They had come from Honduras, setting out weeks earlier by foot, then crossing Guatemala and Mexico by truck and train. When they had reached the Rio Grande, the “Great River” that was the United States border, their coyotes waited with them in the foliage until night, then secretly ferried the group the thirty-yard distance across in three small rubber rowboats.
Then bright portable floodlights had popped on. And they were almost immediately apprehended—following a futile attempt at fleeing—by the green-uniformed officers of the United States Border Patrol.
At that point, of course, their coyotes were nowhere to be found north of the border.
The American government’s processing of unaccompanied minors was similar at all southern U.S. points of entry. Within twenty-four hours of the declaration, with the detainees held in secure rooms, the usual telephone call was made to the local Mexican consulate. For Ana and Rosario, that meant the one in Brownsville. It was located on Mexico Boulevard, adjacent to the Amigoland Shopping Mall, not quite a mile’s walk to two of the three bridges there that crossed into Mexico.
The Mexican consulate in Brownsville then arranged for an official in Matamoros with the more or less Mexican equivalent of child protective services to meet the group of unaccompanied minors. The children then would be repatriated to Mexico and, the Mexican government hoped, swiftly returned to their families.
The cold damn reality of that, however, was that in all likelihood their immediate family was still in the United States (parent and child having gotten separated during a crossing, for example). Or, worse, that their immediate family no longer existed for one of any number of tragic reasons, including a mother being lost and presumed dead in the desert.
And the task of (a) finding the child’s extended family and then (b) getting them to agree to take custody (and with it the financial burden) of the minor was daunting—if not damn impossible.
Thus, most of the unaccompanied minors had of course absolutely no desire to be returned home. Certainly not Ana Maria Del Carmen Lopez or Rosario Flores, who had struggled—had very much risked their lives for six weeks along dangerous smuggling routes—to reach the opportunities that awaited them in America.
Yet now, Ana and Rosario—having been processed by the American immigration system and given the status of unaccompanied minors—found themselves in the late-afternoon confusion of the crowd on the international bridge.
And out of that mix of tourists taking quick trips into Mexico to shop or eat and Mexican nationals returning home from working in Brownsville, a handsome young man suddenly appeared before the pair.
He had been exceedingly charming. With a calculated manner, so that the girls would come with him not only willingly but enthusiastically, he immediately began appealing to their desires.
And he began by saying he could get the pretty senoritas back to the United States.
Rosario was charmed.
Ana was wary.
How does he know what we want? Ana thought.
That was quickly replaced with: Is it not obvious? We were just thrown out. Everyone sees it.
And I don’t want to be stuck in cells here.
When caught at the river, they’d first been in the custody of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Border Patrol. That agency had then turned them over to the Customs and Border Protection, also under DHS, which in turn had delivered them to the Mexican officials. They’d thus just suffered through the United States’ bureaucratic system, killing time in cold and sterile holding areas for what seemed like a month. It had actually been four days, and they were told it had taken longer than the standard twenty-four hours thanks to the delay of the weekend.
Neither Ana nor Rosario liked the idea of going through any of that again. Especially in Mexico, which without question would be a worse system with even fewer resources than those of the United States.
As Ana eyed the handsome young man, she thought, And we can’t get sent all the way back to Tegucigalpa.
So far, Ana and Rosario had avoided that by lying to the U.S. Border Patrol policía. They’d stated that they were Mexican nationals, which was what their coyotes had coached them to do if caught.
Neither had any official papers—no birth certificate, certainly no driver’s license, no passport, nothing—proving that they were or were not Mexican.
But they also did not have anything that stated they were from Honduras or Guatemala or Nicaragua or any other country. The Americans called that “OTM,” any country Other Than Mexico. If the illegal aliens admitted to being from a particular country OTM, American law required that they be sent back to that particular OTM country.
If, however, they proclaimed Mexico was their home, the norteamericanos—Customs and Border Protection, to be precise, but it made no difference to the girls which official agency—would expedite their repatriation via the nearest port of entry.
Even Ana Lopez and Rosario Flores—with very little formal education, barely able to read or write beyond basics in their mother language, let alone the least bit literate in English—had the street smarts to figure out that game. And walking across the international bridge and winding up in Matamoros was a helluva lot closer to getting back into America than being trucked or bused or whatever all the way back to Honduras.
Of course, conveniently, repatriation via the nearest port also happened to be the most expeditious option for the U.S. government and its agents.
The Mexican official who was meeting the group of unaccompanied minors was an overweight gray-haired Latina woman in an ill-fitting pantsuit. She held up a clipboard and looked more than a little weary, if not overwhelmed.
Standing with Ana and Rosario at the edge of the bridge, the handsome young man gently applied pressure: “You must decide now! Quickly!”
He looked at the official, then added, “Before you are taken into her custody!”
And before, the girls knew, the long—and what would turn out to be futile—process of finding their families began.
Rosario and Ana exchanged glances, then Rosario handed off the six-year-old boy to another in the group.
