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05-31-06, 10:17 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer (http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/14706732.htm)
Special Report: The Border Wars
A steady tide
By Kevin G. Hall
Inquirer Foreign Staff
FERNANDO SALAZAR / Knight Ridder Tribune
A group of immigrants is led into the U.S. just 100 yards from the Nogales, Ariz., checkpoint. Since Oct. 1, more than 288,000 have been stopped in and near Nogales. Many still enter, offering a reality check for the government's plan.
http://www.philly.com/images/philly/inquirer/14706/216269096786.jpg
More Photos (
http://inquirer.philly.com/slideshows/news/060429immigration/index.html)
NOGALES, Mexico - One by one, men and women crawled on their knees and bellies across the hot red desert sands, less than 100 yards from where rumbling tractor-trailer rigs crossed from Mexico into Arizona.
In temperatures approaching 100 degrees, they looked as if they were on a military reconnaissance mission, but their tattered clothing said these weren't soldiers. They were would-be illegal immigrants making their way from southern Mexico to the United States.
President Bush and Congress have vowed to seal America's porous border with the aid of thousands of National Guard troops, miles of fences, surveillance cameras and aerial drones.
But here in Mariposa Canyon, the government's plan faces a reality check.
In groups of 10 to 16, men, women and children routinely cross the border, led by brazen smugglers called polleros. It all happens in broad daylight, under a blazing sun at high noon, around and through the 12-foot-high wall that the U.S. government built in the late 1990s to keep them out.
The scene unfolds under the noses of Customs and Border Patrol agents. Once across, the immigrants dash to a warehouse parking lot, where their ride awaits to take them to a safe house in the Arizona border town of Nogales.
On May 22, the polleros allowed a reporter and photographer to view their world up close. The men, many in their 20s, earn about $100 a head for sneaking mostly Mexicans into the United States. From there, the illegal immigrants will fan out to look for work just about anywhere they can find it.
After first hurling rocks down a gulch at the journalists and threatening them, the smugglers loosened up and let the journalists watch, photograph, and accompany their operations.
Finding smugglers is easy along this stretch of border. At one shack, more than a dozen were gathered, all talking at once on their cell phones and walkie-talkies.
The shack was a stone's throw from the Mexican government's border crossing, where an agent shooed away reporters. The smugglers passed around a marijuana joint in plain view of the authorities.
In turn, the polleros led groups of Mexicans down a trash-covered ravine to the 12-foot-high metal fence that guards the border here. It is routinely blow-torched or cut to make space for passage.
At the point closest to the U.S. crossing station, the immigrants crawled on their bellies and through a cattle gate instead of the high metal fence.
"They should've gone that way," one smuggler said as he watched from the top of the canyon. There was a crowd around the rickety shack, and the men all commented and criticized the tactics of the smugglers below, as if analyzing a soccer game or bullfight.
A few hours later, a Border Patrol agent in his trademark dark-green outfit started walking the U.S. side of the ravine, putting an end to several hours of uninterrupted traffic.
Three smugglers, all young men from the state of Sinaloa, a drug-trafficking hub, waved over a reporter to accompany them.
The smugglers identified themselves only by their street-gang nicknames - El Chumi, El Cholo and El Tacohuayo. They were all in their early 20s and seemed half-mobster and half-Beavis and Butthead. They joked and bantered constantly, razzing one another and using language that would make a sailor blush.
"Why do you want to build a wall when we'll just find a way around it?" Chumi said defiantly.
The pudgy, baby-faced smuggler complained repeatedly that Mexicans were just seeking work and should not face such obstacles to entry. All efforts to stop smugglers will fail, he insisted.
Since Oct. 1, 2005, more than 288,000 illegal immigrants have been apprehended in and around Nogales. More than 430,000 were caught in the Tucson sector in the year that ended Sept. 30. Clearly, not everyone is getting across.
But with more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, many do get across, as was evident on this scorching afternoon.
Juan Carlos, a timid man from the state of Puebla, quietly interrupted the sermon of the man smuggling him to America.
"If the U.S. doesn't want illegal workers, why are companies coming here to contract them?" he asked, telling of recruiters who come through his region south of Mexico City with buses. They offer to take people across to waiting jobs, he said. The cost of the illicit transit would be deducted from their pay.
During the only moment the smugglers were out of earshot, one man said he paid $1,000 to be taken across the border. Another angrily referred to the smugglers as corruptos, or corrupt ones.
