Dispatches From the Border |
Hey, good morning. Good morning.
Michael Barbaro
After a 35-day government shutdown over a proposed wall on the southern border, Democrats and Republicans in Congress are now negotiating over what border security actually means.
Annie Brown
Is there a wall over here?
Azam Ahmed
I don’t know.
Michael Barbaro
So we check back in with “The Daily”‘s Annie Brown.
Azam Ahmed
Oh, look, it just sort of stops and turns into a chain-link fence.
Michael Barbaro
Who’s been driving the length of the U.S.-Mexico border with reporter Azam Ahmed.
Speaker
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
Michael Barbaro
Their last dispatch focused on migrants on the Mexican side who are deciding whether to cross the border illegally.
Speaker
My wife, my two daughters and [INAUDIBLE].
Michael Barbaro
Today, what happens once they cross?
Speaker
Irrespective of what the government — whatever it is, we know we’re going to cross. We know we’re going to cross.
Michael Barbaro
It’s Tuesday, January 29.
Azam Ahmed
A few days into our road trip along the border, we found ourselves not on the border at all, but 80 miles north.
Annie Brown
O.K. Driving to Brooks County.
Azam Ahmed
In a place in Texas called Brooks County, one of the deadliest counties in the country for migrants.
Annie Brown
What is today?
Azam Ahmed
Because after making the dangerous trek to the border and then making it across successfully, it’s not over. The next thing they face is the inhospitable landscape. The nature here is crazy. It’s just kind of this scrubland, untamed — it’s pretty remarkable. What they’re up against now is not only being caught by border Patrol, but getting lost in the brush, getting dehydrated, dying of exposure. Hello.
Eddie Canales
Are you here?
Azam Ahmed
Yep. We’re here. We just pulled up in front of the court house. So we went up to go meet a guy named Eddie Canales. Ah. O.K. I see you. O.K. I’ll just park right where you are. He’s basically dedicated the last few years since 2013 helping to try and keep migrants from dying, essentially. And we’re basically going to follow him around for the day.
Eddie Canales
Hey.
Azam Ahmed
How are you doing?
Eddie Canales
Hey! You’ve got more than one photographer.
Azam Ahmed
She is — a radio show I told you about. Eddie works out of a small brick building across the street from the courthouse in Brooks County.
Eddie Canales
You know, I was born in Corpus, grew up on the border.
Azam Ahmed
He’s 71. His great grandparents came over from Mexico, and he grew up along the border.
Eddie Canales
I consider myself a fronterizo.
Annie Brown
What does that mean?
Eddie Canales
Border guy? [LAUGHS] Border rat?
Azam Ahmed
For decades, he was a union guy organizing immigrants working as cleaners, builders and janitors. He retired a few years ago, but then the death count in Brooks County spiked.
Eddie Canales
From 2004 to the present there’s probably 750 or so just in Brooks County alone.
Azam Ahmed
In the last 15 years, the remains of 700 migrants have been found just in Brooks County alone. And oftentimes they’re bleached bones with an empty jug of water beside them. It’s a sort of grim still life of someone’s final moments.
Eddie Canales
Came out here, you know, we’ve got to save lives, we’ve got to figure this out, we’ve got to do rescues and stuff. You know, you’re desperate to try to do something.
Azam Ahmed
And Eddie decided he was coming out of retirement to find a way to keep so many migrants from dying.
Eddie Canales
This is the — welcome to the South Texas Human Rights Center.
Azam Ahmed
Love it.
Annie Brown
Thank you.
Eddie Canales
Yeah, we’re —
Azam Ahmed
So as part of his work, Eddie sets up water stations at strategic locations throughout Brooks County.
Eddie Canales
Go out with — some of the citizens are going to go out with us for the water station, water drops. Those are all water station.
Azam Ahmed
He’s got a map of Brooks County with these little push pins all over it. These are where you dropped water off for migrants crossing through.
Eddie Canales
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
Azam Ahmed
[SPEAKING SPANISH] All right. All right. We’ll squeeze in. So we went out with him —
Annie Brown
I’m going to squeeze in with you all back here.
Speaker
O.K. Perfect.
Azam Ahmed
On one of his tours, which is essentially checking and replenishing water supplies.
Eddie Canales
O.K. Watch where you step. O.K., please? When you open up the water station —
Azam Ahmed
We hop in Eddie’s truck with a couple of volunteers. The bed is filled with hundreds of gallons of water.
Eddie Canales
Look out for wasps and spiders and stuff. O.K. Be cognizant of that.
