The Devil's Highway: A True Story Page 17

  15

  Aftermath

  The Border Patrol, enacting a long-standing federal plan, tried to palm the survivors off on the hospital in Yuma without arresting them. If an illegal was brought in and turned over for lifesaving purposes, and the Migra had not officially arrested the culprit, the bill immediately was the hospital’s problem. If the clients were prisoners, the government had to pay for their health care. It was not uncommon for illegals to rehydrate, catch a nap, eat some hospital food, then walk out the doors and into the United States. Migra-as-Coyote. But it saved the government money. Seventy-seven hospitals throughout the American Southwest were losing about $190 million in unpaid bills, and tens of millions of these could be attributed to medical attention for illegals, including those dropped off by the Border Patrol.

  Pima County, home of Tucson sector, wrote off $24.7 million in 2000 alone. San Diego and El Paso were, incredibly, worse. In Tucson itself, University Medical Center lost an estimated $6.5 million for treatment of “undocumented entrants.” And little old Yuma, population 160,000, spent $4.1 million. About a quarter of these bills were from illegals, though the media laid it all on them.

  A survey conducted by Florida’s MGT of America, a consulting firm, estimated that illegals made up 23 percent of unpaid bills in the Southwest’s ER’s and care centers. Twenty-three percent might seem like a moderate percentage of the cost—after all, that means that 77 percent of the bills are unpaid by good Americans. Still, elder care, certain emergency services, and long-term care for American citizens were forced to shut down all over Arizona as the toll mounted.

  The walkers lay in beds, unaware that they were costing anything.

  The border makes number crunchers go mad. It’s harder to cross, so there are more Coyotes; the numbers of crossers, in spite of $5.5 billion spent to stop them, keep swelling; deaths increase; wildlife is endangered; landscape is ruined; and supply and demand rule—Coyotes charge more every year, and because of this, fewer Mexicans are willing to return to Mexico. Why risk it? Now that the average cost of crossing is somewhere around seven hundred dollars, only 38 percent of illegals choose to go back after two years in the United States. They simply can’t afford to go home.

  The lost walkers lay on crisp white sheets, rolled through swinging doors, blinked at confusing lights and masked faces, hospital gowns, the smell of disinfectant and their own strange musky stench. Needles. Liquids. A sign flashed by: THIS WAY HEART CENTER. People in green inserted electric thermometers in their ears. Hands in rubber gloves. “Are we contagious?” one of them asked, but no one answered.

  On that last morning of the long walk, Wednesday, May 23, when agent Mike F. found the men on the Vidrios Drag, it was ten in the morning. The men began to arrive in the Yuma Medical Center within hours. They were met by Dr. David Haynes and his team. It was overwhelming: body after body, patient after patient. Dr. Haynes jumped to it. All of them had kidney damage from the relentless cooking. The Border Patrol and other rescuers were truly racing the clock: Haynes told the local newspaper, “They would all be dead if they hadn’t been brought in to the hospital when they were.” Later, Haynes told reporters, “Have you ever seen a mummy from ancient Egypt? That gives you an idea. They looked shriveled up.”

  Nine of them were in fair condition. Two were in serious condition. One was critical. When Mendez arrived, he scrunched low in his bed and tried not to make eye contact. Would the boys cover for him? Would they let him escape?

  The walkers went into rooms, sometimes together, and sometimes paired with strangers. Hilario, who had lost his water the first night, not only survived but managed to somehow look dapper in his bed. His hair was neatly combed, and his thin moustache looked like it was drawn on his lip.

  Rafael Temich ended up in a room with an old white man. His nurse was named Jenny, and Jenny came and went, wrestling mightily with the old man.

  “Did they come and exercise you?”

  “What?”

  Rafael didn’t understand a word of it.

  “Who turned down your bed today?”

  “Huh? What?”

  Rafael kept finding dry little things in his nose and mouth, kept picking them out while Jenny struggled with his neighbor.

  “You pulled out your needle!”

  “I did?” the old man replied.

  “He pulled out his IV.”

  “What?”

  The old man launched loud, hacking coughs into the room.

  “Our friend,” Rafael said, “is in bad shape.”

  The hospital’s social worker spoke Spanish. He stepped into the room, interrupting the sheriff’s interrogation. Rafael’s mother called from Veracruz, trying to see if he was alive. The hospital was going to provide him with a call back to her once the cops were done with him.