Chumi and Tacohuayo, a serious-looking dark-skinned man with a mustache and a sweat-soaked green golf shirt, planned their next move.
They pointed to pole-mounted cameras on the other side of the high fence. They would have to time their sprint across the border to the movement of the cameras, which are remotely operated from a control room in a Border Patrol station. The men were patient. They watched the cameras closely over nearly an hour to see if they could detect a pattern.
Meanwhile, the marijuana-smoking Cholo passed around a couple of gallons of water. It seemed to have appeared magically. The men weren't carrying it during the sprints and belly-crawling beforehand.
Along the rusting fence, blue metal hacksaw blades littered the ground, used to cut peepholes that would help determine when to run across.
The smugglers mercilessly teased one young man for his bright-red hooded sweatshirt, no doubt brought along to keep him warm in the bone-chilling desert nights.
"Didn't you have something in yellow or orange?" they asked sarcastically as the man, embarrassed, yanked it off over his head.
Suddenly, it was time to move.
Tacohuayo swiftly led the first group of six through a makeshift door cut out of the American fence.
The pudgy Chumi brought up the rear. The immigrants scurried across the desert on their knees to a rancher's chain-link fence, which they would slide under.
A Border Patrol van appeared to watch much of the attempt from a few hundred feet away. Later that evening, during a tour of the Border Control station, it was clear the cameras probably did see it all.
So how did it happen?
The smugglers insisted Border Patrol agents are paid to look the other way.
Nonsense, said Manuel Coppola, publisher of Nogales International, the Arizona border city's twice-weekly newspaper.
Coppola's May 19 editorial blasted Bush's plan to send up to 6,000 National Guard troops to the border, calling it "lame."
Like many on the border, Coppola said that far more boots on the ground were needed and that the Border Patrol was forced to leave smaller groups alone while it concentrated on larger numbers of crossers.
"Do we stop everything? No," Senior Agent Jim Hawkins, a Nogales Border Patrol spokesman, said when asked about the daylight crossings.
He cautioned that crossing the border did not mean victory for the immigrants. The Border Patrol routinely finds the safe houses and focuses heavily on the roads leading out of Nogales.
Earlier in May, agents stopped an unmarked box truck and found 91 illegal immigrants stuffed atop one another inside.
"I don't think people understand the sheer scope of this issue," Hawkins said.
Special Report: The Border Wars
A steady tide
By Kevin G. Hall
Inquirer Foreign Staff
FERNANDO SALAZAR / Knight Ridder Tribune
A group of immigrants is led into the U.S. just 100 yards from the Nogales, Ariz., checkpoint. Since Oct. 1, more than 288,000 have been stopped in and near Nogales. Many still enter, offering a reality check for the government's plan.
http://www.philly.com/images/philly/inquirer/14706/216269096786.jpg
More Photos (
http://inquirer.philly.com/slideshows/news/060429immigration/index.html)
NOGALES, Mexico - One by one, men and women crawled on their knees and bellies across the hot red desert sands, less than 100 yards from where rumbling tractor-trailer rigs crossed from Mexico into Arizona.
In temperatures approaching 100 degrees, they looked as if they were on a military reconnaissance mission, but their tattered clothing said these weren't soldiers. They were would-be illegal immigrants making their way from southern Mexico to the United States.
President Bush and Congress have vowed to seal America's porous border with the aid of thousands of National Guard troops, miles of fences, surveillance cameras and aerial drones.
But here in Mariposa Canyon, the government's plan faces a reality check.
In groups of 10 to 16, men, women and children routinely cross the border, led by brazen smugglers called polleros. It all happens in broad daylight, under a blazing sun at high noon, around and through the 12-foot-high wall that the U.S. government built in the late 1990s to keep them out.
The scene unfolds under the noses of Customs and Border Patrol agents. Once across, the immigrants dash to a warehouse parking lot, where their ride awaits to take them to a safe house in the Arizona border town of Nogales.
On May 22, the polleros allowed a reporter and photographer to view their world up close. The men, many in their 20s, earn about $100 a head for sneaking mostly Mexicans into the United States. From there, the illegal immigrants will fan out to look for work just about anywhere they can find it.
After first hurling rocks down a gulch at the journalists and threatening them, the smugglers loosened up and let the journalists watch, photograph, and accompany their operations.
Finding smugglers is easy along this stretch of border. At one shack, more than a dozen were gathered, all talking at once on their cell phones and walkie-talkies.
The shack was a stone's throw from the Mexican government's border crossing, where an agent shooed away reporters. The smugglers passed around a marijuana joint in plain view of the authorities.