Azam Ahmed
And we take off for the different access roads that line the ranchland in Brooks County.
Annie Brown
How often do you go out and replenish these?
Eddie Canales
In the summer every week, and every two weeks in the winter.
Azam Ahmed
And surrounding you realize just how desolate it is, because you drive for miles and miles and miles, and there’s nothing. There’s these roads, but there’s no structures, there’s no stores. There’s just sandy plains, scrub brush and — I mean, even the plants don’t look really alive. Why do you figure so many migrants wind up dying here in Brooks County? It’s not on the border. What is it about the county?
Eddie Canales
Well, there’s a checkpoint, right? So the checkpoint being so far —
Azam Ahmed
There’s one main road that runs through Brooks County. And there’s a Border Patrol checkpoint on it, which means you can’t really transit via car if you’re a migrant, because you’re going to get stopped and your car is going to be reviewed, which forces people out into the scrubland and into this inhospitable climate where they have to walk, essentially, around that checkpoint and presumably get picked up on the other side.
Eddie Canales
And it’s by design, right? That they’re going to force them into the brush. They’re going to force them to walk.
Azam Ahmed
It’s part of this idea of deterrence.
Eddie Canales
That’s the way that they have it set up.
Azam Ahmed
I think people think it started with Trump, but this is a Clinton-era initiative. If we make it harder on people, if we push them into more desperate conditions, it might dissuade them from coming.
Eddie Canales
Because you’re actually forcing people into the more remote, very harsh areas, very isolated areas.
Azam Ahmed
The one thing we’ve learned is that doesn’t actually work. It’s not working today with making it harder to cross legally to ask for asylum. People just cross illegally. In the same way, making them take this treacherous journey through Brooks County, the number of people who have died over the last 15 years, it hasn’t stopped them. It hasn’t stopped people from dying. It hasn’t stopped them from taking that track.
Eddie Canales
I mean, there’s so much death. [SPEAKING SPANISH] I mean, we’ll show you — see how that fence is down? Yeah. They’re jumping that. They’re stepping —
Azam Ahmed
So basically we pulled off to the side of one of these roads, and everybody jumps out.
Eddie Canales
It’s difficult to find shade out here. Look at how bad that is.
Azam Ahmed
It’s incredibly dry and brittle plant life.
Eddie Canales
Now, everything’s got thorns. Everything’s got thorns.
Azam Ahmed
It’ll tear your clothes, it’ll rip your skin. There’s no shade overhead. There’s a few trees, there’s live oaks, but they’re sparse. For the most part, it’s just exposed.
Eddie Canales
We have a barrel, a 55-gallon barrel. Blue for water. It’s symbolic. And inside the barrel we have 6 gallons, 7 gallons of water. O.K. We need two.
Azam Ahmed
He pops the lid of this blue bin open.
Eddie Canales
O.K. They just took enough water that they needed.
Azam Ahmed
To check on the water supply.
Eddie Canales
So let’s put the one in there. And that’s one [INAUDIBLE].
Azam Ahmed
There’s a flag planted beside it.
Eddie Canales
The most expensive part is really the flag. It’s very — it’s important.
Azam Ahmed
It’s a tall metal pole, and essentially there’s just a white cloth at the end of it, but it’s just a signal to migrants if they’re crossing through this area that there’s something here, there’s water here.
Annie Brown
Have you come across any migrants while you’re doing the work?
Eddie Canales
Yes. In one of the ranches. I remember going in there to check the water and there were two guys that were in the corner there. So I went around and I asked them if they needed water, food — we gave them everything we had, because they had been walking around the ranch for three days. Three days they had been in the ranch and didn’t — [SPEAKING SPANISH] — you know, going around and around. And I said, “Look,” I said, “You go over there, right there, the high wire, you get that high wire, you jump that fence, and you head north and you just stay on the perimeter, you’ll be fine.”
Annie Brown
And Eddie, what number is this? Station number?
Eddie Canales
Put Singer Ranch —
Azam Ahmed
In general, people try to stay off the road. Instead, they trek through these ranches, which can be hundreds of acres, with no landmarks or mountains to orient them. They sometimes wander in circles for days. So when you talk to the ranchers, what do most of them say to you when you say, “Look, will you allow me to put water on your property? Will you allow me to at least do that?”
Eddie Canales
My approach to them is a humanitarian approach. I’m not going to try to talk politics to them. And I introduce myself. “I’m the guy that’s putting out water stations out there. We’re trying to save lives.” I’m going to say, “Do you have traffic in your ranch?”
