Family history breeds sympathy for hapless aliens

By Ignacio Ibarra
The Arizona Daily Star

BISBEE JUNCTION - The little girl clutching her rag doll peered at me from behind her mother.

Her little brother played next to her in the dirt as a man rose up and motioned me to stop. ``Give us a ride to Naco,'' the man said.

Behind him, a hot, tired troop of Mexican migrants avoided the noon sun under the meager shade of a large mesquite tree.

I had run into these illegal entrants less than a quarter-mile from my home, as a friend and I set out for a hike.

``You can't be giving up already,'' I said jokingly as I pulled the truck over. ``You're not even a quarter-mile from the border. You've still got a long way to go.''

``This is as far as we got,'' said the man. ``We've been walking all night. We don't have any food, water. We're lost.''

By then, a few more people had walked out of the brush.

I couldn't risk driving them to Naco, Sonora, I explained. But I offered to fill their empty water bottles at my home.

``I can bring them back and you can go on, or I can call the Border Patrol to come for you. Which do you want?''

None of them hesitated. ``Call them. Call la migra.''

It took only a few minutes to get back to the house, fill a few one-gallon water jugs and call the Border Patrol.

Even though it was the migrants' idea, I still felt as if I had betrayed them by making the call.

My own parents had crossed the Rio Grande looking for a new life in the United States in 1948. My older brother and I were born in the migrant farm labor camps of south Texas.

Our U.S. citizenship made it possible for my parents and my older sister to become legal resident aliens in 1955 and later U.S. citizens.

The illegal immigrant experience is an important part of our family history, and it's made me sympathetic to the plight of the migrants I've encountered.

The 15 people in this group were from the central Mexican states of Aguascalientes and Zacatecas.

They had traveled by bus to Agua Prieta, Sonora, where they quickly hired a crossing guide.

The young men had paid $100 each to get them across the border to a ride that would deliver them to Phoenix.

Their contact had said he would meet them at Kilometer 14 of Mexico's Highway 2, about halfway between Agua Prieta and Naco.

``We arrived in the evening, and he wasn't there. We waited for a while, then we decided to try on our own,'' explained one of the men. ``But we got lost in the mountains, and we've been walking the whole night.''

As the men talked, Ana Maria Marez Vaquera, 23, coaxed her daughter - the girl with the doll - into taking a drink of water and wiped her younger child's face with a damp handkerchief.

``It must be a tough road with children,'' I said as she tried to interest the boy in a baby bottle she had taken from her bag.

``When there's need, you do what you have to,'' she said.

Vaquera explained she was hoping to reach Phoenix, where she and her children, Yordi, 2, and Maida, 4, would be reunited with her husband.

Their walk the night before had been a disaster. Sometime during the night, the group members had become disoriented, and instead of walking north about three miles to the border, they had walked west for more than 10 miles.

At sunrise, they realized what had happened and turned north, but by the time they had reached Bisbee Junction, they were tired, hungry and hot, and had no idea where to go next.

Little Maida listened intently as her mother described their nighttime hike through the desert. She nodded in agreement when I asked her if she had been frightened walking all that way in the dark.

By that time two Border Patrol agents had arrived. After a quick count and a few questions, they prepared the group for transport to the Naco Station.

I knew this wasn't the end of the trip for this young family. Like most of the migrants I'd met, they intended to try again.

I thanked them for their time and wished them good luck on their next attempt as the agents began loading them into their vehicles.

They smiled and waved and thanked me again for the water.

As we drove away, my hiking partner, Tom Wheeler, noted that the agents seemed bothered by our presence when they arrived.

``They were really checking out the guns,'' he said.

I had completely forgotten that we were wearing holstered revolvers on our belts. It's partly a precaution, and partly a habit that you develop growing up in rural Arizona.

Out here, even law enforcement officers will tell you to learn to rely on yourself in an emergency.

To some, my experience might resemble those of Douglas-area ranchers, such as Roger Barnett, who made headlines after apprehending illegal entrants on their own.