An expert says migrant smugglers are indispensable as a result of the border crackdown.

DANIEL GONZÁLEZ and SERGIO BUSTOS
The Arizona Republic and Gannett News Service

In September, Pedro, a 38-year-old mechanic from Guaymas, Son., crossed the border illegally for the first time.
He did it with the help of a pollero - as human smugglers are known in Mexico - whom he randomly approached in the main plaza in Nogales, Son., where dozens of smugglers were standing around soliciting customers.

"You're talking to a pollero, ese. I can help you across, pal," Pedro recalled the smuggler telling him.

Pedro put his trust in the smuggler, even though he knew it was risky.

The Tucson Citizen's policy normally is not to use unnamed sources. However, to allow readers to understand both sides of this story, editors decided to quote illegal immigrants without using their full names.

Violence associated with the human-smuggling trade has become rampant in Arizona, underscored by the discovery Sunday of three undocumented immigrants shot execution-style in the West Valley desert in the Phoenix area and the Nov. 4 shootout along Interstate 10 - between smugglers and a gang that preys on smugglers - that left four immigrants dead and five immigrants wounded or injured.

While U.S. officials scorn smugglers, labeling them as unscrupulous and unsavory, tens of thousands of Mexicans like Pedro view them as saviors and heroes. They trust them to navigate past the army of agents assembled along what has become a fortified border between Mexico and the United States.

As a result, experts say, U.S. authorities will find it difficult to count on undocumented immigrants' help to arrest and prosecute smugglers despite the growing violence. Some suggest the war on smugglers may resemble the war on drugs, where new smugglers constantly emerge to fill the demand for their valuable services.

Viewed as heroes

"Migrants don't see them as the bad guy in the movie," said Victor Clark Alfaro, a leading human rights advocate in Tijuana and visiting professor at San Diego State University. "Many call them heroes because they got them and their families across the border."

"If you ask them," Clark Alfaro added, "they will say 'thanks to the pollero, I'm in the United States. Thanks to the pollero, my mother, my children, my grandfather are in the United States.'"

Pedro would agree.

He paid the pollero $1,000 to take him across the border. The smuggler fed him, took him to a hotel room in Nogales and instructed him to wait until 2 a.m. for a taxi.

At 2 a.m. sharp, he heard a knock at the door and sure enough a taxi had arrived. Pedro said the driver took him to the border, where a group of smugglers waited to lift him over the 14-foot-high fence in Nogales that divides Mexico and the United States.

Pedro said he jumped over the fence into the arms of more smugglers. They fed him again and drove him to Phoenix.

"Yes, there are bad 'coyotes,' (polleros) but there are good 'coyotes,' too," Pedro said.

Other immigrants who have crossed the border illegally echoed Pedro's comments.

"For me, they make it possible for you to achieve your dream of being able to come to the United States and work for American dollars," said Isidro, 37, an illegal immigrant from Oaxaca.

Lucrative, violent trade

Federal officials say the smuggling trade has grown much more lucrative and violent in recent years, resulting in a surge in killings, assaults and kidnappings in the Phoenix area.

Rival smuggling groups and rip-off gangs, known as bajadores, battle over migrants, who have become high-priced commodities in an escalating war.

At a news conference this month announcing the crackdown on immigrant smugglers, federal officials displayed several assault rifles seized from smugglers and asked the public to report immigrant-smuggling suspects.

Since Sept. 27, when federal officials launched Operation ICE Storm, agents have arrested 504 illegal immigrants being smuggled through the Phoenix area.

They also have prosecuted 79 people on smuggling-related charges, and seized $300,000 in smuggling proceeds and 43 weapons ranging from semiautomatic handguns to shotguns and assault rifles, said Thomas DeRouchey, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix.

"The community needs to be cognizant that here (in Arizona) we have this type of violence associated with immigrant smuggling and these people need to be dealt with judiciously," DeRouchey said. "They need to be identified, prosecuted and if they are guilty, convicted and put in prison."

But several immigrants said in interviews that they would be reluctant to report smugglers to federal authorities unless the smugglers mistreated them.

"It's not going to happen because we have family over there (in Mexico) and they are hungry, and we need the 'coyotes' to help bring them across," one immigrant said.

Incentive to be mum

Most of the immigrants interviewed, however, agreed that smugglers have become far more ruthless in recent years, and they said they especially fear the bajadores who cash in on the smuggling trade by stealing migrants from smugglers, often using brutal force.

"In the past, just some of the smugglers were cabrones but now most of them are cabrones," said Esteban, 33, an illegal immigrant from Sinaloa, using a Mexican word that loosely translated means bastard. He said he has crossed the border illegally 24 times.

Just last week, a federal grand jury indicted four suspected smugglers accused of harboring 18 illegal immigrants in two Phoenix houses. The indictment accuses the four of threatening some of the illegal immigrants with a gun, and assaulting at least one. It also accuses them of demanding phone numbers from the migrants to extort money.

Clark Alfaro said most migrants have an agreement with their polleros not to identify the smuggler if caught by the U. S. Border Patrol.

"It's like an unwritten law," he said. "Of course, if the 'coyote' assaults women or treats migrants badly, sure, they will turn them in."

Clark Alfaro said the fight against smugglers is similar to the longstanding U.S. war against drugs.

"If you arrest one, another will open for business because demand for a pollero's services far outstrips the supply," he said. "It's a lost cause because U.S. officials won't and can't shut the border entirely."

But, he said, Border Patrol officials will have to offer legal residency as an incentive for migrants to testify in court.

"That's unlikely," he said. "I don't see the Border Patrol freely offering green cards to every migrant who turns in their pollero."

Smugglers have grown more sophisticated in shuttling people across the Southwest border because the Border Patrol has fortified the border region, according to one of the nation's most prominent immigration experts, Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California-San Diego.

He points out that during the past decade the number of agents has tripled on the Southwest border and that the price migrants pay smugglers has climbed to $1,500 to $2,000, from $500 in 1993. In the early '90s, 10 percent of illegal immigrants used smugglers. Now it's 60 percent, he said.

"The Border Patrol will put all the blame on the smugglers," Cornelius said. "I'm not an apologist for smugglers. It's not a humanitarian service. It's a very lucrative business, and it's being carried out in a more and more heartless way.

"But the truth is that smugglers have been made indispensable by these operations. You cannot get across without a smuggler any longer."

Esteban, the illegal immigrant from Sinaloa, said he doesn't think smugglers will ever go away.

"Just the opposite," he said. "There are going to be more."