Azam Ahmed
Eddie uses the term “traffic,” but he means people, migrants crossing their land.
Eddie Canales
I say, “If you have traffic, could a water station help you? It affects the county, the cost of the county and the community in terms of having this image of the valley of death.”
Azam Ahmed
He’s convinced a few ranchers here and there to let him put water stations on their land, since most of the migrants don’t pass along the main roads, where he’s able to put his stations. But it’s not as good as he’d like. He’s not able to access a lot of the private land. The guys who tell you no, though, why? What do they say?
Eddie Canales
Oh, some people say, “Nah, I don’t need one of them stopping in my ranch.” That type of attitude. “No, no, no. I don’t want them trespassing or anything like that,” you know. It’s difficult to — how many’s in there? Four. O.K. We need two. O.K.
Azam Ahmed
We spent four hours filling up water stations with Eddie.
Annie Brown
Next station?
Eddie Canales
You got the stickers? Let’s do stickers on all of them, O.K.? We’ve been at it for a while. We’ve got over 160 stations.
Speaker
Another station.
Eddie Canales
Put Singer Ranch, SR, number one.
Azam Ahmed
Just driving one after the next after the next.
Speaker
Next stop.
Eddie Canales
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. The others are good. They look good so far.
Speaker
Five good?
Eddie Canales
Yeah. I think we’re done. Yeah. This is the end of the road here. We can’t go no further.
Azam Ahmed
A lot of it was along the main roads because Eddie can’t get access to some of the ranches where migrants are more likely to stop. And I couldn’t help but notice that most of these were still full. The water hadn’t been drunk. And it made me wonder what happened to all the people that Eddie couldn’t reach.
Annie Brown
And describe where we’re going.
Eddie Canales
We’re going to the Sacred Heart Burial Park, where the cemetery is owned by the county.
Azam Ahmed
So in Brooks County, there’s a cemetery called Sacred Heart.
Eddie Canales
Yeah. You’ll see how they’re trenching based on — let me park where I’m out of the way here.
Azam Ahmed
For the past few years, Eddie’s been working with a team of scientists there, basically to search the cemetery for anonymous migrant graves.
Eddie Canales
I’ll just give her a rundown. 2013 was the first exhumation. 2014, the second one.
Azam Ahmed
Because what had been happening here over the years is that people in the county, when they’d find bodies, migrants on their property, their remains were brought here and buried wherever there was space.
Eddie Canales
[INAUDIBLE] in here?
Azam Ahmed
The county cemetery looks almost like any other county cemetery you’d come to. Grassy, a few big trees, quite full, fake flowers banked against headstones. But after we parked, we began to walk in and see these long trenches being dug. And there’s these small — almost encampments of people digging.
Eddie Canales
As of yesterday — [SPEAKING SPANISH] So there’s now 17. You can see.
Azam Ahmed
Wow. [SPEAKING SPANISH] And just as we arrived, they’d found something. [SPANISH SPEECH]
Eddie Canales
Oh my God.
Azam Ahmed
It’s a black plastic trash bag that’s been worn thin, and inside are just bones stacked on top of one another.
Speaker
That’s what — that’s all that’s exposed.
Eddie Canales
[SPEAKING SPANISH] Because the essence is disintegrated. So carefully —
Azam Ahmed
It was obvious, from the condition, that this person had died long before they were buried.
Eddie Canales
And this is Dr. Kate Spradley.
Kate Spradley
Hi.
Annie Brown
Hi. Annie.
Kate Spradley
Annie, nice to meet you.
Eddie Canales
You can ask her any questions.
Kate Spradley
I’ll answer them, too.
Azam Ahmed
Eddie introduced us to the anthropologist leading the dig, Dr. Kate Spradley.
Kate Spradley
The Texas Criminal Code of Procedure and the Texas Health and Safety Code mandate that —
Azam Ahmed
So in Texas, there are now laws that require DNA samples to be taken from every body found, but for years —
Kate Spradley
In Brooks County, that wasn’t happening.
Azam Ahmed
That wasn’t happening.
Kate Spradley
And there were so many people dying here. In this particular county in 2012, you had 130 deaths. And that’s just too much for this county to handle.
Azam Ahmed
This county, overwhelmed with the number of people, was finding wherever they could in this cemetery to bury these individuals.
Kate Spradley
They buried them anywhere they could find.
Azam Ahmed
Without a map, without taking DNA samples, without gravestones.
Kate Spradley
It’s body bags, and it’s just digging shallow holes and throwing people in.
