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 Editorials | June 2006 
An Increasingly Deadly Trail
 John Pomfret - Washington Post
| | U.S. President George W. Bush speaks to border patrol officers after touring the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, New Mexico, June 6, 2006. Bush is on a three-state swing on Tuesday to tout efforts to strengthen enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque) |
Tighter border has illegal immigrants risking more perilous routes.
Covered Wells, Ariz. - It was early on a May morning, still dark, when Border Patrol agent Dan McClafferty first smelled death, its rich odor piercing the desert bouquet of sage, salt cedar and creosote. Following the beam of his flashlight, McClafferty looked under the thorny branches of a paloverde tree and found what he was looking for.
The body of the 3-year-old boy lay still, covered with a jacket and his arms crossed over his chest. His mother, found wandering along a desert highway hours earlier, had carried him there as she had tried to cross into the United States illegally.
The sad discovery was not unique. Since 1993, when the Clinton administration began a crackdown on border crossings in San Diego and El Paso, more than 3,500 people have died trying to cross into the United States through desert. And, as officials work to put more patrols and fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, immigrant advocates fear there will be more deaths among the tens of thousands who attempt the trip.
Most of the deaths so far - 959 since Oct. 1, 2001, according to local government statistics and the Mexican government - have been in Arizona, where the landscape comprises mountains, ranches, Indian reservations, military proving grounds and endless miles of cactus-filled desert. The boy, who was found on May 16 and whose name could not be ascertained from U.S. or Mexican officials, was one of the latest additions to the list.
Border Patrol statistics show that while the death toll mounts annually, the number of those apprehended while crossing the border has not changed significantly since 1993. But because federal agencies have tightened the border in urban areas, smugglers who move the men, women and children seeking to enter the United States illegally have funneled them onto increasingly perilous trails where temperatures are high, water is scarce and danger is abundant.
"All the evidence is that increased enforcement on the border has achieved no benefit at all except in additional employment of Border Patrol agents," said John Fife, a Tucson pastor and founder of No More Deaths, a coalition of charities devoted to stopping deaths during desert border crossings. "What has changed is the devastating elements of this policy. You have a number of deaths that surpasses the number of American deaths in Iraq. And yet still we are determined to persist and redouble our efforts."
The other view is that a tipping point could be reached if the flow of agents and materiel to the border continues to increase. Since 1993, the Border Patrol has tripled in size and President Bush has pledged to add 6,000 more agents. He also has ordered the National Guard, which began deploying to the border Monday, to help build new fencing and other protections. "America has the best technology in the world, and we will ensure that the Border Patrol has the technology they need to do their job and secure our border," Bush said May 15 in a nationally televised speech.
Even as the president was speaking, McClafferty was searching the Arizona desert.
A Toxic Mix
The 3-year-old's mother's name was Edith Rodreguez. She and her son crossed into the United States from Sasabe, Mexico, on May 11, said a spokesman for the Mexican consulate in Tucson. A native of the Mexican state of Veracruz, a major source for illegal immigration, the 25-year-old woman was traveling in a group of eight to 10 people, herded north by a smuggler, called a coyote.
To keep the group moving fast, the coyote handed out a Mexican over-the-counter drug called Sedalmerk, consulate spokesman Alejandro Ramos Cardoso said after Mexican officials interviewed Rodreguez. Sedalmerk is a combination of caffeine, Tylenol and the herbal supplement ephedra - an amphetamine precursor that is banned in the United States.
Sedalmerk may be safe to use as a pick-me-up in a normal environment but it is a toxic mix when combined with a trek through the desert because it accelerates dehydration, McClafferty said. Two days into the journey, the boy's energy was flagging and he was dehydrated. On May 13, Ramos Cardoso said, the coyote and the rest of the crossers abandoned Rodreguez and her son, leaving them to walk in the desert by themselves.
Rodreguez began carrying the child, moving north through a sliver of earth hemmed in by two mountain ranges on land belonging to the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation. Sometime that day, the boy lost consciousness, Ramos Cardoso said. But Rodreguez kept on walking, clutching him.
