Who Really Crosses the U.S.-Mexico Border?

The Atlantic: For the first time in more than 60 years, more non-Mexicans than Mexicans were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol at checkpoints in 2014, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.

Approximately 257,000 non-Mexicans were apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol in 2014, compared to about 229,000 Mexicans, according to the recently released data. The total number of unauthorized immigrant apprehensions is up 16 percent from the prior year. Read more. 

Texas Bolsters Border Patrol With Its Own

New York Times:  Along the Rio Grande here, the suspected smugglers trying to slip into the United States have certainly noticed their adversaries on the water: burly commandos in black-and-white boats mounted with .30-caliber machine guns and bulletproof shields. The patches on the officers’ camouflage fatigues identify them not as federal Border Patrol agents but as another breed of law enforcement entirely.

Texas game wardens.

Pool photo by Eric Gay

A team of them — whose routine duties include investigating fishing tournament cheaters and making arrests for B.U.I., or boating under the influence — patrol the Rio Grande, pulling smuggling suspects from the river and dodging rocks thrown from the Mexican side. Members of the Texas Rangers have also traded in their familiar white cowboy hats for camouflage so they can blend into the brush on covert nighttime operations.

Mexico, U.S. Examine Use of Force on Border

Hispanic Business: Mexican and U.S. officials met to discuss the use of force by U.S. federal agents on the border in an effort to reduce violent incidents during the apprehension of migrants, the Foreign Relations Secretariat said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske, U.S. Border Patrol officials and U.S. Embassy personnel participated in the meeting, the secretariat said.  Read more. 

Migrants dropped off at bus stations in Arizona

Chron
By Astrid Galvan

By the time the women arrived disheveled and hungry at the Greyhound station in Phoenix, they had already spent weeks traveling thousands of miles with young children in tow.

Ranging from months old to adolescents, some of the children were sick and lethargic. Others played gleefully at arcade games in the crowded waiting room of the bus station.

The families were apprehended in Texas, flown to Arizona and dropped off by the busload at the station in Phoenix by federal immigration authorities overwhelmed by a surge of families caught crossing the Mexican border into the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

It was signal of a shift in immigration that has seen the Rio Grande Valley surpass Tucson as the leader in border apprehensions, overwhelming border agents in Texas. The trend is being driven by a huge increase in the number of immigrants from Central America.

Yet while the number of apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley vastly surpasses those in the Tucson sector in Arizona, the area has fewer agents. From October 2013 to May 17, agents in the Rio Grande Valley made more than 148,000 arrests, compared with 63,000 arrests in the Tucson sector. But the Rio Grande Valley has about 1,000 fewer agents than Tucson. Read more. 

Group Rooted in the Desert Looks Out for Migrants

NY Times
By FERNANDA SANTOS
August 2, 2013

ARIVACA, Ariz. — Monsoon rains tinge the desert with deceptive hints of green at this time of the year, but migrants crossing illegally from Mexico continue to risk death from thirst and exposure in the blazing heat. A fortunate few who become lost might stumble upon lifesaving gallon jugs of drinking water, scattered by a band of volunteers along makeshift footpaths that have been carved through the mountains and washes.

From a primitive base camp here, volunteers trained by a group called No More Deaths patrol the desert, offering water, food, clothing and medical care to lost, injured and exhausted migrants, no questions asked. The group’s mission is as simple, though not uncontroversial: to end migrant deaths along Arizona’s borderlands.  Read more. 

Anarchy along Mexico's southern border crossings

LA Times 
By Richard Fausset
August 3, 2013

CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — The Mexican government is pledging to bring order to its wild southern border. The stakes couldn't be higher, and the job couldn't be more difficult.

The proof lies in this dusty border town of 14,000 people. Here, unmonitored goods and travelers float across the wide Suchiate River — the boundary between Guatemala and the Mexican state of Chiapas — on a flotilla of inner-tube rafts. They cross all day long, in plain sight of Mexican authorities stationed a few yards upriver at an official border crossing.

Some of the Central Americans are visiting just for the day. Others are hoping to find work on Mexican coffee plantations or banana farms. But many will continue north toward the United States.  Read more. 

Mexico rescues 52 migrants kidnapped near U.S. border

Reuters
Jun 25, 2013

 Mexican security forces on Tuesday rescued 52 kidnapped migrants, mostly Guatemalans, who were being held in a house in the violent state of Tamaulipas near the U.S. border.