Azam Ahmed
Literally anonymously.
Kate Spradley
But in 2013, things changed, and the South Texas Human Rights Center helped the county get the money they needed to send remains to a medical examiner. So what we’re dealing with is people who died before 2013 that are buried in this cemetery.
Azam Ahmed
So at baseline, they’re exhuming these bodies to take DNA samples so that they can then compare those to databases of families who have missing loved ones. Essentially, she is trying to reclaim people from anonymity.
Kate Spradley
We’ve found 16 so far.
Azam Ahmed
So this is the potential 16th?
Kate Spradley
This is not the 16th. The 16th, do you see the white in the corner over here? Above that scale —
Azam Ahmed
Oh, yes.
Kate Spradley
There’s a little white coming through. That looks like it’s going to be another bag. Yes. A bag of remains.
Azam Ahmed
Since they started, they’ve found more than 150 bodies in the cemetery. And with them they often find the things they carried.
Kate Spradley
They’re carrying a toothbrush and toothpaste. This is something — you know, you and I are not carrying that right now. That’s something that — somebody is traveling. People carry just different things. There’s been stuffed animals, baseball cards, a luchador mask. It’s really interesting because you can see, also, through looking at the personal effects, how some people prepared for this trip. One person had photocopied money and put the photocopied money in his pockets. And then he sewed in a little pocket inside the pants with his real money. So just by looking at this and documenting it, you can tell how they prepared for this.
Azam Ahmed
Many of the families that have missing loved ones have placed their DNA in a database. And essentially, using that database, they compare it with the samples that come in from the bodies they exhume. And they occasionally match.
Kate Spradley
And we’ve identified 30 people so far.
Azam Ahmed
That’s incredible. I mean, I work and live in Mexico, it’s just, like, a — it’s just a dark hole. Nobody ever finds out where their loved ones —
Annie Brown
And give me context for that. What does it mean that they’ve matched 30 in this case?
Azam Ahmed
I mean, it means that there’s 30 families who have closure. There’s 30 families who know what happened.
Kate Spradley
We identified two individuals. Their families were in Houston, so they came to visit their remains in our lab before they were sent back to their country of origin. And you really got to see how this information impacted them. It let them just, I think, finally breathe for a moment. They’ve been on pins and needles. They didn’t know what happened. They asked questions like, well, how long were they out there? We called this person. We called this person. We called this agency. Is there anything more we could have done? And we said, no. You did everything that you could. Then they actually viewed the remains. They held the remains, and they wrote letters and put them in the box to go back with them for burial. It’s very nice to see that side of it and to see the impact and the meaning that it carries.
Azam Ahmed
The effort has largely been a success in Brooks County, but there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of people whose bodies are never found. And if they’re never found, they’re never identified.
Kate Spradley
Will we ever find the rest? That’s what I really start thinking. Will we ever be able to clear this cemetery? Will we ever find all of the individuals? How many people will we leave behind? And how many families will never know what happened to their loved one?
Eddie Canales
For every recovered body, there’s one other body that’s still out there.
Kate Spradley
Or more.
Eddie Canales
Or more.
Kate Spradley
They’re all accidental discoveries. Nobody’s out looking for them. So it’s just a ranch hand or somebody — a property owner is doing something, and they happened upon a body and find them. If you could go out and do systematic searches, I think you would find a lot more.
Eddie Canales
We’re just scratching the surface. You know, all this debate and everything about a wall and all the government shutdown and everything, people are still dying. Everybody says the system is broken, immigration system is broken, right? And you have a deterrence policy. So as long as you have migrant deaths, is that O.K. for the system? No. It’s not O.K. Not one life should be a consequence of a system that is broken.
Azam Ahmed
We’ve driven 80 miles away from the border that day. And I don’t think I realized until later that that was still the border. Even though geographically, it was not technically on the border, the same sort of realities applied.
Annie Brown
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Kate Spradley
Bye. You’re welcome. Nice to meet you.
Azam Ahmed
When you’re in Brooks County with Eddie, it’s hard to imagine why someone would want to stand in this guy’s way. I mean, he’s just trying to save lives. But there are moments when we’re with him, it becomes clear that not everybody does want him to succeed.
Eddie Canales
Right there at Mil Ojos, three of the bottles have been slashed.
Azam Ahmed
While we were on the water run with him, there was one water station where all of the jugs had been punctured, and the water had been allowed to seep out.
