Photo Composite: The Fence seen from Nogales, Sonora, with crosses honoring those who die in crossing the desert; a Maya cross from Chiapas, at that time sending proportionally the highest number of migrants from Mexico; a landscape at Acteal, Chiapas, site of the 1997 massacre by government trained paramilitaries of women and children of the Abejas, a non-violent liberation theology resistance group sympathetic to the goals of the Zapatista uprising.
In 2008, as people thought about the election for the next president, many of us thought that we were electing someone who would champion a more just Immigration policy. That year I spent a few days with immigrants on both sides of the border in and around the twin Nogales (Arizona and Sonora). The undocumented population of the United States had grown to around 12 million persons, from 3 million only 22 years before, but was beginning a decline that continues until now. In that time budgets for border enforcement had quintupled.1
With the election, in spite of Barack Obama's achievements in other areas, in immigration we got the Deporter in Chief.
How is the immigration situation in 2008 relevant to us now that we’ve been through the children wrenched from a parent’s arms*, denial of treaty-guaranteed asylum hearings and dumping of applicants on the Mexican side of the border where there are no facilities or provisions for them, and where they are prey to various bad actors from cartels, kidnappers, con artists.
What was the nature of immigration enforcement in 2008 that could lead to the kind of barbarism that we’ve witnessed during the Trump era? For one thing families were already being separated as people were already being picked up and deported with children and spouses left behind. The Obama administration claimed that their policy was to target only felons, people guilty of crimes in the United States. We saw here in Western New York that camps of immigrant farm workers were being raided and arrested en masse. The evidence is now clear for anyone with eyes to see that the practice was completely different than the announced policy. Enforcement units, in order to preserve budgets, set quotas and met them any way they could.2 The result was that we saw more deportations than in any previous presidential administration. Some advocates advised quiescence so as to not jeopardize the chances of Dreamers. Where did that get us?
Since the time of the Reagan administration, as now, our government has bullied Mexico to enforce its interdiction policy by stopping immigrants at their southern border. And if they were able to make it through that, they were terrorized and sometimes kidnapped or killed by members of the various drug cartels. You had to have a very strong desire to go to the USA. (Now "Caravans" offer some protection.)
The processes in the special immigration courts ran fast track trying to deal with large numbers of people being apprehended. Detainees were already being shuffled from holding center to prison to places in faraway states making it impossible for legal representatives or loved ones to follow them and defend them or even know where they were. I had to bail out a detainee in Batavia, New York who had been arrested in Vermont. Large incarceration centers put up by for-profit companies often found it not in their interest to provide decent living quarters and food.
* Over 500 children still not reunited with parents as of 10/25/20 as I write.
They'll work hard and long at dirty jobs. They'll work cheap so we'll keep the low prices we like for what we eat.
We like to call them "illegals" and make their coming a felony. We like to keep them afraid.
We like to have more of them than we are willing to give permits. We like to turn them off and on, like a spigot.
Keep them trying to hide. Know where to look for them when we think they are too many.
With Young Men of Highland Chiapas: a view from the place of origin
To tag along to their game at a basketball tournament in Aldama, another nearby Maya town I have to pay the taxi fare. Edgar drives it. He’s one of the super-abundance of low paid taxi drivers in the town near his parents’ milpa. There on any noon two rows of taxis line the entire town square, but nobody wants to go to San Cristobal. As we drive I ask them about heading for El Norte.
Edgar: I cleaned office buildings in D.F. [Mexico City]. Hard work, all night, and you can’t save any money. Sure, I’d like to go to the US. But my parents say it’s bad there.
Cristóbal: Some come back with a car to drive as a taxi or they build a cement house, but some come back dead or we never hear from them again. continue reading entire story of young immigrants from Chiapas
I knew there were workers down there....marking the earth. Without those small interferences, it would be swallowed by the landscape. It would not last a single decade.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, flying over the US/Mexico border3
BORDERS: SCARS IN THE EARTH
The Fence seen from northern part of Mexican Nogales
In 2008 a primary route for undocumented crossers began in Altar Sonora where coyotes (guides) could be hired and rides to the border near Sasabe could be purchased. Then the dangerous trek through desert to Tucson or other points could begin. I was warned to stay away from Altar with a camera.4
Looking West-Northwest from near the intersect of Sasabe Road with the road through Arivaca gives an idea of the kind of terrain an immigrant might have to cross in order to avoid the "Migra".
see map above
Close to the center of migration in 2008 were the twin Nogales lying across a line drawn in the sand that separated Arizona's Nogales from Sonora's Nogales. And now that line was erected into a high steel fence. Nearby was Sasabe a tiny hamlet near the true center of the crossings, and further south in Mexico was Altar where those preparing to cross congregated and found coyotes to guide them. This made Nogales a place where daily hundreds of Mexicans and Central Americans caught by US Immigration authorities were deported, dropped by buses on the US side and watched walking to the other. On the Mexican side was a government reception area where at least some of the deported Mexicans could receive advice. They could receive some food from volunteers come up from Tucson with a kind of food trailer. They could even receive haircuts from volunteer beauticians from the area.. Often there was a Mexican Red Cross nurse or a volunteer nurse come up from Las Cruces, New Mexico to try to make up for the medical neglect of the holding centers and to treat the damage done by the desert crossing.
