Thread: Illegal crossers' last try: brazen dash through city

Illegal crossers' last try: brazen dash through city

After failing in the desert, hope remains of breaching urban border

08:29 AM MST on Sunday, April 22, 2007

By Brady McCombs / Arizona Daily Star

NOGALES, Sonora — Gabino Ibarra leans against a white stucco wall outside a church in the late-afternoon shadows, prying a few remaining cactus splinters from his calloused hands.

It's mid-April and the 37-year-old father of four from Veracruz, Mexico, is staying at a migrant shelter, resting from three weeks of failed attempts to cross illegally into the United States through the Altar Desert near Sasabe.

The grueling desert treks have left Ibarra 17 pounds lighter and less enthusiastic about his northern quest than when he left Veracruz, more than a thousand miles away in southeastern Mexico. But, he planned to make one last-ditch effort. Like many before him, he will try to scale the steel fence that marks the international line in Nogales.

"This will be the last try," he says in Spanish. "So I don't have to go home defeated."

For would-be-illegal border crossers who have failed to slip into the United States through remote deserts and mountains, the imposing urban border can start to look beatable.

At first glance, the 2 1/2 miles of international line in downtown Nogales seems like an impenetrable stretch of border. Menacing fences stand 10 to 20 feet high with steel mesh overhangs angled on top. Surveillance cameras on top of 50- to 65-foot poles swivel back and forth, zooming in on different parts of the fence and sending images back to control rooms.

At night, stadium lights shine on the line, bringing the fence and nearby neighborhoods into the spotlight.

Border Patrol agents sit in trucks close to the fence waiting to spring into action. Agents on bike patrol pedal up and down busy downtown streets.

On two hilltops, National Guard observation teams using binoculars watch two of the busiest crossing spots.

Still, each day, hundreds of illegal entrants — many making a final attempt after being caught multiple times in the desert — test the gantlet.

They scale the fence, crawl through holes they've opened in it or trudge through tunnels that connect Nogales, Sonora, to Nogales, Ariz. Many get caught and others injured, but some actually make it.

Agents in the Border Patrol's Nogales Station, which covers 32 miles of border from the Patagonia Mountains east of Nogales to Ruby, west of Nogales, record nearly 80 percent — about 250 of the 315 — of their daily apprehensions in a 4-mile stretch near Nogales, said Mario Cano, Border Patrol spokesman.

"Every day, people cross in the urban areas," said Enrique Enriquez Palafox, coordinator of the Nogales Grupo Beta office, Mexico's special force for protecting migrants, in Spanish. "So, it's not 100 percent guarded."

How and why they do it

A quick climb and a mad dash often sounds appealing to illegal entrants who have endured grueling days and chilling nights in the desert.

The Border Patrol drops off hundreds of illegal entrants daily at the Nogales ports of entry. Illegal border crossers who are apprehended between the Yuma County line on the Tohono O'odham Reservation and the Huachuca Mountains near Sierra Vista, and choose voluntary return, get bused to Nogales.

As they try to figure out their next move, smugglers offer them a quicker, easier route into the United States.

"They tell them, 'I can get you across here. I'll take you to a spot that is easy, you won't have to walk,'" Enriquez said. "They convince them and that's why they try again here in Nogales."

Even though the probability of capture has increased over the years, the attempts still represent a threat for the Border Patrol. The cameras, sensors, lights and fences help agents, but Nogales remains a challenging urban setting.

At certain spots along the fence in hilly Nogales, the land on the Mexican side is much higher and offers an easy climb over the fence. Houses butt up against the fence in Mexico, providing cover for potential crossers and ideal lodging for smugglers.

Storm waters fill natural washes along the line and weaken the fence. This month, an Air National Guard team replaced one such section with steel bollard fencing that prevents illegal entry but allows water through.

Savvy smugglers and insistent illegal entrants know how to take advantage of the momentary lapses in patrol, Enriquez said. Spotters wait for a Border Patrol agent shift change, a momentary lapse in vigilance or for a surveillance camera to swivel the other way and then send one, two or three people over the fence where they'll sprint to a store, house or car where somebody waits for them.

"They still continue to try and that's why we have as much layered enforcement in the downtown area," said Gustavo Soto, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman.

They'll also scout out weak areas of the fence where they can move in and blowtorch a hole and sneak through. Smugglers have established lookout spots in the top stories of hotels and apartment buildings and in houses on hilltops where they watch every move of the Border Patrol, Cano said.

"They are watching right now," said Cano, standing about 20 yards north of the border a few hundred yards west of the Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry. "They don't have to play by the rules. They don't have a time schedule. That what makes this hard: We have to play by the rules."

When they make their move, agents must react quickly.

"Within a few seconds to a few minutes they can be in a house, in a taxi, in a vehicle and we've basically lost our initial opportunity to make an arrest," John Fitzpatrick, Border Patrol agent in charge in Nogales, told Southern Arizonans at a town hall meeting on April 3.