The two teenage girls disappeared with the handsome young man into the lengthening shadows of a trash-strewn side street.
If the female Mexican official had noticed the two teenage girls leaving the group, she certainly did not show it.
Almost immediately—within two blocks—the handsome young man stopped and turned to the girls. When he told him that his name was El Gato, Rosario giggled. He smiled back, then said that if they wanted to get back to the United States, they would have to trust El Gato.
“We have little money,” Ana had said, looking at Rosario, knowing that that was a lie.
They had absolutely no money.
Most of what they’d had had gone to the coyotes for their failed first illegal crossing. The rest, little more than a hundred dollars, had been on a prepaid debit money card. On the back of the card, they had written the U.S. phone number of Rosario’s cousin, whom they’d planned to call once in America. But during the rough rowboat ride, unbeknownst to Rosario, the card had slipped free from the back pocket of her jeans. Both card and phone number were somewhere on the bottom of the Rio Grande.
“We can discuss that later,” El Gato had said agreeably, then held out his right hand and cocked his head. “And you are . . . ?”
“Rosario Flores,” Rosario said, grabbing his hand. She nodded toward her cousin and added, “Ana Lopez.”
“Well, Ana and Rosario,” he’d said charmingly as he shook their hands in turn, “can you trust El Gato?”
“Who does not trust a kitten?” Rosario had quickly answered—Ana thought a little too quickly.
Ana then pressed for details—who was he, where would he take them, how much would it cost?
El Gato smiled at her. He commented that she would do well in America.
“You have such a wise and questioning mind,” he said.
Then he’d told th
em of the great many jobs that America offered pretty girls like themselves. Ones that paid cash to work as a waitress in restaurants, to clean houses and offices, even to watch over young children, jobs that the gringos called “nannies” and “au pairs.”
More money than they could believe, he’d said, more than enough to live on in great comfort and still send plenty back home to their families.
Juan Paulo Delgado said that once the girls were across the border he would introduce them to some of the others he’d helped. They were ones he called his “growing family,” he said with a smile. Then he said he’d set up Ana and Rosario, as he had the other girls, with work. He’d even help show them how to wire their extra money home.
Extra money! Rosario had heard.
Not just money, but extra!
Rosario—who people often confusedly assumed was Ana’s older, wiser sister despite the fact that Ana was far more grounded—leaned over and whispered in Ana’s ear: “Juanita!”
Juanita Sanchez, Ana knew, was a cousin on the other side of Rosario’s family, the one whose telephone number they had lost in the river. Juanita had been sending money home to Honduras, first from Dallas in Texas. Then it had come from the ciudad called Newark, in Nuevo Jersey, where the cousin now worked—though Rosario was not sure for whom—as a criada, a maid-servant.
Rosario had told Ana that she knew that was true because she’d gone once with Juanita’s mother to collect the money—five hundred dollars, which came out to be more in Honduran lempiras than the aunt earned in half a year. Juanita had wired the money from the United States to the bright yellow-and-black Western Union office nearest their Tegucigalpa barrio.
And that, in fact, had been what encouraged Ana and Rosario to start on their journey north.
Standing on the side street near the international bridge, Ana looked her cousin in the eyes and anxiously considered their options.
That had taken no time whatsoever. They had no money and no other place to go save for the streets of Matamoros or the Mexican system of child protective services.
“Bueno, El Gato,” Ana had said. “What do we do?”
El Gato smiled, then motioned with his hand over his head. He said that if they trusted him, they would also trust his friend Hector—who on cue suddenly came around a corner. As he approached them, Ana and Rosario saw that he was younger than El Gato, maybe even the age of Ana and Rosario, but far coarser-looking, with an acne-pocked face and bad teeth.
El Gato introduced them. Then he looked from one girl to the other and promised them (a) that they should have no worries with Hector, (b) that Hector would be their coyote and see that they safely got across the Rio Grande, and (c) that he himself would see them shortly on the U.S. side.
And then El Gato said his goodbyes.
Hector led Ana and Rosario around the dirty street corner to a battered and rusty yellow Toyota compact pickup. They all squeezed into its cab, with Rosario sliding across the torn fabric of the bench seat to sit in the middle. After about an hour’s drive on paved highway—during which an increasingly disgusted Rosario didn’t think Hector’s hand brushing her knees as he worked the gearshift was exactly an accident—the truck turned onto a narrow, bumpier macadam road.
Just past the corner, they passed a police car that was parked on the side of the small road. The officer made no effort to stop them. Ana even thought that she saw the man smile and nod.
Minutes later, the truck turned off the macadam road and drove a short distance down a tree-lined rutted dirt road. It then slowed and made an abrupt turn through some brush between the trees. The surprise turn caused Rosario to squeal, then laugh a little nervously.
Limbs scraped the side of the truck. One bough popped through the open passenger-door window. It struck Ana on the ear but caused no injury.
The Toyota pickup stopped fifty feet later, and Hector got out and motioned for the girls to do likewise.