A Search for a Child
In early January, the Border Patrol began concentrating on Arizona's Altar Valley, which had become a virtual highway into the United States for thousands of illegal immigrants and is dotted with natural water holes and water stations serviced by American charities. The renewed enforcement there resulted in traffic being diverted to the Tohono O'odham land that has less water.
Some religious and charitable groups have placed water barrels in the desert and handed out maps in Mexico showing their locations, drawing the ire of those who seek tougher enforcement along the border. One of the groups, Humane Borders, received permission to keep water barrels on land belonging to the Bureau of Land Management, the Interior Department, the city of Tucson and Pima County. But the Tohono O'odham tribe has declined to give its permission.
It was on that land that Rodreguez found herself walking with her son. She carried him for more than a day, Ramos Cardoso said, before placing him under the paloverde tree and going to look for help.
Like many who cross the border illegally, Rodreguez had been in the United States before. She worked menial jobs in Kentucky, where she met a man who apparently was married. The two had a relationship and Rodreguez got pregnant, Ramos Cardoso said. She decided to have the baby in Veracruz so her mother could help her. Returning to Mexico to have a baby was an unusual decision - many Mexican women make the reverse trip, traveling to the United States to have their babies so their children will be U.S. citizens.
Earlier this year, Rodreguez decided to return to the United States to show the boy to his father, Ramos Cardoso said. She traveled to Sasabe, joined the coyote's group and walked across the border.
After placing her son under the tree, Rodreguez chanced upon Highway 86, which runs through the heart of Tohono O'odham. There, on the afternoon of May 15, Border Patrol agents picked her up.
Ramos Cardoso said she told the agents immediately that she had left her son in the desert, but Gustavo Soto, a Border Patrol spokesman, said they learned of a missing boy four hours later after she was sent to a processing center in the border town of Nogales before she was returned to Mexico.
McClafferty received word about the missing boy that night. He is a member of BorStar, the Border Patrol's elite search and rescue unit, established in 1998 to help save illegal immigrants lost in the desert. When McClafferty went searching for the boy, it was unclear whether he was alive. He said he was told that the mother was so distraught that Border Patrol agents understood only that her son was missing.
McClafferty and three other agents began bushwhacking through the desert scrub, looking for footprints, where Rodreguez had been found. There were thousands, making it impossible to track the boy that way.
Back at Nogales, Border Patrol agents photographed the bottom of Rodreguez's shoes and faxed the image to McClafferty. Just as the sun was setting, he found matches in the dust. For the next seven hours he and the other agents tracked them by flashlight.
"We figured she was in bad shape," McClafferty said. "She was walking around in circles. She went for help then went back to her son but couldn't find him."
In the end, McClafferty smelled the boy's remains before he found them.
"She carried her kid in the desert for four or five hours and not one of them helped her," McClafferty said of the others who walked in with Rodreguez. "I've seen a lot in six years, but this kid thing was one of those that I just couldn't file away."
More Deaths Expected
After being expelled from the United States, Rodreguez was allowed back on May 18 on a short-term humanitarian visa to identify her son's body. An autopsy revealed that the probable cause of death was dehydration and exposure to the sun. The temperature had been above 100 degrees during their journey.
Eric Peters, deputy chief medical examiner for Pima County, placed the time of death between May 13 and May 14, meaning the boy had probably died in his mother's arms.
The last time a young child died on the border, according to Pima County records, was November, when a 1-year-old girl succumbed to pneumonia. Peters said authorities told him they had seen women with babies trudging through the reservation lands, and he and his colleagues are bracing for more child deaths this summer.
The Tohono O'odham police considered charging Rodreguez with child endangerment, but the Pima County attorney's office said it had no interest in prosecuting her. Rodreguez returned to Mexico on May 20 and her son's body followed two days later.
Ramos Cardoso said he tried to persuade Rodreguez to speak to the media because the consulate hoped her story would encourage others not to follow her.
"She had been through a lot of suffering," he said. "She told us she just wanted to go home." |
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