Pubdate: Mon, 10 Oct 2005
Source: Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City, UT)
Copyright: 2005 Deseret News Publishing Corp.
Contact:  http://www.desnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/124
Author: Dennis Romboy And Lucinda Dillon Kinkead, Deseret Morning News

BORDER PATROL SEARCHES THE DARK FOR SIGNS OF LIFE

SUNLAND PARK, N.M. - So far, only jackrabbits are hopping the border 
along this stretch of desert between the United States and Mexico.

But the night is young, and it is a smuggler's moon - a half crescent 
that emits just enough light to travel but not enough to be seen.

Veteran U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent Jorge Martinez pulls his 
SUV through sagebrush-covered hills looking for any sign of humans as 
the sun sinks in the southwestern sky. The evening shift is typically 
the most active for border crossers, he says.

New Mexico, Texas and the Mexican state of Chihuahua come together 
here. A white statue of  Christ on the cross stands atop Sierra del 
Cristo Rey as a symbol of goodwill between the United States and 
Mexico. It is also a place where dozens of people play cat and mouse 
with the border patrol each day.

Martinez is among some 1,200 agents in the vast El Paso sector - 
125,000 square miles including 289 miles of border - where the job is 
all about holding the line.

"We try to prevent them from getting in. That's our job," he said. 
"But they do get in."

Three hundred new agents are due to arrive soon.

The El Paso border patrol has detained 110,000 men, women and 
children, mostly younger men, in the past 11 months. It has made 
1,184 drug seizures at a street value of $153 million.

"If you're not familiar with the volume of narcotics, it's kind of 
breathtaking when you see it for the first time," said Doug Moser, 
customs and border patrol spokesman.

On this night, Martinez has a tip from a confidential informant that 
marijuana smugglers are planning to dash across the line into a house 
in Sunland Park. There is no evidence of them or anyone else for that 
matter early in his shift. But it is early and still daylight.

Several Mexican children straddling a tall iron gate separating the 
two countries are the first people he encounters, though he keeps his 
distance. Another officer who took a closer look informed Martinez 
the young boys were throwing rocks.

A local church uses the gate to deliver food and clothing to 
residents of impoverished Rancho Anapra, a shanty town of squatters 
on the Mexican side, just feet from the border. The cinder-block 
shacks and wooden-pallet shelters lack running water and electricity. 
What power they do have is pirated from the utility lines overhead.

The boys aren't a threat, so Martinez moves on.

Agents say most border crossers are peaceful, even cooperative. They 
rarely have to draw their guns, let alone fire them.

"You can catch a group of 50 by yourself," Martinez said. "They won't 
run from you. In Arizona, they run. Here they don't. Why it is, I don't know."

Things aren't so quiet about 60 miles west in Deming, N.M., where 
border patrol agents are "getting hammered," Martinez said. He is 
told the processing center there can't handle all the people caught 
this evening. Twenty-seven of them were sent to the Santa Teresa 
station in his territory.

Martinez heads to the top of a hill about 300 feet tall overlooking 
the border. Agent Juan Hernandez is there sitting in a truck equipped 
with a thermal imaging camera. The green monitors shine in the 
darkness, illuminating shadows or silhouettes that might be humans.

"You're kind of the conductor of this orchestra up here," Hernandez said.

The camera often can't see all directions at once, so border crossers 
will hug the sides of the hill, wait until the camera rotates east, 
and then break for the houses below at a dead run.

"They're brazen, but they are desperate to get in (to the United 
States)," Martinez said.

So far this night, Hernandez hasn't had to direct any agents to an 
area where people might be trying to sneak across the border.

In addition to the all-seeing eye in the sky, the border patrol has 
other high-tech gadgets at its disposal, including thousands of 
ground sensors. Infrared beams and magnetic and seismic mats are 
hidden throughout the hills. Any movement across or over them trips a 
computer alarm and pinpoints the location. The sensors will come into 
play later in the night.

Martinez, a supervisor, decides to drive to the Santa Teresa station 
to check on the 27 detainees from Deming. He navigates the maze of 
dirt roads in the darkness without the least bit hesitation.

Some of the roads are surprisingly well-groomed, and Martinez says 
there is a purpose for that. Agents on each shift drag the dirt as if 
it were a baseball infield. Any northbound footprints will be obvious.

And in his 17 years on the job, Martinez has seen all kinds. Crossers 
have attached sponges or cardboard to their feet to displace as 
little dirt as possible. Some have tried crawling, while others 
walked backward. One fashioned a set of hooves to imitate the cows 
grazing in a nearby field.

"We have new technology, but we rely on old-fashioned detective work, 
too," he said.

At the station, the 21 men and six women from Deming wait in two 
holding cells for processing. They've come to the border towns from 
as far inland as Durango and Veracruz.

All of them were living in one house and picking chili peppers for 75 
cents a bucket. Someone tipped off federal officers, who picked them 
up. Now some stand up against the glass watching the proceedings. A 
man in a Raiders jacket and another in a Packers coat lie on the 
concrete floor with their eyes closed.

The men's hands are so dry from working with crops or rock wall or 
concrete that officers have to add water to get accurate 
fingerprints. They have no natural oils left in their hands.

Border officer Ed Barrera says he can tell how long they've been in 
the United States by how much money they have in their pocket. A 
couple in their mid-50s arrived in the United States two days 
earlier. "We just got here yesterday," a 56-year-old woman tells an 
officer. "We just got started."

"You feel for them," Martinez said. "If you were in that situation, 
what would you do?"

Each person's fingerprints are scanned into nationwide criminal 
information computers that will show anything from a parking ticket 
to homicide conviction. Those with previous criminal convictions may 
be referred to federal court for prosecution. The others will be 
logged into the computer and released back to Mexico the next day.

Back in the SUV, Martinez has learned that ground sensors have 
alerted agents that people - seven in all - have crossed the border. 
They are not the drug runners for whom officers have been watching. 
They are working people looking to better their lives.

Martinez hates the "coyotes" who smuggle people across for a price 
and the bandits who steal from them knowing they have cash.

"They prey on their own. They show no mercy. They're ruthless. 
They're just out to see what they can get, what they can steal," he said.

But these seven people apprehended tonight are just people like you 
and me, he says. "There's no difference whatsoever, except one is 
born over here and one is born over there. If I were in their 
situation, I'd be doing the same thing."

Among this group is a woman with a 7-month-old baby. Martinez said it 
bothers him that a mother would put a child at such risk. "It just 
gets you mad sometimes," he said.

But the woman doesn't appear troubled at all. And another woman 
sitting in the van headed for the detention facility is smiling broadly.

"What do they have to be scared about?" Martinez said. "They're just 
going to be processed and sent back."

And then tomorrow, as darkness falls, more crossers will begin their 
journey, sneaking across in the shadows.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman