Friday, September 27, 1996

On the Border, Agents and Aliens Dubious of Immigration Reform

By PAULINE ARRILLAGA
Associated Press

McALLEN - It's 7:30 p.m. on a week night in this town on the Texas border, and while most families are sitting down to dinner, Ramiro de Anda and Leo Laurel are setting off to work.

Armed with flashlights and binoculars, pistols and handcuffs, the two men hop in a stark-white Ford Bronco and head toward the dimming sun.

"I'm ready to rock 'n' roll," hoots De Anda, who at 42 has been a U.S. Border Patrol agent for 13 years. He spent most of that time preparing cases for prosecution against illegal immigrants and alien smugglers, but returned to the field four months ago.

At age 51, Laurel is the veteran of the pair. He has worked all of his 27 years with the Border Patrol on the line, as it's called, and grins sardonically at his partner's enthusiasm.

"When I was at his time in, I thought I could change the world," Laurel says. "Now I see the reality."

Reality is another night on the front line in the battle against illegal immigration. As Congress finishes work on legislation aimed at aiding in that fight, these men watch from afar and simply wait for the changes.

But reality is, they don't think those changes - including nearly doubling the size of the Border Patrol to 10,000 agents - will stop the men and women they see every night from illegally entering the United States.

"They could put a million agents on the border, and it wouldn't stop immigration," says Laurel. "It's an economic thing. They've got nothing to lose."

Even De Anda, the optimist of the two, agrees that provisions included in this latest effort at immigration reform won't do the trick. The main problem is the legislation lacks sanctions against U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants, he said.

"That's what they're coming for. They'll get a dish-washing job that pays more than a high-tech job in Mexico," he said.

"You can catch illegal immigrants all day long and take them back, but they're going to keep on trying. What's better than the land of milk and honey?"
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The Bronco lurches along a narrow levee running parallel to the Rio Grande, which besides the Border Patrol serves as the only barrier between Mexico and the United States. On the horizon, the lights of Reynosa, Mexico, pilot the agents along their mission as the sun slowly sets.

De Anda turns off the engine alongside a steep bluff. Grabbing a pair of binoculars, he and Laurel plod confidently downward, wading through an ocean of overgrown mesquite trees before reaching a clearing next to the river.

De Anda methodically scans the river bank on the Mexican side, which could be reached in minutes were there a bridge. He spots a pile of driftwood stacked neatly, waiting to be used as a ferry to freedom.

This spot is a popular crossing point for drug and alien smugglers, Laurel explains. But tonight, the action is elsewhere.

"It's actually pretty peaceful out here right now," he says. "Sometimes it's real peaceful - sometimes."

Back in the truck, the radio crackles with voices of other agents reporting hits on sensors hidden to detect movement by immigrants or smugglers.

De Anda and Laurel depart to help their colleagues with the paperwork.
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At a cramped processing station in Hidalgo, a tiny town just south of McAllen and an international bridge away from Reynosa, 10 illegal immigrants file through the door. Some are together, others not. One is a woman, the rest men and boys.

One by one they sit before a agent and answer the questions, familiar to most. Name, age, city of residence, why they are here - the latter more rhetorical than anything.

Some laugh and talk with each other as they wait their turn; others sit in quiet disappointment at having been caught.

For Jorge Nunez Rodriguez, this process is hardly daunting. At 17, the brash youngster estimates he has crossed the border illegally at least 100 times, and he started only two years ago.

A resident of Reynosa, he comes to work in a used clothing store in McAllen where he makes $30 a day, a rich man's salary compared with the $5 a day most laborers earn in Reynosa, if they can find work.

Rodriguez has heard about the proposed new law to get tougher on illegal immigrants such as himself, but he said nothing would deter him from coming to America to look for work.
"Laws or no laws, I'm still coming over," he said.

Reymundo Sanchez echoed the sentiment.

Sanchez, 30, who also lives in Reynosa, said he hasn't been able to find work there in four months. With two small children and a wife to feed, he decided to try his luck in the United States.

He, too, has heard that U.S. immigration laws might be changing, but he said he is less afraid of new laws here than of starving back in Mexico.

"It's a terror being over there because you can feel the death when your children are asking you for food and you have none," he said, his piercing dark eyes dull and depressed. "I can take the hunger. My wife can take it, too, but the kids can't.

"I don't care if they put soldiers on the border, hunger would still make me cross."
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With the processing complete, agents and immigrants together file out toward the international bridge, where the agents watch as the immigrants walk home. All of them know it won't be long before they meet again.

For Laurel, it's a frustrating way to end a day.

"It's frustrating in that there's no since of accomplishment. They'll be back tomorrow," he says. "What's the solution? I don't know. But like I said, you can put a million guys out on the border, and it won't stop them."