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Along the border, a land held hostage
Bandits roaming the Arizona-Mexico frontier threaten immigrants, patrolmen, workers

By Stephen Kiehl
Sun Reporter

January 22, 2006

NOGALES, Mexico -- They had made it across the border, 20 of them, through a hole in the barbed-wire fence in the dark Arizona desert. Juan Carlos Reyes Hernandez, 25, with two children at home and a third on the way, was among them. He planned to work in construction and send his earnings back home.

He had promised to pay the "coyote," or smuggler, two months' wages to lead him safely to Tucson. Instead, he walked into a trap. The group was less than a mile into the United States when three men with pistols set upon them. Hernandez believes the coyote and the gunmen were working together.

"He delivered us to these guys," Hernandez said last week, telling his story in an immigrant aid office in the border town of Nogales. "They took our money and they took part of our food that we had for our trip. The group in total ended up losing $2,500."

They were the victims of border bandits -- gangs of armed men that have made the U.S. border with Mexico an increasingly violent place in the past year. The gangs target illegal immigrants who cross the mesquite-studded desert by the thousands each night, robbing them of cash, assaulting those who resist and raping the women, officials say. The bandits contributed to a 50 percent increase in deaths last year among immigrants crossing the Arizona border.

Immigrants are not the only targets. Last year in Arizona, U.S. Border Patrol agents were assaulted a record 365 times -- more than double the 2004 total. Ranchers whose families have raised cattle in southern Arizona for generations are selling their land and moving out. And officials at the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, south of Tucson, are worried that the attacks will force them to close parts of the refuge.

The rise in violence comes amid a growing public fervor for a border crackdown. Last year hundreds of armed Minutemen began patrolling the border themselves, and fears that illegal immigrants will take away jobs from Americans and strain hospitals and schools have spurred passage of anti-immigrant laws in several states.

Seeking middle ground, President Bush and business leaders support a "guest worker" program that would allow immigrants to enter the U.S. to work for a fixed period of time. But many Republicans call that unacceptable and want a tighter border and zero tolerance for illegal immigrants already in the U.S.

In the past decade, the Border Patrol has fortified urban areas such as El Paso and San Diego, building tall fences and flooding border towns with agents. As those efforts have pushed outward from the cities, immigrants have been funneled into the Arizona desert, where the fences remain porous and the Border Patrol less of a presence.

But the desert is a virtual no man's land, where bandits can easily prey on immigrants far from the watchful eyes of law enforcement. Human smugglers and drug smugglers battle for the best routes, and the coyotes fight each other over groups of immigrants, who pay steep prices for their passage.

"The reports have picked up in the last few months," said Mitch Ellis, manager of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. "These bandits operate in a very organized way. They target illegal immigrants because they're carrying several hundred dollars and much of their life's possessions."

Last year, 267 illegal immigrants died while crossing into Arizona, according to the U.S. Border Patrol, making it the deadliest year since record-keeping began in 1993. Most were victims of dehydration or exposure -- deaths that have increased because the immigrants now travel routes that are longer and farther from help. But an increasing number were shot or beaten. A list of the causes of death reads like a police blotter:

Gunshot wound to head. Gunshot wound to torso. Gunshot wounds of chest and neck and sharp force injury of neck. Multiple injuries due to blunt force trauma.

"There are more and more people willing and ready to steal from them and attack them as they cross because they know that they're vulnerable," said Enrique Enriquez Palafox, the Nogales head for Grupo Beta, Mexico's official immigrant aid group. His 10 aid workers cover more than 30 miles of the border, and this year they have rescued 155 people.

Ninety percent of them, Enriquez said, were victims of a robbery or assault.

Responding to the crisis, the Mexican government now gives immigrants a pamphlet illustrating the dangers. It shows a bandit pointing a gun at a helpless immigrant, his clothes tattered and a rattlesnake at his feet.

"I tell them: You will get tired. You will be assaulted. You will maybe even lose your life," Enriquez said. "And they think: 'No, that happens to other people, not to me.'"

At least half a million immigrants cross illegally into the United States through its southern border every year, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. And about half of those now come through Arizona. Along Migrant's Canyon, one well-known route for human smuggling in the Sonora Desert south of Tucson, officials have found mattresses used by bandits for sexual assaults.

"I burned two of them myself," Enriquez said. "They even put the panties and the bras on trees to decorate as trophies."

Because of the bandits, researchers on public U.S. land in southern Arizona now travel with armed guards. The Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge has been the site of six shootings since July. In the previous 20 years, there had not been a single shooting reported.

Ellis, the refuge manager, said there are two types of bandits -- those looking to intercept drug shipments coming across the border, and those targeting illegal immigrants. He believes most of the bandits are Mexican and that they often operate close to the border so they can cross from one side to another to avoid law enforcement.

He says the border area has become a "war zone."

"We see people who have been shot. We see dead bodies on the refuge, and the survivors are telling us they've been robbed," said Ellis, who worries for the safety of his staff and visitors. "If there are people who frequently cross the border robbing, raping and shooting people, I think we would be foolish to think that we're safe."

