Colorado & Denver News

by Alan Gionet
NOGALES, Ariz. (CBS4) ― In spite of more apprehensions, more resources and more attention, the tide of illegal immigration continues from Mexico across the United States border.

Border patrol agents using sophisticated video equipment have been watching lines of drug smugglers marching like ants into the U.S. for years. When a CBS4 crew visited the border recently, agents said they have seen lines of illegal border crossers in the dead of night each carrying bags full of marijuana on their backs.

In a similar manner, immigrants sometimes cross the border illegally in waves.

CBS4's crew saw agents taking men into custody who were caught hiding in the dusty Arizona border city of Nogales. On the other side of a high fence made from what the border patrol calls "landing mat", Nogales has become a jumping off point for a new life in the U.S.

The men who were grabbed by border patrol agents took a familiar route.

"They cross the same route all the time," Border Patrol agent Randy Williams told CBS4. He said they would probably be back.

In places the landing mat fence stretches 10 feet and more. In other spots, there are vehicle barriers erected to keep the smugglers from busting across the border in vehicles and outrunning agents. In some places the border is separated only by a few strands of barbed wire. It's a relic of a time when crossing between the U.S. and Mexico was not a question that dominated a close political year.

The people who are caught are taken to the processing center in Nogales. That's where the border patrol sorts out anyone already convicted of a crime in the U.S. While there is a liaison officer who works with Mexican authorities, they look only for wanted criminals from Mexico.

There is no system for routine checking of whether border crossers have a criminal background in Mexico. The border patrol says that about 10 percent have a criminal history in the United States, meaning they have been in country before.

"Child molesters, murderers, rapists, you name it, we're catching them," senior border patrol agent Shanon Stevens said.

The processing center also had families when CBS4's crew was there. Children huddled close to their mothers. Agents say the parents have exposed those children to harm by attempting the sometimes dangerous crossings.

Many of those families, as well as other border crossers who are caught, are returned to the Mexican border voluntarily. There is frequent bus traffic to the port of entry in Nogales where they are dropped off and told to walk back across the border into Mexico.

Over the past couple of years, there has been an increase in the traffic into some of the worst desert America has to offer. The high fences in the urban areas like Nogales mean a tougher crossing, so more illegal immigrants attempt to make it across the desert.

CBS4's crew was told of "coyotes" (a slang word for a human smuggler) telling often under-educated and desperate people it's only a few miles and a few hours, when in reality it takes days to walk the dried stream beds past the border patrol agents to vans or other vehicles waiting to pick up the illegal immigrants along lonely roads through trash-strewn south Arizona.

"Many of them come across thinking North Carolina is a 2 hour away, " saidJimmy Wells of the humanitarian organization No More Deaths.

Wells and other volunteers walk the desert, leaving water and some food.

Temperatures can easily reach 110 in the summer, and people are found wandering. Some have been found naked; others dig holes in search of water. Many who run out of water drink from cattle tanks left out for the cattle who free range in the hardscrabble looking for morsels.

The water is often brown and fetid, and drinking it only leads to stomach illnesses. That's when they're left behind by the coyotes who insist groups keep making progress. That's when people die.

"This is a real human crisis," Wells said. "The death rates are high enough now that we average one person dead in the desert a day."

There were 500 deaths along the border last year.

Agents know they aren't even close to stopping the flow of people, but they've made inroads -- they've made it harder. If you ask them how, they will point to all the infrastructure and talk about the additional agents.

Despite that, border patrol agents say they know each day there is a chance they'll miss another border crosser.

"It just depends on the day," Shannon Stevens said.

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