The Lethal Path to the North : Popular Alien Route Crosses, Crisscrosses Perilous Freeways

Shortly after sunrise, the word went out-- la migra was changing shifts--and groups of the United States’ newest residents emerged from brush, tunnels, underpasses and dozens of other hiding places where they had been ensconced through much of the chilly night and took their place on the freeway near the San Diego-Mexico border.

Within moments, scores of pedestrians had dashed across the traffic and were marching at a brisk pace down the median of Interstate 5, giving the narrow center of the busy roadway the feel of a bustling shopping boulevard.

Startled motorists hit the brakes, slowed into adjoining lanes and honked their horns, but new arrivals on foot continued to swell the ranks of those already massed on the median, hurtling across the freeway like frightened wildlife whose migratory path has been broken by eight lanes of traffic.

“I’m scared,” confessed Sandra, 24, four months pregnant, as she progressed quickly down the median strip along with a group from Mexico City, her alert eyes scanning the fast-moving traffic to the left and right with alarm. “I just want to get to Los Angeles.”

One man carried his daughter hoisted on his shoulders, a mother held the hands of her two young ones, and a teen-ager ambled arm-in-arm with his girlfriend.

Such is the extraordinary spectacle that unfolds daily in the San Diego border community of San Ysidro, where highways, particularly I-5, have come to serve a singularly paradoxical role: safety zone and deathtrap, claiming dozens of lives annually but also providing a path to a new life for hundreds of thousands.

Although the pedestrian-on-the-freeway phenomenon has existed for years in the border area, authorities say changing crossing patterns at the international boundary have resulted in more people than ever massing on the roadways and traversing the fast-paced routes on their long treks north.

And more migrants than ever are being struck and killed--26 so far this year, including 16 in the border area. Ten more have perished in the other trouble spot--I-5 in the vicinity of the giant immigration checkpoint north of Oceanside, which many migrants attempt to evade on foot, to their peril.

Since 1987, vehicles on high-speed roadways in the two areas have struck and killed 116 such pedestrians, including 83 in the border area and 33 near the checkpoint, according to the California Highway Patrol. Although some remain unidentified, all were believed to have been undocumented border-crossers bound for the north.

Part of the reason for the increase, authorities said, is U.S. enforcement pressure at once-popular crossing points, such as the infamous “soccer field,” that have pushed much of the illicit traffic westward to the Tijuana River Basin area.

Nowhere else in the nation, authorities say, do high-velocity roadways--explicitly off limits to non-motorists--exact such a toll of life among pedestrians.

“When I talk to some of the officers in L.A. about this, they just can’t believe what goes on down there,” said Randy Search, a traffic officer with the California Highway Patrol in San Diego who has worked the border beat. “You really can’t comprehend it until you see all these pedestrians on the freeway like this.”

An approximate 2-mile stretch of I-5 traversed by the Dairy Mart Road overpass is by far the bloodiest stretch of roadway, accounting for 14 of the 16 deaths in the border area since January. Dairy Mart is crisscrossed by major immigration crossing routes. Interstate 805 and California 905 each claimed one border-area victim.

Among this year’s Dairy Mart-area victims: Leonel Sanchez Pasillas, 16, and his cousin, Rafael Cardoza Pasillas, 22, country boys from Mexico’s Zacatecas state who were planning to start anew with relatives in Chicago. About 11:30 p.m. on Feb. 16, both were struck by one or more hit-and-run vehicles along I-5 less than a mile south of the Dairy Mart Road overpass. “They were looking for a better life, I guess,” said a cousin, Gonzalo Vargas, who now lives in Orange County.

Despite the danger, the San Diego-area freeways are popular because they provide the chance of escaping Border Patrol officers, who are wary about chasing pedestrians across busy highways.

“We are hesitant to chase them when they are around the freeway” because of the danger both to immigrants and officers, said Ted Swofford, supervisory Border Patrol agent in San Diego.

The familiar border cat-and-mouse game has assumed a character all its own here. Each day, groups of migrants huddle along the shoulders or in the medians of I-5 in San Ysidro, negotiating prices and routes with smugglers, often raising voices to be heard above the din of the constant traffic.

“We’re safe here,” a 27-year-old smuggler who gave his name as Jose Luis, said on a recent morning as he straddled the concrete barrier that bisects the median along I-5 in San Ysidro. He is one of a corps of coyotes who work the roadways, hooking up traveling groups with transportation provided by other smugglers--equipped with vehicles, often stolen--who congregate in parking lots and streets adjoining nearby San Ysidro Boulevard.

“What can la migra do to us?” Jose Luis asked, laughing, as he scanned the brush adjoining the freeway, seeking potential clients to lead across the road. “If they come from the south, we go to the north side (of the freeway). If they come from the north we go to the south side.”

The smugglers, mostly men in their 20s, station themselves at strategic spots--along the roadway shoulders, medians and in adjoining brush--offering levantones ( “lifts,” or “rides”). The barrier fences of I-5 are mostly battered or torn away along the border strip, testament to the constant traffic. “Levanton! Levanton!” the smugglers advertise as each new group arrives alongside the edge of I-5.

On another evening, a smuggler stationed alongside the northbound lanes of I-5 taunted a Border Patrol officer positioned along the fence separating the freeway from San Ysidro Boulevard. “Arrest me! Arrest me!” the smuggler repeated over and over again to the agent, who was reduced to kicking dirt on the smuggler in frustration.

