Border Crackdown Fuels Smugglers' Boom

The 42-year-old father of three from Mexico's Veracruz state didn't bother hiring a smuggler in 2001 when he and a friend hiked two days across the border near Naco, Ariz., eventually settling in North Carolina to make $6 an hour as a carpenter.

Sanchez eventually returned home and in May set off again for North Carolina. At the same border he crossed without help before, he paused _ spooked by the deaths of hundreds of migrants who perish each year in the desert and convinced that heightened enforcement would force him along obscure routes.

"I'd get lost if I tried alone, left to die in the desert," Sanchez said.

So Sanchez agreed to pay a smuggler $1,500 to get him to Phoenix _ like many, he would pay nothing unless he crossed successfully.

Over a two-week span he tried to cross four times in groups of about 20 people, but the Border Patrol nabbed him each time. After being dumped back into Mexico, Sanchez would return to the bustling border boomtown of Altar, a 90-minute drive from the Arizona state line. Mexicans who are arrested are typically freed within 24 hours, after a quick stop at jail for fingerprints. (Sanchez eventually got across. In a later phone interview from Durham, N.C., where he landed a $10-an-hour carpentry job, he said he paid $1,800 to a smuggler to be guided across the Rio Grande near Laredo, Texas, and be shuttled to Chicago by van and bus.)

Like an army in the field, smuggling networks require layers of support. Entrepreneurs have remade Altar, where dozens of boarding houses have sprouted in recent years and shuttle vans line the central square, where migrants gather before they cross. Taco stands share space with a Red Cross trailer that treats migrants for blisters, parasites and swollen fingers.

Francisco Garcia, a former Altar mayor who now runs a migrant shelter, has tallied 14 hotels, 80 boarding houses and 120 taxis _ for a community of about 16,000 permanent residents.

"You would think this was a tourist spot but we have nothing _ no architecture, no beaches to show off," said Garcia, who describes the town as "the waiting room for migrants."

An estimated 3,500 people pass through every day from January to April, the peak crossing season _ before summer, after a home visit for Christmas. Vans line the square, cramming up to 30 people inside and charging the equivalent of $30 a person for a ride to the border.

Tijuana's red-light district offers another glimpse of the increasingly sophisticated smuggling trade.

Before a crackdown in the mid-'90s, illegal immigrants famously massed along an open border and sprinted into the night.

As security increased, smugglers worked solo, collecting $300 tips to guide immigrants on a short walk into San Diego, where the customers would hop a trolley or be collected by a friend or relative. Then came two steel mesh fences, along with more Border Patrol agents, stadium lighting and motion sensors.

Now, the men who worked as solo smugglers a decade ago are minions in a larger scheme. They get paid about $100 to recruit migrants on Tijuana's streets for organizations that charge $1,600 to sneak people through the mountains near Tecate, 35 miles east of San Diego. Some migrants pay $2,500 to hide inside a car trunk.

"Times have changed _ it's a lot more difficult to get across, there are a lot more problems, and there's a lot more walking," said Juan Torres, 45, a smuggler who leads immigrants through the mountains. His cut is about $300 from the usual $1,600 fee. Drivers and people who run safehouses in the United States also get a cut.

Migrants linger inside dingy Tijuana hotels, waiting for a cab or bus ride before sunset to begin a trek that can last up to four days. A driver meets them on the U.S. side and speeds them to a drop house, sometimes with deadly consequences as they try to evade Border Patrol highway checkpoints.

One man who survived a July 2005 crash that killed five people _ including the man's pregnant wife, 13-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter _ said he had agreed to pay $1,500 a person to get his family from Tijuana to Los Angeles.

Business is so good that some Border Patrol agents are taking a cut. In one of several recent convictions, two supervisory agents in southeastern California admitted taking nearly $180,000 in bribes to release immigrant smugglers and illegal immigrants from federal custody.

Smugglers _ often called "coyotes" _ have flourished for decades and witnessed boom times before. Demand grew after a temporary worker program with Mexico ended in 1965 and again after the 1990s crackdown in San Diego and El Paso, Texas.

Smuggling entered a new growth phase after 2000 as the Border Patrol shifted agents to Arizona. The Border Patrol's Arizona stations accounted for half of the agency's 1.2 million arrests along the Mexican border in 2005, up from only 8 percent of 1.2 million arrests in 1992.

U.S. officials say they make no systematic effort to track how many of the people they arrest hired smugglers. Customs and Border Protection has not responded to a Freedom of Information Act that the AP submitted in April to disclose what information it collects in the Border Patrol's database of apprehensions.

Bulmaro Arizmendez del Carpio, 22, was one of those caught by the Border Patrol. He decided to save the $1,600 fee and forsake a guide, then walked three days in triple-digit temperatures in early June before being arrested with 17 others outside Phoenix. After the first day he ran out of water and twice had to fill jugs with dirty water from cow tanks. His feet were covered with blisters.

Back at a bus station in Mexico, where he was deported, Arizmendez said, "If we had hired a smuggler it would have been different."

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Associated Press researcher John Parsons contributed to this report.