I wanted to see some
exotic scenery and examine drug smuggling routes at the same time.
To accomplish this, I took the California/Mexico border tour
sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies the first week in
March. There were 14 of us, including four staff members from the
Center, which is based in DC. Part of the tour included two days in
Tijuana, which caused some apprehension in the minds of a few on the
tour. Of course it didn’t help when the Center emailed everyone a
copy of the U.S. Department of State “Mexico Travel Warning” which
casually mentioned that “Mexico suffered an estimated 105, 682
kidnappings in 2012” plus stating that the number of U.S. citizens
murdered in Mexico was 81 in 2012. But never fear, 14 of us went
into Tijuana and 14 came out.
This was not my first
border tour with the Center. In February of 2012, I did a similar
trip along most of the Arizona/Mexico border and the following year
an excursion along a good chunk of the
southwest Texas/Mexico border down to Brownsville at the
southern tip. I found myself constantly making comparisons about the
areas and people we met during the three tours. For example the
length of the border with Mexico varied widely among the three:
Texas at 1240 miles, Arizona was 372 miles and California at 140.
Starting off the tour in San Diego, we learned that the city had a
15 mile border with Tijuana and two major border crossings. Almost
300,000 people crossed over each day; supposedly this is the busiest
border crossing in the world. Many days a person who works in
Mexico, but lives in the USA, faces a 2-3 hour wait at a crossing to
get back home after work! One major issue San Diego has with Mexico
is over the Tijuana River which flows for about 120 miles then
empties into the Pacific. It’s one of the most polluted rivers in
the world with raw sewage emptied into it all along its
length.
Unfortunately the last
five miles of this waterway flows through California where it
empties into the Pacific Ocean at the southern end of Imperial
Beach. The United States has built a sewage treatment plant, which
helps somewhat, but efforts to make Mexico build a similar facility
have failed.
As for drug smuggling
tunnels, one discovered a few years ago was so big a person six feet
tall could walk through it! The smuggling tunnels that exit in San
Diego many times are inside warehouses. The cartel rents space in a
San Diego warehouse near the border then tunnels from Mexico into a
room they’ve rented from the warehouse owner. Since many sections
are partitioned off from the others in the bigger warehouses,
hundreds of people could be working in this facility and have no
inkling of illegal activities!
A visit was paid to
infamous
Smugglers’ Gulch, which now features a lengthy border fence.
Officials at the site told us, at times in the past, as many as a
thousand illegals a day streamed over the border in this area. The
fences there now consist of vertical iron rods/bars 15-18 feet high
a few inches apart that go on for miles. A few, like the fence
directly across from a notoriously crime ridden section of Tijuana,
has razor wire on top. Border agents said the fences stop most of
the illegal crossings, but there’s always some who can find ways
over the top, as a pile of confiscated hook ladders near the fence
attest. More than one enforcement officer (on all three of my border
tours) has told me that nobody can accurately state how many
illegals successfully cross over – either daily or yearly.
The comment reminded me
of my Texas border tour when I was on the banks of a relatively
narrow, shallow Rio Grande River where you could see hundreds of
feet down each bank with no barriers whatsoever. How many slipped
across easily at night? Guesswork at best; anyone who says they have
precise figures is blowing smoke. The one thing they do know is that
the crossings have decreased substantially over the last 2-3 years.
Said one person I conversed with: “Illegals are still coming across,
there are just less of them.” Three factors explain the decrease:
The infrastructure has improved to stop movement namely the fences),
there’s been increased use of camera/watch towers, helicopters, etc.
and a hike in the number of border patrol personnel. For example,
one sector we visited near the Arizona border had 1200 border patrol
agents compared to 300 a decade ago.
The two-day trip to
Tijuana was eye opening. Here you have a third world city of 1.3
million people bordering a US city with 1.4 million, the biggest
disparity of wealth of any two cities side by side in the world. We
felt no danger traveling around and in fact ended up in the
beach resort of Rosarito about ten miles south of Tijuana. Some
Californians call the area the Baja Malibu. Many Americans own beach
homes here. The Tijuana Marriott (sounds like an oxymoron) was our
home for one night on the trip. It was a carbon copy of an American
Marriott with excellent service.
We made a 30 mile drive
east to Tecate. This trip through the mountains offered some views
of a pretty barren landscape. Border fences went up and down these
small mountains continuously; it was like looking at the fence
version of the Great Wall of China. A tour was taken of the
Tecate Brewery and, of course, everyone ended up drinking
a sample of their product.
While in Tijuana, a
visit was paid to
La
Casa del Migrante, which is one of the charities in Mexico
providing shelter and orientation to those caught at the border and
deported back into Mexico. The shelter is run by a Scalabrini
priest, Fr. Patrick Murphy, who grew up in New York. Father said his
last mission post before Tijuana was in Kansas City. One day he
received a call from a Superior that he was being transferred to
sunny Tijuana, leaving the mid-West, which was then in the grip of a
brutal cold wave. “God works in strange ways,” said a smiling Fr.
Murphy. The shelter accommodates up to 140 males at any one time.
Another shelter, on the same street, takes in women.
Most of the
money to run the shelter comes from donations of all kinds. The day
we were there, a huge shipment of donated onions was being processed
in the kitchen. Anyone admitted to La Casa was there, on average,
about two weeks. During that time they’re offered all sorts of
counseling on occupations, personal problems, future prospects, etc.
I asked Fr. Murphy if any of the deportees still insisted on making
another try across the border. “At first, almost all of them do. But
after some counseling, most of them realize it’s more practical to
return to their homes.”
Near the end of the
tour, a visit was paid to El Centro, California in the heart of
Imperial Valley. This enormous farming area was made famous by the
labor struggles of Cesar Chavez. However if it weren’t for the All
American Canal connected to the Colorado River, this area would be a
wasteland.
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Chip Faulkner |
