Thread: A hike with the Border Patrol through an illegal alien trail

A hike with U.S Border Patrol agents through an illegal immigrant trail

May 31, 2011 10:35 AM
Naxiely Lopez
The Monitor

There is no other way to phrase it: You don’t know how tough it is until you go through it.

Thousands of people, young and old, die each year trying to reach what they believe is the American Dream. Men, women and children set off from various countries across the world to reach the United States by any means necessary.

They swim. They crawl. They run. They put their lives in danger.

At least 20 such people have died in the U.S. Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector since the start of the year, said agency spokeswoman Rosalinda Huey. Another 70 have been rescued.

Border Patrol officials recently invited members of the media to experience what its agents and the immigrants they encounter face each day. The agency hopes that chronicling the hardship will deter people from entering the country illegally as summer sets in and conditions for illegally crossing the border and trekking across South Texas become increasingly perilous.

What follows is my account of a day in their shoes — although, frankly, I’m not sure which I felt like more: an immigrant or an agent.

8:00 a.m. — About 20 members of various media outlets meet at the regional Border Patrol headquarters in Edinburg, where we sign waivers indemnifying the agency against liability in the event of our injury or death and receive a briefing on the day’s activities. We are going to see firsthand what an immigrant must go through to make it past Border Patrol’s Falfurrias checkpoint, considered to be one of the last hurdles before heading to points north.

9:30 a.m. — We are shuttled to private property near Chimney Park in Mission, where we are dropped off on the banks of the Rio Grande.

We are immigrants who have just crossed the river and arrived in the U.S. at last.

The Border Patrol agents and my fellow journalists and I began the first trek of the day. We pick our way through a thicket of trees and grass, trying to fend off grasping branches that seem bent on slowing our progress.

Narrow trails snake through the trampled undergrowth, and signs of previous immigrants — toothbrushes, clothing, empty water bottles — litter the wayside.

It’s a sunny, breezy morning and everyone seems to have a spring in their step. We walk, climb fences, duck branches and walk for about 20 minutes before reaching a dirt road, where coyotes, or immigrant smugglers, wait for their sometimes reluctant clients.

“That was pretty easy,â€

If the Dems & some Repubs truely cared about IA's they would "Build The Dang Fence" and save much trauma & many lives.........