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  1. #1
    Senior Member Brian503a's Avatar
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    San Luis Rio Colorado: a staging place for illegal crossers,

    http://sun.yumasun.com/artman/publish/a ... _24330.php

    San Luis Rio Colorado: a staging place for illegal crossers, deportees
    BY BLAKE SCHMIDT, SUN STAFF WRITER
    May 19, 2006


    SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. - The coyote told her it would be a six-hour walk through the desert.

    Instead, it took four days.

    "And four nights," said Maria Hernandez as she took off her sock to unveil the blisters covering the bottoms of her feet.

    She's not sure whether it was the friction from walking or the sheer heat of the desert floor that caused the blisters. Maybe it was both, she said.

    On her four-day walk through the east Yuma County desert with 21 other illegal immigrants, the group ran out of water on the second day. By the third, some people were asking to be left behind.

    "One man was crying, he wanted us to leave him," said Faustino Gomez, a member of the group.

    On the fourth day, Interstate 8 came into sight. They were supposed to be picked up by smugglers. Instead, they were picked up by the U.S. Border Patrol.

    "All that for the American dream," Hernandez said, prompting laughter from about 20 other immigrants who were waiting for breakfast at the House of Divine Providence, an immigrant shelter in San Luis Rio Colorado.

    Most of them were recently deported. But others stopped here, in this city that has become the staging area for increasing numbers of immigrants, on their way north.

    Over recent years, Border Patrol's Yuma sector, which extends from the southeastern corner of California to the Yuma-Pima county line, has seen a spike in illegal crossings.

    As of Tuesday, Yuma sector Border Patrol agents have made 96,190 arrests so far this fiscal year, which is a 13 percent increase from this time last year.

    Since the United States tightened security at the main crossing points in Texas and California in the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of migrants have turned to the Arizona desert, risking not only dehydration but robbery and violence at the hands of bandits.

    Almost all Mexican illegal immigrants stopped by the Border Patrol are deported.

    They are apprehended, processed, driven to the Mexican border in buses and released into Mexican border cities like San Luis Rio Colorado.

    Many of those deported, like Gomez and Hernandez, will cross again.

    Even though Border Patrol doesn't keep aggregate numbers on how many illegal immigrants will cross again after being deported, the numbers are high.

    Border Patrol will apprehend the same immigrant a dozen times or more without booking them, said Border Patrol spokesman Michael Gramley.

    And some don't wait long before crossing again. On occasion, migrants have been nabbed twice by Border Patrol in one day.

    Many arrive as penniless out-of-towners in this border city, where some say it's easier to find a coyote than an employer or a bus ride home.

    "That's why people cross the border again. They don't have money. They don't know how to get out of here," said Joel Perez, a Mexican from Mexico City who was recently deported for the third time.

    Immigrants lay sprawled in the city's main park and pack the bus stations, where smuggling recruiters
    roam, encouraging migrants to cross again.

    They fill the city's soup kitchens, immigration agencies and social-service offices, looking for food, clothes to make another trip or money for a bus ticket home.

    Grupos Beta, an agency formed to protect and rescue immigrants; Integral Family Development, a Mexican social service agency; and the city will help families pay for part of a bus ride south.

    In conjunction with Mexico, the Border Patrol started a pilot program in the summer of 2004 that gave immigrants from southern Mexico apprehended in Arizona an opportunity to be flown to Mexico City.

    But the plan has seen limited success over the last two summers, said Border Patrol spokesman Sal Zamora, because the program is voluntary and most immigrants opt to be left at the border. Hays said it is uncertain whether the program will be available this summer.

    At the House of Divine Providence, immigrants can rest a few days before crossing again. They eat soup, get a night's sleep and exchange stories.

    The immigrants here, most of whom have crossed various times, tend to agree that it is getting harder to cross. But few say that they're going to quit trying.

    Others, like Gomez, are given hope by the recent immigration protests in the U.S., as well as talk of a guest-worker program and amnesty they've seen on television or that they've heard from family members living in the U.S.

    But Gomez said talk of a guest-worker program isn't what prompted him to head north. The father of three said his home in Chiapas in southern Mexico was recently destroyed by a hurricane.

    "We come out of necessity," he said, adding that his dream is to buy a house in the United States.

    He said he'll go to the park this afternoon to look for a smuggler. He won't try crossing alone because he doesn't know the area, he said.

    But the two men sitting on either side of him have different stories.

    They're both single. One of them, Porforio Torres, illegally crossed the border recently at the port of entry.

    "I just told them ‘U.S. citizen,’ ” he said, adding that agents didn't ask him for identification.

    The other man, Orlando Osuna, made the crowd laugh as he told how he crawled into the U.S. near the Colorado River, as Border Patrol spotlights and helicopters filled the air.

    "When they shine the light on your eyes, they light up like cat eyes," he said. "You have to cover your eyes," he said, burying his face in his arm.

    Osuna, 23, made it across in a few hours and walked to Yuma by himself.

    In Yuma, he was mesmerized by American food, music in English and high-tech crosswalks.

    He said he didn't understand how to use the crosswalk machines, so he jaywalked across an intersection - in front of a Border Patrol vehicle.

    "There was Border Patrol and police everywhere," he said, throwing his arms in the air. But apparently, none of them stopped him.

    But he decided after a couple of hours he had seen enough and walked back to Mexico from Yuma.

    "I didn't like it," he said.

    Gomez laughed.

    "So you did it just to do it? Just as a game?" he asked.

    His face tightened up.

    "Most of us come because we don't want to be poor," he added.

    -------------
    Blake Schmidt can be reached at
    bschmidt@yumasun.com or 539-6852.
    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts at http://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  2. #2
    Senior Member Coto's Avatar
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    Re: Recruiters

    Hi Brian,

    Pass the crying towel so I can regain my composure.

    Quote Originally Posted by Brian503a
    ...Immigrants lay sprawled in the city's main park and pack the bus stations, where smuggling recruiters
    roam, encouraging migrants to cross again.
    So, these smuggling recruiters are they the illegals' future employers?

    Coto

    What part of "We don't owe our jobs to India" are you unable to understand, Senator?

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