Repeat border crossers After being deported, entrants are often ready for another try
Wed Mar 17, 3:42 AM ET
By Ignacio Ibarra , Arizona Daily Star
AGUA PRIETA, Sonora — Newly deported migrants traveling in groups of as few as four people and as many as 30 get dropped off at the border here at frequent if irregular intervals.
At times they fill the tables at Cafe Viva Mexico, keep the cluster of pay phones and the liquor store just south of the border busy along with the drugstore, where they stock up on diet pills and snack food to energize them for another attempt to sneak into the United States.
The process of illegal immigration here is a revolving door in which migrants spend lots of money and time making repeated border-crossing attempts. It's made easier because the Border Patrol deports illegal border crossers to the nearest port of entry - putting them almost immediately back in the hands of the people smugglers - and gives entrants nearly a dozen chances to make it before the agency stops simply giving detainees a short ride back to the border.
Ten years after the Border Patrol launched Operation Gatekeeper, chasing people-smugglers and their clients from California and Texas to the border in Arizona, Douglas and Agua Prieta have become the transit hub for soon-to-be illegal entrants. They arrive every day in buses, vans and even cabs to connect with smugglers who promise to lead them into the United States for fees that can exceed $1,500 per person.
The U.S. Border Patrol at Douglas captures 200 to 300 illegal border crossers each day. Most of them are returned at their own request to Agua Prieta. That's a much lower apprehension rate than four years ago, when up to 1,500 people, mostly Mexicans, were being caught each day.
While the numbers indicate the problem of illegal immigration is diminishing here, the reality is illustrated in a common exchange at the border when agents release their charges. " Adios, buena suerte," the agents often say, wishing farewell and good luck to deportees, who reply, " Hasta mañana," until tomorrow.
Often, the entrants won't wait until tomorrow, said Rob Daniels, a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol in Tucson. "They will catch somebody at the beginning of a shift and by the end of the shift they will catch that same person again," Daniels, who has spent 10 years with the Border Patrol, says of conversations he's had with agents working here.
Advances in technology have improved the agency's ability to keep track of illegal entrants even when they give false names, but not enough. Most illegal entrants almost immediately bounce back across the border after deportation.
Entrants given 3 options
The deportation process begins in the field. Every captured illegal border crosser must provide agents with a name, place of origin, parents' names and details of their journey. Agents also collect other information, including the time and location of the capture, and the number and makeup of the group they were caught with, said Michael Hyatt, a Border Patrol supervisory agent in Douglas.
Captured illegal entrants are given three options: see an immigration judge who will hear arguments they have for staying in the country, request political asylum based on a fear of returning home, or accept a voluntary return home. The third option is the most popular. It means a ride back to the border.
Agents type information gathered from field interviews into a computer database. They also scan each detainee's fingerprints and take a photograph.
Before entrants leave, another team of agents reviews their individual files. They make the final decision on removability based on a check of the file against the agency's database, part of the system used by the FBI (news - web sites) and other law enforcement agencies across the country.
The goal is to identify criminals hiding among job-seeking migrants, said Hyatt.
If a captured border crosser is wanted in the United States, the Border Patrol asks the jurisdiction if it wants to extradite. When the answer is yes, the local sheriff's department is called. If not, the individual is held for an appearance before an immigration judge.
Having gone through such a formal removal process in the past can make a person ineligible for a voluntary return to Mexico , as can having a criminal record or being from someplace other than Mexico, Hyatt said. Having been caught too many times can also keep a detainee from getting a bus or van ride to the border.
"Here we have a threshold of 10 or 11 entries, but that varies from station to station and that can change depending on what we have on the individual," said Hyatt. "If we've got someone who consistently gets caught in the same area, we're going to look at that individual a little more intensely before we give them a voluntary return."
"In most cases, we try to return them with the people they were found with, and we never split up a family," said Hyatt.
Groups and families do get separated, though, and deportees often arrive back in Mexico injured, hungry and tired.
"No work and no future"
"I came because I'm a single mother with no work and no future. What else was there for me to do?" says Sara Garcia, 21, as she sits with several companions inside Cafe Viva Mexico, just yards from the border.
Back from her third capture and voluntary deportation in a week, Garcia lacks the money to pay for the food she's been eating as she waits to connect again with a smuggler who has agreed to help her get to New Jersey.
Her knees ache. Her body is scratched and bruised from a tumble she took trying to cross a wash in the middle of the night. She could barely breathe, much less sleep, in the tiny cave where she and 40 others rested and hid from the Border Patrol the night before.
Garcia said she'd rather be home in the Mexican state of Morelos, south of Mexico City, with her 1-year-old son. But the chance to work in a New Jersey restaurant earning enough money to provide for her child drives her to go on.
"I'm trapped, it cost me 5,000 pesos ($500) to get here, and it will cost another 5,000 pesos to get back home," Garcia said. "Even if I wanted to go home, where am I going to get that money?"
"I can't even call my family, because if I did, I'd start crying and have to tell them all the things I've gone through since I left," Garcia says.
It's lucrative for smugglers
The deportation turnaround is lucrative for people-smugglers - coyotes - like Jose Luis Alvarez Mejia of Chihuahua and his companion Obert Madrid of Ciudad Obregon, Sonora.
The teens earn several hundred dollars apiece each time they sneak a group of pollos - chicks - into the United States. When the Border Patrol cracks down, the pair say, they raise their fees.
"It's pretty hot right now, so things have gotten pretty hard," Alvarez Mejia said. "There's a lot of migra, but there's a lot of people wanting to cross and they pay well."
Alvarez Mejia said he and his companion have each been caught four times leading groups of illegal border crossers into the United States. They were able to hide each time among the pollos, returning with them to Mexico.
The people-smuggling trade is out in the open here. Most of the newly deported walk into town carrying slips of papers scribbled with either a coyote's phone number or names of local hotels that serve as pickup points.
Some make their way into Cafe Viva Mexico, where Susana Medina Hernandez and her husband, Damase Pardini Gutierrez, offer a menu of comidas corridas, hearty, simple meals that include meat, beans, rice and tortillas for about 30 pesos, about $3, a plate. Although most customers can pay, many show up with little or no money.
The couple, both of whom still recall their own experiences as illegal border crossers, do their best to feed them all. "We give them food, coffee, something to drink. We help them with medical care if we can, and sometimes we let them sleep here," said Medina, who arrived in Agua Prieta from Guanajuato five years ago intent on making it into the United States.
After several failed attempts, Medina met her husband and they opened the restaurant, which has become a haven for migrants biding their time in Agua Prieta. "There are so many people," she said. "Sometimes I don't have enough tables for them, so they eat standing up."
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