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SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Sonora — Casa del Migrante, not far from the port of entry, is a way station for migrants. It’s usually the first stop for deportees and, occasionally, one last layover for those making their way north.
Listen to the men and women at the shelter and two narratives emerge. Many caught by the Border Patrol and criminally prosecuted for illegal entry say they won’t try to cross again, at least not immediately.
If it was only the agents or the fence, a group of men said one afternoon in late July, they would reconsider. But there are also sensors, drones and the cartels that control the routes. It has gotten too hard, they said.
Others, who left children and partners behind or who come from extremely impoverished states, say they see no other option but to keep trying — no matter the cost.
Over the years, the Border Patrol’s strategy has been prevention by deterrence, making it so hard to cross that migrants think it’s best not to try; and when that doesn’t work, to use consequences, including criminal prosecutions, to reduce the number of repeat crossers.
But it’s still up for debate how effective those efforts are. A 2017 Government Accountability Office report found that applying consequences to border crossers didn’t seem to affect the recidivism rates over time. To the contrary, researchers found that apprehensions across multiple years increased from 21 percent in fiscal year 2014 to 25 percent in 2015.
Recently, many of the deportees who arrive at Casa del Migrante la Divina Providencia have been criminally prosecuted for illegal entry but were told the detention centers were full, said Martin Salgado, who runs the shelter.
For some the “push” factors — poverty, violence, natural disasters — and the “pull” factors — jobs, family, safety — are much stronger than any wall or punishment.
Here are the stories of three migrants who are undeterred:
Getting home
Felipe is 41 and comes from Colima, a small state in the western part of Mexico. But he lived in the United States for more than 25 years, much of that in Tennessee.
Over that time, he worked in construction, until he wrecked his car, state troopers responded, and he was eventually deported.
“Once you are deported,” he said, speaking English with a Southern drawl, “you can’t get a visa. Nothing is the same.” He asked that his full name not be used.
He tried making a life back in the hometown he left when he was 14, but it didn’t work out. He didn’t recognize anything anymore; he didn’t feel safe. “It’s a feeling of not completely belonging.”
His life was in the U.S. with his children, not in Mexico. So even after trying to cross again and failing, he said he couldn’t give up.
A recent study co-authored by the binational Kino Border Initiative, which serves deportees in Nogales, Sonora, found that nearly three-fourths of those interviewed planned to return to the United States, and roughly one-fourth as soon as possible.
That’s explained in part because increasingly, deportees are like Felipe: those who left Mexico at a younger age and built lives and families in the United States.
The strong social ties to the United States will be significant drivers of future unauthorized Mexican migration, which has decreased in recent years as the Mexican economy improves and birth rates fall, according to University of Arizona assistant professor of sociology Daniel Martinez.
This group — which researchers refer to as “unauthorized permanent residents” — are those who are more likely to keep trying to cross no matter what, and who in turn risk further criminalization each time they do, Martinez said, which can have long-term impacts for them and their families.
As immigration arrests and deportations from the U.S. interior rise, Martinez said, there will likely be more people like Felipe trying to come back.
After failing to cross in Yuma, Felipe said he was trying to make his way to Mexicali to try his luck there.
“I have no choice.”
A crucifix at the Casa del Migrante la Divina Providencia is adorned with rosaries and icons from migrants seeking safe passage across the border at San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora.
Near death
For others, it doesn’t have to be that they left children behind or that they’ve lived on the other side so long that they consider it home.
The poverty they are seeking to escape and the prospect of what a future in the U.S. can offer is enough to keep them from giving up.
Socorro Reyes, 30, spent four months at the Sonora shelter in a back brace recovering from an accident that nearly left her paraplegic.
Still, she hesitates to say whether she regrets trying to cross the border illegally.
On April 7 she was among 30 migrants whom smugglers crossed through Tijuana and crammed inside a horse trailer. “We were one on top of the other,” she said.
Reyes said she felt the truck go faster as it sped on the highway towards San Diego. Suddenly, up was down as the trailer started to flip.
“I thought I had died,” she said, but she was able to get up and walk away from the crash, even though it felt as if she was bleeding from the inside.
While the rest of the group scattered, Reyes stayed behind.
