Consider This from NPR - Migration Is Shifting. Who Is Crossing Where?

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

The past twelve months have been the deadliest on record for the migrants crossing the Southern U.S. Border from Mexico. More than 800 have died in the last fiscal year. This past year also saw a shift in migration. More and more are coming from Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela. Past entry points have given way to more remote locations on the border, like Eagle Pass and Del Rio, Texas. These were sleepy border towns, now they are some of the busiest junctions on the border. Who is arriving and what happens when they get there?NPR's Marisa Peñaloza and Joel Rose report. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community. Email us at [e-mail]. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. Crossing the southern U.S. border from Mexico has always been dangerous, even deadly. But the past 12 months have been the worst. More than 800 migrants died during the last fiscal year. That's according to internal government figures shared by a senior border patrol official with NPR. Many died from extreme heat, some out in remote areas, some in the back of trucks. Tonight, stunning new evidence in what officials are calling the nation's deadliest case of human smuggling. This empty trailer, now tied to the deaths of 53 men, women, and potentially children left packed inside.

And others died while crossing the Rio Grande. We all just jumped into the river without knowing how deep it was and how strong the currents were. Anderson Infante had just made it across the river a few weeks ago near Del Rio, Texas, when he heard someone screaming. I hear a young woman yelling, help, help, I'm drowning. But everybody kept going. No one was helping her. So I went back into the river. I pulled her out of the water and I told her to breathe. She survived. Hundreds of others haven't been as lucky. It seems like it's a slow moving river, but it's fairly swift. So it is very deceptive, very dangerous. That is Manuel Melo, fire chief for Eagle Pass, Texas. His department helps recover

bodies of migrants found in the river. He used to get maybe one or two calls a month. Now he's getting dozens. So it's basically a drowning a day that you're seeing. Authorities haven't seen anything like this before. Never. Every day. Never. Tom Schmerber was with the Border Patrol for 20 years before becoming sheriff of Maverick County, which includes Eagle Pass. Maverick has no medical examiner, so the bodies of migrants have to be stored at a local funeral home

until they're sent to a neighboring county. But the bodies, they keep coming, and the funeral home can barely handle them all. Right now they're over with him. He doesn't have the space. Consider this. Eagle Pass and Del Rio used to be remote border towns where not much ever happened. Now they are the busiest junctions on the border. For the first time ever, immigration arrests and detentions topped two million over the last fiscal year. Who are these new people arriving, and what happens to them when they get there?

From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Tuesday, October 4th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. In southwest Texas, a roughly 50-mile stretch of the Rio Grande connects the towns of Eagle Pass and Del Rio. Plenty who cross the border here are from Mexico, of course,

but more and more there are Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaraguans coming through. There's a ranch outside of Eagle Pass. There, migrants arrive in groups of all sizes. Some are just a few families traveling together, while others can be throngs of several hundred crossing over at once. NPR's Marisa Peñaloza and Joel Rose were at the ranch to see all of this in person, and they were surprised to find one person crossing alone. That is how we meet Jose Albornoz, under the blistering sun of South Texas,

all alone, dripping wet and muddy on the U.S. side of the river. We're on the land of Luis Valderrama. He's a rancher, owns a few hundred acres just outside Eagle Pass. Valderrama is showing us where other migrants cut holes in his fences, when suddenly Jose Albernos just appears in the middle of a dirt road. Valderrama is a former border patrol agent. This is not his first encounter with migrants. He has a gun on his belt. Still, he's cautious approaching this guy traveling alone,

who's just turned up on his land with a big bulge under his shirt. What's under your shirt, Valderrama asks. It's a good question. For all he knows, it could be anything. Drugs, weapons. Valderrama asks if he's carrying a gun or a knife. Don't be scared, Albornoz says. He lifts his black t-shirt and pulls out a plastic garbage bag.

Inside, he has a smaller bag holding his passport, a change of clothes and a smartphone. Valderrama unlocks the gate. Albornoz is still breathing heavily after crossing the river. He's not young or skinny like a lot of the migrants we've seen. He stops in the shade to catch his breath. ¿Cómo decidiste cruzar en Why did he pick Eagle Pass, I ask? Albornoz says he heard from other migrants that the journey through Coahuila, Mexico, is safer, less policed. So he just followed in their footsteps, using his

smartphone to map out the route as he went. My trip was planned by Google, he says, not me. Many of the migrants who wind up on buses or planes to the north now pass through this remote stretch on the Rio Grande. We spoke to dozens of migrants who told us they're choosing to cross here because they've heard from other migrants that the journey is relatively safe. This new wave of migrants is coming largely from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. That's significant because these migrants generally cannot be expelled under the pandemic border restrictions known as Title 42. And instead, immigration authorities are releasing them into the U.S., where they can seek asylum.

This summer, the area around Eagle Pass became the busiest spot on the entire border. Immigrant advocates here had never seen anything like this before, so they had to improvise. When migrants are released from U.S. custody in Eagle Pass, they come here, to a nonprofit called Mission Border Hope. It's turned an old warehouse on the outskirts of town into a bustling weigh station for migrants. Our main purpose is to help them continue their journey. Valeria Wheeler is the executive director.

