A System of Exploitation

Yesterday we received a call from a woman who owns a small ranch about 15 miles down the highway from us and which sits on the border with Mexico. She is elderly and may be suffering from some early stage of dementia.

I had met her once before, last week, when another local activist called us to come out to her farm because she had three migrants there and she was afraid of the border patrol. Last week the three just wanted to make a phone call, which we let them do, and they arranged whatever they were going to arrange and went on their way. But the situation seemed sketchy last week, and even more so today.

Today she called us saying that she had 7 migrants on her property and she wanted our help in getting them to leave. The migrants were staying in a shed on her property that seemed to be set up for that very purpose. When we spoke to them, they said that their coyote (the Mexican guide they pay to get them across the border) told them to go there, and that the coyote said that the property owner was being paid $100 per person. The property owner says she is being regularly hassled by the border patrol and that she is afraid of them and afraid that her employees cannot be trusted not to report her to them.

The migrants say that she is a regular stop and that many pass through her property, and only sometimes does she get concerned, especially when her employees are around. The property owner says that border patrol ride through her property at night on their horses, and buzz her with helicopters, and she doesn't want migrants to stay there.

We finally reached an agreement with the migrants that 6 of the 7 would walk back up toward the mountains until their pick-up arrived. We gave them plenty of food and water for the several hours they would have to wait. The 7th, the one with the cell phone, would wait in the shed until he recieved his call from the pick-up giving the location so the group could meet him or her. The one with the telephone wanted to wait in the shed because he said that he could not get cell phone service in the desert, but could get it if he stood in one corner of the shed.

We brought this proposal to the property owner, and she agreed to it. We waited until the 6 had left, and then we left. Who knows what happened after that. They may have come back. The property owner has recourse--she can call the border patrol. Clearly she did not want to do that, and clearly the migrants knew she did not want to do that.

After they left, I went to talk with the property owner, trying to find out the real story. I asked her if she was being paid. She denied it. But then she spilled at least part of the story. She used to have this Mexican guy ("Martin," coincidentally the same name as the coyote the migrants were calling both times, today and last week) working for her whom she totally trusted. He took care of her and she allowed him to board his horses on her property.

Then one day suddenly she had five border patrol vehicles in her yard. They marched 18 migrants out of her locked shed and arrested Martin. But she emphasized that as far as she is concerned, Martin was innocent. He served a year in jail and now cannot come into the US. Clearly, Martin is now running his business from the Mexican side and steering migrants to her property. She denies knowing who it is that is sending them to her. She also denies being a part of it. Who is telling the truth? I think she is very vulnerable, but I also think she is a party to it.

She hates the border patrol, but I think we need to ask ourselves why the border patrol is allowing this. They know perfectly well what is going on there if they are really patrolling as much as she claims.

I think this story provides some insight into the game that is being played between the coyotes, the border patrol, and even some property owners. The migrants are caught in the middle of a large money-making scheme on the part of everyone, including the empoyers in the US who hire them at substandard wages and benefits in order to increase their own profits. Many property owners are also caught in the middle, not wanting to be a party to migrant deaths or human rights abuses, but also not wanting to break the law. Other property owners, as we see from this story, are part of a complex system of exploitation.

To me it highlights the need to legalize and normalize what is going on here, to get it out of the hands of organized crime and to give migrants legal recourse against exploitative employers. The system has also led to widespread document fraud in the US. The migrants we encounter are coming because they know they have a much better chance of finding work in the US than in Mexico. And bad as the jobs are that they take in the US, they are much better than what they are leaving behind. I try to imagine what it would be like to leave everything I know permanently, to resettle in a foreign culture and land. People do it because they see no better alternative.