  Rafael said thank you, but he did not smile.

  By 11:30 A.M. that same Tuesday, Rita Vargas was on the case. A strong woman with movie-star looks, Vargas was the Mexican consul in Calexico. Her husband, Felipe Cuellar, was the consul of San Diego. They were uniquely qualified to understand the vagaries of migration and tragedy along the line, overseeing between them the region encompassing the Tijuana, Mexicali, and San Luis migratory corridors. Having originally come from Mexico City, Vargas had made it her business to become an expert in the norteño territories, a land alien to her.

  The Calexico consul had responsibility for Yuma (and, by extension, Wellton), which at that time had no consulate. Yuma called Calexico to tell them there were dead Mexicans in the field. Rita Vargas was on the telephone in minutes, hunting down Mexican authorities all over the world.

  Rita was known as a no-nonsense consul who brooked no foolishness. While charming and funny, endearing when it was appropriate, she was not afraid to stand up to both the Border Patrol and her superiors. She lived in a world far removed from the decencies of La Capital—no exquisite dining or Aztec collections in Calexico, no waiters in tuxedos with perfect manners, all-night bookstores, concerts and strolling mariachis in Garibaldi, no metro, no small white lights in the trees of Coyoacán where coffee shops served demitasse cups across the street from Frida Kahlo’s house. Rita Vargas lived in a world of gangsters and Coyotes, cops and victims. She traded now in mummified bodies and gunshot wounds, fear and force.

  In a notorious case earlier in her tenure at the consulate, Vargas handled the case of a classic border shooting. A green Migra agent had fired into a crowd of illegals in the dusty night near Mexicali. He claimed that he’d fired his weapon in self-defense—the gang had outnumbered him and rushed him. One of the runners was mortally wounded. The others, according to his report, turned tail and fled.

  While this agent awaited medical evac for his victim, the Mexican slowly bled into the soil. The agent, clearly distraught, turned in his report, and he was supported by the testimony of the old boys of Calexico Station. The shooting was ruled righteous, and the newbie was cleared of any charges.

  Only Rita Vargas thought it was worthwhile to investigate the ballistics. A quick review of the coroner’s report demonstrated that the wound had entered the runner’s back. It occurred to her that a self-defense shooting should have hit the victim in the chest, unless the Mexicans were assaulting the Migra boy with their buttocks. Her investigation sought out the illegals now safely hidden in Mexico. The science and their testimony revealed exactly the reverse of the Migra’s report. They had been running for the border, going back. The agent, allegedly young and nervous, had fired at them as they hit the fence, and the victim was hit as he tried to repatriate posthaste.

  Vargas famously walked into the station chief’s office with her report and said, “Your men are lying to you.”

  Thus started a respectful relationship between them. While perhaps not a friendship, their mutual respect was a feature of the Mexicali/Calexico corridor during her tenure there. Vargas became close to the chief’s wife, for example, and she oversaw the amazing development of a Mexican government service window in t
he Border Patrol station with his mute blessing.

  By 11:30 A.M. of that last day, Rita Vargas already knew that the walkers were mostly from Veracruz. She tracked down the governor of that state at his hotel in Europe. She stopped his vacation cold and gave him a long-distance report. She then pulled her superior out of an important meeting in Mexico City. That work done, she sped to Yuma, where the first of the walkers were arriving by Marine and BORSTAR helicopters.

  The men were gawking with huge black eyes at the hustling gringos. Cops everywhere. Huge Migra monsters lurched around them. Deadly serious Latino sheriffs descended on them. Soldiers. Nurses. Pilots. Chaplains. Doctors. The Mexicans soon joined in: scary Federales with notebooks and expensive after-shave lotion pulled chairs up to their beds. Who did this? Where is he? Where’s El Negro? Where’s Don Moi? Do you know Daniel Cercas?

  The overwhelming flow of panicky radio calls had been picked up by scanners all over the southland. The scanners started to attract reporters. TV crews sped to Yuma from central Arizona and California, newspaper stringers and borderland beat reporters hustled to the medical center. It was lights and mikes, notebooks and flashbulbs. Television vans raised their satellite dishes. Press credentials flashed in the sun. The hustle and jiggle overtook the parking lot of the medical clinic. Signcutters suddenly became perimeter security experts.

  “We’re famous,” somebody said.