In turn, the polleros led groups of Mexicans down a trash-covered ravine to the 12-foot-high metal fence that guards the border here. It is routinely blow-torched or cut to make space for passage.
At the point closest to the U.S. crossing station, the immigrants crawled on their bellies and through a cattle gate instead of the high metal fence.
"They should've gone that way," one smuggler said as he watched from the top of the canyon. There was a crowd around the rickety shack, and the men all commented and criticized the tactics of the smugglers below, as if analyzing a soccer game or bullfight.
A few hours later, a Border Patrol agent in his trademark dark-green outfit started walking the U.S. side of the ravine, putting an end to several hours of uninterrupted traffic.
Three smugglers, all young men from the state of Sinaloa, a drug-trafficking hub, waved over a reporter to accompany them.
The smugglers identified themselves only by their street-gang nicknames - El Chumi, El Cholo and El Tacohuayo. They were all in their early 20s and seemed half-mobster and half-Beavis and Butthead. They joked and bantered constantly, razzing one another and using language that would make a sailor blush.
"Why do you want to build a wall when we'll just find a way around it?" Chumi said defiantly.
The pudgy, baby-faced smuggler complained repeatedly that Mexicans were just seeking work and should not face such obstacles to entry. All efforts to stop smugglers will fail, he insisted.
Since Oct. 1, 2005, more than 288,000 illegal immigrants have been apprehended in and around Nogales. More than 430,000 were caught in the Tucson sector in the year that ended Sept. 30. Clearly, not everyone is getting across.
But with more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, many do get across, as was evident on this scorching afternoon.
Juan Carlos, a timid man from the state of Puebla, quietly interrupted the sermon of the man smuggling him to America.
"If the U.S. doesn't want illegal workers, why are companies coming here to contract them?" he asked, telling of recruiters who come through his region south of Mexico City with buses. They offer to take people across to waiting jobs, he said. The cost of the illicit transit would be deducted from their pay.
During the only moment the smugglers were out of earshot, one man said he paid $1,000 to be taken across the border. Another angrily referred to the smugglers as corruptos, or corrupt ones.
Chumi and Tacohuayo, a serious-looking dark-skinned man with a mustache and a sweat-soaked green golf shirt, planned their next move.
They pointed to pole-mounted cameras on the other side of the high fence. They would have to time their sprint across the border to the movement of the cameras, which are remotely operated from a control room in a Border Patrol station. The men were patient. They watched the cameras closely over nearly an hour to see if they could detect a pattern.
Meanwhile, the marijuana-smoking Cholo passed around a couple of gallons of water. It seemed to have appeared magically. The men weren't carrying it during the sprints and belly-crawling beforehand.
Along the rusting fence, blue metal hacksaw blades littered the ground, used to cut peepholes that would help determine when to run across.
The smugglers mercilessly teased one young man for his bright-red hooded sweatshirt, no doubt brought along to keep him warm in the bone-chilling desert nights.
"Didn't you have something in yellow or orange?" they asked sarcastically as the man, embarrassed, yanked it off over his head.
Suddenly, it was time to move.
Tacohuayo swiftly led the first group of six through a makeshift door cut out of the American fence.
The pudgy Chumi brought up the rear. The immigrants scurried across the desert on their knees to a rancher's chain-link fence, which they would slide under.
A Border Patrol van appeared to watch much of the attempt from a few hundred feet away. Later that evening, during a tour of the Border Control station, it was clear the cameras probably did see it all.
So how did it happen?
The smugglers insisted Border Patrol agents are paid to look the other way.
Nonsense, said Manuel Coppola, publisher of Nogales International, the Arizona border city's twice-weekly newspaper.
Coppola's May 19 editorial blasted Bush's plan to send up to 6,000 National Guard troops to the border, calling it "lame."
Like many on the border, Coppola said that far more boots on the ground were needed and that the Border Patrol was forced to leave smaller groups alone while it concentrated on larger numbers of crossers.
"Do we stop everything? No," Senior Agent Jim Hawkins, a Nogales Border Patrol spokesman, said when asked about the daylight crossings.
He cautioned that crossing the border did not mean victory for the immigrants. The Border Patrol routinely finds the safe houses and focuses heavily on the roads leading out of Nogales.
Earlier in May, agents stopped an unmarked box truck and found 91 illegal immigrants stuffed atop one another inside.
"I don't think people understand the sheer scope of this issue," Hawkins said.