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Posted on Tue, Feb. 28, 2006

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

1 man, 2 homes
For Luis and other illegal immigrants here, the longing to revisit their homelands means another dangerous crossing into the U.S.
DÁNICA COTO
dcoto@charlotteobserver.com

Luis wasn't sure he wanted to risk leaving his wife and children in North Carolina to visit his parents in Mexico.

He'd have to cross again into the U.S. illegally. He could get arrested. Shot by robbers. Abandoned by the coyote guiding him.

He was most afraid of not seeing his family again, but he didn't tell them. Luis didn't want them to worry. But his wife and four children knew the dangers.

They've all crossed illegally, one after another, since he came to North Carolina 10 years ago, lured by stories of plentiful jobs and higher pay.

Luis, 45, was a fisherman in Mexico, making $1 for every kilo he caught. On a good day, he says, he'd make $10.

Now, he lives with his wife and two youngest children in a trailer park about 25 miles outside Charlotte. He's in construction; his wife works in a factory. His older children have married and moved to other parts of North Carolina.

Luis is a quiet man with a deep faith. He speaks in short sentences unless he's talking about God and the Virgin Mary and how they've influenced his life.

He says he's never been in trouble; a search of N.C. criminal records appears to support that.

Luis and his wife are part of a growing illegal immigrant population in North Carolina, estimated at 390,000, that provides low-cost labor and contributes millions to the economy.

Those immigrants also strain public services like schools and health care. They're under scrutiny as public officials debate how to handle 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., of which 6 million are Mexican. U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., of Charlotte, has called for tougher immigration laws, citing two fatal traffic accidents police say were caused by illegal immigrants.

It was a precarious time to attempt a border crossing, but Luis missed his parents. He hadn't seen them in five years.

They live in Guerrero, a Pacific coast state in southwestern Mexico, and don't plan on leaving. They're in their late 70s.

Luis sends them $500 a month, which they've used to buy land and cows, but he still felt an obligation to visit.

It was worth the risk, he told the Observer as he recounted his trip.

Luis planned to drive his brown Nissan pickup more than 1,700 miles to his hometown of Montecillos and leave it with his parents.

In mid-December, he says goodbye to his family.

A promise fulfilled

Luis' parents are waiting for him in their yard when he arrives Dec. 18 in Montecillos.The drive lasted 48 hours.

At Christmas, Luis eats his mom's sweet tamales, and at New Year's, her pozole, a spicy soup of pork and white corn. He misses his wife and children.

He spends almost a month in Mexico. On Jan. 10, he says, he takes his parents to visit the Virgin of Juquila shrine in the state of Oaxaca. It's a seven-hour drive, but he's eager to show them the Virgin who has kept him safe.

Luis first visited her 10 years ago before his first attempt to cross the border. In exchange for a safe journey, he promised in prayer to visit her every time he returned to Mexico.

He chose that Virgin because she watches over a small, humble town similar to his.

Before Luis departs, his parents borrow $2,000 to pay a coyote to get him back to his family in North Carolina.

Luis catches a van to Altar, a town in the state of Sonora that's become a jumping point for migrants planning to illegally cross the Arizona border. The driver stops along the way in Acapulco and Mexico City to pick up more migrants.

After a 58-hour drive, he arrives in Altar on a freezing January morning. A couple hours later, Luis climbs into another van with 10 men, three women and an 8-year-old boy. One woman is four months pregnant.

They sit on skinny metal benches.

Eight others are also going to North Carolina - Charlotte, Raleigh and Winston-Salem.

Víctor, a 29-year-old construction worker, is returning to a job just outside Charlotte, where he'll put in 12- to 14-hour days.

No illegal immigrant likes coming to America, he says.

"They're coming just for money," says Víctor, "the best life for our family."

He, too, sends money home to Mexico every month, he says, so his two children can go to school and his wife can buy the basics. Like Luis, he's returning after visiting family in Guerrero. He hadn't seen them in eight years.

Reliving a memory

It's 8:37 a.m., Jan. 18, when their van pulls away from the Altar town square.

No one speaks. The passengers avoid looking into each other's eyes. Holiday visits are over. The upbeat ranchero music on the radio seems like an intrusion.

The van grows stuffy, but they remain bundled in their dark, insulated jackets, which they hope will keep them warm in the desert night. They carry food and water for a three-day journey.

Luis looks out at honey-colored grass and cactus fields.

