Monday, Jul 9, 2007
Posted on Mon, Jul. 09, 2007
Lured by the American dream, migrants risk all for better life



By JAY ROOT
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
The conclusion of a two-part series.
MATAMOROS, Mexico -- They didn't even know where they were until the northbound Kansas City Southern de Mexico freight train pulled into Matamoros on a muggy summer morning.

A few hours later, on the banks of the Rio Grande, the three young men learned the name of the U.S. town they were hoping to sneak into.

Jose Vasquez, a 22-year-old laborer from Veracruz, let the strange word roll off his tongue.

"Brownsville," he said uncertainly.

Vasquez and his two fast friends from the train -- Hondurans with an equal zeal to find a better life in the United States -- didn't have so much as an address on the other side. None spoke a word of English. They'd heard of San Antonio, but how far was it?

It was too late for a geography lesson now. The sun was going down and there hadn't been a Border Patrol truck on the gravel road across the river for a while. Thirteen hours after they arrived in Matamoros, weeks after leaving all but hope behind them, the three men stripped down to their shorts and waded into the muddy Rio Grande.

Within minutes they had disappeared into the thorny brush of a U.S. wildlife refuge, three new bit players in the red-hot debate on illegal immigration. Whether they got caught or joined the ranks of the undocumented masses is anybody's guess.

500,000 every year

The determination of the three men underscores the formidable challenge for U.S. policymakers: While immigration legislation founders in Congress, the trains and buses keep coming, carrying fresh recruits for America's fields and factories. And as law enforcement throws more money and people into an ever-growing border security apparatus, the undocumented population has steadily increased by about half a million people each year, estimates show.

Some die trying to cross the border. Many are caught but turn right around to try again, as the men in Matamoros vowed they would do if apprehended. The two Hondurans, Oscar Danelo and his longtime friend Neri Rodriguez, said they had practiced swimming back home in Santa Rita. "I'm not scared," said Danelo, 22, as he stared across the river toward Brownsville. "Poverty removes your fear."

Others, like Junior Acevedo, surrender after the first brush with La Migra -- or U.S. immigration -- and then find themselves right back where they started years earlier. What ties their stories together is the unshakable desire to leave behind desperation and grinding poverty for the freedom and prosperity they find across the border. They're unanimous in the belief that a massive wall being planned for the U.S.-Mexico border won't stop determined illegal immigrants from getting through.

The Acevedo family reached for the American dream more than a dozen years ago. Juan Antonio "Junior" Acevedo was clinging to what little remained of it, mostly memories, on the night Danelo reached U.S. soil for the first time.

He was savoring the final moments of a rare break from his $50 a week assembly-line job, a humbling comedown from the $900 a week he used to average laying tile in Fort Worth. He says it's torture sometimes at night to look across the river, toward Del Rio, from his hillside home in Ciudad Acuna.

"You can see the lights of Del Rio. It's right there. A few steps away, and I can't cross," he said. "Sometimes it makes me want to cry, but I know it's going to make me stronger."

Like his siblings, Acevedo's English is excellent. He knows exactly where San Antonio is. In fact, he would love to drive his Ford Explorer straight to the parking lot of Six Flags Fiesta Texas. If he still had it, that is.

The cars. The house on Bewick Street in Fort Worth. Hanging out at Grapevine Mills. It all ended in early 2004. Acevedo recalls feeling a little nervous when an Arlington contractor dispatched his crew, on his dad's birthday, to do some tile work at a military facility in Fort Worth. The scene plays out in his mind over and over like a bad TV rerun.

"Do you know that you are in this country illegally," the security guard asked after checking the workers' IDs at the gate. The truth stung, but they didn't lie about it. They agreed to a voluntary deportation and, a few months later, were back in their native Ciudad Acuna, rediscovering the hardscrabble life they had overcome only by fleeing.

The good life

Today, they cling to 13 golden years in Tarrant County and the allure of an eventual return -- a legal one -- to sustain their hopes for something better.

"Here, I feel like I'm a prisoner in my hometown," said Juanita Acevedo, 43, whose three children act and talk like typical Americans despite their Mexican heritage. "We love Fort Worth. We weren't born there, but I left half of my heart in Fort Worth."

In the meantime, her children are moving on and trying to make the best of it. Lupita, 20, a graduate of Paschal High School, has started college in Mexico and dreams of returning to the U.S. as a skilled professional or university professor. Junior, 27, is working on a high school equivalency degree and attending computer trade school.

Sister Patricia, 12, was born at JPS Hospital in Fort Worth and now attends public school in Del Rio. Since she was fortunate enough to be born in the U.S., she can go back and forth as she pleases. "I told her she can be anything she wants to be," Lupita, in flawless English, says of her American sister. "She can be president of the United States if she wants."

One thing none of them want is the stain of illegality, which they acquired by overstaying temporary tourist visas.

"I know it was illegal, but I was a kid," said Junior, who was 13 when he left Mexico for Fort Worth. "I don't want to go back illegally."

They want to be legal

The recent legislative defeat of President Bush's immigration plan notwithstanding, the Acevedos are ready to sign the papers to become legal guest workers the moment Congress signs off on the idea. In the meantime, millions more are prepared, just as they once were, to leave everything behind for a more prosperous but uncertain life in the shadows of the legitimate U.S. economy.

Before he hopped that train to Matamoros a few weeks ago, Vasquez was lucky to get $8 an hour picking fruit and doing odd construction jobs in his native Veracruz. He's the first in his family to head north, and they're counting on him. Knowing that the Border Patrol would be more likely to peg him as an illegal if he took his backpack across, Vasquez spilled the contents of it out onto the soggy riverbank -- a can of tuna, a container of Lady Speed Stick deodorant, a tube of Colgate toothpaste -- all of it soon to be whisked away by smugglers and others who regularly rummage through the hastily discarded belongings of border-crossers.

Vasquez put a set of dry clothes into a plastic bag and slung it around his neck on the end of a leather belt.

"I want to get some money so I can send it back home," he said before stepping into the water. "I've been wanting to cross since I was a kid. I finally decided to do it."

Before Danelo got into the water, he said he, too, wanted to send money back to his family in Santa Rita, Honduras. But after that he wanted to get a car. Asked if he knew how to drive yet, Danelo answered: "No. But over there, you can learn everything, right?"

ONLINE EXCLUSIVES

See a photo slide show and watch video of two illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande at www.star-telegram.com.

A year ago, as the immigration debate heated up, Star-Telegram reporter Jay Root and photographer Tom Pennington traveled the length of the U.S.-Mexico border. Retrace their journey in The Dividing Line, a multimedia presentation at www.star-telegram.com
http://www.star-telegram.com/state_news ... 63318.html