Star journalists file dispatches from 3-week stint on border

Arizona Daily Star ^

[SandRat]

Day 0: In Tucson … for now (July 17, 2006)

Tomorrow we leave for San Diego/Tijuana. 21 Days on the border – hard to fathom. That will be longer than an entire Olympics; Mardi Gras (well, the tourists' version, anyway); a fortnight; the Lord of the Rings trilogy, viewed 50 times in succession; your 5-year-old niece's rendition of the Nutcracker, viewed just once; ... well, you get the picture.

Our journey will take us from Tijuana to Brownsville, via Tecate, CA and MX, Yuma, AZ, Sasabe, MX, Columbus, NM, Ciudad Juarez, MX, Big Bend, TX, Del Rio, TX, Nuevo Laredo, MX, and all points in between. When accessibility to the Internet permits at least one of the five of us will be posting dispatches of our journey on this blog. However, as the online producer I'm proud to announce that they won't always come in the traditional text-based manner. We'll mix in some photos, voice-overs, video and other goodies to keep it interesting. Oh, and you can always check where we are by looking at the 'Current Location' box on the top right of the page, just right of the 'Working the Line' banner.

And finally, as we scour the remote regions of the border we're sure to get lonely so we'd love to get some comments and thoughts from y'all (see that, I'm prepping for the 1,000 miles in Texas already). I've moderated enough forums and story comments to know that the border in general and immigration in particular is a contentious issue, so I'm not naive enough to think every comment is going to be civil, but we do hope that the majority of you will be constructive. We don't expect you to agree with everything we say – heck, we don't want you to, that would be BORING – but we'll most likely only respond to the more thoughtful comments.

Alright, enough blabbing. Back to packing and enjoying the A/C. See ya on the road, as we're "working the line."

— Andrew Satter

Day 1: The Scramble (July 19, 2006)

It didn't take long for us to get to work upon arriving in California on the way to San Diego. We were just sailing west on Interstate 8 when we encountered around a dozen U.S. Border Patrol agents searching for suspected illegal entrants in an area of particularly rough terrain.

I rapidly gained respect for the difficulty of the agents' task after setting out to scramble up a boulder-littered mountainside to better document their work. Let's just say that sucking wind is putting my physical state mildly after a saunter up a steep incline in midday heat. I got scratched, scraped and stuck by about every plant or rock that could catch me. That, I am sorry to say, was not too difficult, because I was pretty darn slow.

There was cover everywhere. A person could disappear in a second within the dense brush or within spaces between the huge boulders that housed what remained of blankets, backpacks, and water bottles left behind by travelers. Making photographs required dodging these barriers, trying not to lose my footing on sand-covered stones. Running from or searching for anyone in this environment has got to be tough. Both the seekers and the sought-after not only have to worry about each other, but about mother nature as well.

Tomorrow we begin our first day of investigation in Tijuana and the U.S. territory just outside San Diego that shares its border. We appreciate seeing all of the comments from you all, and hope that you continue to share with us.

Best, James

— James Gregg, photographer

Day 2: They too know about walls (July 20, 2006)

To Israelis, security fences are a familiar sight.

As she stood at the westernmost tip of the international border between Mexico and the United States, 17-year-old Mor Gal-On said the metal fence dividing the two countries appears less imposing than the walls she's used to in Israel, where she lives. "The Israeli soldiers don't watch with a camera – they look you in the eyes," she said. "Our fences are all electricity too, if you touch them. This seems smaller."

Mor, who lives on a kibbutz in Southern Israel, was among several Israeli teens who visited Border Field State Park at the edge of the Mexico-U.S. border today. Like many of the teens, she was critical of building walls to divide people.

"Even metaphorically, it's not human," she said. "If you can't build a bridge, don't build a wall instead." The wall between the U.S. and Mexico begins in the Pacific Ocean off a sandy white beach and it's demarcated with long thin rusted-looking columns of metal. Tijuana residents jog, walk and sunbathe next to the more sparsely occupied American beach.

Enrique Morones of the immigrant aid group Border Angels said the western tip of the international line was once called Friendship Park but the name changed to Border Field State Park when the wall went up in 1994. Before the wall went up, he said Mexican residents used to play soccer there.

Though Enrique laments the day the border fence at Tijuana went up, he was just one of more than a dozen people our team interviewed today, all with varied thoughts on the border region, which many people say is a country of its own.

— Stephanie Innes, reporter

Day 3: Hi Ho Silver (July 21, 2006)

Throughout the night we crossed paths with Border Patrol agents driving trucks and SUVs while spending time near the western edge of the San Diego-Tijuana border. But when we saw a silhouette in the distance that looked like an old cowboy painting, we didn't know who we're looking at. Before us were three men sitting high on their horses with the city lights painting the outlines on their cowboy hats.

It turns out that the trio were members of the horse patrol for U.S. Border Patrol San Diego Sector. On this night, they were assigned to patrol an area that included a deep, rugged canyon called "Smugglers Gulch." The team had been working together for three years and said they track down calls just as any other agent would in truck or SUV. As they sat atop their horses in the haze of the moon and stadium lights that shine on the border, it reminded us that for all the technology and fencing, patrolling any area boils down to manpower.

— Brady McCombs, reporter

[SandRat]

You be the judge of the veracity of these reporters.

[amihow]

This writer is a well known light weight pandering to keep her job with the Red Star.