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Politics : ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION THE FIGHT TO KEEP OUR DEMOCRACY
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From: Tadsamillionaire1/5/2007 5:30:03 PM
   of 3197
 
US immigration battle goes below
As the United States prepares to fence much of its border, the new battleground for agents chasing illegal immigrants is not above ground but beneath it.
In Arizona officials have found that hundreds of people are tunnelling their way into the country from Mexico.

Some tunnels cannot be sealed because they are vital drainage links, but it is people, not water, that are flowing through them now.

I followed border patrol agent Gus Soto into another world.

One that is dark and dangerous, the new superhighway not only for illegal immigration but also the trafficking of drugs.

The tunnels which run beneath the border town of Nogales were eerily silent apart from the scurrying of rats.

Profitable business

Gus and his men were on the lookout for people traffickers, highly-organised gangs for whom a human cargo is worth more than a cargo of narcotics.

As we made our way walking through a labyrinthine network of passageways, Gus told me that the traffickers, or "coyotes", regularly charge up to $3,000 (£1,500) per person.

With 10 or more people per journey, that amounts to a highly profitable business.

Venturing further into this subterranean world we found clothes strewn around.

Gus told me that before making it to the surface the coyotes often give their clients a fresh wardrobe to help them blend in with their new surroundings.

And not far from the clothes were canvas bags, now discarded but once packed with drugs.

Gus told me the marijuana had probably been passed up to gang members waiting on the street above through one of the scores of exit points emanating from the main tunnels.

Since California and Texas plugged gaps in their borders in the late 1990s this part of Arizona has been the favoured route for illegal immigrants.

The area around Nogales accounts not only for almost half the arrests, but also half the drug seizures made by US border guards nationwide. More article at .....

news.bbc.co.uk
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