He crossed the desert on his first trip, a decade ago. He found work at a food processing plant near Charlotte, he says, then joined a construction company.

His wife came soon afterward, and their children followed. Everyone works except Luis' youngest son, who's still in school. He left Mexico last year.

At 9:49 a.m. there's a glimpse of America -- a 7,730-foot granite peak. It's the highest in Arizona's Baboquivari mountain range, considered sacred by neighboring Tohono O'odham Indians.

The peak guides migrants through the desert. Keep it on your right if you cross through the Indian reservation. Keep it on your left if you cross through Sásabe.

By 10:20 a.m., the van arrives.

No one talks. The border is a mile away.

Sásabe is a place to finalize plans. Migrants don't stay long in this town of rutted dirt roads and shoddy homes of plywood and cardboard.

Many stop at a Virgin of Guadalupe memorial to light a candle and say a last prayer. She's the patron of Mexico.

It's still daylight, and Luis and the other migrants from the van head for an abandoned brick house a half-mile from America. A dozen people sit on the floor of an empty bedroom. Ten others crowd into the kitchen. They stare, shifting their feet, when a reporter approaches.

Luis speaks up: "You need to leave."

The mood grows tense this close to crossing. Secrets revealed could derail their trip.

Luis presses: "Now."

He steps back into his group. They'll wait here for darkness to cross.

`All work and no rest'

The journey is more punishing than expected.

In an interview, Luis and two other migrants describe how their group crossed:

After spending more than a day in Sásabe, they sneak through a barbed-wire border fence after a two-hour drive west in the desert.

The Border Patrol catches most of them. But Víctor, the pregnant woman and another man run away.

The remaining migrants are taken to the detention center and later released in Nogales, Mexico, 50 miles to the east.

Luis and the group circle back to Sásabe. Again, they sneak across with a coyote. Again, they're caught.

They return to Sásabe for a third try.

The coyote tells the woman and her young son who had been riding in the van to leave. They're slowing down the group.

Luis and the others leave them behind and follow the coyote.

After walking for an hour, they're robbed at gunpoint. Four men snatch their money, then wish them luck and warn about nearby border patrols, Luis says.

The group walks 14 hours until a pickup arrives and shuttles them to Tucson. There, they catch a van that drives two straight days to the Charlotte area.

On the night of Feb. 8, Luis arrives home. His family is waiting.

"They were all there," he says. "I was happy. They gave me a welcoming hug."

Luis introduces them to José, 35, from Acapulco, whom he befriended on the van. He'll stay with Luis until he saves enough to rent his own place.

The celebration is quick.

Luis returns to his construction job and rarely sees his wife because they have opposite schedules.

When he gets off work at 5 p.m., he usually goes home and eats the supper she prepared. If he feels like eating out, he'll indulge in the buffet at a local restaurant.

They don't enjoy their lives, his wife says. She asked not to be named for fear of reprisals.

"Life here is all work and no rest," she says. "What we earn we send to Mexico."

Luis and his wife live in a small, peaceful community with other Mexican immigrants who share meals, gossip and baby-sitting duties. They've created a reliable network they can depend on like family.

Some have lived quietly in America for years. They work long hours, earning five to 10 times what they would make in Mexico. They want better lives for their children.

There are also newcomers in the neighborhood. The woman and her 8-year-old son who were left behind in the desert are here for the first time.

After being separated from the group in Sásabe, she called her mother in Mexico City and requested she sell what furniture remained.

She used that money to pay a man to pick her up in the Arizona desert after she and her son crossed the border alone.

They drove to Phoenix, then another van brought them straight to North Carolina.

They moved in with her uncle in the same trailer park, a street over from Luis.

The woman and her son don't speak English. He'll be going to an American school. She has no income and feels guilty about relying on her uncle.

In Mexico City, she swept floors in an office building where she and her son lived in one room. She wanted something more for him, so she came here looking for better pay.

She hasn't found it yet.

She misses her mother and the boy's father. It's a familiar ache for illegal immigrants.

"We suffer together," she says.

Editor's note: Observer reporter Dánica Coto first encountered Luis in a van at Altar and traveled with him to Sásabe. His account of his border crossing was confirmed by others who crossed with him.

-- Staff writer Liz Chandler, researcher sara Klemmer and WCNC's bobby rettew contributed to this report.

-- Dánica Coto: (704) 358-5065