As we walked across the soft desert sand of
Southern New Mexico towards the tall steel fence a cold breeze
chills us. Beyond the fence is pure poverty. Cardboard shacks
and plywood homes litter the barren hills that we can see.
This is bleak, I think to myself, this is life on the Mexican
border.
“Immigration, as you know, has become a very politically
charged issue,” our tour guide Doug Mosier said. We are a group
of journalist, both Mexican and American, on tour with the U.S.
Border Patrol. We have come together to focus our international
efforts towards issues along the border of our two countries.
We have come here to see first hand the problems that politicians
and border agents have to face.
Rep. Silvester Reyes of nearby El Paso, said the
U.S.-Mexican border was in complete chaos until the inception of
Operation Hold the Line. A project that beefed up Border Patrol
presence in 1993. He should know. As a retired Border
Patrol Chief he is now a congressman for the 16th district
of Texas.
Security has been beefed up indeed. We are led off to an
area that border agents said “once had a dust cloud in the air
from the amount of people crossing into the U.S.” Now there
is a high steel fence that becomes concrete underneath, to prevent
people from digging under. A border official sits on each of
the surrounding hilltops with infrared cameras and motion sensing
equipment all to make sure the residents of the cardboard
village on the other side of the fence, stay there.
As the border agents show us the many devices they are
using to keep people from crossing, a group of children walk out
from the village opposite the fence. Two boys approach to see
what we are gathering for. They stagger around the brush with
an under fed dog following them. It is nearing sunset on this
late fall afternoon and the cool breeze chills me through my
jacket and many layers of clothing. It is getting cold. The
children that stand on the other side of the fence from me,
do not have jackets. I look as two innocent faces shiver
in the cold, peering across meshed steel at me.
“What a way to grow up.” I say to myself. The Border
Patrol Agent Jusus Rodriquez tells me that these people are called
Maquidalores. The name given to Mexicos exploited labor
force. Rodriquex tells me that these people are picked up by
busses in the morning and taken to one of the many industrial
facilities in Juarez, where they earn a meager wage.
Their cardboard and plywood shacks offer little
protection from the elements. The people here try to keep warm
by burnning anything they can, mostly old tires, Rodriquez
says. I look at the two boys through the fence. Then I glance
at downtown El Paso, with its supermarkets and fast-food
restraunts in the distance. Only this steel fence seperates
these two boys from their current situation and McDonalds in
the distance.
The U.S. Border Patrol will be receiving a thousand more
agents a year, until the year 2000, Reyes said at the conference.
Operation Hold the Line plans to expand, incorporating
most of New Mexico and Parts of Arizona, Mosier said.
When asked what gives him the most satisfaction about his
job, Border Patrol Agent Jesus Rodriquez said he “likes being outside
and having the chance to work in many different areas.”
When asked what gives him the least satisfaction, he adds that,
“You see all the poverty that you have to deal with on a daily
basis. In some instances I have to have a lot of sympathy for
the people who cross illegally for economic reasons.
Because, honestly, if I was in there shoes I would be doing the
same thing”
“When people complain about ever little thing that they
complain about (in America). All you have to do is look across
the border and see what poverty exists over there.” he said.###
11/18/97 Aaron Prouty