Identification, please.
It was the Texas Rangers this time. Or Park Police. Whoever, but I was starting to notice a pattern here. A nation leery of itself becomes a police state. But a badge is a badge. America, secure and suspicious. Love it or leave it.
Yes sir. Here you go: NEWS MEDIA PRESS OFFICIAL IDENTIFICATION.
Who gave you permission to come out here? He was wearing The Glasses, you know, the one-ways, like Booda wore.
A rancher had given me permission to check out his property. Ever since the federal government built an eighteen-foot wall to the north of his spread to prevent flooding and illegal immigrants from running through town, the rancher’s Texas plot had been walled off from the rest of the United States. He’d been living in no-man’s-land, caught between Mexico and Texas. It was still technically American territory, but because the border wall was a mile north, and he was existing now in a gray land, a purgatory of the shadows.
Cops didn’t bother patrolling this forgotten, vestigial piece of America, and eventually, narco-traffickers ran the rancher off with guns. Smugglers ransacked his house. Migrant women and children from Central America now used it as a resting point, their used diapers and toiletries discarded beneath the mesquite tree. But I wasn’t telling the cop this.
Are you filming me?
Yes sir.
Stop filming, he demanded.
No sir. First Amendment. Sorry.
You’ve got one minute to get off this road.
Or what?
Or you’re subject to arrest.
On what grounds?
Trespassing.
Trespassing?
Yes sir.
A hundred thousand women and children were suddenly flooding into the United States, many of them walking up the very road we were standing on. They would immediately surrender to the American authorities, knowing that because of a loophole in the law, they couldn’t be deported. At least not the unattended children, who accounted for half the traffic. The other half? The adult women? The authorities processed them too, and seventy-two hours later, everybody had an immigration court date and a bus ticket to a city of their choice. According to Congress, more than 90 percent of them would never show up for court.
You’re going to arrest me for trespassing? An American citizen? That’s ironic, Officer.
You now have thirty seconds, sir.
More cruisers pulled up. Border Patrol. State Park police. The whole enchilada. We were only a couple months into The Americans, but one thing had become real obvious: Lots of people in this country have a gun, claiming a little piece of authority. Those who have none officially behave as thugs, jackboots, obstructionists.
But this was different. Now I had an official Law Man running me off a public road because Texas was being invaded by a horde of mamas and papooses.
The United States had spent more than a trillion dollars since 9/11 to secure its borders, and we couldn’t handle a wave of nursery school children. It was a national humiliation, and they were taking it out on the reporters.
Fifteen seconds.
I lit a cigarette. That countdown trick doesn’t even work on ten-year-olds. The ranger returned to his cruiser. I made a fake phone call. He wasn’t going to arrest us, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let us down to the Rio Grande to get a photo of some kids surrendering to authorities.
All right, guys, pack it in, I told Bob and Matt, who were relishing the attention because Matt knew it was good TV and Bob is a psycho when it comes to the Man. We’ll try the state park a couple miles upriver.
They fucking ran you out of there?
The question came from Albert Spratte, a big, salt-and-pepper buzz-cut white guy, again with the one-way glasses. Spratte was a lifelong Border Patrol agent and was so upset that a lifetime of work had devolved into chasing toddlers around that he’d agreed to meet us on his day off in muggy ninety-five-degree heat.
Man, that can’t even be legal, he said. The government just doesn’t want you to see how bad it is, what a failure this is.
I’d heard it more times than I could remember from Border Patrol agents. I’d heard it in Arizona, Washington State, California, Michigan. The border is a failure. Most of those telling me this were Latino agents, upset at the crime and drugs and the jumping ahead of those trying to gain legitimate entry into the United States. I’d heard it from a crew in Laredo, Texas, as they were inspecting a drainpipe, filled with shoes and clothes, that illegal immigrants had used to bypass the border fence.
Bro, one of the agents said then, don’t put my name on this, but if the people really knew what was going on, they’d flip the fuck out.
We were talking with Spratte in Anzalduas Park, a nice cool place located at a bend in the Rio Grande in McAllen. There were barbecue pits and shade trees, the current made slow by a dam in the river. There were also dozens of law enforcement types from every jurisdiction, since this was where TV went to get pictures of migrant hopefuls being smuggled in on Jet Skis, Spratte told me.
Jet Skis! The ingenuity of these smugglers. The ability to cope, to change with the times. Years earlier, for a newspaper story, I had attempted to sneak back into the United States with the help of a coyote, or smuggler. I’d taken a taxi out into the Mexican desert, where the meeting point was. When I walked down the ravine and parted the reeds, I found three hundred people divided into groups of fifty and one hundred, ready to embark on the very dangerous three-day journey across the unknown and inhospitable desert floor. A human cattle drive. Their eyes, reflected in the night, widened in fright at the sight of a gringo coming upon them. Now you could do it by a twenty-second sleigh ride across the Rio! ¡Que fantástico!
