Thread: Anti-smuggling campaign gets visual aid – from smuggl

www.signonsandiego.com

Anti-smuggling campaign gets visual aid – from smuggler

Gregory Alan Gross
UNION-TRIBUNE BREAKING NEWS TEAM

1:31 p.m. August 18, 2005
SAN DIEGO – The U.S. and Mexican governments are mounting an ad campaign in Mexico against smuggling women and children across the border inside potentially deadly hidden compartments in trucks and cars.
Migrant smugglers increasingly resort to bizarre tricks to stash illegal immigrants in their "load cars" in hopes of driving through border crossings and escaping the notice of inspectors, said Adele Fasano, director of the U.S. Customs field office in San Diego.

U.S. border inspectors typically find 30 to 40 hidden compartments a month at the San Ysidro port of entry alone, she said at a press conference at the San Ysidro port of entry.

As if to underscore Fasano's announcement, nearby border inspectors made a discovery inside the trunk of a late-model Ford Crown Victoria: Seven men and women, stacked on top of one another like luggage.

Uncomfortable, to be sure, but not as dangerous as many of the more hidden compartments that smugglers now use.

"Under the program we're announcing today, this would not be considered an unsafe compartment," said Customs official Joseph Misenhelter, noting that modern cars, like this Ford, have emergency releases inside the trunk. "They can get themselves out."

Not so in hidden compartments.

"Temperatures in these hidden compartments can reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with a very limited supply of oxygen and exposure to noxious fumes such as carbon monoxide," Fasano said.

PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS
Over the years, women and small children have been found sewn into driver seats, bolted under engine compartments and sealed inside dashboards by migrant smugglers charging $2,000 to $3,000 per person, Fasano said.

"They will go to any lengths," Fasano said. "They've shown us that. "

Children being smuggled in compartments often don't know the hazards and horrors that await them. Capt. Jerry Valladolid of the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department described having to cut out one child hidden inside a vehicle's gas tank – with gasoline still inside it.

"He was breathing gasoline fumes. He was soaked through and through with gasoline," said Valladolid. "If we hadn't found him, he would have been dead before he got to his destination."

So far, no one has died in one of these compartments, but federal officials fear it's inevitiable.

"I believe it is just a matter of time before we agonize over the tragic loss of a small child," Fasano said.

TV CAMPAIGN SPOTS
In hopes of preventing that, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in conjunction with the Border Patrol and the Spanish-language network Univision, has produced a half-dozen public-service radio and TV announcements. The messages will be broadcast by San Diego radio stations and made available to Mexican stations. They urge Mexican families not to entrust their loved ones to migrant smugglers.

One such "spot" shows a mother pounding on the trunk of a car when her child begins to have trouble breathing. Another depicts a "coyote" reassuring a mother that her son will be safe with him.

"I'm a professional," the smuggler says. "He's in very good hands."

The next shot is of a trunk lid being closed, with the image dissolving into a coffin being closed.

We need to send a clear message from many nations. Don't illegally immigrate! That will solve this problem.

W

www.mercurynews.com

Novel media campaign aims to deter illegal border crossings

ELLIOT SPAGAT

Associated Press


SAN DIEGO - An immigrant smuggler assures a woman he has years of experience sneaking people into the United States from Mexico inside car trunks.

"Don't worry, everything will be OK," the mother assures her fearful daughter. "This man will take care of you."

It's the script from a Spanish-language media campaign the U.S. government launched Thursday to warn Mexican border crossers about the risks of potential death traps in vehicles. The public service announcements call attention to what authorities say is the alarming practice of immigrant smugglers to stuff children in all kinds of vehicle compartments, including trunks, dashboards, engines and even gasoline tanks.

The announcements coincide with the launch of another, slickly produced, Spanish-language media campaign by the U.S. Border Patrol to discourage illegal immigration and call attention to the dangers of clandestine border crossings.

Those television spots - which invoke images of a graveyard and a funeral procession - began airing last week in several Mexican states with high migration rates and were due to begin this week in U.S. cities including Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. The campaign unveiled Thursday will target cities closer to California's Mexican border.

Nearly 6,500 children were arrested at California border crossings in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2004, a 17 percent increase from the previous year, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection bureau's San Diego office, which is sponsoring the campaign.

Since October 2004, some 4,200 youngsters have been arrested.

Just how many of the children were concealed in compartments isn't known, but in August 2003, authorities found a 12-year-old Mexican girl who had spent nearly two days crammed in the side panel of a van that was seized and stored in San Diego. She survived.

Migrants who heard or watched the anti-smuggling ads at a Tijuana, Mexico, shelter Wednesday night said they were accurate, even powerful. But they vowed to return to the United States anyway.

"Everything they say is true," said Ramon Fuentes Lopez, 38, a farmworker who has done stints picking apples in Washington state and plans to rejoin his family in Lompoc, Calif. "It's a disaster what's happening. People die of hunger. People die of thirst."

Agustin Jaime Ortiz, 33, said the warnings against hiding inside vehicles were "100 percent effective," stirring memories of a previous crossing inside a meat freezer truck. He remembered turning purple on the 1994 trip from Tijuana to Los Angeles.

"I have to cross because I have family over there, but I won't do it in a trunk - that's for sure" he said, laughing.

The Mexican government has published a booklet warning of the dangers of border crossings, but the publication has been criticized by some in the United States because it also shows safe ways to cross for those, like Ortiz , who won't be deterred. The 32-page "Guide for the Mexican Immigrantl" is illustrated in a comic book style.

The two U.S. campaigns don't mark the first time the federal government has campaigned against illegal border crossings, but they do appear to be of the more ambitious efforts.

The Border Patrol's $1.5-million campaign, called No Mas Cruces en La Frontera, or No More Border Crossings, marks the first time the agency has bought airtime, said Gloria Chavez, one of the organizers.

One 30-second spot produced by Elevacion Ltd., a Hispanic marketing agency in Washington, D.C., features a graveyard and ends with a narrator's warning in Spanish: "There are many reasons to cross the border. None is worth your life." A second spot recreates a small-town funeral for a Mexican man who died in the desert.

Customs' San Diego office had no money to produce its ads or buy airtime so the radio spots were donated by Univision Communications Inc. They warn that migrants can be killed inside cars from heat, inhaling gas fumes or from lack of oxygen.

"Mommy, I can't breathe," a girl says to her mother from inside a trunk.