Interdicted Chinese illegal immigrants
- Photo courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard

Clips from the INS film The Enemy Unseen
(Streaming video: 3 minutes, 1 second long. To view, you need
RealPlayer)

Transcript of the audio

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Excerpts from Peter Kwong's
Forbidden Workers

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The Land Route
Excerpts from Ko-lin Chin's
Smuggled Chinese

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Law Enforcement
and Border Management
INS Web Site

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INS Press Releases
on Alien Smuggling
INS Web Site

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The U.S. public was horrified by news stories about a group of 14 illegal migrants who were found dead in an Arizona desert in May 2001, but hundreds die each year attempting to cross U.S. borders.

The dangers are especially great along the more than 2000-mile-long U.S. border with Mexico, where migrants routinely miscalculate the risks of crossing huge expanses of featureless deserts or negotiating the swift currents of the Rio Grande River.

An over-land entry to the United States is attractive to smugglers because of the diversity of terrain and the number of concealment methods they can use, says James Chaparro, director of anti-smuggling at the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

But with increased vigilance by U.S. border authorities, smugglers attempt riskier routes to evade detection, often with disastrous results.

According to figures provided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 201 migrants died between October 1, 2000 and July 10, 2001. Another 367 died between October 1, 1999 and September 30, 2000. The leading causes of death are heat exposure followed by drowning.

The deserts in the southwestern United States can take days to cross. But with few landmarks and insufficient water supplies, the immigrants often become lost and succumb to exhaustion and dehydration.

The Rio Grande River, which runs for 1885 miles (3033 km) and forms much of the U.S. border with Mexico, has swift currents that have proven deadly for many migrants.

Other migrants die in auto and train accidents or from suffocating in confined spaces, such as inside the cargo areas of delivery trucks.

Thanks to the heroic efforts of the U.S. Border Patrol, however, thousands of migrants have been rescued. Between October 1, 2000 and July 10, 2001, 869 migrants were saved. Between October 1, 1999 and September 30, 2000, the number was 2464, according to INS figures.

In addition to the obstacles provided by nature, the migrants face violence at the hands of drug smugglers and bandits who haunt the border areas.

The INS is trying to warn would-be illegal migrants of all of these risks through public announcement films such as The Enemy Unseen. (See film clip.)

Although some American residents in the border areas are sympathetic to the sufferings of illegal immigrants, U.S. law prohibits harboring or transporting undocumented migrants. Violators can be imprisoned for up to 10 years for each smuggled immigrant.

While the majority of illegal immigrants apprehended along the U.S. southern border are Hispanic, 349 Chinese illegal migrants were caught in Fiscal Year 2000 (October 1, 1999 to September 30, 2000), according to the INS. Another 321 Chinese illegal migrants were apprehended the same year along the U.S. border with Canada.

The May 2001 migrant deaths that focused public attention on the problem involved Hispanics. Their smugglers abandoned them after they ran out of food and water. Fourteen were found dead; the U.S. Border Patrol rescued 26 others. According to press reports, doctors who treated the survivors described their patients as so shriveled from dehydration that they looked like mummies

The group was found far from any roads or any sort of shelter in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, a desolate place in Arizona where temperatures routinely soar well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

July 2001

-- Story by Jane Morse, Washington File senior writer