At Least 7 Migrants Perish in Cold

At least seven Mexican immigrants died and more than 50 others were rescued in rural San Diego County canyons Friday after a freak spring storm dropped a foot of snow on mountains that are a favorite route of illegal border crossers.

Two other migrants were found dead Friday and 25 more were rescued on the Mexican side of the border Thursday night in a hilly area about 30 miles east of Tecate, according to the Baja California state Civil Protection Agency.

Late Friday, the San Diego County medical examiner’s office and Mexican consular officials reported that an eighth victim had been found on the U.S. side, but the U.S. Border Patrol confirmed only seven deaths.

Rescuers from the Border Patrol and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department ended their search Friday afternoon, saying there were no other signs of life in the snow-covered back country about 40 miles east of San Diego. Mexican authorities said they, too, believed they had found all the stranded migrants.

By noon, U.S. rescue teams had ushered the majority of the migrants to safety. Most were men, but there were some women and two girls, sisters ages 5 and 7. They survived nighttime temperatures in the 20s, some wearing sodden T-shirts and flimsy sneakers.

Rescuers found the migrants scattered in rugged arroyos more than 12 miles north of the border. The first group was found about 1:30 a.m., huddled near an emergency call box on Interstate 8, near Japatul Valley Road.

“We were not prepared,” one of the survivors, Pablo Huerta, said tearfully from his bed in Sharp Grossmont Hospital in the San Diego suburb of La Mesa. “We were not expecting to encounter snow and ice.”

Some of the migrants had been lost for more than three days in the wilderness, without food and with only stream water to drink. They told authorities they were abandoned by their smugglers, or coyotes, said Mario Villarreal, a Border Patrol spokesman.

Several of those rescued were identified by others as smugglers.

“We are trying to find out who these smugglers were, and if we can they will be charged with manslaughter,” said Gloria Chavez, a Border Patrol spokeswoman. “They left these people out there to die.”

The rugged back country east of San Diego has become a popular corridor for immigrant smugglers since the inception of “Operation Gatekeeper” five years ago, which doubled the number of border agents around San Diego.

Friday’s tragedy resulted when the unusual storm dropped more than a foot of snow on elevations as low as 2,000 feet, trapping dozens of migrants in the steep canyons south of Interstate 8.

One of the survivors, the 44-year-old Huerta, reported that he had been betrayed not only by the elements, but also by a smuggler who abandoned him and his son at the most arduous part of their journey.

Huerta said he and his son paid a total of $1,800 to a man who was supposed to shepherd them all the way to a farm somewhere north of Los Angeles.

“Instead, the man just took us to the border, took our money and then pointed north and said, ‘You go in that direction,’ ” said Huerta, lying dazed in his hospital bed.

Huerta and his 25-year-old son wandered into the mountains and soon found a group of other immigrants who said they had been abandoned by their smugglers.

“We knew that we wanted to go north, everybody was going north,” Huerta said. “But none of us knew how to get there.”

The father and son and the others wandered in the mountains for three days.

The situation grew even more bleak when rain, and then snow, began to fall on Thursday. Huerta said he was wearing only jeans, a sweatshirt and tennis shoes and his 25-year-old son had only a light jacket for extra protection.

Huerta’s body temperature was 90 degrees when he arrived at the hospital, more than eight degrees below normal. It later returned nearly to normal, hospital officials said.

His son, Antonio, was taken to another hospital, but the tiny, wiry father of 14 said he knew nothing about his son’s fate.

“Do you know where my son is?” he asked, weeping softly. “Do you know how my son is?”

Outside the hospital room, a Border Patrol agent waited, ready to take Huerta into custody as soon as doctors released him. He and the others who were treated, as well as those who did not require hospitalization, will be returned to Mexico unless they are needed to help build a case against the smugglers.

Of the more than 50 rescued migrants, at least eight remained hospitalized and most were weak, hungry and had been “soaked to the bone,” Villarreal said.

Thick fog and slushy trails made the search for survivors difficult early Friday, but the air cleared and temperatures warmed as the day went on.

Authorities with the Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, the Forest Service, the California Highway Patrol and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department used dogs and helicopters to conduct the search.

Searchers found migrants alone and in groups of up to a dozen. They were in three areas--some about 1 1/2 miles south of the intersection of Interstate 8 and California 79, an area known as Nelson Canyon, others about seven miles east of there, near Sunrise Highway, and a third group near Campo.

The dead, all victims of exposure, were found in Nelson Canyon and near Sunrise Highway. They reportedly ranged in age from 18 to 31.

Most of the survivors were dressed in light clothes.

They were taken by helicopter to several hospitals and a Border Patrol command center just off Interstate 8 in the Cleveland National Forest.

One man flown back to the command post near Alpine appeared barely conscious as he was given first aid and placed in an ambulance. He was wrapped in a dry blanket; left behind were his soaked clothing and a trash bag that had been his only protection through the harrowing night.

Critics have blamed the increasing number of deaths along the border on the Gatekeeper strategy. They say work-starved immigrants have been pushed into more isolated regions and forced to rely more heavily on smugglers.

So far this year, 27 Mexican migrants have died crossing the California border. Last year 141 perished, and 85 in 1997, according to the Mexican Consulate.

Last summer, eight migrants were found dead in 110-degree heat in the desert near the Salton Sea--an indication of the extremes of climate that make back-country smuggling so perilous.

“These were entirely foreseeable consequences of a strategy that maximizes the risks to migrants crossing the border,” said Claudia Smith, an immigrant rights activist who opposes Operation Gatekeeper.

U.S. immigration officials attribute the rising death toll to smugglers who charge $1,000 or more to lead migrants across the border, but often abandon them.

John Elliott, owner of a general store in the area, said he has mixed emotions about the immigrants who routinely pass by, stopping at times to buy food or warm themselves by his fire.

“I don’t want to turn them in,” Elliott said. “But they still don’t belong here. And then you have these tragedies.”

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Ellingwood reported from Descanso, Reza from La Mesa and Rainey from Los Angeles.