Young migrants still determined
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/miami/16583.html
January 12, 2006
TECATE, Baja California.- Just like tens of thousands of other Mexican youths, Jacinto Hern?ndez, 14, is trying to outfox some of the world?s most
sophisticated detection technology to cross into the United States.
Before setting out on the short but perilous journey, he will eat at a Catholic Church-run hostel in Tecate, just across the border from the
California town of the same name, the site of the crossing known as Eagle Pass.
"I can?t get work in Mexico and I need to help my six younger siblings," says Jacinto, a native of the central state of Quer?taro. He has already made
six failed attempts to cross the border.
Eagle Pass is a gap in the fence that lines most of the U.S.-Mexico border. But the absence of a physical barrier does not mean the frontier is
undefended.
Tecate, California, is also a major legal port of entry for goods and people entering the United States from Mexico, and the U.S. Border Patrol and
Customs units have the latest in high-tech surveillance gear.
Jacinto Hern?ndez and other migrants must get past infrared cameras and elude patrolling helicopters equipped with night-vision equipment.
"If U.S. immigration authorities detain me 10 times, I will try 11 times ," the young man says while leaving the Casa del Migrante, the Tecate
shelter.
All six of Hern?ndez?s previous attempts to enter the United States were at points in and around Tijuana, just opposite San Diego, an area where U.S.
authorities have already completed a good part of what is intended to be an impregnable barrier of three fences that stand nearly 4 meters (13 feet)
high.
"What most infuriates me every time I fail is knowing that I have the U.S. less than 20 centimeters away and I still can?t set foot on its territory,"
Jacinto said.
After his six thwarted bids to cross, the teenager walked alongside the Tijuana airport expressway that runs near the border, observing the scores of
crosses and painted tombstones and signs of the danger of the journey. "All of these adults and children, men and women, died trying to seek a better
life," he said.
Well over a million Mexicans and other Latin Americans cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally each year. Hundreds of thousands are apprehended and
returned.
Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed and sent on to the Senate a bill that would authorize the construction of hundreds of miles of
additional border barriers as well as make crossing without proper documents a criminal offense. But Hern?ndez says that any such measures will be in
vain as long as there are needy people in Latin America.
However, the journey is becoming more perilous.
"Many minors are abandoned to their fates because the migrant traffickers cheat them when they reach the border," said Uriel Gonz?lez, coordinator of
a Tijuana center for teenagers preparing to venture north and those who were caught by the Border Patrol and sent back to Mexico.
Gonz?lez told EFE that kids from other parts of Mexico and Latin America who end up stranded in border cities such as Tijuana run a high risk of being
sucked into the local underworld.
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