Last One Over the Border, Turn Out the Lights

Some weeks ago, I heard that The Game had changed along the border. This happens from time to time. When a million people per year cross any border illegally, it must perforce take on a ritual, game-like quality. And nowhere in the world does anyone have a border game that equals our nightly affair with the Mexicans.

The basics of the border game are this: Each evening, at dusk, the opposing sides appear at the agreed locations, like kids coming to play Red Rover. The United States is represented by the Border Patrol and Mexico by the pollos , which translates literally as chickens but actually means runners.

There are two major sites for The Game, the most famous being an area known as the Soccer Field. Millions have made the run from the Soccer Field to America, disappearing into the dark canyons on the California side. A few miles to the west is a second site known as El Bordo, where the runners make their dash across the Tijuana River.

Over the years, the games have grown more sophisticated and there are nuances for each site. At El Bordo, for example, the pollos will determine strategy each night based on the configuration of the Border Patrol’s four-wheel-drive Ramchargers. Ramchargers positioned along both levees of the river means the patrol will use a trapping maneuver that night, and the pollos adjust accordingly. Other configurations have other meanings.

For decades, as we all know, the pollos have been winning this game. The score is about 3 million to zip. So every few years the patrol tries to introduce a new wrinkle that will change the equation. In the late 1970s they tried a wire fence, and last year there was the famous plan for a big ditch. Nothing doing on the ditch.

Now, the latest wrinkle: The Border Patrol has decided to illuminate the nightly games just like Dodger Stadium.

The idea is clever. In the past, cover of darkness was a major tool of the pollos . What if, the Border Patrol reasoned, we take away that advantage and bathe the wasteland of the border in light a thousand times as bright as the moon’s?

And that’s what they’ve done at El Bordo. By 7 p.m. on a winter evening, the concrete banks of the Tijuana River and the tawdry hotels on the Mexican side have been lent an unreal, radium-like glow. Stationed every hundred yards along a stretch of levee, small towers with metal halide lights pour big-time candlepower onto the playing area.

And The Game has been changed. Think of it like the three-point shot in basketball, something to mix things up a bit and keep the veterans interested.

Sitting in his patrol car on the north levee, Supervising Agent William Pink points to a group of young Mexican men making their way down the south bank.

“Now watch,” he says.

Instead of crossing at the usual spots, the men walk far downriver to the edge of the illumination, almost as if the light were pushing them. Then, somewhere in the shadows, they scramble across. Pink looks most satisfied.

“The lights don’t actually stop anyone, see?” he says. “But we’ve forced them to cross down there, rather than here, and it’s tougher down there.”

There are other subtleties. The lights, beamed directly at the young men and women, produce a temporary night blindness. For a precious minute or two after they hit the darkness, the runners are operating essentially without vision. And that’s where the Border Patrol waits. Red Rover, Red Rover, send Carlos right over. . . .

Of course, when Carlos is captured by the patrol, not much happens. He’s put on a bus back to Tijuana and a week later will make the run again. After all, this is The Game and not to be taken too seriously. Over time, the pollos will develop counterstrategies to deal with the lights and a new equilibrium will be achieved.

As we discuss these possibilities, Pink spots four men on the American side, running fast. Somehow they have circled around the lights and arrived at the easy route to the north. They’re exactly where they’re not supposed to be. We watch them slip into a yard filled with abandoned trucks, darting among the shadows as quick as fish.

Pink shrugs. Maybe they are among the winners tonight. Maybe they’ve discovered a weak point in the lights. When a million people per year play this game, you can’t worry about each and every pollo.

But it worries Pink, if only a little. Tonight he’ll think about those men, and maybe tomorrow the Patrol will make some small changes. Because tomorrow night, same time and same place, The Game starts again.