Mexican immigrants

[Other News - Roberto Savio / IPS <soros@topica.email-publisher.com>]

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A grim gamble

Mexican immigrants bet their lives they can make it across the U.S. border
through the blazing Arizona desert. Poverty drives them; hope lures them.
But in ever greater numbers, the desert is killing them.

By Michael Riley
Denver Post Staff Writer


Sunday, October 19, 2003 - TUCSON - Along with coyotes, turkey vultures and
a heat so intense it can melt the soles of tennis shoes, the desert can
turn a 180-pound body into a skeleton in less than three weeks.

What ends up on the stainless steel tables and in the adjacent,
industrial-size freezer in the Pima County coroner's office are not so much
bodies as they are relics of the desert's destructive power.

What remains along with the bones and bits of desiccated flesh are the few
things the people who die crossing this desert took with them:

A note from a grandmother, the words "vaya con Dios" - "go with God" -
printed neatly at the bottom.

A wedding ring sewn into the cuff of a woman's pants to protect it against
bandits.

A photo of a dark-eyed woman staring blankly into the camera, a smiling
child on her lap.

Together, these artifacts tell the story of the worst summer of immigrant
deaths on record in Arizona.

The U.S. Border Patrol says at least 151 immigrants died attempting to
illegally cross from Mexico into the United States during a 12-month period
ending Sept. 30. Human rights groups put the toll higher - at 205 - saying
that Border Patrol figures do not include all the bodies found by local law
enforcement. Last year, at least 145 immigrants died on the trek.

In July, at the height of summer, temperatures regularly exceeded 105
degrees. On a single day - July 15 - eight people died in separate
incidents along the state's 350-mile border with Mexico.

The immigrants enter the country illegally across routes deliberately
chosen to avoid guards and billions of dollars in technology that Congress
has poured into the country's southern border over the last decade, mostly
in Texas and California, channeling more immigrants into Arizona.


Deaths sharpen debate
In all, perhaps a million people attempted to sneak into the country
through Arizona last year, guided by immigrant smugglers known as coyotes
and using the sheer size and remoteness of the desert to their advantage.

Most made it across, betting the lure of the world's richest economy
against the slim chance of death. There are more than 8 million illegal
immigrants in the country now, a number that grows by up to 15 percent a
year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

"People keep crossing the border for the same reason I keep flying. The
odds are, I'll make it safely to where I'm going," said Nestor Rodriguez of
the Center for Immigration Research at the University of Houston.

But the rising death toll has deeply divided this state, from the
grassroots up.

Armed vigilantes track the immigrants in the desert, while nuns and doctors
come to their aid with medical supplies and water. Nationally, the border
deaths have sharpened an already rancorous immigration debate with the
urgency of human tragedy.

"No one yet has died coming through a port of entry. There is a safe way to
come into the United States of America. It's not our fault if people choose
other ways that are dangerous," said U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Littleton,
who last toured the Arizona border in March.

"Here's what the debate has to be about: Shall we have borders or shall we
not?" Tancredo said.

The Rev. John Fife, founder of a group called Samaritan Patrol, counters
that the pull of jobs and the push of poverty will overcome just about any
obstacle short of the kind used by East Germany to seal off West Berlin.

"I just kind of doubt the U.S. is willing to mine the border with Mexico
and issue shoot-to-kill orders," said Fife, whose group sends doctors and
nurses into the desert to aid the immigrants.

The stories of the illegal immigrants are a palette of misfortune and hope.

A 16-year-old girl who convinced her parents that she had a better life
waiting for her working in a butcher shop in Kentucky than a small village
in Mexico - and died far from either.

A young Mexican man who safely made the crossing, then helped authorities
find the body of a friend who died in his arms, a victim of dehydration and
heatstroke.

An 80-year-old great-grandmother who survived the desert while her
daughter, a woman in her mid-40s, did not.

Many of the immigrants had no idea of the dangers they faced. Some crossed
in high heels and tank tops, or pushed baby strollers. Others, beginning a
trek that can take as long as three days, carried only enough water to last
an adult walking through the desert a few hours.

The victims often died alone, but they rarely started that way. The
smugglers, called "coyotes," instruct their groups to leave stragglers
behind. Most obey.

Their stories represent lives gambled and lost.

"It's like running a gantlet. If you can get to the other side, you can get
a job," said the Rev. Robin Hoover. Hoover founded Humane Borders, a Tucson
group that carries as much as 500 gallons of water to 41 desert aid
stations each week for immigrants who often can't physically carry enough
liquid to sustain them through the trek.

"There are thousands and thousands that make it every year. The problem is
that every year there are more and more that don't."


Post / Hyoung Chang
For 75 miles along Arizona’s Tohono O’Odham reservation, only four strands
of barbed wire and the occasional warning sign separate Mexico from the
United States. But the brutal climate claims its own toll: On a single day
in July, eight people died attempting to cross the border illegally in
Arizona.