The migrants had been held for several days in a house in the city of Reynosa, where they were found by a group of federal and state police, officials said.

The group was made up of 48 men from Guatemala, two from El Salvador and two more from Mexico, a press release from the state government said.  Read more. 

Millions of immigrants waiting for green cards

USA Today
Daniel González, The Arizona Republic
June 23, 2013

The long wait is at the center of the debate over whether to give the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally a pathway to citizenship.

Phoenix - Alejandro Bojorquez wants to play by the rules.

The Mexican citizen has patiently waited for years for a green card to allow him to come to the United States legally, even as millions of compatriots crossed the border illegally.

But his wait has been long. Very, very long.

Bojorquez was 14 when his father, Jesus Bojorquez, then a legal permanent resident, filed a green-card petition on his behalf. Alejandro is now 29.  Read more. 

The Other Mexicans: Indigenous people come from a world apart from Spanish-speaking Mexicans

National Geographic

Katya Cengel

Published June 24, 2013

Mixteco is Villegas's native language. It is the only language he spoke fluently when he came to the United States sixteen years ago at the age of seven. The trilingual rap song is his own creation and he takes to heart its Spanish language refrain: "Mixteco is a language, not a dialect. It's the gold that I treasure."

Villegas spent two years working in the grape fields where his older siblings still toil. Now he is a community worker at the Fresno headquarters of the Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities, a nonprofit that focuses on the specific needs of indigenous Mexicans who have migrated to California. Across the United States these indigenous migrants are isolated even more than other immigrant groups. They speak neither English nor Spanish and are often looked down on by Spanish-speaking Mexicans.

They may not be the Spanish-speaking migrants that politicians picture when they discuss immigration reform, but as their numbers increase and trilingual members like Miguel organize, they have their own stake in the fractious debate in Washington. A possible language requirement would be particularly difficult for indigenous communities. Without Spanish, their road to English fluency will be that much harder. Their own languages are not traditionally written languages. Many have not had formal schooling.  Read more. 

Immigrants Reach Beyond a Legal Barrier for a Reunion

Washington Post
By REBEKAH ZEMANSKY and JULIA PRESTON
Published: June 11, 2013

NOGALES, Ariz. — Three young immigrants had a jubilant and painful reunion here on Tuesday with parents who had been deported from the United States, sharing hugs through the steel bars of the border fence that separates this American town from its Mexican twin.

The young adults are part of the movement of immigrants who grew up in this country without legal status who call themselves Dreamers. Their parents traveled to the Mexican side of the fence from Brazil, Colombia and Guadalajara, Mexico, seeing their children in person for the first time in many years.

The meeting, under a searing borderlands sun, was a new piece of the highly personal political theater that young immigrants have used to dramatize their support for a bill in the Senate to overhaul the immigration system. Hours before the encounter here, President Obama spoke at the White House to urge Congress to move quickly to pass the bill. Suggesting the growing influence of the youth movement in the debate, the president framed his remarks — both literally and politically — with Dreamers.  Read more. 

Border Patrol account of deadly Nogales shooting is disputed

I was in Nogales last November. We had a long, tearful talk with José Antonio's grandmother and aunt and saw the place where the boy was shot. There is a small altar there on the sidewalk where the Border Patrol fired some 13 bullets into his body. To do so, they pretty much had to poke the rifle through chinks in the fence and aim at the boy's body. Now a witness says he wasn't even throwing rocks toward the border (not as if that would justify the crime even if he were). The FBI says it's investigation is "on-going". I wrote about José Antonio's death in "A Killing Spree on the Border" and about a similar case earlier in "Lethal Force on the Border."

It's important to maintain attention on the issue so that the question of the use of excessive force by BP agents is finally dealt with and those responsible for these murders are brought to justice.

Arizona Daily Star

by Perla Trevizo

March 30, 2013

NOGALES, Sonora - A Nogales teenager was simply walking down the street and not throwing rocks at U.S. Border Patrol agents the night he was shot and killed, a new witness says, contradicting the agency's initial statement.

Isidro Alvarado, 36, said he was walking less than 20 feet behind José Antonio Elena Rodríguez when two other young men suddenly ran past him and into a side street. He then heard gunshots come from different directions and he saw José fall to the ground.

Alvarado ran south in the same direction as the two men to take cover and call the police, he said earlier this week as he retraced his steps near the DeConcini Port of Entry.

