"It's Our Job to Stop That Dream"

The endless, futile work of the Border Patrol

Malia Politzer from the April 2007 issue

(Page 3 of 13)

 

"Do you have papers?" he asks in native Spanish. "Are you all Mexicans?"

 

A middle-aged man in dark green pants and a dusty blue cap singles himself out as the spokesman. "We're

from Hidalgo," he says. "Illegal. I'm a farmer. So is he." He indicates one of the others with his chin. One is a carpenter, he tells us; another works in construction. "We're just here to work-we have friends in Atlanta who will give us jobs. We're not criminals."

 

"How long have you been walking?"

 

"Three days. Our coyote attacked us the first day. Shoved a revolver in his face and took everything." He jerks his head toward the youngest of the four. The young man doesn't meet my eyes. "He left us to die."

 

We'll call the man speaking Armando Ramirez. He is 49, he tells us. He says this is the first time any of them has tried to cross. None of them has ever been this far north before; none has ever seen a border town. They didn't know the way, so they paid a coyote $1,700 each. To come up with the sum, they sold everything they had. Ramirez took money from a loan shark to cover the remaining cost. "With interest," he adds. "More than 30 percent."

 

But there are plenty of jobs waiting for them in Atlanta, they were told. They only had to get there.

 

"We're here as workers," Ramirez says to me emphatically. "We don't smoke, we don't drink, we're not smuggling drugs-none of that. We're here to work." He glances at Vasquez. "Or were here to work."