Edge of Battle

documents that raised the suspicions of Omaha Public Power District employees. They contacted ICE special agents for assistance, who responded and arrested the men after determining that they were illegally present in the United States…

BORDER CROSSING DEATHS SET A 12-MONTH RECORD—By Richard Marosi, L.A. Times Staff Writer—October 1, 2005—A record 460 migrants died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in the last year, a toll pushed higher by unusually hot temperatures and a shift of illegal migration routes through remote deserts.

The death total from October 1, 2004, through September 29, [2005,] surpassed the previous record of 383 deaths set in 2000, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Border Patrol.

The dead were mostly Mexicans, many from the states of Mexico, Guanajuato and Veracruz, but also from the impoverished southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. Migrants continue to die in automobile accidents and from drownings while crossing waterways into California and Texas, but 261, or more than half the total, perished while crossing the Arizona deserts, the busiest illegal immigrant corridor along the nation’s two-thousand-mile border with Mexico.

The migrants, herded across the border by smugglers, have been traversing increasingly desolate stretches of desert as the Border Patrol cuts off more accessible routes…

PROLOGUE

SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF GLAMIS, CALIFORNIA

MAY 2007

The youngest child in the group, an eleven-month-old girl, died sometime before midnight, a victim of a rattlesnake bite the day before, suffered when her mother set the baby down in the darkness near an unseen nest. The infant was buried in the desert of southern California, just a few miles north of the border that they had worked so hard to cross. Two other children, one a four-year-old girl, the other an eleven-year-old boy, wept for their infant sibling, but their bodies were too dehydrated from spending almost two days in the desert to shed any tears.

It was all the same to Victor Flores, the seventeen-year-old coyote, or human smuggler, escorting the group of twelve migrants across the southern California border. It was sad, of course, the baby dying—he prayed with the others for the baby’s safe deliverance into heaven, hugged the mother, and wept with her. But one less child meant one less cry in the night to alert the Border Patrol, one less reason to slow down on their long trek across the desert—and, of course, there were no refunds. It was five hundred dollars a head, Federal Highway 2 in Mexico to Interstate 10 in the United States of America—no refunds, cash on the table.

Besides, he thought ruefully, children had no business out here. He was seeing lots more mothers and their children these days on these trips across the border, not just the men. That was a frightening trend. Things were bad in Mexico, and probably had been forever, but typically the family stayed in Mexico, the father went to search for work, and he returned months later with cash; he stayed long enough to crank out another child or two, then departed again. The exodus of women and children from Mexico meant that things were only getting worse there.

Not that the economic, sociological, or political situation was looking any better in the United States these days, but it was a heck of a lot better than in Mexico.

The calendar said it was spring, but daytime temperatures had soared above ninety degrees Fahrenheit every day since the group was dropped off beside Federal Highway 2 about ten miles south of the border. They camped when Victor told them they needed to stop, crossed Interstate 8 on foot at night when Victor told them to—it was much easier to see oncoming cars at night than in the daytime, where heat shimmering off the pavement made even huge big rigs invisible until just a few hundred feet away—and stopped and made shelters with their spare clothing in dusty gullies and washes when Victor said it was time to hide. Flores had a sixth sense about danger and almost always managed to get his pollos (or “chickens,” what the coyotes called their clientele) into hiding before the Border Patrol appeared—he even somehow managed to evade helicopters and underground sensors.

He knew his route well, so they traveled at night. That usually meant a more comfortable journey, but in the arid, cloudless air the desert released its sun-baked warmth quickly at night, and now the temperature was in the low forties. The pollos baked during the day and shivered at night. There was no way around it. It was a hard journey, but the work and the money at the end of the trail hopefully made the sacrifice worth it.

Victor’s specialty was the El Centro Border Patrol region of eastern Imperial County, between Yuma, Arizona, and El Centro, California—what the coyotes called the Montanas del Chocolate, or Chocolate Mountain region of southern California, an area of roughly two thousand square miles. He led a small group of migrants all the way north to Interstate 10 somewhere between Blythe and Indio, California. With decent weather and a cooperative group, Victor could escort a group of twelve along that route to his drop-off point in two days, sometimes less, with almost one hundred percent probability of success.

For an additional fee, he would take pollos as far as they desired—Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Reno, even Dallas, Texas, if they desired. But the real money was in the short trek across the deserts of southern California. Most migrants hooked up with friends or relatives quickly once they got to the farming communities of the Coachella or Imperial Valleys or along the interstate highways, and Victor’s prices for travel beyond southern California were steep. It was safer traveling with him than trying to take the bus or trains, since the Border Patrol checked IDs of Hispanic-looking individuals frequently on those two conveyances. Victor charged mightily for the safety and convenience of longer-distance trips, but it was well worth it.

Victor never bragged about his skills at evading the authorities, but he never denied them either—it was good for business. But he was not gifted with any sort of extrasensory perception. He was successful because he was smart, patient, and didn’t get greedy, unlike many of his friends who also worked the migrant underground railroads. Where other coyotes took twenty migrants in more conspicuous vans and rental trucks, Victor took a maximum of twelve in smaller vehicles; when others raced and took unnecessary risks to do the job in one or two days and were caught at least half the time, Victor was careful, took extra time, and made it 95 percent of the time.

Many thought he was good at his job because he was a bebe del angel, or “angel baby,” born in the United States. Perhaps most folks wouldn’t consider being born in an artichoke field in Riverside County near Thermal, California an angelic thing, but Victor had something that his friends didn’t have—a real American birth certificate.

About ten miles north of the border, just before daybreak, Victor came upon his “nest,” and after removing a few branches and rocks and a sand-covered canvas tarp, his pride and joy was revealed—a 1993 Chevy Suburban with four-wheel drive. Before doing anything else, he started inspecting the outside of the vehicle.

“?Que usted esta haciendo? What are you doing?” one of the male pollos asked in Spanish, with a definite Eastern European accent. This guy was somewhat different than the others. Victor at first thought he was a federale, but he had paid cash and observed all of the security precautions without question or hesitation. He wore sunglasses all the time except when walking at night, so it was impossible to see his eyes. His hands were rough and his skin toughened by the sun, but he didn’t carry himself like a farmworker.

Of course, more and more migrants using Victor’s service were not farmworkers. This guy looked tough, like he was accustomed to fighting or violence, but at the same time he was not pushy or edgy—he seemed very much in control of himself, capable of springing into action but very content not to do so right now. An Army deserter, maybe, or some sort of fugitive from justice or prison escapee trying to sneak back into the United States. Victor vowed to keep an eye on him—but he was not his biggest concern now.