The reality remains that most illegal entrants try to avoid the tightly patrolled urban setting. But, with so many returning to Nogales after apprehension the temptation is difficult to resist even if they know odds are against them.

"They'll say, 'Maybe today is my lucky day?' " Enriquez said.

Added Soto: "It's a mad dash and there are some people that are educated enough that they are not going to try to cross in the desert because they know it's too dangerous."

That's not to say the urban crossings don't present risks of their own. People often cut themselves, twist ankles and break arms and legs trying to scale the fence or crawl through blowtorched holes. In the tunnels that connect Mexico to Arizona beneath the bustling streets of the two Nogaleses, they risk their lives the moment they step inside.

Drainage turned walkway

The sounds of boots rustling through debris and splashing water breaks up the eerie silence that fills a chilly, dark tunnel that connects Mexico to the United States beneath Nogales.

Border Patrol agents are performing a routine sweep inside the Grand Avenue tunnel, a 20-foot-wide underground passage 7 to 10 feet deep built to prevent flooding but used for decades by smugglers as an avenue into the United States.

Even with the agents' special training, infrared goggles and high-tech flashlights, the Grand and Morley Avenue tunnels are a dangerous setting, complete with gunfights, rapes and deaths.

Illegal entrants usually walk through the main tunnels in groups of 10 to 20 and then crawl through exit tunnels leading to grates and manholes in city streets.

"The more pressure we put on them aboveground, then you'll see them come down," Cano said.

Officials were feeling good in early summer 2006 about the progress they had made over the years in slowing illegal-entrant traffic in the tunnels.

The tunnels were created to channel monsoon rains and prevent flooding, and the agency knew it would never be able to close them, but saw a decrease in traffic in the prior two years.

By erecting two sets of heavy steel doors designed to open when the tunnels fill with water, the agency had made it more difficult to cross inside the tunnels. With cameras and sensors, they were alerted when somebody was trying.

Then, during heavy rains in July, raging waters knocked down the first set of steel doors inside the tunnels. Within weeks smugglers ripped down the cameras, shattered lights and broke a siren designed to deter entries.

On July 27, 2006, overnight storms flooded the Grand Avenue tunnel, sweeping away a group of illegal entrants. Law enforcement officials rescued 34 but found three others dead. Eight bodies have been found in the tunnels since 2000, officials said.

The storms wiped out the agency's tools and reopened the route to smugglers.

From Oct. 1, the start of fiscal year 2007, through the end of March, agents have made 1,609 apprehensions of illegal entrants who crossed in the tunnels, Soto said. That puts them on pace for an increase in apprehensions for the second consecutive year. Apprehensions doubled in 2006 to 2,268 from 1,085 in fiscal year 2005, Soto said.

"We were able to operationally shut down these tunnels for the last two to three years," Cano said. "But, during the last monsoon season when everything got pretty much destroyed, that has set us back."

The Border Patrol hasn't replaced that first set of steel doors, leaving one set of steel gates inside each tunnel, which is easier to breach, Cano said. The agency is trying to decide if it will put the same doors back up or create a new design. Officials hope to do something before this summer's monsoon.

Officials know patrolling the two largest known tunnels on the border will always be an issue. Even if the government had the money or initiative to fill them in — which officials have talked about doing with tunnels in San Diego — they couldn't because the drainage system prevents flooding in the Santa Cruz Valley.

"They never thought these tunnels would become such a problem that it's become," Cano said.

No more desert

Ibarra shakes his head when asked about returning to the desert.

The first time he ended up being held at gunpoint in a stash house in Phoenix where smugglers demanded double the original fee. Law enforcement officials found him and 40 others in the house, saved them and then deported them.

The second time, he fled from Border Patrol agents who were apprehending the group he was crossing with and then got lost in the desert before eventually returning to Mexico. The third time he tried crossing without a smuggler and wandered in the desert for six days before the Border Patrol arrested and deported him.

He remembers the days without food; that foul taste from drinking water from cattle troughs; the cuts and bruises from brushing against cactus and trees; the freezing mornings; the feeling of being lost and wondering if he would ever see his four daughters again.

"Es muy pesado, muy duro," he says in Spanish; "It's really painful, really hard."

He admits that he's about ready to return to his family and construction job in Martinez de la Torre, Veracruz.

But before returning he must make one more attempt so he can tell his family and friends, the ones who encouraged him to try, that he did everything he could.

"By the fence there should be a way," Ibarra says. "This will be the final attempt … "

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He admits that he's about ready to return to his family and construction job in Martinez de la Torre, Veracruz.

Is this one of the jobs that the illegals won't do? Could it be that they'd rather pick our veggies and fruits and scrub our toilets? :P

But before returning he must make one more attempt so he can tell his family and friends, the ones who encouraged him to try, that he did everything he could.

Are these the family values we keep hearing about? It sure sounds like his family and friends are promoting breaking the law. [/quote]