These detainees had the relative good fortune of being dropped off at 7 PM. The supervisor of the reception area on the Mexican side told me of women with children being dropped off at 2 AM when there was no one there to assist them.
When the bus from the holding center dumps them at the border the detainees discard the bags and baggage tags for their personal possessions that have been returned to them as they got off the bus.
middle right: The reception area of the Sonora government, offering limited aid to the freshly deported immigrants. Note the sign telling immigrants to report any illicit activities. This would include con artists and self styled coyotes offering a "sure path" for a second try to enter.
bottom right: A training hair stylist from a local school. The man seems quite pleased by the first kind touch he would have received in some time.
bottom left: first aid for feet still bloody and swollen from days walking burning desert sand.
Even after 12 years, having to blur them to give them promised protection is like violating them a second time. I am reminded of the the Zapatista's explanation. Asked why the Zapatistas continued to wear their mask, they explain; "It is that we are invisible to you. We wear the masks so you will see us. When you do we will remove our masks." When we see immigrants for what they are they will not have to hide. I wish you could read their faces though. You would see in the children expressions from happy oblivion to dawning realization of the gravity of their situation. Only in the mother's face would you see the full weight of desperation. They were picked up earlier that day while walking in Tucson and rapidly deported. She hadn't yet been able to contact her husband to tell him they were no longer in the same country as him and could not come back. When, if ever, will the children see their father again?
Picturesque? Imagine her moving at night with her four children through this landscape (Near Arivaca). They aren't from desert, they don't know desert. Failed crossers have spoken to me at length about the fear of snakes and thorns and scorpions. The pain of their damaged feet. The fear of infection of the inevitable wounds. The dwindling of their two gallons of lugged water, sometimes saving their urine to drink. The worry about falling behind, of being deserted. The doubts about the coyote. The uncertainty about making deadlines with those committed to pick them up somewhere out there. And finally the sense of personal failure when the migra arrive and command you to lay on the ground..... "Others made it. They came back with the pickup truck to turn into income or the home that relatives built for them and family with the money they remitted. Why did I fail?"
This route had become primary after beefed up efforts to stop undocumented immigrants from coming through porous ports of entry.
FACT: putting together government sources from the US And Mexico, the number who died crossing between 1994 and 2009: 5,6075
Question: If you came across one of the Jugs of water left by the No More Deaths group6 to save immigrant lives would you poke holes in it like border vigilantes and some immigration officers?
left: On the Mexican side, the dusty road towards Sonoran Sasabe, reputed to be controlled by smugglers of humans and drugs Documented as the base of cartel outposts which charge a heavy toll to migrants being trucked to the border to begin their crossing. Beyond that it's 89 kilometers to Altar.
right: The appropriately named Super Coyote convenience store which is a last chance to buy provisions as you come very close to the US border.
"Miguel" from Veracruz
Looking into the US from the northern part of Mexican Nogales
Twin border cities like the two Nogales and Loredo/Nuevo Laredo were once closely linked and people across the border were almost like neighbors and could pass casually back and forth. (For Nogales, this changed in 19186) In the upper right photo we can see how a kid on the Mexican side could still glimpse through to the other side and vice versa. The space is too narrow for him to crawl through, but he could trade treasures with a kid on the American side.
The Mexicans use the wall as a gallery of committed and protest art. The crosses on the wall in the center of Mexican Nogales serve as a memorial to some of the thousands who have died crossing into the United States, through dehydration or exposure in the desert, drowning in the Rio Bravo (Riio Grande) and more.
The metal sculptures are part of "Paseo de Humanidad", an installation by TALLER YONKE artists, Guadalupe Serran and Alberto Morackis (the latter now deceased). It has echoes of Frida Kahlo's "Self Portrait at the Borderline between Mexico and the USA". There the emphasis is on the organic, elemental and indigenous nature of Mexican culture compared to the industrial and modernist urban nature of US culture. Here the context is immigration, and we see Mexicans on their side moving towards La Línea (the border) to cross, or heading back, burdened by the fruits of their time in the US. Those heading towards the US carry little beyond their internalized symbols such as corn (out of which the gods made men). One has a skull like a Day of the Dead sugar candy. One carries a weaving made on an indigenous back strap loom.
Those returning carry the weight of their immigrant experience. Two of them carry a body wrapped in a shroud. (It is very common that Mexican immigrants who have lived a major part of their lives in the US, supporting their families with remissions, stipulate that on their death their bodies be returned to Mexico for burial in the village of their origins.) Another returning figure has the head of the Statue of Liberty and a torso, arms and legs which are full of bombs. The last in line is burdened down with an automatic washing machine, bringing US "labor saving" inventiveness home.
