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 News from Around the Americas | May 2006 
As Bush Stumps for Stopping Migrants, Mexicans Say Nothing Will Halt Illegal Trips North
 Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
| | US President George W. Bush takes a ride in a US Border Patrol dune buggy. Bush traveled to Yuma on the US-Mexico border - one of the most popular entry points for illegal immigrants - to underscore his commitment to sealing America's porous borders. (AFP/Paul J. Richards) |
Nogales, Mexico – Mexicans say it will take more than three layers of fence and 6,000 National Guard troops to keep them out of the United States.
As President Bush visited the stretch of Arizona desert Thursday that serves as a cactus-studded freeway for thousands of undocumented migrants, those preparing to make the perilous trip said they will find a way around almost any obstacle.
“We'll go under it, we'll go over it, we'll go through the air, the sea or the earth, but they're never going to stop us from crossing,” said Jesus Santana, a Tijuana truck driver who was caught trying to cross and deported.
Increased security will likely only serve to make smuggling fees more expensive and drive immigrants deeper into debt, making them even more desperate to make it north.
As a tired, bedraggled column of deportees filed across a Nogales border bridge Thursday – just as Bush was giving a speech on border security west of here – some migrants were already furiously dialing cell phones to contact immigrant smugglers for their next attempt.
“Of course we'll cross again. We're just waiting for them to come and pick us up,” said Javier Torres, 22, of Cuiliacan, Sinaloa. Just 100 yards away, vans of the kind used by smugglers waited under an underpass to pick up groups of deportees.
The deportees were greeted on the Mexican side by Martin Doriane, who for the last four years has surveyed returning migrants for the Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
Doraine says at least 95 percent of migrants caught and deported say they'll try again, in part because they've sold everything they own in Mexico to pay increasingly expensive and sophisticated smuggling efforts to overcome tightened border security.
“They say, 'I had a roof and a frying pan in Mexico, but I sold both to come north, and went into debt, so what do I have to return to?'” Doraine said.
One of the deportees, Maria del Carmen Valadez, brought her 12-year-old son, Julio Cesar Castaneda, on the dangerous two-day trek through the desert. The boy hungrily ate a taco Doriane gave him as his mother acknowledged “it is a risk” to bring a child on such a dangerous trip.
“I did it to give him a different life,” said Valadez, of Fresnillo in Zacatecas in northern Mexico. She said she'll probably try to cross again, because in her home town, “there's nothing but poverty.”
That sense of desperation – and determination – is everywhere.
On Monday, a detained woman told agents she had left her 3-year-old son dead in the desert.
The proposed 370 miles of triple-layer fencing, approved by the Senate Wednesday, as well as Bush's plan to send National Guard troops to play supporting roles in border enforcement have raised tempers and tensions here.
“Somebody is going to start shooting, and then there will be problems between the two countries,” predicted Santana, the Tijuana truck driver.
Mexico's government has expressed concern about the wall and National Guard proposals, saying they aren't the way to solve problems of border security and illegal migration north.
“Most countries want to bring their people together and tear down physical, commercial and cultural barriers,” presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said Thursday. “Anyone who proposes separating them is out of line. Walls are a sign of distrust, and that will never be the basis of a good friendship between two countries.”
The Senate measure includes provisions that would give some undocumented immigrants a path toward citizenship and allow more people to work temporarily in the United States.
But Santana said he saw no advances in the sweeping reform package.
“There will always be more people wanting to come,” he said. “It will always be like this.”
Bush Travels to US-Mexico Border to Press Immigration Reform
Laurent Lozano - AFP
Yuma, AZ - President George W. Bush traveled Thursday to this desert town near the Mexican border - one of the busiest entry points for illegal immigration into the United States - to show his commitment to sealing America's porous borders.
Bush is seeking to drum up support for his immigration reform plan unveiled Monday, which has been met with skepticism by conservatives in Congress. The US president hopes to show disaffected members of his conservative base that he will be tough on border security.
Bush, who has proposed placing up to 6,000 National Guard troops along the southern US border to assist border patrol officers, visited a part of the border where they are already in place.
"I think it helps to have the president out here, seeing the part of the area of the country that one time was overrun by people coming in here, that's beginning to get settled down because of a strategy that's being employed," Bush said in a speech here.
"We're going to secure our borders. That is the duty of our country. It's a sovereign responsibility," the president said.
"We want the border to be open to trade and lawful immigration, and we want our borders shut to illegal immigrants, as well as criminals and drug dealers and terrorists."
The US leader spent about 10 minutes touring an open dirt field in San Luis, standing a few hundred feet away from a border fortified with a 20-foot-high corrugated metal fence, a 150-foot buffer zone, a second 8-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, and five watch towers.
Bush also met with border patrol agents to get a feel for the challenges they face in the Yuma sector, where more than 96,000 illegal immigrants have been caught since October.
Supervising Border Patrol Agent Richard Hays said that "active criminal smuggling enterprises" operate in the neighborhood directly on the other side of the fence in Mexico.
Hays said the area used to see mass incursions of 70-80 people at a time, but the new fencing, lighting, video cameras and other measures have cut those numbers significantly.
Units of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Air National Guard are also here, helping build roads and lay foundation for high-intensity lighting.
Bush on Monday outlined a plan to deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops on the US-Mexico border and create a guest worker program providing a possible pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented migrants, among other proposals.
The visit took place as the US leader earlier Thursday made an emergency request to Congress for 1.9 billion dollars to start paying for the extra border security.
"As part of my first objective to secure our nation's borders, I ask the Congress to consider the enclosed requests for an additional 1.9 billion dollars for the departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security," Bush said in a letter to US lawmakers.
The president said the funding request was offset by a 1.9 billion dollar reduction in money requested earlier this year by the Defense Department.
Bush said the money would pay the initial costs of deploying troops to the southern US border, and help pay for additional Border Patrol agents, infrastructure, and technology outlined in his speech.
On the eve of his trip, Bush sent his top advisor Karl Rove to meet with members of Congress skeptical about the Republican administration's immigration reform plan.
Members of the House of Representatives, which last December passed a bill that emphasized tough border security, including the construction of a fence making it harder for would-be immigrants to enter the United States illegally, have been the most critical of Bush's plan.
The president's plan is more in keeping with one under discussion this week in the Senate, combining border security with a new guest worker program and a path to earned citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants now in the United States.
In an interview with Fox television Thursday, Bush urged the Mexican government to do more to prevent its nationals from illegally crossing the border into the United States.
"They've got to do their part in order to make sure both borders are secure," he said.
For its part, the Mexican government said Thursday it would send a letter of protest to the United States, after the US Senate voted for a 600-kilometer (370-mile) border barrier to stop illegal migrants. |
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