Border Crackdown Fuels Smugglers' Boom

SAN DIEGO -- Toughened U.S. border enforcement has prompted substantially more illegal immigrants to hire smugglers to help them cross over from Mexico _ and competition among sophisticated criminal networks for customers has spawned violence and sometimes death.

The evidence is abundant in border boomtowns, where human traffickers rustle together flocks of immigrants for the journey north. Further evidence comes from tens of thousands of interviews of illegal border crossers in surveys by a Mexican government-funded research institution, which were analyzed by The Associated Press.

"What was once a discretionary expense has now become a necessity," said Jorge Santibanez, who oversaw the surveys while president of Tijuana-based El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

AP's examination of the sweeping data found the use of smugglers on the rise among those surveyed. The interviewees were border crossers who returned to Mexico within three years or were caught and kicked out by the Border Patrol.

About half of those surveyed in 2005 said they had hired a smuggler. That compared to about 1 in 3 in 2004 and just 1 in 6 in 2000.

The actual percentage of illegal immigrants who hire smugglers may be even higher than what the AP analysis found. That's because people may hesitate to admit they hired someone to commit a crime. And the survey excludes those who made it across and remain in the United States _ a successful crossing often depends on the expertise of a hired guide.

"You're less likely to get caught if you're using a smuggler," said David Spener, an immigration expert at Trinity University in San Antonio.

While smugglers have spirited people into the United States since Congress first limited immigration in the 1880s, the current spike coincides with heightened border security following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

In this market, where customers pay several times what they did a decade ago, increasingly brazen organizations compete for business.

While most smugglers walk their customers several nights across the deserts that dominate the frontier's nearly 2,000 miles, others take frightening risks.

Inspectors at a San Diego crossing found a 14-year-old girl strapped under the metal bars of a car seat, the driver sitting atop her, and occasionally find children inside compartments that once served as the gas tanks.

Smugglers in Arizona have hijacked loads of customers from rivals _ in one case, resulting in a highway shootout that killed four people in 2003. In Tijuana, across from heavily fortified San Diego and the world's busiest border crossing, three bullet-ridden bodies were found in May, covered with roasted chickens. Spanish slang for a smuggler includes "pollero," literally a poultry handler.