Border Jumpers Leave Their Imprint on a Besieged Town

Each day, the runners tumble out of holes cut in the 15-foot-high steel fence in front of Noemi Parra’s home on the U.S. side of the border. The illegal immigrants race through her front yard, duck under the clothesline and hurdle her neighbors’ bushes before disappearing.

When the Border Patrol is nearby, immigrants shake the doorknobs on her house, plead for help and sometimes try to burst inside uninvited.

“In the beginning I was scared. Now I’m used to being locked inside my house,” said Parra as she watched a group of men sawing noisily through the steel fence across the street.

Parra’s neighborhood, which stretches three blocks deep along the border, is one of the most popular spots in Calexico for illegal immigrants to cross. Within seconds, a runner can melt into America.

Unlike other border cities that are separated by canyons or rivers, Calexico and Mexicali form a contiguous sprawl, only briefly divided by the six-mile border barrier.

Calexico, known as the Gateway to Mexico, is trapped in the middle of an unusual drama as federal agents struggle to prevent the Imperial Valley city 120 miles east of San Diego from becoming a safe zone for illegal immigrants.

Increased border security in California -- stadium lighting, surveillance cameras and more agents -- has pushed many illegal immigration routes east to Arizona. In Calexico the number of fence jumpers has diminished in recent years. But the border remains porous, the streets chaotic.

Most residents lock their doors. Others in the city of 27,000 residents -- 95% of them Latino -- show compassion by offering water or food. And some, hearing the desperate knocks, have hidden immigrants in closets and back bedrooms. Still others have discovered a lucrative business in providing sanctuary.

“Residents are caught ... between compassion and coercion,” said Mario Lacuesta, a supervisory Border Patrol agent. “We wish we had more cooperation ... but we understand that some people, because of the retaliation factor, don’t contribute.”

The effort can seem futile at times: A recent police meeting with residents to discuss the problem of illegal immigrants running across yards was interrupted by an immigrant running across the yard.

One 1st Street homeowner calls the pursuits “the never-ending story.”

“The properties here get destroyed,” said the resident who refused to give his name. “The immigrants cave in our roofs. They climb our trees. If you don’t lock your car, they get in your car. You don’t need to get a movie because at night, life here is a movie.”

Human smugglers -- who offer residents up to $300 to harbor illegal immigrants -- have changed some attitudes. Because of their fear and disgust over the smugglers’ profiteering, some residents who were once sympathetic now point agents to hiding places.

And many who might have helped immigrants now turn them away. If smugglers learn that a person has an open-door policy, residents say the house gets mapped on escape routes.

“Some people feel sorry for them and try to help,” said Maria S. Mendez, who, like some residents, tells of finding an illegal immigrant hiding in her living room. “But you never finish. If you help them, they come back.”

The agents, peering through binoculars, keep watch day and night. Parked in SUVs or roaming on bicycles, they are stationed every 100 yards or so along the border. It can be boring work -- sitting hour after hour in the searing sun -- but a footrace can start at any moment. Last year, 40,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended along the 37-mile border from Calexico to Arizona.

The smugglers, yelling taunts and threats through the fence, are defiant. Lacuesta said one asked for a little respect. He said, “I don’t hate you: you’ve got a job to do. But so do I.”

For years, Calexico and Mexicali seemed like one city. The chain-link fence between the two was so flimsy that people would pull it aside and walk into the United States. Agents were often nowhere to be seen, and immigrants could easily cross the border and hop on buses or take taxis north out of the city.

But with the erection of the steel fence, and bolstered security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, illegal crossings became more difficult. Though the number of crossings decreased, activity surged in the area, and finding an immediate hiding place became key.

The immigrant paths into Calexico are marked by broken fences, snapped tree branches and trampled bushes. Border jumpers open backyard gates and slip into barbecues and quinceanera parties. Some conceal themselves in green trash bags. Others run through elementary school playgrounds. An agent once found two men in the girls’ restroom of the Calexico Adventist Mission Academy.

The pursuits can also turn deadly: One woman was found dead last year in a trash can outside the home of Alejandrina Larranaga. Her granddaughter lifted the lid after hearing the pleas of a man yelling through the fence from the Mexican side. He said he hadn’t seen the woman leave her hiding place.

The girl tapped on the woman, but she didn’t move. Authorities believe she’d been so fearful of capture that she suffocated from the heat.

Among the numerous entry routes for illegal immigrants along a four-mile stretch of Calexico’s border with Mexicali, a favored one starts across the street from Carmen Lazo’s stucco house on 1st Street. Here, young men scale the barrier and slide down the posts like firefighters in a station house. Others use battery-operated saws and cut through the steel-post fence in minutes. Through the holes come fleet-footed young men, stooped grandparents, women and children.

The immigrants know the way: After crossing 1st Street, they slip through Lazo’s narrow side yard. They cross the alley where 11-year-old Jonathan Parra plays kickball. At the yellow townhouse rented by the Alvarez family, they run across the dirt-patch backyard to a concrete walkway to 2nd Street.

The route -- less than a football field long -- is clear of obstacles. Every gate has been torn off its hinges, every fence has had its slats removed. Once the immigrants get to 2nd Street, they can stroll downtown and blend in with shoppers or escape in a getaway car.

But the passage is known to agents. They often park in the alley, waiting for people to run by. That’s when the immigrants seek cover in safe houses.

According to residents and immigrants, people are given descriptions of houses that harbor immigrants. Usually, the doors are open and they walk in without a word.

“Sometimes you have to pay, sometimes you don’t,” said one young woman, who added that she has often used safe houses when crossing the border.

Every neighborhood near the border has suspected safe houses. The owner of one, a grandmother, smiled when asked whether she harbored immigrants. No, she said, but others do.

“A lot of people do it because they need the money. Some are drug addicts. They’ll take $100 or $150,” she said.

Agents try to catch immigrants before they run through a front door. But if an immigrant gets inside, a search warrant is needed. The process takes hours, and agents say they often don’t have the manpower.

Police and Border Patrol agents say most people refuse to help. They also say some residents, overcoming their fear, call when they hear footsteps on their roof or see people running through yards.

Parra, the 1st Street resident, now waters down her dirt front yard so agents can track immigrants’ muddy footprints.

But some residents help only to a certain extent. Lazo, a mother of five who lives next door to Parra, has refused offers of $300 to harbor immigrants. But she won’t alert agents when immigrants pass her yard.

“Pobrecitos” -- the poor immigrants, Lazo said. “It’s so hard for them to cross.”