The 118,000-acre refuge gets about 30,000 visitors a year, but Ellis says school groups are coming less frequently. Workers at the refuge warn visitors of the dangers but still permit them to explore as far as they feel comfortable.

"If the violence continues, we may have to close parts of the refuge or all of it," Ellis said. Besides the "horrible" consequences for immigrants, he said, "U.S. citizens are almost being held hostage by this border situation. These are public lands. I should be allowed to bird-watch without having to worry about being shot."

The refuge shares 5 1/2 miles of border with Mexico, a boundary so porous that cattle from Mexican ranches are often found grazing on U.S. land. The fence that marks the border is a few strands of barbed wire, barely four feet tall, and cut in numerous places to provide easy passage for the immigrants.

The land is marked by a spider web of packed-down dirt trails, created by the thousands of immigrants walking through. The paths are strewn with trash -- empty water and soft drink bottles, candy wrappers, clothing. There is also the occasional body.

"The bandits rob, rape and pillage the alien groups that come through," said Drew Cyprian, a law enforcement officer who has worked at the refuge for 20 years. "Some just take money and jewelry. Others take all their food and water. They're extremely difficult to catch. A lot of the time, they do their dirty deed and they zip back into Mexico."

Across the border from the refuge, just 50 feet from the United States but a world away, is the town of Sasabe. The roads are made of dirt and rock, mangy dogs forage for scraps, and the few homes standing are constructed from plywood and bricks stacked without mortar.

But Sasabe, with a population of 3,000, has boomed in recent years as immigrants have fled the larger border cities. The town is in the middle of the Sonora Desert, and it is here that the migrants meet with smugglers who charge $800 to $3,000, depending on the destination.

Shortly after 10 a.m. Wednesday, a Ford van pulled up behind a small snack shop in the town and disgorged 10 men, two women and two children. They carried gallon jugs of water and backpacks filled with cans of refried beans, jalapenos and tuna. This would be their last stop before heading into the desert.

"I don't know if it's worth it," said an 18-year-old woman in a big black parka who identified herself as Ernestina. She left a job making $7 a day at a hotel in Mexico City to attempt the crossing. "I guess it will depend on how it turns out for us."

She was in a group of six -- four adults and two boys, ages 5 and 7. One of the men, who said his name was Jose, said the group planned to find their own way without a coyote. They did not worry about bandits, or the cold desert nights, or dehydration.

"I pretty much don't have any fear," Jose said. "I'm not afraid at all."

He was handed a yellow slip of paper informing him of his rights by Kat Rodriguez, an immigrant aid worker from Tucson. She travels to Sasabe at least once a month to give out the yellow slips. She asked Jose and Ernestina to call her when they got to Tucson, so she wouldn't worry about them.

"In July, there were 78 people who died -- 78 who died in Arizona. How can you not call that a crisis?" Rodriguez said. "Every year is the deadliest year. Every summer is the deadliest summer. How long are we going to allow that before the government analyzes some of these tactics?"

The increase has been significant in the past five years. The Border Patrol says 106 immigrants died while crossing from Mexico to Arizona in 2000. By last year, the number had more than doubled, though the Border Patrol has added search and rescue and trauma teams to save lives.

The Border Patrol acknowledges that gaining "operational control" in urban areas in Texas and California has pushed immigrants farther into the desert, where they must pay smugglers to show them the way and where the risks are greater. The U.S. runs ads on Mexican TV warning that there are dangers and that some coyotes cannot be trusted.

The coyotes are fighting back, attacking agents with marbles fired from slingshots, with rocks thrown across the border and in shootings. Agents were shot at 33 times in Arizona last year.

It is only after immigrants have attempted the crossing that many appreciate its risks. At the Grupo Beta office in Nogales last week, a dozen men sat on hard plastic chairs watching Mexican soap operas and contemplating their next move. They had been sent back from the U.S. and would either return home or try again.

Miguel Angel Caciques, 20, fell and hurt his knee after his group entered the U.S. He could not keep up and was left in the desert. He was able to reach a roadway and flag down a sheriff's deputy, who wrapped his knee before turning him over to Border Patrol. Back in Mexico, he said he'd wait a month or two and then give it another shot.

"The need of my family is so great that I know if I endanger my life for one week and it gets me into the United States, I can send money home," he said. "It's worth the risk."

Others weren't so sure. Juan Carlos Reyes Hernandez, who was in the group of 20 that had been robbed, said he would return to his wife and children in the central Mexican city of Guanajuato. He said anyone considering entering the U.S. should think twice.

"They should think a thousand times that they will put themselves in danger, that they will be facing not only the dangers of temperature and strange animals and cold and thirst, but also the coyotes who are going to take advantage of you," he said.

"In my town, I may be very poor, but I am someone. My wife loves me. My children love me. Yes, I can come to the United States and make some money, but nobody cares about me there."

stephen.kiehl@baltsun.com