On the Mexican side, there was a sandy beach where women and children played. A hundred yards from them were camped about two dozen tough-looking guys with Jet Skis, trailers, pickup trucks with windows tinted black, and coolers of beer.
I stepped into the bush, blew up a rubber kayak I had brought for the trip, and slipped on a straw hat and a red-white-and-blue Speedo with “USA” stamped across the ass. A güero like myself flailing around in a ridiculous costume with a giant yellow banana had two purposes: It would get the attention of the smugglers, and it would make for good TV.
And it worked well. Too well. As I paddled around the Rio Grande, smack dab in the center of the smuggling thoroughfare, chatting with families of sunbathers, the men on the Jet Skis started buzzing me, coming close, making swells in the water. My yellow banana bobbed and weaved. I waved. One hombre on a Jet Ski let off the throttle, smiled at me, then made a throat-cutting gesture with his fingers.
What was remarkable was the lack of cooperation from the Mexican authorities. There were no police or border agents on their side. Dope and human trafficking going on in plain sight, international media in a lather, me padding around in patriotic beachwear, and not a federale in sight.
What’s more, when U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehend people coming from Mexican territory, the Mexicans will repatriate their own people but not foreign nationals from other countries. And what’s even more, when a child arrives alone on American soil, she is entitled by American law to safekeeping and due process to prevent her from being trafficked. But if she arrives with her mother, both can be deported home immediately.
U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, a sensible law-and-order Democrat from the Texas border town of Laredo, wondered why we weren’t putting the Central American families on an immediate flight home, or pushing Mexico harder to do its fair share.
TV pictures of a dozen families returning to Guatemala from America after they’d sold everything they possessed to get to the United States would do more to stop the tidal wave of humanity than anything Congress might cook up, Cuellar had told me the previous day at a hastily convened press conference in a McAllen municipal office building. True immigration reform would take a decade anyhow.
The first lady of Honduras had also attended the presser, where coffee and doughnuts were laid out for the media. The primera dama pleaded for more aid to help the poor and famished of her nation, more American-funded programs to help los niños pobres. It broke her heart to see children being held in the squalor of American detention cells. They are only looking for a better life, she said. What we need to end this calamity is money, American money. And compassion—yes, this is what is needed.
The first lady dabbed at her eyes on her plump, well-fed face, took a few questions, and left. She did not, however, bother to take any of her paisanos back home with her on the presidential jet. I stuffed the leftover doughnuts into my shoulder bag.
Why were the women and children coming now? Simple. President Obama, frustrated with a lack of action in Washington on immigration, had signed an executive order allowing people who were brought illegally to the United States by their parents before the age of sixteen to stay indefinitely. By the time news made it down to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, it was understood that Obama was granting mass amnesty to any child and parent who could get to America. That’s what the migrants were saying to me, anyway.
That’s what a sweet eleven-year-old boy named Domingo from Guatemala told me at the McAllen bus station. After three days in the overcrowded detention center, he and his mother had two tickets to Los Angeles, where they had family, and a far-off date in immigration court.
Domingo was scared, and who could blame the boy? He and his mother had been brought through Mexico by violent smugglers for $5,000. When Domingo walked too slowly for the coyotes, they would cuff his ears. When he got scared at the river and ran off, they hunted him down and beat him. Now there were cameras at the bus station, and protesters on TV.
Do you think life will be better in Los Angeles? he asked me.
Yes, I think so. They have good schools there. And nice things to eat.
It has streets that are very big, no?
Very.
I hope it is good.
It will be. You will see.
I gave the boy twenty dollars and told him not to tell his mother about it. Buy yourself some ice cream when you get to Los Angeles. Study hard and do not be one of those bad boys who grow up to be bad men. I told him to remember his mother’s sacrifice, and I welcomed him to America. Sometime in his life, I hope, he will think back on me, that unknown man who encouraged him at a hard moment in his life, and pass it along to the next boy or girl. I gave him one of the press conference doughnuts. Chocolate cream filling.
Gracias, señor.
Claro.
I headed to the cheerless Mexican consulate in McAllen. It was crowded and smelled of perspiration. The power had gone out. The elevator and air-conditioning were out of order. I was escorted up the fire stairs, seated in a glass-walled lounge, and given coffee in a china cup. I wondered how they kept it warm.
A well-dressed spokesman for the consul general came to see me. I asked him why his government wasn’t doing more to stop the flow into the United States from his country.
It is of course a very complicated question, he said. We really cannot speak about the issue at this time. It is . . . how you say? A hot-button issue. Speaking to it may only inflame passions. Are you enjoying your café?
Yes, very much, thank you. Would you like a doughnut?
An eighteen-foot concrete wall and hurricane fencing had already been built in McAllen during the Bush-era border security push. It was a bipartisan deal, in 2006. Among the notable Democrats to vote for it: Senators Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders, the socialist from the hills of Vermont. But the wall doesn’t work. To begin with, it was a mile north of the actual border—the Rio Grande—and all a woman or child had to do was make shore and touch a toe to American soil to be granted entry. Sometimes, Spratte told me, they’d sit and wait for hours for the Border Patrol to arrive so they could surrender and be fed and given water.
