Illegal migrants persist despite fences, danger:

Posted By: William "Bill" Buckington

By Danna Harman, USA TODAY

Altar, a dusty town of 14,000 about 60 miles south of the Arizona border, is one of the largest staging points for migrants trying to cross into the USA illegally. They arrive from all over Mexico and from as far as Brazil. They eat road-stand chicken from plastic foam containers and bed down at hostels. Then they head for "El Norte."

Congress is considering dramatic changes in U.S. immigration policy this week. President Bush is discussing the issue with Mexican President Vicente Fox in Cancun. Here, though, migrants on the move to the USA say beefed-up enforcement will deter few. "Walls and lights and sensors and police fill our heads," says Dagoberto Martinez, a 17-year-old from Hidalgo, Mexico, who is headed north. "But they don't make us turn back." (Related: Senate considers immigration proposals)

The U.S. Border Patrol caught 1.2 million illegal immigrants in 2005, an arrest rate of roughly one person every 30 seconds. There are no official statistics to indicate how many illegal immigrants made it across, but the Pew Hispanic Center estimates there are as many as 12 million illegal immigrants in the USA - 56% of them Mexicans.

From Altar, migrants guided by "coyotes," - people smugglers - might cross near Naco, Mexico, and into the canyons, walking toward Tucson and Phoenix. Or they trek through the mountains around Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, moving north to Phoenix or west to Los Angeles. Others take the Sasabe route and follow "ghost roads," footpaths in the sand, toward Tucson. A few go through the Barry M. Goldwater Range, an Air Force live bombing range, heading for Yuma, Ariz.

The first time Jesús Ramirez sneaked across was three years ago, when he was 17, he says. He worked construction and bused tables in Las Vegas, earning $350 a week. He sent half his pay home to his parents in the Mexican state of Michoacan, and saved much of the rest to travel back at Christmas and pay a coyote for the return trip north. Back home in Michoacan, he says, he was never able to earn more than $80 a week.

Last week, Ramirez set off again from Michoacan. He agreed to pay a coyote $1,000 upon arrival in Las Vegas. From Altar, Ramirez's group drove to the border near Sasabe and crossed on foot. After three days, they were rounded up by border agents and handed over to Mexican immigration police.

Next week, Ramirez says, he will try a different route. He gives a cellphone number. Call in a week, he says, and he'll be on the other side.

In Yuma, much has changed, says Mike Gramley, a U.S. Border Patrol agent who has been there 12 years. When he started, there were 300 agents in Yuma who tracked people by following footprints in the desert. There was also a new fence that ran for 6 miles around Yuma, where the Border Patrol nabbed about 50 illegal immigrants a day.

Now, there are 650 agents in Yuma; the fence is being elevated to 12 feet and extended to 10 miles. A secondary fence is going up, stadium lights shine through the night, motion sensors are buried in the ground, surveillance planes fly overhead, and infrared cameras beam back to headquarters.

Yuma is the USA's busiest border station. Last year, 138,460 migrants were caught coming through here.

In Arizona, many want a longer fence. They point to San Diego as proof it would work. There, the fence helped send attempted crossings falling in the early 1990s. Last year, 126,910 illegal immigrants were caught near San Diego, down from a peak of 629,650 in 1986, the Border Patrol says. "California and Texas got relief with increased border vigilance - don't we deserve any in Arizona?" Sen. Jon Kyl (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., said this month.

Opponents of fences and walls say they only push the human traffic elsewhere. The decline in crossings near San Diego coincided with increases in Arizona and Texas, they say. "It's like a balloon. If you squeeze in one sector, the migrants move to the other side," says Jon Amastae, director of the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Today, close to half of all illegal crossings take place in Arizona, according to Humane Borders, a Tucson-based organization that offers humanitarian assistance to illegal immigrants. Because of increased vigilance near heavily traveled entry points and urban areas, illegal immigrants have begun crossing over more difficult terrain - remote locations where temperatures during the summer often top 100 degrees.

A record 473 migrants died in 2005 while crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, the most since the Border Patrol began tracking such deaths in 1999.

Also, by making the journey more difficult, the coyotes become more necessary and can charge higher prices. That lengthens the stays of migrants who must repay people smugglers, Amastae says.

Mexico's National Population Council says illegal immigrants stayed in the USA an average of about six months during 1993-97. The average stay increased to more than a year by 2001-04.

Back in Altar, Dagoberto Martinez is standing on the side of the road looking south, toward home. It's his first time away from his brothers, his first attempt at crossing the border. He looks scared.

He will go to Los Angeles. There is a job there and a second cousin. At home, there was no work. "That's my whole story," he says.

Harman is Latin America bureau chief for USA TODAY and The Christian Science Monitor.

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