Tougher Border Patrol a Real Downer for Aspiring Migrants

Many Americans think of the southern border of the United States as terrain that has been yielded to illegal immigrants seeking U.S. jobs and social services.

But a thickening band of law enforcement agents is taming the frontier, blocking thousands of Mexicans trying to escape their country’s poverty.

Experts say many Mexicans who relied on illegal entry into the United States for economic survival are suffering trauma from stressful--and often unsuccessful--attempts to sneak across the border.

Some are turning up at a shelter for migrant workers in this sprawling border city run by the Rev. Gianni Fanzolato.

“So many arrived with psychological problems, with the feeling of failure,” Fanzolato said. “They would be shaking, sweating, anxious. This ‘migrant syndrome’--we’re seeing it every day.”

The smell of boiled onions drifted through the shelter’s courtyard. Thirty men waited for a free dinner, a blessing and a respite from trying to get to the promised land of the United States.

A few steps away, Fanzolato turned on a yellow light to push away the encroaching dusk. He closed the door, muffling a migrant’s guitar music.

“They have truly arrived in the big city and they are all alone,” Fanzolato said. “The saddest thing I see is the loneliness of the migrant. They are the poorest of the poor. I see them filled with doubt.”

Many men and women who stay at Casa del Migrante have one goal--to cross into the United States. Situated a few miles from the border on a sloping side street, the shelter can house 400 men.

Rudy Ramirez, a psychologist and administrator at Casa del Migrante, studies “migrant syndrome” by interviewing the shelter’s residents and giving them psychological tests.

“We’re doubling, doubling and doubling the Border Patrol,” Ramirez said. “There is increased stress all along. They manifest the symptoms in neuroses, depression, psychosis--sometimes violent, sometimes autistic.”

One researcher in the United States said it should be called “undocumented-entry syndrome.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that trying to cross this military border is a very traumatic, dangerous experience,” said Fred Krissman, a researcher at the Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies at UC San Diego.

In January, the San Diego sector of the Border Patrol apprehended 58,582 illegal immigrants, a 51% increase from the same month in 1995.

At the same time that enforcement has been toughened, Mexico’s economy has worsened, stepping up the pressure on would-be migrants. Krissman said desperate economic conditions for Mexican laborers caused by the peso’s plunge in December 1994 has strengthened their motives for crossing.

During a reporter’s visit to the shelter, a burly, 28-year-old from the state of Michoacan prepared to try crossing again. The previous night, an officer rode up behind him on a horse and lassoed him around the neck, he said.

“I don’t care if they hit me, I have to cross the border,” said the man, who refused to give his name. “I have a wife, kids, pressure on me.”

Some Border Patrol agents ride horses in the hills of southern San Diego, but they deny they use lassos on illegal crossers.

Armando Lizarraga Mendivil, a gaunt-faced 28-year-old, spent the previous night in jail after U.S. agents apprehended him in Calexico, a few feet north of the international line. He was handed over to Mexican officers.

In a trailing voice, Lizarraga said he has a construction job waiting in suburban San Diego. All he wants is to earn $2,000 and return to Mexico by summer.

Those who sleep at the shelter for more than two nights have to prove they are employed. If so, they get 15 free nights. Many find work building homes, offices and stores in booming Tijuana; others work in the numerous factories lining the border to produce goods for export to the United States.

Inside the four-story shelter, murals of trees are painted on the walls and a lone plant hangs cockeyed from a blue railing overhead. The courtyard’s concrete floor is puckered by a small drain.

Fanzolato, a Roman Catholic priest, blesses the residents, gives them sandwiches and wishes them well.

Many have left behind destitute families in rural Mexico with high hopes of attaining jobs in the United States and earning American dollars to send to their loved ones. Instead, they find themselves unable to get across, stranded in Tijuana until their families can send money for the trip home.

Most of the men at Casa del Migrante that night had made at least one attempt to cross the border in the previous 48 hours. One was preparing to make his fourth attempt in two days.

Not all have been beaten down by the tougher border. As the men lined up for dinner, 24-year-old Jelazio Herrera stood in the courtyard’s chilly night air and hummed while two guitarists strummed and sang “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

Herrera was heading to Chicago to be a busboy--a job his cousins there secured for him. He planned to run over the rugged hills in worn, cracked wingtip shoes.

He pinned his optimism on the rules that he believes do not allow illegal immigrants to be arrested by the National Guard troops, police officers and military personnel who are helping to watch the frontier on the U.S. side.

“See, the officers can’t touch us,” he said. “Only the Border Patrol can.”