Hunt for Better Life Leads Aliens to ‘Season of Death’

The season of death has returned to the desert, and its arrival this year was described early this month by the Yuma County Sheriff’s Department in language as dry as the land itself:

Ruperto Ramirez was found deceased in the desert south of Dateland, Arizona. Victim died from exposure to the elements while crossing into the United States from Mexico.

With that, Ramirez, who had entered the United States with two other Mexican nationals in search of the greater rewards of working in America, was documented as the 47th illegal alien to die in one hellish stretch of desert in southwest Arizona since 1982, the 47th to lose a life while searching for a better one.

Since then, three others have died, to make the total 50.

And those are only the ones that have been found.

There are, most certainly, more.

“Undoubtedly,” says the Border Patrol.

“They start across with very little water, two or maybe one gallon,” says Ramon Higuera Cota, who, at 51, has trekked the Lechuguilla Desert many times. “You need four or five gallons.”

Then he adds: “You always risk your life when you go across the desert. As soon as you cross that fence (marking the border), you are resolving to make it or die. It’s like going into combat.”

Now, with record numbers of migrants streaming from the near economic chaos of Mexico into the United States, the U.S. Border Patrol in Yuma has formed a special “Desert Area Rescue Team,” or DART, to aid in the search this summer for illegal immigrants reported to be in danger in the desert.

Even as they searched for Ramirez on June 2, the team accidentally found and rescued another illegal alien who was in the final stages of dehydration and near death.

And the problem is not just confined to the desert here. The Yuma County sheriff’s office has also recovered remains of two suspected illegal aliens north of Yuma and 13 who have drowned in the Colorado River and its irrigation canals while attempting to enter the United States since 1982, the earliest year for which records are available.

Increased Problem Expected

“What we’re concerned about is the numbers--we’re going to have an increased problem this year,” says Dale W. Cozart, chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol in Yuma, citing record apprehensions of illegal aliens along 118 miles of border in southwest Arizona and southeast California. March saw a monthly record 10,000-plus apprehensions in the Yuma sector, April saw a 25% increase in apprehensions over April of 1985, and April 7 saw a record one-day catch of 632 illegal aliens--an average of 26 apprehensions every hour.

While the Border Patrol has always tried to help aliens in trouble in the desert, Cozart says, “with these vast numbers, we might get two or three groups of people in trouble, and the DART is to augment that help.”

Of the Lechuguilla Desert area here, Cozart says: “It’s unique. A large number of people have traditionally entered through one of the largest, harshest, most waterless areas on the southern border of the United States. There are other harsh areas, but we have this large number of people who traditionally come here.”

The Vast Whitewing Ranch

And many of them traditionally work at the vast Whitewing Ranch here in Dateland, 10,000 acres of citrus and grape crops whose harvest hinges on Mexican laborers. The Arizona Farmworkers Union has charged publicly and in affidavits from workers given to federal investigators that the ranch illegally recruits workers in Mexico and lures them into crossing the desert with the promise of jobs.

Employing illegal aliens is not a crime but enticing them to illegally enter the country is.

The Border Patrol, Cozart says, was notified of Ramirez’s plight in the desert by the Whitewing Ranch, where Ramirez’s two companions had gone.

A federal grand jury and a Border Patrol investigation into the charges continue but have thus far produced no criminal charges.

Owned by Bank

The ranch is owned by Arizona’s powerful Valley National Bank in Phoenix, the biggest bank in the Rocky Mountain region and the 23rd largest bank in the country. It acquired the Whitewing Ranch, and the longstanding practice of employing illegal aliens, in a 1983 foreclosure action. After the foreclosure, it hired the ranch’s former management to continue running it. “The bank inherited the problem,” says Don Devereux, a spokesman for the farm workers union.

Asked to respond to the allegations made by the union, a spokesman for the bank refused to comment. After an internal audit last fall, the bank said in its report on the audit that the allegations are “untrue and unfounded,” but it acknowledged to reporters at the time that it did not interview the workers who made the charges.

