 because illegal immigration and drug smuggling is a fact of life on the US-Mexico border. Employees take extra precautions before they head to the field to avoid trouble. First, they talk about the importance of getting to know the area. Any new employee goes through an orientation. They've already been appraised of the situation. They will ride along with other staff members in the field. They'll get a feel for the country. They'll even maybe ride along with law enforcement, not in a law enforcement capacity, but to help learn the area. We have an area that is rather difficult to learn. The roads are few. The distances are great. It may take you all day to get across the refuge, for instance. So we're concerned that an employee knows where they are, and if they need help when they radio in, they can adequately articulate to law enforcement how to get to them. If you're a new employee on a border district, your best bet is to go to that person that's been around for a long time and has seen the changes, the fluctuations, has seen the things that are hard to see and pick their brain. Next, employees stress the central role communications play in keeping them safe along the border. It is a level of communication is real important because our experience here has been that dangerous situations are going to be things that you encounter suddenly and can kind of spiral out of control very quickly. So it's very important that somebody knows where you are at all times, and that if you do get into any kind of a questionable situation, that you alert somebody to it immediately so that they know that something may be happening in a certain area. People can be ready to mobilize if they have to. Things that I'm looking for when I come into a site are do I have cell phone coverage? What kinds of communication forms do I have before I ever get out of the vehicle? If I know I don't have cell phone coverage then I need to have something else with me if I'm going to leave that vehicle. I do carry a satellite phone and a handheld radio. There's normally backup radio systems when employees are out. There's a mobile unit in the vehicle. There's also a handheld unit. And if they're overnighting in more remote areas there's also a satellite phone with them as well. So there are multiple options for communication. In many situations employees emphasize the importance of safety in numbers. As often as I can I have someone out there with me especially if I know I'm going to be in some more remote country or country I might not be as familiar with. This district has a lot of two-track roads that go out to tanks and stop. And the brush is thick. There's not a lot of turnaround. And when I'm by myself I generally don't take those because I don't know what's going to be at the end. It might be a drop off site. Could be anybody out there. Could be trafficking humans, trafficking drugs. So I generally won't take those. But if I'm with the buddy then they can be watching you know a man in radio or something and I can still at least get my job done and stay somewhat safe. I may not have come out here. If I didn't have law enforcement if I didn't have someone else with me a co-worker I wouldn't come out. I wouldn't risk it. It's too isolated. If something were to happen to me it'd be hours before anything would be discovered. And I'm not going to jeopardize myself like that. Employees also stress the agency's policies on check-in and check-out are particularly important when working near the border. We monitor our employees. They put in their names, their destination and the time they're going to be in the field on a check-out board. In certain areas they check in every half an hour or hour depending upon the area that they're in. And if there's no check-in then the monitor will call them by radio and determine that they're okay. And if there's no response we have an immediate protocol that our law enforcement immediately responds to the area to find them. Other areas have a little bit less of a risk. There are known areas for lay-up sites and in some of those places what we've done is we have a monitoring system where our staff have to check in with the law enforcement officer tell them where they're going what vehicle they're in when they'll be out that kind of thing so that our law enforcement officers can check up on them. They don't have to accompany them but they know okay the biologist is in this area I'm going to keep my eye out and listen and then they have to check out when they come back out. We also need a policy that when we're out in the field in remote areas that if I'm going to exit the vehicle I call in and say I'm going to be now leaving the vehicle I plan to be out 30 minutes and I'm in a certain area and so they know and especially if I'm by myself and then I'll turn around and I may not have to be even in the border near the border I can be you know 50 miles 100 miles and I'll still do that especially if I'm by myself you have to take those precautions and then when I get back to the vehicle I call back in and say I'm back in the vehicle Each agency can have different policies on wearing the uniform near the border You and your supervisor will need to discuss what options you may have dressing in plain clothes or wearing the uniform Here are some ways to look at either side of the issue There's a controversy over it my personal feeling on it is that from a safety standpoint most of the people out in the woods realize that we're for our service that we're not border patrol we're not law enforcement we're for our service and if they identify us as that then that reduces the threat level to them and people tend to be a little less aggressive they know that we work you know unarmed they know that we're not dealing with all sorts of miscellaneous wrongdoing that basically we're dealing with the natural resource issues so my personal feeling is that the uniform contributes to safety because it identifies us people know what we're doing and they don't mistake us for law enforcement So what pound one? I could check the truck though I have the denim shirt that identifies this I want to be able to identify myself I'm in Hispanic and if I didn't have some form of I feel idea on me of my uniform I could easily be mistook and for by the militia and be harassed possibly there's times when I feel strongly having some form of ID but like if I'm in more northern areas the shirt or the jacket may not be that necessary but I always try to wear my field shirt that has the emblem on it of some form of ID on it Our district ranger here has left it to our discretion we kind of covered it in job hazard analysis as to whether we use uniforms or not some of us prefer not to use uniforms because we don't want to be portrayed as a law enforcement officer in Mexico a law enforcement presence could come in any kind of a uniform so they see a uniform as authority and as law enforcement and so we try to stay in plain clothes and if you do run into somebody and some of our thoughts are a lot less likely to be aggressive towards you if they're aggressive towards law enforcement if they're doing something wrong they're going to try to get away but if they see you just as a citizen or somebody out working out in the field they aren't going to be near as threatened I don't believe from somebody in plain clothes Finally, employees stress the need to remain alert and avoid complacency Over time it's really easy for our employees to get complacent because they deal in that kind of environment they see undocumented immigrants almost every time they come out to the field and a lot of times nothing happens and so you get to the point where it's kind of like being in bear country and you're seeing bears all the time you really don't take any of it real seriously until the first time you get chased up a tree or until the first time you get chewed on and it gets a little bit more respect from you and of course those are the kinds of instances that we don't want to have happen so we're constantly fighting a complacency as well as a lack of knowledge or understanding of what this environment holds for people Well I think one of the ways we fight complacency is basically back through training periodically we'll talk about the situations card that we've developed on the border and we brief off of that and so I think teaching it is one of the best ways of actually making people more aware and less complacent so I think we try to attack it from several different points of view and if we see people being maybe a little bit too liberal I think we're also in a mode where we would tell somebody that hey you probably shouldn't stop to help that person or I was really worried about you in this kind of environment or you forgot to check out and so then we had to call you up on the radio and find out where you were at and express some of that additional concern because it's really easy to get complacent but I think a lot of our people are more used to having people complacent around border issues so we kind of watch out for ourselves too Longer term employees often feel the dilemma we have is that they feel very safe here because they've worked here for 15 years and they feel that the desert hasn't changed that much there's just a little new influence and they often feel that they know how to deal with things and therefore the safety protocols can get in their way we keep the conversation always going with the employees about the safety protocol and why we're doing it our hope is that through this the training that we continue to do and the re-verification of the safety protocol that people will, if they do get into a situation they'll think about it and say oh yeah I remember I was trained to back out of the situation immediately so that they don't continue to think that they're fine