Cops, Coyotes and the Politics of Stupidity

Here, back in the good old days of a couple of years ago, I had the occasion to hang out with Mexican immigration cops -- the elite, sometimes notorious Beta Group. Make no mistake, Beta was a brilliant law enforcement idea: inviolable Mexican cops, safeguarding the border. But Moloch is a jealous god, and the flow of sacred gold could not be interrupted. In Sasabe, the cops weren't allowed to carry weapons. They were also decked out by the government in brilliant day-glo orange vests, so the bad guys could see them from, oh, 20 miles away.

I know that the idea of Mexican cops can send shivers down Americans' spines, but you need to know that these officers were warm, generous and professional. They agreed, for example, to take us to the open field where the immigrant vans dislodge their occupants, but only if I promised to run as fast as I could if the machine-gun boys started to drive in our direction. The cops liked me because I was born in Tijuana. They thought I could escape with my life while the narcos were busy shooting at my reporter friends.

As of 10:30 in the morning, the vans hadn't shown up yet. I asked my Beta companion where they were. "Oh, smugglers sleep late," he said. "They don't get to work till after 11." And, sure enough, after 11 o'clock, the vans began to appear.

Each one disgorged 27 to 30 people. This, in a desert devoid of anything but some adobe ruins and a tin shack where two abandoned immigrant girls who worked for the local water mafia were selling old plastic milk jugs full of hose water for 10 times the going rate. I asked my friend how many people came through this spot. "Well, I don't know what happens after six at night," he said. "But last Friday, between 11 and 5:30, we counted 137 van loads." Smugglers sleep late, but they work hard. They put in seven-day weeks, 137 van loads every day of the year.

We retreated to the police station, a cinderblock cube with overflowing garbage cans. The commander sat at his desk, looking as dapper as Andy Garcia. His men watched him watch me, and when he laughed, they laughed. When he glowered, they looked at the floor.

I told him I had never seen anything like the parade of vans in the desert.

"Nobody has," he said.

It's bigger than we realize, I said.

He replied: "Undocumented immigration is the second-largest source of income to the Mexican government. First, petroleum. Second, immigrants' remittance money. Third, tourism."

What about the narcos?

He paused. Then he smiled. When he laughed, his men laughed, too.

"Okay," he said, "illegal immigration is the third-largest source of income to Mexico."