Recent Reports and Videos about Southwest Border Smuggling

Coyote Interview Video

CBIG researchers have interviewed coyotes over the years, but none has been willing to go on camera, until now. In Interview with a Coyote a former coyote, who we call Alejandro, describes how he crossed people through the Southwest desert, helping them arrive at cities throughout the United States. He also relates how he evaded the tighter border security after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and how transnational criminal organizations have taken control over the increasingly profitable and dangerous border smuggling businesses. Go to Interview with a Coyote (2012, 12 min. 51 sec.).

Border Security Techniques in the Southwest Video

   CBIG's Carolyn Gonzales with Agent Ralph Gomez "on the line" near El Paso (frame from video)

U.S. Border Patrol efforts to seal the border are depicted in a short video filmed in the El Paso Sector of the Southwest border. Agent Ralph Gomez describes Border Patrol techniques for thwarting unauthorized crossings,  Go to the video titled Border Security Techniques in the Southwest (Posted in Jan. 19, 2012, 4 min. 34 sec.).

Sealing the Southwest Border:  Accounts from Hidalgo and Cochise Counties

At times the border residents in New Mexico and Arizona feel abandoned by DHS and local law enforcement policies that have increased incidents of illegal activity on their lands, but have not effectively sealed many rural border areas.  Richard Schaefer and Carolyn Gonzales produced six in-depth reports on border problems: 1. Sealing the Border, 2. DHS Chokepoint Strategy, 3.  Recent Border History, 4. Living in No-Man’s- Land, 5. Three-Tiered Pricing for Smuggling Humans, 6. Big Money’s Corrupting Influence.  Go to Southwest Border Stories of Smuggling and Immigration to download a compilation of all six reports.

In preparation for the above report, Gonzales and Schaefer conducted interviews with border residents and law enforcement officials. Go to Southwest Border Stories of Smuggling and Immigration to see a series of edited video reports compiled from interviews in Grant and Hidalgo Counties in New Mexico and Cochise County in Arizona, as well as Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico.    

Human Trafficking Chapter forthcoming. . .

Also. . . CBIG’s Richard Schaefer and Carolyn Gonzales have written an in-depth account describing the often-tenuous line between illicit human border crossing and human trafficking of migrants, and how it affects undocumented migrants and the ranchers, farmers, and border residents in two rural Southwest United States counties. The report draws on CBIG’s primary-source accounts from Hidalgo and Cochise Counties, as well as accounts of the abuses Central American migrants face when traveling through Mexico. The chapter, titled “Human Trafficking Through Mexico and the Southwest Border: Accounts from Hidalgo and Cochise Counties,” will be published in a forthcoming book on human trafficking edited by Susan Tiano. See Borderline Slavery: Mexico, United States, and the Human Trade to be released in 2012 by Ashgate Publishing. The CBIG chapter is available for reviewers, journalists and researchers from Richard Schaefer -- schaefer@unm.edu.

Cross-Border Issues Group supports North American travel and bi-national student exchanges to investigate how people living across borders experience issues.  CBIG exchanges lead to research and journalistic reports that provide an intercultural perspective on significant social issues.

Migrant injured in fall from a freight train in Ixtepec, in southern Oaxaca.    Photo:  Rodrigo Guzman Serrano

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Schaefer Gives Presentations on the "Albergue System" of migrant shelters in Mexico and sealing the Southwest Border

Associate Professor of Journalism Richard Schaefer gave two presentations at the Second Binational Conference on Border Issues in San Diego in December 2011. "The North American Albergue System" was based on many CBIG visits to varioius migrant shelters in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.  (See Schaefer's earlier 33-page account of his stay in the Casa Migrante in Lecheria, Estado de Mexico, edited by Carolyn Gonzales and JoAnn Schaefer. (Download PDF file.)) The second presentation drew upon CBIG's Southwest Border work. Go to Southwest Border Stories of Smuggling and Immigration to download a compilation of six in-depth reports.  

Keep up with CBIG Blogs:

CBIG: UNM Cross-Border Issues Group Blog
          by various CBIG personnel

UNM Today: CBIG Visits Altar, Sonora, Mexico
          by Carolyn Gonzales

UNM Today: CBIG Visits Lordsburg & Douglas
          by Carolyn Gonzales

Daily Lobo: On the other side of the fence
          by Andrew Beale, UNM

Rodrigo Guzmán:  CBIG blogs/videos/podcasts
          by Rodrigo Guzmán | Tec de Monterrey & UNM

 

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