The highways in the border area are themselves surrounded by ideal hiding places: drainage tunnels and canals, thick vegetation and maze-like apartment complexes, low-rent hotels, fast-food joints and gas stations. As along the border strip itself, the freeway area is frequented by thieves--including, according to freeway-crossers and smugglers interviewed, a particularly vicious knife-wielding robber known as La Arana (“The Spider”), who prowls the brush bordering the freeway and is rumored to live in a nearby San Ysidro flat.

“This way! This way!” Eduardo Reyes, a 16-year-old resident of the Mexican city of Guadalajara, kept urging his young cousins--Salvador, 13, Lupita, 7, and Sandra, 4--as he helped transport them and others recently through a labyrinth of escape routes adjoining Interstates 5 and 805 in San Ysidro.

The group, along with others, initially crossed the freeway from west to east, having entered the United States at a point west of the port of entry at San Ysidro. They hiked down the median for the equivalent of about three blocks before crossing to the eastern edge of the roadway.

Their path is a lesson in the hows and whys of illegal immigration.

Most of those who enter without inspection from the west side of the border port--the southbound side--must cross I-5 to catch a northbound ride.

Many border-crossers are led by coyotes and are petrified when they first glimpse the racing lights of the highways. Some opt to use a tunnel that goes beneath I-5 near Dairy Mart Road, physically safer, but leaving them trapped should la migra appear and block both sides.

“I know it’s dangerous and a lot of companeros have been killed, but we run the risk because we have more opportunity in this country,” said Marcos Mata Valle, a 37-year-old farm worker and father of eight from the Mexican state of Michoacan, who was found on the freeway median on a recent evening, attempting to find a smuggler willing to take him and a companion to Bakersfield.

Sixteen-year-old Edgardo Reyes, who was helping to bring his three younger cousins to their parents’ home in Orange County, likewise hoped to hook up with a smuggler.

“As long as you’re careful on el freeway, it can be safe,” Reyes assured a U.S. reporter during one of many breaks on his roundabout voyage.

At one point, when a Border Patrol van appeared, the entire group of nine ran back toward the relative safety of I-5. Eventually, unable to find an affordable ride, they succeeded in hopping a northbound trolley, later transferring to local buses in downtown San Diego and Del Mar and arriving safely in Oceanside.

Enforcement and safety efforts aimed at reducing the freeway foot traffic have proved problematic.

In recent months, police, U.S. Border Patrol and California Highway Patrol officers have cooperated on several sweeps in the border area, temporarily shutting down I-5 and allowing immigration agents to arrest as many as 165 undocumented pedestrians at a time. However, many returned once the freeway was reopened.

The California Department of Transportation, which maintains the freeways, has taken numerous steps to little avail--trimming roadway brush that provides cover; repairing fencing and increasing lighting; embarking on public service campaigns on both sides of the border warning of the dangers; and posting flashing lights advising motorists of the danger in both the border area and near the San Onofre checkpoint. Nothing has worked.

“When we look at all the things that we’ve done so far, the fact is that the fatalities keep mounting, so obviously we haven’t been very effective,” said James Larson, a Caltrans spokesman in San Diego.

Stung by criticism that they have done too little, highway authorities now contemplate some “very radical” steps, Larson said. Among them, he said, are a reduction of speed limits in the trouble areas and the construction of more effective barriers in freeway medians.

Meanwhile, the human toll rises.

Although most commonly those killed appear to be men in their late teens, 20s and 30s, who still compose the majority of undocumented border-crossers, coroner’s reports show that the victims include a disproportionate number of women, children and the elderly--who are all inevitably among the most slow-footed. Many had probably never seen such fast-moving traffic, much less attempt to run across it.

Of the 26 undocumented pedestrians killed so far this year along the border and near the checkpoint, the dead included four adult women and four males who were 17 or younger. The youngest fatality was an 8-year-old boy killed near the San Onofre checkpoint on Aug. 8. (Antonio Marin-Colon, a citizen of Mexico, was charged Friday in San Diego federal court on a felony alien-smuggling charge linked to the boy’s death. Marin-Colon could face an involuntary manslaughter charge.) Six of the 1990 victims were 45 or older.

The identities of six of the 1990 fatalities remained unknown--not unusual because many carry limited identification. One unknown victim, a Latino male in his 20s who was killed along I-5 in the border area May 16, had a wallet containing only a picture of an unidentified woman and a handwritten poem in Spanish.

All of those identified were natives of Mexico except for Encarnacion de Maria Salazar, a 17-year-old Guatemalan killed along I-5 near the checkpoint July 7.

About half of the 16 killed in border-area incidents were victims of hit-and-run accidents, according to reports on file at the county Medical Examiner’s office. Only one of the 10 deaths near the Border Patrol checkpoint near San Clemente involved hit-and-run incidents. Virtually all of the accidents happened at night. Many victims were run over more than once. At least one was seen crawling on the roadway, having survived initial contact, before being hit again.

The oldest to perish thus far in 1990 was Jesus Mora Torres, a 70-year-old native of Michoacan who was apparently headed to a son’s home in El Monte. He was struck by a southbound pickup shortly after 11 p.m. on May 27, at a spot along I-5 just north of Dairy Mart Road. He died a few hours later at UC San Diego Medical Center.