Mirages and hallucinations
When most illegal immigrants set off from staging points in Mexico, they
are laden with heavy, gallon-size bottles of water tied around their necks
or to their waists. The groups can be heard from hundreds of feet away, the
distinct clip-clop of jug against jug breaking the desert silence.

But in the severe summer heat, it becomes almost impossible to carry enough
water to stay alive.

As the body dehydrates, it eats away at its own muscles to release more
moisture. That, in turn, sends contaminants rushing into the blood,
prompting the kidneys to shut down. As the body's core temperature rises,
the brain begins to swell, which can cause hallucinations.


Rescuers say they've found groups of immigrants who have circled the same
patch of desert for days or, lost in their final delusions, had begun
eating dirt while believing that they were drinking water. Others,
desperate to preserve every drop of moisture, drink their own urine.

"They'll begin to see things, like the old mirage scene in the movies,"
said Mark Adams, chief of the ambulance service in the town of Sells on the
Tohono O'Odham Indian reservation, which sits astride a major smuggling
route.

As their mental functions deteriorate, the travelers forget to use the
sun's position to orient themselves, "or they'll forget to follow that road
on the horizon they were supposed to be using as a guide," he said.

What's striking to him and others, Adams said, is the increasing number of
women, children and elderly who cross each season. Because crossing the
border has become more difficult since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it
has become more common for family members to join husbands and fathers in
the United States than for the men to continue the tradition of returning
home and recrossing each year.

Experts say the greater vulnerability of those making the crossing
illegally helps explain why deaths have increased even though the number
trying to enter the U.S. has slumped because the economy is weaker.

The women get sick more quickly, rescuers say. And those traveling with
children often give up their water so the children survive. Though women
make up 15 percent of those caught attempting to cross in Arizona, they
account for nearly 25 percent of those who died.

"The thing that really gets me is the pregnant ladies that come across, and
both the mother and child die," said Dan Potter, a Sells paramedic.

"Or maybe she'll give birth out there and the baby dies. Every life is
precious, I know, but for me, those cases are the roughest."


Many immigrant smugglers give the weakest crossers amphetamines or
ephedrine, the stimulant linked to the death of Baltimore Orioles pitcher
Steve Bechler in February. Last June, a "coyote" leading 40 immigrants
across the Tohono O'Odham reservation gave several women red and white
pills because they were slowing his group down. One of the women,
25-year-old Elizabeth Acosta, became dizzy, collapsed and died, according
to police.

The stimulants "give you that sense of being able to push farther faster,
but they increase your core temperature and your demand for water," said
Adams. That makes it more difficult for medical workers to save the victims
once they are found, he said.

Once the immigrants are in the desert, an individual life is of less
concern than the safety of the group. A pulled muscle or sudden illness can
be a death sentence. But an immigrant carrying money or anything else of
value may be able to strike one last bargain.

"If somebody is really near dying, the coyotes will sell them IV fluid" for
$10 to $50, depending on the victim's desperation and ability to pay, said
Potter.

"If more than one (person) needs it, there's usually only one catheter, so
it's not too sterile. We've even run across people who were dead that still
had the (IV) bottle hanging on them," Potter said.

But amid the profiteering and deceit, there is heroism.

After walking in the desert with a small group for two days in early
August, Victor Plascencia collapsed of exhaustion and dehydration. While
the others went on, one man, Francisco Lara, stayed behind, built a
shelter, and comforted Plascencia, who died in his arms.

Facing certain arrest and deportation, Lara walked into a Border Patrol
office in the town of Ajo, Ariz., and told officers there he wanted to help
find Plascencia's body. Still sick, his feet badly blistered, Lara led a
patrol back into the desert.

"A lot of these individuals, they just continue on their journey. This guy
came back to find the body of his friend," said Karin Neuhaus, a detective
of the Tohono O'Odham Police Department who participated in that search.

"That made a difference, and you could see it in the way he was treated by
the officers out there. He won their respect."

If there was anyone traveling with 18-year-old Jacinto Soto, he or she gave
no thought to coming back.

When rescuers found Soto's body in a remote corner of the Tohono O'Odham
reservation in early September, he was face down and without water. He had
managed to crawl into the meager shade of a palo verde tree.

Faline Harshbarger, a university graduate student and volunteer, was with
the aid group that found Soto's body. What was left of his skin had turned
to leather and his legs were gone, eaten away by coyotes. Medical workers
told Harshbarger it looked like the young immigrant had been dead about two
weeks.

In a year of carting water and medical supplies into the desert with a
group called Samaritan Patrol, Soto's was the first body Harshbarger had
found. The event so moved her, she said, that she plans to visit his family
next February in Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state and one of its
poorest.

She plans to give Soto's parents an old, band-less watch she found in his
pocket along with what details she knows of his death.

"There are so many people that just never find out what happened to their
loved ones," Harshbarger said. "I want to be able to show them pictures of
where he died. I want them to know how brave their son was."


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silent”. Roberto Savio

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