The drop off and the walk of broken dreams

The Wackenhut bus arrives at the siding near the border. It’s brakes sigh and it coughs out 20 or 30 people, mostly young, mostly men. The officer gives them each a plastic bag with a number to match their Homeland Security baggage receipt and they straggle along the fence towards Mexico. On the way they remove from the bags their belts, which they promptly reinstall to sagging pants, and their shoe strings and a few personal belongings, which they stuff in a pocket. The bags and baggage checks they leave as a testimony for the wind.

The migrants

 Lisandro has alert eyes, thick lips and bronze skin, curly hair, and is studiously polite and eager to talk. Clearly he’s a leader among the small cluster of young men around him. He’s from Veracruz and has a message for “señor presidente Bush or señora Hilary” (Obama hasn’t overcome her yet). First he tells about the treatment by the arresting immigration officers whom he calls “Hermanos de la migra” (Brothers from Immigration). Though their group offers no resistance, the officers grab them by the nape and push them to the ground where they are forced to lie with their hands behind their heads. Then one of the officers jams his foot down hard on Lisandro’s back. They are forced to lie like this for an hour in the cold of the desert night.

In a chorus I have heard from immigrants returned to Chiapas and that I will hear from each immigrant I talk to here, he says “No somos animales. We are not animals. We come here not to rob or make trouble, but to work.”

“Please tell President Bush or Mrs. Hilary, that the officers should treat us with dignity. We are not animals.”  Lisandro is one of the more eloquent I’ve heard. When I ask him if he’s a preacher he smiles and nods “yes”. I guess my clue was when he called the man who stomped on his back while he was helpless on the ground his brother.

Each immigrant tells me the same thing in his or her own way, many more bitterly. There is the young man picked up after 12 years working in Kentucky. He’s too upset to give a camera interview, but tells me he is waiting for his brother who was detained with him, but not yet released. His brother was bitten by a spider or some sort of insect and his arm was breaking out and getting red. In the detention center he pointed this out to the officer and requested some sort of medical attention for his brother. Repeated requests were ignored.

Then there is the simple matter of food. Gilberto from Guerero who, has lived for  13 years in the U.S. working in construction tells me in perfect English that all they give them to eat for a day is a packet with 4 crackers and a bag of chili beans.

I hadn’t come here looking for this. I came to hear the immigrants’ stories and hopes. In regard to immigration officers, If anything, I hoped to hear stories of men rigorous in enforcing their understanding of the law, but compassionate towards the immigrants. This was the dominant image I found in some writers I trusted, like Luis Urrea.

Has something happened? In the age of Abu Gharib has a new attitude been passed down from a nasty, self righteous, pitiless government? An attitude of “Treat them like shit so they’ll think twice about trying to come back again?” And could such an attitude affect rank and file so quickly? I know that ICE has been on a hiring spree. To get hired for southern duty you don’t even have to speak Spanish, if you can pass a language learning “aptitude” test and then take a couple weeks of “intensive” training. I guess I wouldn’t pass that aptitude test because I’ve been working really hard on my Spanish for 6 or 7 years (including months at a time in Mexico with no English speaking contacts), and I feel barely qualified to carry out my interviews with the immigrants. But then I’m an old dog.

I wanted to look at the other side. Months before my trip to Nogales I contacted the Tucson Sector and was told that unless I had the equivalent of a network contract for my documentary, I shouldn’t bother to apply.