“The foreman would tell me (at the end of a harvest) to bring two, three, however many (workers) with me (next time) and I will have a job here and the workers will have a job,” says Ramon Higuera Cota. He was interviewed at the Whitewing Ranch shortly after he had crossed the desert in hopes of harvesting grapes. “That’s why I always brought one or two. They always gave jobs to all the people I brought. I always bring two people. But this year, I did not bring anyone. Everybody was already here.”

Not Yet Hired

And he had not yet been hired.

In affidavits obtained by the farm workers union and turned over to the federal prosecutor who is leading the grand jury investigation, other workers have alleged that ranch foremen have recruited workers in a park across the border in San Luis Rio Colorado.

“The problem is basically low wages, no jobs and large families in Mexico,” says Lupe Sanchez, the executive director of the Arizona Farmworkers Union. “That (the desert) is the only way they can get across, so it’s the only way to work.”

Sanchez says the union, whose members are mostly Mexican nationals, is so concerned over the desert deaths that it has dropped its normal opposition to “guest worker” programs and has urged the Whitewing Ranch to seek federal approval for the legal, temporary importation of citrus and grape pickers from Mexico. “It’s a very oppressive program because it gives total power to the employer,” says Sanchez, “but it’s the only way (to stop the deaths). Within one or two seasons, it would stop completely.”

Women and Children Died

The union first learned of the desert deaths a year ago after a 21-year-old woman from El Salvador, her two sons, 4 and 5 years old, and another woman, all died while crossing the desert with the mother’s husband to pick grapes at the Whitewing Ranch, according to the Yuma County Sheriff’s Department. The guide who led them was taken into custody at the Whitewing Ranch and charged with smuggling aliens into the country. He has since been convicted of violating immigration laws.

But sheriff’s deputies maintaining order at a strike called by the AFW at the nearby Red Mountain Farm told union leaders the Salvadorans were not the first to have died in the desert, an inhospitable obstacle course stretching for 50 miles or so from the border to Interstate 8. Largely featureless to the untrained eye, its chief hallmark is a sandy spine of dunes six miles wide.

The journey usually begins in the small Mexican town of El Sahuaro, a brief bus ride out Highway 2 from San Luis Rio Colorado. Passing through Big Gap or Little Gap, they set sight on Mohawk Peak and begin walking the Mohawk Valley, the sand dunes between them and the peak, which gives way to Interstate 8 and a rest area at Milepost 56 with drinking water.

Chronicle the End

The Yuma County sheriff’s records chronicle the end for many who are found:

--”(A witness) was with a party of six that crossed the desert toward Whitewing Ranch, he said that they got lost. The deceased was left behind because he just could not go any more. He was overweight so they left him there, where the Border Patrol found him.”

--”Border Patrol pilot reported that an alien was going north on Papago Road and that the subject would fall to the ground and crawl, walk and crawl. Ground Patrol arrived at the point where the subject was, that subject was Emilio Vasquez, nephew of the deceased person. He said that Rosendo Vasquez died about 3 p.m.”

--”(A Border Patrol) pilot had located a deceased person in the desert, southeast of the sand dunes. . . . The body appeared to have been in the desert four to five weeks. An employee came from the Whitewing Ranch with (the dead man’s) name and employee number. They advised me that he was an illegal alien and that he (had first) started working (at the ranch in) December of 1984.”

Anonymous Endings

Others who have been claimed by the desert died more anonymously, carried by the sheriff’s office only as “skull,” “body,” “jawbone plus,” or “remains.”

“For the privilege of a job,” says Devereux of the farm workers union. “To pay these kinds of dues to work. . . . If the ranch had applied for (guest worker) permits, they could have brought them in by bus.”

Cozart of the Border Patrol says that much of the migration across the desert is indeed aimed at the Whitewing and two other ranches nearby. “A great amount (of migration) is local,” he says. “It doesn’t mean a lot aren’t getting money here to go to Phoenix or Los Angeles. But there are great numbers that come locally. . . . During citrus season, all of the migration to the area is to Whitewing.

“A guest worker program is going to alleviate the situation,” he says. “It’s not going to solve it. But it might help in terms of the numbers coming in.”

But, adds the head of the Desert Area Rescue Team, John Elton: “There’d still be that few that still had hope.”