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By Root 536 0

imagine a rogue Border Patrol death squad. In Texas, two FBI agents investigating Mexican train robbers who jumped freight trains near the El Paso line were mobbed by a gang of Mexicans and dragged to the border, where they were savagely beaten. One of them died. In Iowa, a train car was famously pried open to reveal the cooked and melted remains of eleven entrants. The world’s biggest coffin-load. A Mexican drowned on live television trying to swim across the pathetically narrow Rio Grande. He looked almost funny. He belly flopped into the water, splashed, splashed—it couldn’t have been more than two, three strokes—and he was gone. Just … gone. They played it as a tape loop: splash-splash-gone; splash-splash-gone.

The Yuma 14 changed nothing, and they changed everything.

Today, Mendez sits in a cell in the big prison in Safford, Arizona. He has no visitors. He doesn’t answer letters.

The spirits of the dead moved the living in Desolation to make changes. Some of the changes are symbolic, too little, too late. The Mexicans opened a small consulate in Yuma, though the consuls agree that the Yuma consulate is an empty gesture. Tucson, yes. Calexico, yes. Phoenix, yes. But Yuma … well. It’s a building with a Mexican flag, and it balances out the Border Patrol offices out on the east end of town. The power remains in Calexico; the main consulate is still in Phoenix. Nobody goes to Yuma.

Yuma sector faced strange changes after the event. Mike F., the signcutter who happened along the Vidrios Drag that first morning, went over to the K9 corps. Yuma Migra agents close ranks around him when asked if he’s available for an interview. “Sorry,” you’re told. “He’s with the canine units now. He can’t be bothered.” They don’t think you should use his name. Other aspects of the Yuma 14 case—BORTAC operations, for example, investigative leads—are under OP/SEC secret clearance, need-to-know, eyes only. Makes everybody feel like they’re James Bond.

One thing Yuma and Wellton understood immediately from the disaster in May was that the way things worked didn’t work. If they were to hope for a change in the fate of the Devil’s Highway and all the lost souls walking it, they would have to become proactive, not reactive. They arrested plenty of walkers, but they wanted to save more of them. This quiet resolve is reflected in the way they refer to the catastrophe in obtuse terms—not “Yuma 14” for them. They still say “The thing that happened” when they speak of it. As if it were too sad to name.

One of the first things Yuma did was to organize a crack BORSTAR unit. They immediately began to patrol by helicopter, four-by truck, and ATV. Sometimes, the helicopter ferried the agents and their small all-terrain scooters in by air, and they dropped into the danger zone and sped to the rescue. Each member of the unit spoke fluent Spanish, had been through a demanding boot camp experience, was trained in emergency medicine. Most BORSTAR agents were military men, like Yuma’s Jason Carroll, a former sniper.

In Wellton, things were even more immediate. After all, it was in their patrol area that the deaths happened, and it was their guys who had first rushed to save the walkers. In a stroke of genius, Wellton trucked in portable army buildings and dropped them right in the middle of the Devil’s Highway, beside the Pinacate Lava Flow. The units were plain cubes, with room extenders that slid out on the sides. Water buffalo trucks set up huge water tanks outside. Radio antennae and satellite dishes went on top, generators roared to life, and small groups of agents took up permanent residence in the heart of the walking zone. It was a substation in the wilderness. Patrols had a base in the very middle of the traffic, and patrols could go out all night; the lights of the camp were visible to walkers for miles.

Not satisfied with the substation, Wellton’s agents invented another, more extreme bit of ingenuity. It was obvious that the main corridor north tended to be in the deadly area of the bombing range, hemmed in on either side by the ABC mountains