Every week, the Border Patrol would round up store-bought and makeshift ladders and have them taken off to the dump.
I think there’s a guy on that side who makes them, Spratte said. We used to put the ladders in the warehouse, then the warehouse got too full. Now we just throw them away.
Like I said, these coyotes were geniuses. They could work on Wall Street. I still wanted to see these smugglers in action. We left the consulate and the next day we decided to head back to Anzalduas Park to try our luck.
When we arrived, a local constable had detained three Chinese people in new, clean tracksuits who had just made shore by Jet Ski. Chinese in tracksuits! Marvel that. Bob and Matt and I parked the van behind a hedgerow and waited for a Jet Ski to make a break for the American shore. When it did, we jumped out of the van and began rolling. There were two women on the back. One was plainly pregnant. I don’t know if it was the cameras, Bob’s red-white-and-blue do-rag, or his speckled white legs in white socks, but the coyote freaked out, spun the craft around, and throttled back for Mexico, but not before giving me the finger and shouting, “Motherfucker! You’re costing me money!” It was my old pal who had buzzed my kayak and threatened to cut my throat earlier.
I smiled and waved.
Spratte came walking up out of nowhere. He was escorting yet another reporter around the park. We were all there. CNN. Breitbart. Texas Monthly. BBC. Good God, where was Field & Stream? I pointed out the coyote on the opposite side of the river. He lifted the pregnant woman in his arms as though they were newlyweds and set her back on the sand.
Why do I have to do your job, dude? I said to Spratte.
No comment, he grunted. They’ll be back once you leave.
I had no doubt about that. There is an old saying in journalism: When you think you’ve finished, knock on one more door. With a little resolve, maybe we could actually watch the pregnant woman come ashore and surrender to the Americans. A coyote flipping me off and threatening to sever my jugular is good, but seeing him act as a ferry service while U.S. agents help the woman up the slippery banks would demonstrate the point nicely.
I instructed Matt to take the east side of the bend in the river and Bob the west. I positioned myself in the middle, working as the lookout and attempting to communicate with each of them by hand signals.
The Jet Skis on the Mexican shore fired up, and the smugglers raced in a circular mania, trying to create a distraction. Suddenly, Matt started screaming, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Maybe he’d been stabbed, I didn’t know. I ran to him. He wasn’t bleeding at all, but he had found two men lying low in the tall reeds, their legs hidden in the river water. You know the border is out of control when three reporters from Detroit can find illegal immigrants hiding in the mud of a Texas backwater crawling with lawmen.
I couldn’t make out their faces in the umbra of the river trees, but I could see that one of them was smiling. A big, dopey grin, wide and toothy. It was weird. They’d been caught smuggling themselves into another country and Twinkles here was as nonchalant as a teenager shoplifting candy. He seemed happy, almost.
I handed them bottles of water.
Gracias. Gracias, señor. He gives his name as Ciro.
¿Cómo viniste? How’d you come here, Ciro?
Nadamos. We swam.
I noticed Ciro and his traveling companion were wearing flip-flops. Think of it: two middle-aged men of average physiology freestyling in Bermuda shorts and sandalwear through an international boundary buzzing with smugglers’ Jet Skis and with police boats, the tide running hard and turbid, and neither of them so much as losing his foot apparel. ¡Increíble! Estás bullshitando, amigo. You’re bullshitting me, I said.
He gave that dopey grin again and shrugged his shoulders in a “what can be done about these things?” kind of way. Then his smile fell to pieces when the constable arrived to see what we were doing.
I apologized to Ciro. Lo siento. It was not my intention to have you arrested. I’m just doing my job and they saw what was happening. I’m sure you understand?
No te preocupes, he assured me. Don’t be troubled. This is only my second time being caught. They will only send me back home over there. I will try ten more times until I make it. As I have before.
You might die, I told him.
I’ve got six children, friend.
I looked across the Rio Grande to the point on the shore where Ciro said they began their swim. There were factories there, in the background, their gleaming metallic roofs and smokestacks lighting up in the falling sun.
¿Por qué no trabajas allí? Why don’t you just get a job over there on your side?
¿Allí? He laughed. There? You cannot get work there. Those are the American factories. The maquiladoras. You have to know somebody in there to get a job. It’s all fixed. Besides, they don’t pay much. They work you and then throw you away. He broke into his smile again: No, it’s much better to try on this side, amigo.
American factories? Of course. Yes, thank you for the education, Ciro. And good luck.
NAFTA. I counted the years. Yes, NAFTA was celebrating its twentieth anniversary. And CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, was about ten years old. We were promised better wages. We were promised the flow of illegal immigration would dry up. Free trade would raise all boats. That was the promise. The reality here in the heat was that a pregnant woman from a sinking-boat nation somewhere south of here was making a mad dash for the American border on a Sea-Doo and two guys in the back of a squad car had little more than a pair of flip-flops and a half dozen mouths to feed.