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By Root 581 0

for Sasabe’s or El Papalote’s or Vidrios’s existence. The vans lined up under the spindly cottonwoods have driven from Altar, Sonora, full of walkers. Don Moi was quite familiar with Altar. The bus stopped there, and he often hit the cell phone to check with his bosses: should the walkers hop off in Altar and grab a guide for the Sasabe line, or should they go on to Sonoita, to take part in a more complex conspiracy? Several of our Wellton 26 stopped over in Altar, and it was the merest whim of the head Coyote that put the Yuma 14/Wellton 26 on the bus to Sonoita instead of in a wasted Ford van heading for Organ Pipe. Maybe the Big Man was watching MTV; maybe he was heading for the toilet, or looking for a smoke. He had his phone in one hand, he spoke one word, and on they went to their ordeal.

By the time they were finally rescued, they could have been in Miami.

The ne’er-do-well fence jumpers that galloped into El Paso and San Diego on a quest for chocolate shakes and Michael Jackson cassettes are no more. The New-Jack Coyote is largely the inadvertent product of the Border Patrol’s extremely effective interdiction and prevention policies. Good old Operation Gatekeeper is the mother of invention. San Diego’s Border Patrol beefed up the border fence, then placed massive flood-lights along it, illuminating the no-man’s land between the United States and Mexico. Then, in a burst of creative thinking, it ceased the endless patrolling of the hills and river valleys of the region. Instead, the Border Patrol parked trucks at half-mile checkpoints all along the fence. Each agent is in sight of the next, and all of them are in constant contact as they observe the line. Helicopters still hover, and their versions of the Oscar sensors blip, and night-vision electric eyes scan. The fence in the west extends into the ocean. In the east, it terminates in the wasteland of deserts and mountains.

Unimaginable developments followed. In the region of San Ysidro, the last small town before you get to the Mexican border, at the last U.S. exit off I-5, a big sparkling suburb has sprung up. In this area formerly notorious as a human hunting ground, a dangerous waste of crime and panic, junkies and gunfights, there are now soccer fields and two-story houses that look like they could be in a subdivision of Denver. At the end of all the cul-desacs in the development, there is a high wall, and football-stadium floodlights pointing south. Some of the new Latino middle class once crossed that very land in a mad scuttle; now, teens in the neighborhood climb up on their backyard sheds to watch the action in the Tijuana River floodplain.

The hundreds of walkers who once ran this gauntlet are now forced to move east. They rarely try to swim around the western barrier, and if they do, they land in a state park where “fishermen” casting into the surf are often armed feds. The only way to go is out there, back of beyond, away from civilization. And if you go far enough, the fence devolves into a two-foot-high road barrier you can step over. Farther still, and you’re in territory much like Sasabe. There are approximately two thousand miles of this kind of terrain to enter.

This new paradigm—walkers crossing Desolation in place of jumping urban fences—has made Altar the largest center of illegal immigration on the entire border. The central park plaza in town is full of Coyotes and walkers. A five-minute visit to the park will garner several offers to cross. Coyotes hawk destinations like crack dealers in the Bronx sell drugs: voices murmur options from a memorized menu, “Los Angeles, Chicago, Florida.”

The backs of the Altar vans have plastic milk jugs of water for sale. On the front of each van is a sign made of masking tape, and it says “Sasabe,” or “Frontera.”

“Carolina Norte. Carolina Sur. Nueva York.”

The main grocery store in Sasabe, hardly a supermarket, is winkingly called “Super El Coyote.”

The Mexican government’s border sign near Sasabe doesn’t actually say “Coyotes.” It uses the hipper slang of the border. It says, “Los Polleros.”

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