Eddie Canales
It was clear, I mean, you could tell where somebody took a —
Azam Ahmed
And he said, on really bad days, sometimes the entire water station can disappear, just thrown on the back of someone’s truck and taken. At one of the water stations we went to check on — So one of these flagpoles that are used to designate where the water stations are has been bent completely down to the ground.
Eddie Canales
I don’t know if maybe the wind in itself — it can get pretty windy out here.
Azam Ahmed
At first Eddie suggested it might have been the wind, but I think that was wishful thinking.
Annie Brown
So it’s like, either the elements or a person knocked this thing down.
Azam Ahmed
I’d be surprised if the wind bent it down all that way.
Eddie Canales
Yeah. No.
Azam Ahmed
It was sort of laying flush with the ground.
Eddie Canales
Somebody could have just came in here and bent it down completely. Or somebody got mad and decided to bend it down.
Azam Ahmed
And people are like that? People not like what you do sometimes?
Eddie Canales
Yeah. Yeah. There are some people that are like that.
Azam Ahmed
And so he spent several minutes using his body weight to try and lift the pole back up and bend it back into shape, but ultimately he couldn’t. It was too badly bent.
Eddie Canales
But I’ll refurbish the flagpole.
Azam Ahmed
And so it sort of sat there, eventually when we left, half in the air, kind of bobbing. You guys — we can give you guys a ride to where you’re going. We have some extra seats. So Eddie took some of the volunteers home. And then —
Eddie Canales
Come back and maybe do a dinner or something.
Azam Ahmed
Came back and asked us if we wanted to go to dinner. So we followed him to his Thursday night dinner spot, a restaurant called Jaliscos right on the highway into town.
Eddie Canales
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
Azam Ahmed
It’s like a Tex-Mex standard restaurant. A few families here and there. SPEAKER You can sing any song you want. But they were setting up for karaoke night.
Eddie Canales
Any song you want!
Azam Ahmed
By the bar, we see a guy with a white handlebar mustache, cowboy hat, cowboy boots, queuing up for karaoke. The D.J. walks over, hands him the mic, and he starts singing a George Strait song.
Phillip Gómez
(SINGING)
Azam Ahmed
Behind his head, the TV is playing, and it’s showing the highlight reels of President Trump’s speech that day about the border wall. But nobody, I mean, nobody was even looking at it. Everybody was just focused on him and this song.
Phillip Gómez
(SINGING) Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
Azam Ahmed
And the mic just starts getting passed around.
Speaker
(SINGING)
Azam Ahmed
And the song choice was kind of an interesting border mix of, like, Mexican songs and Texas country songs.
Speaker
(SINGING) [SINGING IN SPANISH]
Azam Ahmed
And it goes like — it was actually a really fun vibe, everybody just totally being themselves. So about an hour in, I walked over to the guy with the handlebar mustache and invited him to sit down with us. Trying to understand the border a little bit. I spent the whole day with Eddie and sort of had been seeing the county through his eyes, and I wanted to know what other people thought. His name was Phillip Gómez and he was the grandson of Mexican migrants. Phillip actually supported the wall.
Phillip Gómez
I don’t care who’s president whatsoever. Everybody’s making a big deal about Trump, but he’s right.
Azam Ahmed
He said he didn’t care who was president, but that President Trump was right.
Phillip Gómez
Why do people have walls in their backyard?
Azam Ahmed
He said, “Why do people have walls in their backyard? Because they don’t want people in there. There’s no difference. Explain the difference to me.” So Eddie starts eavesdropping on Phillip and I having this conversation, so he kind of interjects. Starts by asking Phillip, “You’re in favor of the wall?” And Phillip says yeah, and Eddie starts to tell him, “I was born here. I’m from here. My family is Mexican. I see it as a symbol of racism.” And it was interesting, there’s these two guys, both Mexican-Americans, both speaking in Spanglish, both in their late 60s early 70s having this conversation from absolutely opposite sides of the divide, at least until —
Speaker
Phil, I think you’re next.
Azam Ahmed
It’s time for the next song.
Speaker
Phil, you’re next.
Azam Ahmed
And someone comes over, hands Phillip the mic, and we convince him to sing from our table.
Phillip Gómez
(SINGING)
Azam Ahmed
And he launches into his next song.
Phillip Gómez
(SINGING)
Azam Ahmed
Eddie sat back, took a sip of his beer and smiled. And then, like everybody else, he started humming along.
Phillip Gómez
(SINGING) [APPLAUSE] Thank you.
Michael Barbaro
“The Daily” will keep checking in with Azam and Annie as they continue their trip West along the border.
2019 © The New York Times