Roberto Martínez Protected Migrants from Many Dangers

Jesús Reyes and his nephew, Andrés Valdes, left the poor colonias of Mexico City to try their luck in El Norte.

Originally from Oaxaca, one of the poorest states in Mexico, they moved their families to Mexico City to escape its harsh poverty. They found 18 million people in the Federal District competing for jobs and housing. So Jesús, 18, and Andés, 16, decided to do what thousands of their compatriots have done before them - head north.

Nothing, however, could have prepared them for what they would encounter once they reached the U.S.-Mexico border.

When they reached Tijuana, a city of almost two million bordering San Diego County, they had to decide where to cross. The area known as “El Bordo” (levee), popular because of its accessibility to freeways, was now lit by floodlights set up by the U.S. Border Patrol.  Jesús and Andrés moved farther west.

The area they chose would take them through one of the most dangerous sections of the border, the scene of at least 10 shootings - six resulting in death – since January.  As Jesús and Andrés slipped through the torn fence and made their way down a path through a ranch, they heard a voice call out, “Venga, venga, no migra” (Come, come, we’re not the Border Patrol).

When they moved closer to see where the voice was coming from, a white man in his early 20s stepped from behind a tree and pointed a high-powered bow and arrow at them. Then three men came out of the ranch house, pointed rifles and guns at them and demanded money. They took $50 and ordered the pair to run.

As the boys ran, they saw another group of migrants approaching. They attempted to warn them, but the robbers waved them away with their weapons. From a safe distance, they saw the four men rob that group, too.

A week later, I was showing a CBS television crew a migrant camp in Carlsbad, a mixed farming and residential community in northern San Diego County. The correspondent requested that I ask two workers to relate their experiences as undocumented migrants. That’s how I met Jesús and Andrés.

They poured out their terrifying ordeal at the hands of the robbers.

Two weeks later tragedy struck in the area where they had been robbed. A 12-year-old boy crossing with relatives was shot to death. The shots reportedly came from the house the robbers had come out of to rob Jesús and Andrés. A 21-year-old man was arrested, and later released for lack of evidence, in the boy’s death. The police, whom I had contacted about the earlier incident, called me to bring Jesús and Andrés to look at suspects in a photo lineup. They identified the suspect as the man who had robbed them. He is still charged with robbing migrants.

Jesús and Andrés reside in the same camp where Cándido Galloso Salas lives. Galloso Salas recently was handcuffed, taped and beaten — with a bag fastened over his head — while seeking day work outside a rural store. An all-white jury found his assailant - twice his size at 6 feet, 6 inches and 220 pounds — guilty of a misdemeanor.

Two other migrant workers in the camp described to me how they were attacked, robbed and beaten by six youths with guns and boards. A Mixtec organizer in nearby Vista also contacted me to say he had been shot in the face with a paint cartridge of the type used in war games. A similar projectile was used to injure 14 migrant workers in Poway, 20 miles northeast of San Diego.

This sudden rise in hate crimes comes, not surprisingly, at a time when tensions and animosity are building in northern San Diego County against the growing presence and visibility of migrant Mexican and Guatemalan workers. Yet, it is nothing new.

In 1980 I began documenting shootings, killings and beatings of migrant workers by roving gangs of youths in the area. In November of 1988, two migrant workers were shot and killed on a lonely back road of Del Mar by two self-proclaimed white supremacists. That murder was classified as a “hate crime.” The killer was sentenced to 50 years to life. His accomplice received 14 years.

Almost all the members of these gangs are between the ages of 14 and 22. It leads one to speculate whether they’re carrying out their communities’ fantasies, if the racism is so ingrained that they feel justified to the point that they think they are performing a community service.

The growing number of human rights violations, the use of a popular San Diego radio show to promote anti immigrant sentiment, the hate calls and threats I received at my office, the “light up the border” movement (private citizens park their cars, with headlights beamed at the border to protest the so-called “invasion of Mexicans, drug traffickers and terrorists”) all point to the xenophobic atmosphere rising out of baseless claims that migrant workers steal jobs and are causing a national crime wave, clogging our jails and courts.

As the surge of violence illustrates, those fears are being translated into physical attacks on defenseless people whose only crime is being poor, hungry and persecuted.

This fear and xenophobia should be replaced with an understanding of what drives people north. We are a nation of immigrants, and documented and undocumented workers contribute significantly to our economy, culture and history.

It is ironic that, while walls are crumbling in Eastern Europe, some conservative groups and government agencies here are calling for walls and ditches to be built at our border — sealing and militarizing it.

Regular Army, Marines and National Guard troops are already patrolling the U.S.-Mexico borer from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas.

The border is not a war zone.

The people crossing are not the enemy.

They are just people, people deserving of respect, dignity and all the rights afforded anyone who come here to live and work.