On Oct. 10, 2012, Nogales, Ariz., police and the Border Patrol responded to a 911 call about 11:30 p.m. Officers reported seeing two people with marijuana bundles wrapped around their body on International Street, according to police reports.

They were trying to climb back into Mexico, the report said, when a group started to throw rocks at the officers over the border fence.

When they refused to stop, a Border Patrol agent who was near it opened fire into Mexico, hitting one of them.

Another witness interviewed by Mexican law enforcement said he saw four people running with rocks but didn't specify if José was one of them. Alvarado said he didn't see anyone else running, besides the two young men who apparently had just jumped the border fence, nor did he see José throwing rocks. Read more. 

Why Walls Won't Work: Repairing the US-Mexico Divide (EXCERPT)

The Huffington Post
Michael Dear
March 19, 2013

There are no magic words to solve the problems of immigration in the US or drug-related violence in Mexico. Instead, I offer one incontrovertible conclusion regarding the borderlands: the Wall will not work.
Here's why.

Because the Border Has Long Been a Place of Connection

The borderline is a permeable membrane connecting two countries. The inhabitants of this "in-between" territory thrive on cross-border exchange and collaboration, both of which have flourished for many centuries. There are strong senses of mutuality and attachment to territory among border residents.

Throughout time, many great dramas have been played out along what is today the border zone, including cataclysmic invasion, war, and revolution. The current afflictions in this troubled geographical vortex pertain to immigration and drug wars. The region has survived past upheavals, and will undoubtedly outlast the present woes.

A principal reason why border tensions are today so intense is that neither the migration nor drug problem has its origin in the borderlands. Instead, they originated from outside, and borderland communities have limited capacity for self-determination in these matters. At the national level, the US and Mexico each stand to gain from the sacrifices of that small subset of their populations that resides in the border zones. These are the people who must endure the exogenously-induced threats, with little assistance from their national and local governments beyond military and police actions. In the meantime, they have made what adjustments they can: some people have left , tired of the stresses and dangers; others simply await the future.  Read more. 

New urgency to cross along tougher U.S. border

The Washington Post

That’s when many of these men crossed over for the first time, in their late teens or early 20s.

Today the area is perhaps the toughest part of one of the most heavily guarded and closely watched international boundaries in the world. The Department of Homeland Security has doubled border security and immigration enforcement spending since 2006 to $18 billion a year, deploying sensors, cameras, fencing, surveillance drones and federal agents.

The immigration overhaul proposals from Congress and the White House promise to harden the border even more.

The Department of Homeland Security does not estimate how many illegal migrants make it across, but researchers and the migrants themselves say the odds of getting caught are greater than ever.

Since 2005, the United States has doubled the number of Border Patrol agents deployed along the Mexico boundary to 18,516, an all-time high.  Read more. 

Mexico denounces killing of minor by U.S. border agents

Fox News Latino The Mexican government strongly denounced the homicide of a minor by U.S. agents on the border between Nogales, Mexico, and the likenamed Arizona city.

The Foreign Relations Secretariat expressed in a communique Mexico's "energetic condemnation" of the incident that occurred Wednesday on the border when Border Patrol agents opened fire and killed the minor.

"The disproportionate use of lethal force by the army engaged in immigration-control duties is unacceptable under any circumstances," the statement said.

It added that cases like this, "particularly because of their recurrence," have sparked the resentment of Mexicans and of all the powers and political parties in the country. Read more. 

The economics and human costs of migration: violence and healing in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands

The Americas MexicoBlog is pleased to post this guest blog by our contributor, Dave Feldman. Dave has been volunteering on the border and brings us his observations and reflections on migrants along the Arizona-Sonora border and US projects to provide help.

By Dave Feldman
I am not usually one to frequent McDonald’s, but I nonetheless head towards the double golden arches, which seem to cry out: “Welcome to the United States of America.” I am returning to Douglas, Arizona after an afternoon spent at the Migrant Resource Center in the Mexican border town of Agua Prieta, Sonora.

