The Night Shift: A look at changing smuggling patterns in the remote New Mexico desert

The Antelope Wells port of entry, a remote border crossing in the New Mexico desert, has been seeing hundreds of undocumented immigrants turning themselves over to Border Patrol almost every week.

It’s there seven-year-old Jakelin Caal crossed with her father and a group of 163 seeking asylum. She died 27 hours later; Her cause of death still pending.

Large groups of asylum seekers often wait until dark falls to turn themselves in. The closest cities, Lordsburg and Deming, are nearly 100 miles away.

This tiny port is at the center of a shift in human smuggling. The crowds mostly wait until the sun sets to turn themselves into the Border Patrol agents.

“Since October the beginning of October is when we started noticing larger groups coming across,” said Joe Romero, a Border Patrol supervisor.

Earlier this month, Border Patrol cameras captured 247 migrants of all ages climbing over this vehicle barrier.

“I think we’ve had like 26 or 27 larger groups of over 100 since October. It’s been a pretty steady flow,” Romero said.

The migrants are dropped off one or two miles south of the border, where they are told to walk up to Border Patrol agents. They then climb though holes in the barbed wire fence, cross the border, and climb over vehicle barriers not meant to stop people in the remote expanse. It’s then they walk about a quarter mile down to the port of entry and turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents.

Most have similar stories.

“Back in Guatemala, my son and I received death threats and so we decided to come to the US,” said Carla Xocoy, a Guatemalan woman who was one of three people to turn themselves over to Border Patrol Wednesday night. Xocoy and her son traveled nearly 2,000 miles to reach to the US.

On this night, Border Patrol agents monitoring the area with infrared gear watched as the small group of three, including an unrelated teenage boy, were escorted to the border by what appeared to be smugglers.

Small numbers like these are easier to handle, but the larger groups -100 to 300 people at a time – also bring challenges. Agents here see groups like that sometimes twice a week.

“When you’re talking about large groups of people we’re seeing an increase in injuries and illnesses–from scabies to syphilis to chicken pox to flu,” Romero said.

The Border Patrol has needed to adjust, stationing four specially trained Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue agents whose mission is to always be at the camp, waiting.

“Having our BORSTAR agents out there, they’re trained EMTS, they’re able to give a better analysis of what’s happening out there and provide some further treatment than an agent typically would,” Romero said.

But that means these agents can’t be working their normal stations or patrolling the field.

“It’s better to be prepared for something that doesn’t’t happen than not be prepared for something that does,” Romero said.

Even with two crossings almost every week for months, no large groups turned themselves over last week.

The special operations agents still had their mission, to wait for the asylum seekers — and the smugglers’– next move… In a real-life chess game.

When large groups do come, drug smugglers take advantage.

“They’re pushing drug mules both east and west of those areas to try to keep the agents occupied with those large groups while they’re pushing drugs on the outskirts of those areas,” Romero said.

As this group crossed, smugglers tried to sneak more than 250 pounds of pot. They were caught.

This is only one of the things lawmakers will have to take into account when they negotiate on Border Security with that February 15 deadline. For now the agents at this forward operating base have had their orders extended for at least one more month.