News stories from the accident describe a white Ford F250 driving on Interstate 8 about 15 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Border Patrol took 19 people into custody. Six were transferred to area hospitals. The driver escaped.
Reyes was airlifted with several broken vertebrae that required multiple surgeries. Doctors said it was possible she would never walk again.
Ten days later, she was deported to Mexico.
“I asked if I could fight my case,” she said, “but they said I signed my deportation order.” She doesn’t remember.
The shelter opened its doors so she could recover. Normally, migrants can stay up to three nights, but exceptions are made for those who need time to heal.
“Usually it’s faith that keeps them going,” Salgado said. That and their age. Usually the younger migrants are the ones more likely to keep taking risks.
The day of the accident wasn’t the first time Reyes tried to cross since she left her home state of Oaxaca in November 2017 — or the first time her life was in danger.
Before that attempt, she got lost in the desert with a cousin. Luckily, the cellphone they had worked, and the Border Patrol rescued them before sending them back. Another time she got caught almost immediately after they started walking and was sent back again.
There was even another accident, where she and other migrants were piled in the back of a pickup truck that overturned. That time she hurt her eye and forehead.
“I would see news reports warning people of the crossing, describing what had happened to others,” she said. “But I didn’t think that would happen to me.”
Oaxaca is among the poorest of the Mexican states. Seven out of 10 residents live in poverty. Reyes said her family worked in subsistence farming in a town a few hours from the capital.
Not having a job is another strong predictor for trying to cross again, Martinez has found through his interviews of recently deported Mexicans along the border. This holds true even when immigrants were criminally prosecuted, he said.
A couple of months after Reyes left the shelter, she said she was happy to see her parents again and is now almost able to walk without wearing the back brace. She still can’t lift heavy objects or help in the fields, though.
And the vision of el Norte and her sisters in Oregon is still on her mind.
Asked if she would be willing to try again, she paused. “If I have work, no. But if I don’t ….”
Melva Perez and Carlos Escoto talk about the difficulties of their 3,000-mile trek from Nicaragua. They hitched rides, took buses, walked and even caught the infamous “Bestia” train crowded with migrants headed north.
Difficult journey
The journey north is challenging, even those who are willing to try again are quick to admit.
As enforcement got tougher, people started to cross through more unforgiving terrain and the deaths climbed.
Melva Perez and Carlos Escoto came to the shelter more than a month after they left their native Nicaragua.
“Struggling along the way,” they said, sitting on the shelter’s back porch. By that point they had trekked about 3,000 miles, hitching rides, taking buses and walking.
They even caught the infamous “Bestia,” the train many migrants board to get closer to the U.S.-Mexico border. But it’s dangerous, “you have to find a way to hang on to it,” Escoto said. People have died and lost limbs when they don’t.
Perez nearly fell when a downdraft threatened to pull her down. “I was just barely able to grab her by the hand,” Escoto said.
Perez used to be a domestic worker in Managua, Nicaragua’s capital, she said, and her partner, Escoto, did odd jobs, from security to agriculture.
But the situation got too unstable, they said. There was no transportation and increasingly police were fighting civilians.
More than 300 people have been killed and 2,000 injured since April, most of the deaths caused by police and armed gangs’ violent repression of protests, Human Rights Watch wrote.
By the time the couple reached the migrant shelter this summer they were desperate. They had walked about 50 miles from Mexicali in the scorching summer heat, when temperatures easily rise to the triple digits. “I felt my eyes were going to cook,” Escoto said.
Along the way they had been lied to and gotten lost. They had no money to pay a smuggler.
They wanted to seek asylum, they said, but wouldn’t go to the port of entry because they heard Mexican authorities worked with the U.S. and they didn’t want to be deported.
They had arrived at a crossroads.
Perez had heard about the cartels, the scorpions and snakes in the desert; she had experienced the temperatures that feel like fire. “I don’t want to end up dead along the way,” she told Escoto.
“The dream is over for me,” she said.
But it wasn’t for him. “If they catch me,” Escoto said, “I’ll ask for political asylum.”
The fence and sensors discourage some; others, particularly younger migrants, keep taking risks. Above, the no-man’s land between triple fencing of the border at San Luis, Ariz.