The first U.S. stop for the immigrant named Luis was a cramped drop house somewhere on the outskirts of San Diego, stinking and crowded with 60 other people.
Peering out a window, he could see a parade of vehicles come and go throughout the day and night. Vans, trucks and pickups that would arrive empty, then leave a few minutes later stuffed with people.
“If the (vehicle) fit 10, they’d put in 15. They’d lay 12 people down in the back of a pickup,” said Luis, demonstrating with his hands as if he were laying out slices of bread.
“It’s a very dangerous way to travel,” said the native of Sinaloa, Mexico, who says he has entered the country illegally four times and works in Denver.
Dangerous, yes, but also far- reaching, quick and highly efficient, according to immigration officials, local law enforcement and immigrants who have made the trip.
As a series of van rollovers this week demonstrated, Colorado is a key crossroads in a nationwide smuggling system so vast that it is able to move hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from points along the southern border to the country’s major labor markets every year.
Immigration officials caught nearly 1.2 million people trying to sneak into the country in fiscal 2005, and experts say perhaps three times as many got through.
Colorado State Patrol officials say they make contact with as many as 500 a week, but even that may be only a small fraction of the number who travel through the state as they seek to avoid U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints on the major highways through Texas and New Mexico.
Chicago and Florida were among the destinations of the 113 people arrested after six smuggling vehicles crashed on Colorado’s snowy roads this week, law enforcement officials said.
“Outside of Las Cruces (N.M.), and also near El Paso, there are permanent checkpoints. If you’re destined for Florida, you don’t want to go through Texas,” said Russell Ahr, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona, the area along the border that is the most popular crossing point.
The sheer size of that flow – and the vast amounts of money involved in moving it – has led to the creation of an underground railroad that functions much the way a real one does, Ahr and other immigration officials say.
Passengers travel in legs, with each often operated by independent contractors: one to get immigrants across the border; another to carry them to hub cities such as Los Angeles and Phoenix; and another to take them in smalls loads to final destinations as diverse as New York, Georgia and Louisiana. While Denver is not a hub city, Colorado highways offer arterial routes that can take immigrants to their destinations with less risk of detection.
“The organizations have individuals working in the interior and (whose) job is to get them to a town somewhere in the proximity of the border,” said Ahr. “They are crossed usually on foot in groups that are manageable – 20 or 30 – to a predesignated pickup point where they are met by somebody with a vehicle.
“From there, they eventually make their way up to Phoenix, where they are put up in a drop house, which could be a regular house, an apartment, even a hotel room.”
The conditions can be horrendous.
When authorities raided one drop house in Phoenix, they found more than 190 people. And as the price of crossing has risen, gangs have begun kidnapping the immigrants to nab the $1,200 to $2,000 they pay to be smuggled across.
Once on the road, it doesn’t get any better.
Many of the vehicles the immigrants are traveling in don’t have seat belts, or the seats are ripped out of the back to make room for more people. Tires may be so bald on the SUVs and vans that driving in snow is a major risk.
“They are routinely traveling for days without food and water,” said Carl Rusnock, an ICE regional spokesman in Dallas. “You’ll sometimes see a group of 20 people with one gallon of water to share.”
In some cases, there are no bathroom breaks for passengers, and they’re expected to use a bucket in the back of a van, Rusnock said.
“The conditions are horrendous,” said Estevan Flores, executive director of the Latino/a Research and Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Denver. “It’s congested, and there is no air space.”
Colorado State Patrol Master Trooper Ron Watkins says major crashes are not the only time troopers come in contact with illegal immigrants on Colorado’s highways.
A couple of months ago, Watkins said, a car with nine illegal immigrants broke down near the Eisenhower Tunnel, and when patrol officers tried to make contact with them, they ran off into the snow.
The illegal immigrants they make contact with tie up resources because troopers have to wait for ICE agents to come and detain the people troopers have stopped.
“We might be told, ‘We don’t have anyone to come out. Turn them loose,”‘ Watkins said.
Two Democrats in the state Senate on Wednesday reacted to the latest incidents by calling for the creation of a special state patrol unit tasked solely with policing illegal immigrants.
Sen. Peter Groff of Denver and Sen. Brandon Shaffer of Longmont say they will introduce legislation next week.
“In all four corners of this state, we are hearing that illegal immigration is a primary concern,” Shaffer said. “We can talk about this subject down here until we’re blue in the face. The time for talk is over. It is time to take action.”
Groff already has introduced two bills targeting the underground transportation system for illegal immigrants and victims of human trafficking.
Undersheriff John Fryar with the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office near Brush, says 38 people were detained from the crashes that occurred there Tuesday and that ICE was going to transport them to their facility in Aurora on Wednesday. The Kit Carson Sheriff’s Office also transported several to Aurora on Tuesday.
All are scheduled to be flown to El Paso and other cities today, accompanied by U.S. marshals. From there, they’ll be taken back to Mexico.
Staff writers Mike McPhee and Jim Hughes contributed to this report.
This story has been corrected, online. Originally, due to a reporter’s error, it misstated the number of contacts the Colorado State Patrol has with illegal immigrants on the state’s highways. The correct number is 500 a week.
