Western where Native Americans are the heroes."

Documentary

A documentary film about the Shadow Wolves, Shadow Wolves : Tracking of a Documentary, was directed by Jack Kohler and produced by Joseph Arthur. The documentary profiles an inter-tribal group of Native Americans.
They were featured in the National Geographic Channel
National Geographic Channel
National Geographic Channel, also commercially abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo, is a subscription television channel that airs non-fiction television programs produced by the National Geographic Society. Like History and the Discovery Channel, the channel features documentaries with factual...

show Border Wars in the episode titled "Walk the Line."

External links

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Fact sheet
Fact sheet
A fact sheet, factsheet or one-sheet is a presentation of data in a format which emphasizes key points concisely. The layout is simple and often standardized, e.g...
Shadow-Wolves - unofficial tribute website

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.