She says the group moved into the space back in April after their contacts at the Border Patrol urged them to. Actually, this place was built because of the anticipation that they had. They told us, Valeria, you will need a bigger place. There's going to was built because of the anticipation that they had. They told us, Valeria, you will need a bigger place. There's going to be a lot of more people. The Border Patrol was right. Mission Border Hope is now serving about 500 migrants a day or more. When we're there, many of them are either charging their smartphones or talking to them, trying to sort out their travel plans or get money from friends and relatives to pay for their tickets.

The majority of these migrants are young men, but some are older. There are a few families here, too. Denny Velasco and his wife Kimberly Gonzalez are traveling with their two young kids, ages 3 and 10 months. The parents have degrees in business and were working at a car dealership in Venezuela, but they say the economy there has collapsed and they could barely afford to feed their kids. Gonzalez says people they knew told them Eagle Pass was a safe place to cross. Still, she says the journey was dangerous. They had to cross the jungle in Panama and avoid drug cartels in Mexico. When they finally got to the Rio Grande, the river was high. It took them four tries to cross.

Velasco says he sometimes feels guilty for putting his children through this. They never asked if they wanted to come, he says, even though we are doing it for them. Then it's time for the family to get on the bus to San Antonio and on from there to Los Angeles. Some of the migrants who come through Eagle Pass wind up on buses to New York and Chicago and Washington, paid for by the state of Texas. Very few of them stay at the border for more than a day or two. We spoke with about a dozen residents in downtown Eagle Pass, and most of them feel sympathy for migrants.

That includes Gerardo Jerry Morales. He's a county commissioner, also owns a local business in Eagle Pass, the Piedras Negras Tortilla Factory. Morales says he'd like to hire some of the migrants if he could. We've been short-staffed for the past three years, and people in the U.S. don't want to work. And so I see business owners, you know, kind of leaning, man, what's going on? What's broken with our system that we can't get people to work right now, yet you have these people coming in that want to work. But not everyone around Eagle Pass is happy about this new shift in migration.

Many ranchers and pecan farmers outside of town don't like it, because often the migrants are crossing on their land. That's why we went to visit rancher Louis Valderrama at his cattle ranch on the banks of the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass. Valderrama drove us around his ranch on his ATV. He raises cattle here on 350 acres, covered in carizo cane and blooming purple bushes called cenizo. As the sun is coming down, he takes us to a spot on the banks of the river

where big groups of migrants have crossed. Aliens are walking out. It looks like they're changing here, but we see water bottles, clothing, shoes. Valderrama says some of his cows have died after eating trash left behind by migrants. And that's not the only thing that bothers him. A few weeks ago, the Texas State Guard put in a brand-new fence here

with razor wire across the top. I was happy with the idea of a fence because it would keep my cows from getting out even further. But they've already started cutting this fence. You know, that hole's big enough for a little cow to get through. So this fence has been here like three weeks? Three weeks. Yeah. When did you notice the hole? Second day. Balderrama spent 24 years with the Border Patrol, and he does not like what he's seeing today. Balderrama thinks the Biden administration is sending the wrong message by releasing so many migrants into the interior. He thinks that's just encouraging more

people to cross illegally. If the immigrants knew that you weren't going to be released, they would, and they were going to go to a detention camp and wait for a hearing, and they'd be in a camp for six months to a year, they would stop coming. But Valderrama has some sympathy for migrants, too. He tells us that his mother was born in Mexico, that he's got dual citizenship. I see why they're coming over. If the doors are open, the welcome flag is up. If I was from that side, I'd do the same thing. It's just then that our conversation is interrupted when we come across Jose Albornoz,

the migrant who's still dripping wet from crossing the river and breathing heavily. Albornoz explains that he's been walking since three in the morning, trying to avoid trouble from drug cartels or Mexican police. Migrants like me, he says, are just walking dollar signs. You have to pay everyone for everything along the way. Albornoz says he brought $2,000 on the trip and spent all of it. Albornoz says he had a job in Venezuela, but he wasn't making enough to support his family.

So he left his wife and three daughters back home. And at age 40, he's trying to start over in the U.S. I understand that the U.S. is helping Venezuelans, he says, by allowing us to come in and work here so we can help our families there. It's better to say I tried and failed than not to try, he says. If I didn't try, I would regret it forever. We talk to Albernos for about 20 minutes, then we all climb into Valderrama's ATV and drive up the hill toward the main highway.

Valderrama takes out his phone and speed dials the border patrol. Border patrol cameras. Hey, cameras, this is Luis Valderrama takes out his phone and speed dials the Border Patrol. Border Patrol cameras. Hey, cameras, this is Luis Valderrama. Sir. Hey, I bumped into a Venezuelan down there by the river. I'm going to drop him off at the front gate. A few minutes later, a Border Patrol agent pulls up in a pickup truck. He asks Albornoz a few questions. Then Albornoz climbs in and the truck pulls away. Jose Albornoz texted us last week. He's in Montana,

where he's already lined up a job in construction. I think I'll stay here for a good long time, he said. That was NPR's Marisa Peñaloza and Joel Rose. It's Consider This from NPR. Iman.org. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org.