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Tucson on March 30, 2009 |
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Pa. soldiers return from border patrol
By Barbara Barrett
CDT Washington correspondent
LOS ALGODONES, Mexico -- Not five minutes after the boatload of migrants slipped across the Colorado River at dusk, the "dogcatchers" arrived.
First, U.S. Border Patrol trucks -- the ones migrants call dogcatchers -- tore down a dirt road and cut their headlights. Then a helicopter dipped and circled with deafening blades, its spotlights probing across the water and the mountainside, again and again and again.
On the Mexican side, above the town of Los Algodones, Francisco Lopez watched and listened. For a month, he said, he has been waiting. Three times he almost crossed.
"They're here day and night," said Lopez, 42, who traveled from the state of Michoacán, Mexico, hoping to reach New York.
The show of force now includes about 6,000 National Guard troops.
Almost 70 soldiers from Pennsylvania returned this month after two weeks in the Arizona desert. There, they set up observation points on a levee within sight of the border. They used binoculars and night vision goggles to spot movement. They helped catch at least 10 migrants.
"It made you think, 'Yeah, you're here helping people out,'" said Capt. Brad Pierson, a State College resident and commander of the 28th Military Police Company, based in Johnstown and Greensburg.
The Pennsylvanians saw tragedy among their own, too. Spc. Kirsten Fike, 36, of Warren, collapsed in her first hours working in the 104-degree heat. She died a day later at a Yuma, Ariz., hospital. An autopsy on the cause of her death was inconclusive.
The deployment of guard troops is part of President Bush's Operation Jump Start, a project meant to discourage migrants from risking the dash into the United States.
It's having results: The increased security is pushing migrants into the harsh desert and mountains, forcing more to use smugglers and leading those who are caught to make repeated attempts that sap their strength and savings each time. Many walk for days with little food or water.
In July, an 11-year-old girl was found in cardiac arrest on a 108-degree day in the remote Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation. The girl, Olivia Nogueda, wearing pink sneakers and traveling with her older sister, was declared dead at the reservation hospital. In the following week, in two counties in eastern Arizona, seven other migrants died, including two women and a 12-year-old boy.
Last year, as the Border Patrol increased enforcement around urban areas, more than 460 migrants died trying to cross the border, nearly half in Arizona.
"The more difficult you make it for people to cross, the more people will die," said Joseph Nevins, spokesman for Tucson-based No More Deaths, a coalition of humanitarian border groups.
In eastern Arizona, Pima County medical examiner Bruce Parks holds onto the bodies. He has more than 200 dating back to 2004.
"It's obviously a terrible tragedy for relatively young people to be dying under these circumstances," Parks said, hours after an autopsy on 11-year-old Olivia. "This may be the year we see a downturn. It would be nice."
In Pennsylvania, Pierson occasionally deals with illegal immigrants in his work as a state trooper. He said he knows little about the politics of immigration, but standing guard in Arizona made him wonder what drives migrants to take such risks.
"Obviously they're crossing for a reason," Pierson said. "To me, it seems dangerous. They're crossing in the heat, in the desert. I think, how bad can it be in Mexico to even go through this, take these chances?"
Word spread quickly throughout Mexico after Bush made his announcement this spring.
"I read the newspapers," said Hector Encinas, 29, who lives in the Mexican town of San Luis Rio Colorado, just south of San Luis, Ariz.
"It's more hard right now," said Encinas, standing near an opening in the border wall. "They got a fence, more soldiers, more Border Patrol."
Guadalupe Murrieta, 45, washing dishes in her home nearby, said she never liked the migrants who wander through at night, making her fearful for her children and grandchildren. Now, she said, it's quieter.
What sends migrants into the distance are the images of the National Guard standing watch.
In San Luis, the Pennsylvania soldiers worked under camouflage nets, setting up observation points every half-mile on a levee near the Colorado River, above stretches of dirt and fields of tall, swaying grasses.
It was maybe the third day on watch for the Pennsylvanians when, about 3 a.m., one of Pierson's soldiers spotted movement at the levee.
Four people -- three women and a man -- had crawled through the grasses and were trying to dash across the levee and into a nearby neighborhood. The troops called Border Patrol. All four migrants were caught.
A few nights later, another soldier spotted six more.
"It's nice to see the results, to see that you're making a difference," Pierson said. "It was good for morale."
Mostly, Pierson thinks the Pennsylvanians were a deterrent, frightening migrants from even making the attempt.
In Mexico, some residents aren't so sure.
Migrants pass through the cotton and alfalfa fields around Rebeca Moreno's store near Los Algodones, a quarter-mile from the Colorado River, ignoring the signs warning "Peligroso!" -- danger.
Moreno walked though the back of her store to an open window. Pointing across the cotton field, she said in Spanish: There is the river. The migrants try to swim across. They're caught, sent home and try again.
She pointed to a spot in the road. A man died right there, she said.
On the dirt road in San Luis Rio Colorado, behind the border wall, men were checking their chances recently as evening drew near.
They lit trash fires, hoping to obscure the heat of their bodies. One man shinnied up a wire to peek above the wall toward the levee; a few others pretended to fish in the canal.
Nearby stood Ricardo Mann, 47, the heat of the flames at his back, considering the soldiers standing watch.
"It's like another wall," Mann said. "A human wall."
