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LiP | Immigration Series | BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS Part 1 of 3

Living in Terror
Undocumented Immigrants Suffer in Post-September 11 Era

by Kari Lydersen
09.26.03

Anna says she has been living in a state of terror.

But it's not Al Qaeda the 34-year-old mother of two living in San Diego is afraid of. It's the police and la migra (immigration officials.) She refuses to take the public trolley, fearing that immigration officials will make one of their periodic raids while she is on there. She's afraid to go to the laundromat or the grocery stores in the Latino area of town, which are also frequent targets of immigration raids.

"We're afraid to leave the house at all," said Anna (not her real name) in Spanish, during an interview at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) office in the largely-Latino Grant Hill neighborhood in San Diego. "We're afraid we'll walk out the door and never come back. Because of the Border Patrol, we can't live in peace and dignity. We live with many types of fear, daily. It's not temporary, it's every day."

Even worse than her own fear, Anna is afraid of what her 11-year-old daughter is going through, afraid of the scars her daughter will bear from experiencing discrimination and hatred at such a young age, from being made to feel like a criminal just because she is an undocumented immigrant.

Anna didn't ask for this life. She didn't want to leave her country in the first place.

"I cried and cried about leaving my homeland and my people," she said.

But like thousands of others, Anna had no choice but to leave her home, in Guadalajara, Mexico. Her husband was an alcoholic, and his addiction led to them losing their home and most of their belongings. Anna had no way to support herself and her young daughter. But she had family in Washington, so like so many others throughout Latin America, 10 years ago she decided to make the treacherous journey through the mountains along the border into the U.S.

Later she sent for her daughter. In the U.S. she had a son, who is now five. Now she is raising them both as a single mother. Her son, who was born here, is a citizen. Her daughter is not.

"These are both my children, but my son has rights and my daughter doesn't," she said.

Every day she and her daughter are reminded of what it means to be a citizen and what it means to be "illegal." The dichotomy is everywhere, especially in a border town like San Diego. Her son can go on field trips to other states with his school class. He can visit their relatives in Washington. He can even visit family in Mexico. At Christmas he gets toys from local charities that serve low income families. He gets certain medical benefits. Her daughter gets none of this.

It is all Anna can do to hold on to her two children. Immigration law has already separated her from most of the rest of her family. Though her sister lives in Washington and her brother in San Bernadino, only two hours’ drive from San Diego, she hasn't seen either one in six years.

"I can't risk going through the checkpoints," which are set up on major freeways leading out of San Diego, she says.

The year after she made it to the U.S., her mother became seriously ill. It was a major decision whether to go back to see her or not. She decided to go, meaning she had to risk the treacherous crossing back into the U.S. all over again.

"It's so many mixed emotions," she said. "Of course you want to see your family. But then you have to make decisions. If I get deported, is it worth it? You should never be forced to make that decision."

Anna was able to make it back into the U.S. again after seeing her mother. Today, she says, it would be a different story. "Since Operation Gatekeeper, it's almost impossible," she said.

Operation Gatekeeper, the extreme increase in security measures along the Baja-California border, was started in 1994. Before Gatekeeper, the Tijuana-San Diego border was basically marked by only an approximately six-foot-tall corrugated metal fence, which local activists say was made partly from landing pads from the first Gulf War. Today, there are three fences in some areas. From the ocean to the San Ysidro checkpoint and a bit beyond, there is the original fence plus a new barrier made of tightly spaced concrete pylons topped by a slanting screen. At some parts, a third fence is also in place. Conservative politicians have pushed for plans for a third fence spanning the entire area. In addition to the fences, high-powered stadium lights illuminate most of the border along Tijuana, giving it an eerie glow at night. Border Patrol cars are stationed every few hundred yards throughout the dusty hills on either side of the border.

From Operation Gate Keeper to September 11 and Beyond

ince Sept. 11, security at the border has gotten even tighter. The effects of Sept. 11 have also made life in San Diego, as in cities throughout the country, much harder for immigrants.

"It is totally different since Sept. 11," says Anna. "They see us all as terrorists. Immigrants work for a better life, while terrorists destroy things. We're the opposite of terrorists. We're here for peace.

Fearful as she is, Anna is determined to fight back. She is one of about 20 members of the Patricia Marin Women's Committee, a group which was formed around 1996 with the goal of empowering undocumented women and addressing the specific challenges and abuses that women face in San Diego, from persecution by immigration officials to domestic violence.

Committee organizer Adriana Jasso noted that the type of fear and oppression that Anna has faced is a common story among working class Mexican women in the U.S.

"These women are subject to violence on so many levels," she said. "Mexican working class women really bear the brunt of the violence inherent in the system."

During a visit to the AFSC office in June, Anna was surrounded by 177 empty gallon water jugs plastered with the words Ni Una Mas—Not One More. The jugs represent the immigrants who died crossing the border during June, July and August of 2002—an average of one immigrant a day.

The deaths rose exponentially after Operation Gatekeeper took effect along the Baja California border in 1994, spiking from about 24 a year to upwards of 150.

Many died from thirst in the scorching desert, as the jugs represent. Others died from cold, in the mountains. Still others drowned while swimming across the fast moving, ironically named All-American Canal near Calexico, in the Imperial Valley east of San Diego.