This wall has now been replaced by an even higher and colder looking wall upon which Mexicans are prohibited from expressing themselves..
Americans, who celebrate Halloween with spooks and goblins, are ofter discomfited by the Mexican festivity of death. Both are rooted in our having to deal with the temporariness of our existence. During the past years in the US those acting in our name have carried out a culture of death, both literally and in the reduction of human beings to integers that have no spirit of love and creativity in them that calls out to be respected. This has been especially true in our treatment of undocumented immigrants and Black citizens. Lets hope we still can change.
Transcriptions of statements by two immigrants at the Welcome Center who had just been transported
(I decided not to make available the short documentary in which they appear because they may have returned)
As he spoke, "Miguel" demonstrated how the migra grabbed him, shoved him to the ground and pushed with a foot to hold him down.
We immigrate illegally in order to work
and we don't get involved in war, in drugs,
in matters for the police.
In none of this, Mr. President or Mrs. Hilary.
What we want is that our brothers from Immigration
don't treat us like animals.
We were in Tucson where they took us.
Then out came the Immigration
and we didn't run or anything.
I said to my brothers "Let's not run"
because we're already caught.
So what we did was remain calm.
The migra came and grabbed us here
and pushed us to the ground.
Once we were thrown to the ground,
they placed our hands here,
and put on us this part of the left leg
and here they pushed us down.
Here we remained thrown to the ground
like animals.
Then what is going on?
Almost an hour thrown there on the ground,
treated like animals. What is happening?
What could we do? We're not animals.
There's no reason to treat us this way.
"Orlando" from the Lacondon Jungle
of Chiapas
We left Chiapas because now there is no work
and there's no way to travel because there in Chiapas,
remember where we live,
we live in the jungle
neither highways nor dirt tracks.
We are the most marginalized zone in Chiapas.
That's why many of us leave
and come to the United States.
You see, that's why I object strongly
with the way they treat me now in the United States.
Because now I saw their treatment of me is nasty.
Immigration treated us badly because
some went for evil ends.
I didn't defend them.
And... it's not appropriate for us,
because none of us are delinquent
and we say, because in Chiapas
there are many Americans, who, if we see them,
we treat them with care.
We like them. We don't want them
to ask permission to pass when they
spend time in our land.
And we come struggling to enter the U.S.,
and they tie our hands and our feet.
This is what we don't like.
It's not appropriate for us because there
we don't treat the Americans poorly.
We like them more because they visit our zone.
And we who don't do wrong to those who have come
and it is they who treat us badly,
And the migra even more so.
We have to spend a lot of money
to get to the border.
But now I see that all is lost
when we don't do anything, because now
we are returning to Chiapas because we couldn't cross
and they deported us,
and according to what they said,
if we come back to enter,
the higher the penalty for us.
This frightens us because we have families.
We can't allow ourselves to be abandoned in the streets.
Notes and some external links
Having heard "Miguel" refer to the Immigration authorities that arrested them as "Brothers", I asked him if he was a predicador, a preacher. He said he was.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5049707/ Why Border Enforcement Backfired , Massey, Durand and Pren
Well researched data is available on the Pew Research Center's site for 2009 see, https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2009/04/15/mexican-immigrants-in-the-united-states-2008/
2. Direct documentation of this indiscriminate targeting and family separation can be seen in the first episode of the Netflix documentary series "Immigration Nation".
3. pg. 28, Children of the Land: A Memoir by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
4. Though I heeded the warning not to try to photograph in Altar, others, younger and more daring, have done so. See photos by Julián Cardona at https://lannan.org/art/artist/julian-cardona
also photos by David Rotchkind https://pulitzercenter.org/projects/north-america/altar-sonora-business-smuggling
5. I got this figure by adding those supplied by the Border Patrol for the Southwest Sector and supplementary reports by the Mexican consulates. It is without a doubt a low estimate. Many
bodies simply are not found or are left to decay in the desert. The Border Patrol's figures do not include the Eastern part of the border where, for instance, people drown trying to cross the
Rio Bravo/Rio Grande. Some sources of information about deaths and activism to stop them: No More Deaths immigrant aid organization: https://nomoredeaths.org/en/
Border Patrol's figures: https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2019-Mar/bp-southwest-border-sector-deaths-fy1998-fy2018.pdf
This NNIR site has clear information and links to other useful sources https://www.nnirr.org/drupal/stopping-migrant-deaths
6. For a really fascinating illustrated essay on how the first fence at the border originated in Nogales during the Mexican Revolution 1918 read border historian Carlos Parra's site:
See also the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ambos_Nogales
Another photo essay by Carlos Parra explores the YONKE wall installation "Paseo de HUmanidad":
http://www.nomadicborder.com/photo-essays/border-art-border-dynamics-and-paseo-de-la-humanidad
Parra has a wealth of other material about the border available from these sites.
"Miguel from the State of Veracruz"
All photos and text copyrighted by Bill Jungels. All rights reserved. Use contact page to request permissions.
© 2020 Bill Jungels