  Gringos giving orders—one of the boys thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen in his damned life. His arms were full of bloody cactus punctures, and his balding head was burned bright red. But Jesus Christ! He was alive! It was so funny, he couldn’t stop giggling. And these cops! These ridiculous cops strutting around. He could have wet himself, they were making him laugh so much. He wiped and wiped the blood that started seeping out of his wounds the more he drank. Pinches gringos! “We’re all fucking dead!” he told the cops. “We all died!” He burst out laughing. Showed them the blood. “Death!” It was the best laugh he’d ever had.

  The boys were coming in: Rafael Temich, Nahum Landa. They were hydrated and made comfortable. The helicopter racket came through the walls. They stared dully as IV needles were stuck in their veins. As they drank, they started to be able to urinate again, and women held strange little pitchers to the ends of their penises and collected the dark fluid and whisked it away to peer at it in stark rooms. The men were still so stunned by the walk that they weren’t able to completely process this unexpected North American development: white women clutching their privates.

  Cops stared at them, tried to intimidate them with badges and big chests. Officers who spoke Spanish, some better than others, glared down at them. They set up video cameras on tripods and held clipboards. They had big guns on their belts. Mustaches. Pens. It was all dreamy and stupid. Cops didn’t scare anybody. Some of the survivors resented the questions. Some of them were still insane from the walk. Some, like Nahum, went opaque and shifty, not sure what they should say. How much could they share? Any reasonably tough guy from Mexico knew that you were nebulous with cops, and you didn’t rat out your associates. Besides, who were these big men? More Migra? Would they deport everybody? Nahum kept his eyes hooded and answered their questions with quiet evasion, with maddeningly impressionistic answers.

  “It was the guy with the forelock,” he said. “The rooster hair. He left us.”

  Some of the boys in beds nearby glanced at each other. Everybody was listening to everybody else. Nahum set the course for some of the younger guys: he wasn’t going to crack. They wouldn’t crack, either. But he sure as hell was going to finger Mendez. Nobody was going to stand up for that asshole. They wanted to help. They wanted to know who was alive. And they were afraid to know who had died. Everything in their lives was chaos and fear. They had only been in the norte for less than two weeks. They still didn’t know where they were, didn’t know what “Yuma” was—Mexican or American—didn’t know if they were going to jail or being deported or if El Negro and Chespiro would hunt down their wives and mothers and kill them.

  The beds were comfortable, though. The AC was cool. The Jell-O was tasty. If only the cops would go away and let them get some sleep, things would be a lot better.

  But the cops weren’t going away.

  “Tell us about the rooster guy.”

  They called him Mendez.

  “Did the rooster guy threaten you?”

  No.

  “Were there any sexual improprieties, any violent acts?”

  Sex! No.

  “What’s the name of the guy with the red haircut?”

  Don’t know his name. Mendez.

  “Is the guy here? The rooster boy?”

  I don’t know. Is he here? I think he’s over there.

  And they all looked down the way. Mendez. Oh yes, they said. He’s here. He’s down at the end of the ward. In that bed. That’s the guy with the hair.

  And the sheriffs, smelling their prey, gradually made their way to him, recording each survivor as they went, building their case as they closed the distance between them and him. Every few minutes of tape brought Mendez closer to a life in prison.

  Rita Vargas arrived in Yuma and started caring for the men. She observed the police interrogations, making sure the survivors knew their rights. She hounded the Mexican pols on her cell phone, called Tucson and told them to get ready for bodies—many bodies. She shook Migra hands and Marine pilots’ hands. She comforted brothers and nephews and godsons. If she could have teleported from room to room, hall to hall, officer to officer, and corpse to corpse, life would have been simpler.

  The boys in the beds were all under arrest, so their medical bills were at least no longer in play. The Border Patrol posted a guard on each room, and the guards stood watch the entire time. There wasn’t much to be done for the walkers, once the questions had been asked and the reporters banned and the governments of Veracruz and Hidalgo notified. These boys were going to be pumped full of water and antibiotics and saline solution, and then they were going to Phoenix, to some holding cells, somewhere, but they were not going back to Mexico. Not yet. They might get the ol’ Migra bus ride to Nogales or Sonoita, kicked off at Lukeville crossing with a stern finger-wag, but not yet. No, we had something cooking here. We had Rooster Boy, and he’d killed—well, nobody knew yet how many he’d killed. But the dude was clearly some kind of Coyote Charlie Manson. He was a monster. He was the ur-Coyote shitheel we’d been hunting for thirty years, the killer of walkers, the smuggler punk. And he’d killed his last freaking load of tonks, that was for goddamned sure, and we had rooms full of wits! We had bed after bed full of witnesses for the prosecution. This was Arizona, man. He wasn’t going to get off with a slap on the wrist in Arizona! Lil’ Rooster Boy was going to be deep fried and served up. One of the Yuma sector cutters said, “He shoulda stayed home.”

