Posted on 05/11/2003 6:31:58 PM PDT by JackelopeBreeder
Risky business: Smugglers use various methods to get illegal immigrants across border from San Luis to U.S.
SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. — While patrolling the desert a few miles east of this border city, Mexican immigration inspectors recently found a hole between two fence posts across the road from a popular cafe.
The posts form part of the international line that separates the United States and Mexico, and the cafe is one of several places where illegal immigrants gather before they cross through a hole newly cut in the barbed-wire fence, inspectors said. "This is the new port of entry," joked Gilberto Penagos, an inspector for the Institute of Migration in San Luis Rio Colorado, Son., of the gap in the fence. "Only the officials have not gotten here yet."
Oscar Romo, director of the Mexican Institute of Migration office in San Luis Rio Colorado, said alien smuggling has climbed in the area in recent years, with a major portion of the immigrants being transported from the bigger rings in Baja California.
He said increased enforcement efforts by U.S. Border Patrol agents in the San Diego and El Centro areas have pushed the smugglers east to Arizona.
"There are a lot of people that have tried other parts and have been told San Luis is a good place to cross," Romo said.
Romo's office carries out immigration-related functions ranging from helping tourists get their visas to capturing smugglers. His inspectors have located several abandoned structures and hiding places such as canyons or riverbeds near the border where groups of immigrants are kept hidden while the smugglers wait for the right time to cross.
Romo said that besides organized smuggling operations, smaller nonguided groups of immigrants normally cross the border from within the city limits, either by crawling through dug-out areas below the border fence or by scaling it.
On a recent tour, Romo and the Border Patrol's Mexico liaison agents showed The Sun staging areas east of the city where they said smugglers gathered aliens before leading them across the border. Agents said their information comes from experience and interviews with hundreds of illegal immigrants, who pay smugglers up to $2,000 each to be guided.
Because their job involves working in Mexico, the liaison agents asked that they not be identified or photographed.
The staging areas on the Mexican side are accessible from the Mexican federal Highway 2, which runs east from San Luis Rio Colorado along the border to Sonoita, Son. Some conceal immigrants while smugglers gather more clients plus resources, and others are used for staging areas for a quick dash to the border, often times a few feet away.
Driving east on Highway 2, the first set of staging areas Romo pointed out consisted of six wide holes in the ground that serve as a place to hide from agents patrolling the highway only about 30 feet away. The holes remain from a mining operation that has since moved on.
"They can sit here for days if they have to," Romo said.
In the first hole, inspectors came across several pieces of foam that immigrants put on their feet to minimize the footprints left behind after crossing the border.
Penagos said Mexican inspectors recently came across a group of 35 people sitting in the hole, feet covered, as the guide cut through the barbed-wire border fence. The next day, they got six Hondurans in the same spot.
"They just cut the wire and they're across," Romo said. "From here they can go directly to Yuma."
Romo drove a few miles farther east next to a square brick building that had gang graffiti on the outside and four sets of vehicle seats where immigrants rest before going north
Next to the seats was an unused diaper Romo said is an example of who is crossing and at what risk.
"I don't know why people want to put their children through this kind of thing," he said.
The trip with liaison agents revealed evidence of both a crossing that agents believed was planned for that day and a grocery list left behind by a group that had already set off toward the Gila Mountains. Listed were 70 chickens, 60 cans of beans and more than 100 gallons of water and Gatorade.
Pulling off the highway next to an abandoned store, agents found what they called a "smoking gun." Sitting in the corner of a shaded patio stood a refrigerator that, though not hooked up to power, held several cans of sardines, loaves of bread, jars of mayonnaise and 5 gallons of water — staples of an immigrant's diet.
Next to the food sat two plastic grocery bags filled with new slabs of the foam, which the liaison agents confiscated to help Border Patrol agents track the group if it reached the American side.
But with the gathering points scattered as far out as 70 miles east of San Luis Rio Colorado and literally in the middle of the desert, how do smugglers manage to transport their customers down a major highway without being detected by military checkpoints and federal police who monitor the road? And how do they cross the immigrants into the United States amid Border Patrol cameras, agents and helicopters?
Agents said the answers is simple — a few well-placed pesos and the patience to wait several days for the right moment to jump across the border.
Romo said the Mexicali-based and Tijuana-based smugglers use buses to get the immigrants to the San Luis area. Once they reach San Luis, guides arrange for transport to predetermined stash houses in the city or one of the staging areas in the desert.
Knowing a vehicle loaded with several passengers is a give-away and a classic warning of potential illegal immigrants, agents said the guides often put immigrants on buses in San Luis headed for Sonoita, but instead of paying for tickets, which record the holders' names, the guides give the drivers a few pesos to drop off the immigrants in the desert.
The same goes for taxi drivers or regular citizens headed through the desert area.
Once guides believe they have gathered together enough immigrants to make the trip financially worth their effort, they wait for the right time to cross, which agents said normally takes place at night and after smugglers have done several hours of counter-surveillance.
Once they cross, said Patrick Tuohy, supervisory agent of the Border Patrol's anti-smuggling unit in Yuma, members of the smuggling ring on the American side use everything from orchards to hotels and homes to hold immigrants for a few days before taking them to their final destination.
"They'll stockpile these groups until it is commercially a good time to go for them," Tuohy said. "The trick is not so much getting them across. It's getting them out of the area."
He said his agents have found homes with as many as 100 immigrants inside or hotel rooms that have been rented out for as long as one year by the same person.
Tuohy said intelligence reports show a majority of the illegal immigrants who go through Yuma County are headed to California.
"It's a multilayered enterprise," Tuohy said. "It's very organized and it's hard to track."
Child endangerment ---but the smugglers don't care.
Stay Safe !
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