Knight Ridder News Service
NOGALES, Mexico — One by one, men and women crawled on their knees and bellies across the hot desert sand about 100 yards from where rumbling tractor-trailer rigs crossed from Mexico into Arizona.
In temperatures near 100 degrees, they looked like they were on a military reconnaissance mission, but their tattered clothing said these weren't soldiers. They were trying to make their way from southern Mexico to the United States.
President Bush and Congress have vowed to seal America's porous border with thousands of National Guard troops, miles of fences, surveillance cameras and aerial drones.
But in the Mariposa Canyon, those plans face a reality check.
In groups of 10 to 16, men, women and children routinely cross the border, led by brazen smugglers called polleros. It happens in broad daylight, under a blazing sun at high noon, around and through the 12-foot-high wall that Uncle Sam erected in the late 1990s.
Posted by Richard at May 30, 2006