Border Patrol agents found Edgar Armanda Vargas-de la Rocha dressed in camouflage and wielding binoculars when they took him into custody in the mountains south of metropolitan Phoenix. Before long, he’d told them he was a scout for a Mexican cartel .
In the past year alone, Vargas-de la Rocha said he’d helped smuggle about 1,000 undocumented immigrants into the country, according to court records.
The Feb. 24 arrest near Maricopa, Arizona, took place as authorities looked into why federal equipment in the South Maricopa Mountains had gone offline – and it comes as President Donald Trump’s administration ramps up a border crackdown on illegal immigration , among the linchpins of his campaign platform and a focus of his joint address to Congress…