New troops at US border, but the task is vast
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"Your president is basically playing with both sides during an election year, giving a little to the anti-immigrant movement and a little to those who are in favor of immigration," he says. "We know America is divided over this issue and that no legislation will happen before the election."
A short walk away, in the small town square where migrants arrive from the south in buses and vans to meet their guides for border crossings, migrants show either a vague awareness of the American border buildup, or none at all. In either case, there seems to be little consideration of changes of plan.
In groups of five to 10, migrants from ages 17 to 50, mostly men, sit on the edge of giant planters in the town square. Their stories are similar. Coming from poorer areas in southern Mexico such as Chiapas, Guatemala, and further south, many have spent between $500 and $1000 – and several days of travel – to make it 90 kilometers from the US border. Next, they will meet their guides, who have charged them another $500 to $2,000 to lead them across the desert into the US.
"I can make about $7 a week in Chiapas but maybe a $100 or more in a day in America," says a young man who gives his name as Elfemio, as he sits with a group of four fellow travelers outside the cream- colored Catholic church. Many have saved for months or years for the journey, and sold homes or all their belongings. Most of them have vague plans for how long they will stay, but a common dream is to work for one or two years, saving enough money to return to Mexico and start their own business.
"If you talk to migrants that are making the trek north, you find that their motives are economic – not a wish to colonize America," says Joe Nevins, a political scientist at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Most say they will send money back to their families. Two men report having wives and six children each living in Chiapas. Samuel Vasquez says he's trying to get to his family in Selma, Calif., and plans to pick fruit.
Garcia and Ms. Rodriguez note that, if anything, the border buildup will allow the coyotes who lead migrants north to charge more for the privilege, because of alleged complications and danger of apprehension.
It will also produce complications for migrants, many of whom are already diverted by groups of armed drug smugglers who want to protect their drug routes, they say.
Most migrants are not told ahead of time about the extended hardship of crossing the desert. They have given up so much to get this far that they move ahead undeterred – and many keep trying until they succeed because they have no alternative of going back.
After meeting their guides in Altar, Elfemio and his group will stand in the back of an open-topped pickup truck for 50 miles up a rutted, dirt road to a second disembarkation point just south of the border town Sasabe.
From there, they will meet their coyote and fan out left or right from Sasabe for a three- to four-day trek over desert terrain through the Buenos Aires National Forest to the east or the Tohono O'Odham Nation Indian Reservation.
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At about 3:30 p.m., at a place just four miles south of the border called "la ladrillera" (the brickyard), groups of young men are huddled under old car hoods for shade, waiting for the cool of nightfall and the beginning of their journeys.
"Yes, I am afraid, but my need is greater than my fear," says Raul Gutierrez, 24, from Chiapas. Dogs bark, a radio plays Mexican music, a gust of wind turns a nearby dump of plastic water bottles into a cyclone of airborne refuse before settling back into the dirt.
It is 120 degrees in the shade.
The need, says Mr. Gutierrez, is "to make enough to eat well, and make a home."