  So the tonks were going to lie there nice and cool, eating macaroni and Hamburger Helper, sipping OJ and slurping pudding. Then they were going to get in nice big BP trucks and sing their songs. The survivors were suddenly paid professional narrators. At the beginning of their federal jobs, they were paid in room and board. They got cheap shoes and pants. T-shirts. As they sang, they learned they could get job advancement. Even a substantial raise. Like all good bards, they embellished and expanded their narratives. As long as they told their stories, they stayed. As long as they stayed, they had a chance to stay longer. Soon, they would surely earn money.

  It was the new millennium’s edition of the American Dream.

  Paul K. Charlton, the United States attorney for the District of Arizona, was going to take Mendez down. In documents after document in the matter of United States of America v. Jesús Lopez Ramos, he righteously flayed Rooster Boy.

  “First, the very attempt by the defendant to guide a group of twenty or more individuals through a remote area of desert, on foot, at a time when temperatures were greater than 100 degrees, is, in and of itself, a reckless act. The defendant had been appre
hended on seven prior occasions in this area with groups of people. ( … ) Six of those apprehensions occurred during ‘summer’ months, so the defendant was familiar with the area and aware of the potential for soaring temperatures. The defendant’s past apprehensions at various locations in this particular area support a finding that he knew of the vastness of this desert area. On the other hand, the victims knew only what the defendant and his co-conspirators told them: that the walk would take no more than two days to complete, that they would walk at night and rest during the day, and that they should bring an amount of water that they could carry to sustain them for 1 and ½ days. …”

  Mendez wrote his sad letter, but it could not stand against Charlton’s language and organization.

  By way of this letter, I ask forgiveness and pardon for what happened in the Arizona desert, because I really am sorry from the bottom of my heart for what happened and it honestly wasn’t my intention to lead those people to their deaths. Rather, my intention was to help them cross the border. But we never imagined the tragedy would happen. I want you to know that since my childhood my parents have always been of very low economical resources. My parents had to make great efforts just to feed us each day. I was forced to leave school because they didn’t have enough economic means to send all four of us children to school. So I decided to leave my family and look for work, and make some good money to help my family make ends meet and buy them a house, since they don’t own their own home. I worked legitimately at a factory making roof tiles in Nogales, Sonora. The wages were truly very low, and that was my reason for getting involved in the smuggling business. I met Daniel at the factory where I was working and he asked me if I’d work for him by crossing over illegals and he promised me good wages. I didn’t want to, but in the end I decided to, since it didn’t include killing or robbing anybody. That was why I began to work for him and there were always three of us guides and I swear, nothing like this tragedy had ever happened to us before. It was never our intention to abandon them, but rather to help them, because when three people from the group decided not to continue and turn themselves in, one of the guides stayed with them, and if the rest would have decided not to continue we would have all turned ourselves in. But they decided to keep walking in order to make it to our destination and I never forced them to keep going. So we kept on walking, but within a few hours we all ran out of water. We never imagined the temperatures would be so high. So then the illegals asked me and my companion to go for water and they gave us ninety dollars to buy the water, because we didn’t have any money on us. But it was not our intention to abandon them, but rather to help them. But since the temperatures were so high, my companion died and I was left very weak and I couldn’t continue on to bring help and if immigration hadn’t found me in time I too would have died, and in my state I wasn’t aware of what had happened to the other people. It was in the hospital that they informed me that many people had died. I felt very sad and I honestly am very sorry for the family members and victims and I am so sorry because it wasn’t my intention to lead them to their death. I ask forgiveness and pardon from the judge and the state for what happened. I ask from the bottom of my heart not to judge me so unfairly, because what happened was an accident and not intentional. I promise not to bring illegals across anymore and I am truly repentant, and ask the judge’s pardon and forgiveness.