Road to Nowhere
by Brandi Grissom
December 15, 2009


Enlarge photo by: Bob Daemmrich Photo of undocumented immigrants getting off the bus in Presidio so they can be deported to Ojinaga, Mexico

PRESIDIO/OJINAGA – One by one, 40 Mexican immigrants file off the gray Wackenhut bus, each with the tongue of their torn, dirty shoes flopping agape, beltless pants sagging. Most with their heads hung low. All looking lost and weary.

Security guards in gray uniforms hand each man a clear bag with his belongings and a snack — a packet of tuna, crackers, a juice box — for the long road that is about to unfurl in front of them.

The U.S. Border Patrol bused the men nearly 600 miles from Tucson to this tiny, isolated and impoverished Texas border community. Each day, two Wackenhut buses arrive loaded with 47 men, ages 20 to 60. The men, nonviolent immigration offenders, are shown their way out of the U.S. and back across the border to Ojinaga.

Border Patrol officials, who launched the Alien Transfer and Exit Program on Nov. 1, say the program is meant to break the smuggling cycle in the Arizona-Sonora region. In the metropolitan area of Tucson, human smugglers abound and illegal Mexican immigrants can easily blend into the population, said Victor Velazquez, assistant sector chief in Marfa. Those conditions don’t exist in the isolated Presidio-Ojinaga area, where the dangerous terrain and brutal weather make cross-border travel treacherous. And, he said, the immigrants are not staying in the area; they’re going back to their homes. “We haven’t seen any adverse impact on our operations here locally,â€