Still others swim through the heavily polluted New River in the same area. Word on the street is that Border Patrol agents won't venture near the river because it is so polluted, but the migrants who brave it are at risk of catching hepatitis and other serious diseases.

And a few others have been murdered—shot, stabbed or beaten to death by Border Patrol agents themselves, or members of the U.S. military, or by ranchers or armed vigilante groups that patrol the border with the tacit support of the Border Patrol and local politicians. [See the next edition of LiP for the second part in this three-part series.]

Deaths from exposure and violence used to happen frequently at the San Diego-Tijuana border, in the Tijuana River Valley. Since Operation Gatekeeper, however, only a handful of people try to cross at this border. Deaths and injuries here have gone down significantly, but that is only because migrants have been pushed elsewhere, into the harsh conditions of the Imperial Valley about two hours’ drive to the east. Some immigrants skip Baja altogether, and instead cross the border in the desolate mountains or deserts along Arizona and Texas.

Violence Against Immigrants

hough deaths at the border near San Diego have largely stopped, violence against immigrants continues.

In front of the gray, nondescript buildings of Southwestern College in San Ysidro, there is a monument made of somewhat tarnished, rust-stained white marble blocks. A plaque below the monument lists the names of 21 people who "tragically died" on July 18, 1984.

At that time, the buildings that now house the college were a McDonald’s. On that day, a Vietnam vet named James Huberty who frequently professed his hatred of Mexicans told his wife he was going "hunting humans," according to news reports. He strolled into the McDonald’s with an Uzi and other guns and opened fire.

Christian Ramirez, a staff member at the AFSC and native of San Ysidro, right across the border from Tijuana, notes that many in the community were unhappy with the marble block monument, because neither it nor the accompanying plaque give a real description of what they say happened on this site on that day in 1984. They feel the white marble and vague language obscure the pure hate and racism that manifested here, a hate which is still very much alive.

That hate is what brought Roberto Martinez to where he is today. Martinez, 67, is a sixth-generation Mexican-American—his family has lived in what used to be Mexico, but is now called the U.S.—for decades.

"In 1831 my great-great-grandfather was born in what is now Texas, before there was a border there," he said. "Then there was also racism, violence, the Indian Wars. The things going on in my time are an extension of what was going on then."

When Martinez and his family moved to the town of Santee, east of San Diego in the 1960s, they were one of the first Latino families to arrive. Soon others started moving in. Tensions flared in the formerly rural, all-white community, and white teenagers started wearing jackets with white power symbols on them and the words Youth Klan Kore. They would wait after school with baseball bats for the Mexican kids. He said that one day someone called the police, and only the Mexican students ended up getting arrested. He said some Mexican youth were beaten by the police, as well, and several students sustained serious injuries from this abuse.

So Martinez became an activist, and almost 40 years later, he is still fighting.

And almost 40 years later, white teenagers are still beating up Mexicans.

"I'm working with a family now whose son and his friends were attacked by boys from [nearby] El Capitan High School wearing jackets with Nazi symbols on them," he said. "I'd say things are worse than they were before."

He noted that in the summer of 2000, eight teenage boys viciously beat and tortured five elderly Mexican immigrant workers in a campsite in Carmel Valley, near San Diego, while hurling racial slurs.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, prosecutors in the case said the boys "shot the immigrants with pellet guns, hit them with steel rods and rocks, robbed them and tried to burn the makeshift shelters at their encampment. One of the victims was knocked unconscious, dragged into the bushes and left for dead, according to investigators."

However, despite the racial slurs the boys weren't even charged with a hate crime, and they all avoided state prison and instead were sentenced to two years in jail or less for charges including elder abuse and robbery.
"On one hand these are random acts of violence, but they know what they're doing," Martinez said. "This is part of a pattern of occurrences. In almost every case they're quoted as saying, 'Let's go hunt some beaners' or something like that. But they aren't classified as hate crimes. The juries and judges don't see these as serious crimes because the victims are undocumented immigrants."

Cat & Mouse with Coyotes

acists aren't the only ones attacking and killing Mexicans in San Diego. Though it is now uncommon for Border Patrol agents to shoot or attack immigrants at the border crossing, they get them in different ways. Even if immigrants cross the border farther east in the Imperial Valley, they still come to San Diego in vehicles with smugglers—coyotes—to stay in safe houses and then start journeys to look for work in other parts of the country. The Border Patrol is locked in a cat and mouse struggle with these coyotes. They seem determined to get them at any cost. One result is a disturbingly high incidence of high-speed car chases. When officers start pursuing a coyote, most will flee. To stop the vehicles, authorities will often throw "spike strips" down on the road. As he noted in a report of human rights' abuses filed with the government, Martinez describes what often happens with the spike strips.

"The smugglers see the strip and swerve, causing them to roll," he said. "That will kill eight or nine people at a time. And these high-speed chases don’t just endanger Border Patrol and immigrants, they put the innocent American public at risk. As Martinez continues, he voices sentiments that seem to speak to more than just the situation with high-speed car chases: "We know [they] hold some responsibility, but there has to be a better way to deal with this."