The MRC is a partnership of many different people and organizations, such as the primarily Tucson-based activist aid group No More Deaths—who I am officially volunteering with for the second summer in a row—and the bi-national faith-based Frontera de Cristo, all working together towards the common goal of helping migrants caught in the deadly web of U.S. economic and border policy. We provide food, water, clothing, simple toiletries and basic first aid, and connect folks with other organizations and shelters serving migrants in town. Some have been caught by Border Patrol and deported after walking for as long as eight days in the desert, while others are coming from the south and using the town as a departure point before trying their luck. Raia, a fellow volunteer, had heard that a vigil for those souls whose luck had run out among the cacti and rattlesnakes was going to take place in the McDonald’s parking lot, and so we decide to stop by before heading back to our double-wide trailer in the Hidden Valley Mobile Ranch.

We are met by Mark from Frontera De Cristo, along with a couple of local volunteers and a group of students from Duke—who have arrived with the Tucson-based Border Links—and Stanford. We also spot Kara, a No More Deaths volunteer we met a couple days before at our training session in Tucson. She is based in ambos Nogales—both border towns share the same name—but has just gotten back from a day in the desert near Arivaca, AZ, where No More Deaths maintains a camp and leaves water for the many migrants attempting to cross over to el Norte.

The 100+ degree heat, mountainous terrain and frequent summer monsoons do not make it a logical crossing point along the nearly 2,000 mile-long U.S./Mexico border, but the increased patrolling of urban areas through the construction of a military-style wall and the deployment of heavily armed Border Patrol and National Guard agents has left little choice. The so-called Southwest Border Initiative, first launched by the Clinton Administration in El Paso/Ciudad Juárez in late 1993, is essentially a militarized arm of the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement.

Op-Ed: Death in the Desert

NY Times (Op-Ed): NO matter how the Supreme Court rules this month in Arizona v. United States, which will determine the fate of Arizona’s aggressive illegal immigration law, the national conversation about illegal immigration has shifted. As recent data from the Pew Hispanic Center and the United States Border Patrol indicate, illegal immigration is on the wane, with arrests of migrants trying to cross the United States-Mexico border at a 40-year low and with net migration to the United States at a standstill — and perhaps even reversing direction. In the eyes of many, this is cause for celebration: no more straining the resources of border states while migrants risk life and limb for a shot at a better life.

But this rosy image of “success” ignores the larger, sobering picture of which migrant death and suffering is still very much a part. Read more.

¡Viva Mexico!: Nogales, Mexico - A Few Steps, and a Whole World Away

NYTimes.com: "A SIMPLE painted sign on a wooden board — “To Mexico” — was propped near the door in the fence, but it was the fence itself that fascinated me. Some masterpieces are unintentional, the result of a freakish accident or an explosive act of sheer weirdness, and the fence that divides Nogales, Ariz., from Nogales, Mexico, is one of them." read more

The Border: President Obama gives the National Humanities Medal to Stanford literary scholar Ramón Saldívar

Stanford University News: "In a White House ceremony on Monday, President Obama awarded a National Humanities Medal to Stanford English and comparative literature Professor Ramón Saldívar. His teaching and research, centering on globalization, transnationalism and Chicano studies, were recognized for "his bold explorations of identity along the border separating the United States and Mexico."" read more

Border Reality: Minnesota young man uses EMT training to aid immigrants along U.S./Mexico border

Here is one of those local news acccounts that takes you to the personal level of an issue: this one is the border and migration through the desert. 

Daily Globe | Worthington, Minnesota: " Growing up in Worthington, Dan Wilson was acquainted with the controversial issues surrounding immigration. “... I knew people made a lot of sacrifices to do it, and I had also seen some of the reasons for the immigration. I was feeling connected to that last step of immigration, and it was intriguing to me.”

So Wilson spent last summer working in the Sonora Desert along the U.S./Mexico border, using his skills as a trained emergency medical technician and witnessing firsthand another aspect of the immigration story." read more

Border and Immigration: Couple rides bikes across entire US-Mexico border for immigration reform

You can learn more about Katy and Eric’s travels at http://borderbybicycle.blogspot.com/

ValleyCentral.com: "For five long and educational months a couple from New York and Minnesota have been on a quest to learn about border realities. ... They're biking and blogging every minute of their exploration. “Each part of the border has it's distinct reality,” said Eric Wright. “We knew that and we were interested in what was going on in each part of the border.” “And we felt an obligation to teach as we go,” said Katy Brandes.

After ... working as volunteers at a shelter for migrants in El Paso, Katy and Eric decided to explore the border. In September, they got on their bikes and started pedaling a little north of San Diego, California, final destination Boca Chica, Texas." read more