They were upstream of Matamoros and standing alone on a small rise above the riverbank. The meander of the river made a tight bend here, almost turning back onto itself. The Mexico side was thick with scrub trees and brush, the low sun causing long dark shadows. The immediate area of the bank stank and was littered with trash—empty plastic bottles of fruit drink, empty snack bags, and dirty ragged discarded clothing, both men’s and women’s.
Ana then caught herself suddenly inhaling deeply. She nudged Rosario to look. Rosario followed her gaze and saw the tree with a dozen or more pairs of women’s panties dangling from its limbs. She thought she heard Hector chuckle.
They looked toward him and saw him reaching into a big cardboard box in the back of the pickup. Hector brought out some clothes, then gave them to the girls.
They held them up and saw that they were uniforms: tan cotton dresses with brown piping and off-white cotton blouses with frilled collars. Each had a plastic name tag pinned to the lapel. The tags were a darker brown color with etched white letters at the top—RGG&RC—and one reading ANGEL, one ROSA.
Hector then said that they were to change into the clothes. Right there.
Reluctantly, the girls stepped to the far side of the pickup for some privacy, and stripped to their panties and bras. Hector pretended not to watch, but it was clear that he seemed to enjoy every moment of it.
When they were done, Hector pulled out of the cardboard box three small tan backpacks with a Nike logotype stitched on them. He slipped one over his shoulder and gave the girls the others. It took Hector’s help for them to shoulder the bags, the contents of each weighing exactly ten kilos—just over twenty pounds.
Hector motioned for the girls to follow. They began walking along the shoreline, within the line of trees and out of sight of the other shore. They came to a small rapid where the river bottom was exposed and the murky green-brown river rushed over it.
Walk across? Ana thought.
Why didn’t we do this the first time? Instead of those stupid rowboats!
Could the policeman in the car have something to do with this? Maybe control this part of the river?
Hector pulled out a cellular telephone. In a flurry of finger movements, he typed then sent a very short text message.
Almost immediately on the U.S. side of the river border, not a hundred kilometers away, there was movement at the top of the rise above the river’s edge. It was some sort of small cartlike vehicle. It stopped, and a man got out of it. He was heavyset, like a larger version of Hector, and wore a uniform that was the same tan and brown as the outfits that the girls wore. He then started down toward the river, walking awkwardly under the weight of a long black bag he carried with both hands.
Hector started across the river shoal. The girls looked at each other, then followed.
Wading the shallows was uneventful save for Ana at one point snagging her foot on something underwater. She stumbled, and Rosario laughed. But when Ana went to free her foot and found it stuck in yet another pair of women’s underwear—this pair snagged on a submerged tree limb—Rosario’s smile quickly disappeared.
Once they reached the U.S. side of the river border, the heavyset man nodded a greeting but said nothing.
The girls watched as he and Hector exchanged the backpack for the long black canvas duffle. Hector grunted under the big bag’s weight, and when he slung its web handles over his right shoulder, the girls heard what sounded like metal pipe and dense plastic clunking against each other inside it.
Hector then said, “José, he will take you the next step.”
And, without another word, he struggled with the long bag and went back across the river.
José led the girls with their backpacks to the cartlike vehicle they had never seen before. It had four small tires, a dull scratched dark green body, and not much more than a steering wheel and a black vinyl-covered bench seat that could accommodate no more than the three of them. There was lettering on the front of the cart—though neither girl could translate it, recognizing only the same logotype that was on th
e badges of their outfits—that read RGG&RC MAINTENANCE.
José smiled warmly but said nothing as he drove them down a narrow asphalt-paved path that Ana thought looked as if it had been made expressly for this vehicle.
They came to an automobile parking lot, where José pulled to a stop. A sign there announced RGG&RC VALET PARKING ONLY. They were beside a dusty white Chrysler Town & Country minivan, which a very long time ago had had its sides professionally lettered KIDDIE KASTLE PRE-SCHOOL in a glistening red. They all got in it and wordlessly drove off, passing a grand sign at the entrance reading RIO GRANDE GOLF & RACQUET CLUB.
A half hour later, they turned into a neat neighborhood of nice-looking one-story houses. When José pulled the minivan to a stop on the street before one of them with a single scrawny tree in the middle of its yard, he announced with no emotion whatever that their trip was over.
Elated, Ana and Rosario looked at each other and smiled.
Ana then shook her head in wonder. The whole trip back into the United States had taken no time compared to what they’d just gone through from the time they’d been caught by the policía Americano to when they’d been sent back across the bridge to Mexico.
José relieved the girls of their backpacks, then showed them the two bedrooms where they’d be staying. The girls beamed when shown a closet full of girls’ clothing in various sizes. They were told to pick their outfits from the closet and return the brown uniforms they were wearing to him.
After they had gotten cleaned up and were getting dressed, they heard the front door open and close, and then voices speaking in English. They pulled back the thin curtain and looked out the window. Out by the KIDDIE KASTLE PRE-SCHOOL minivan was parked a bigger vehicle, a Chevrolet Suburban.
Then they thought they recognized one of the voices, and when they went out into the living room, they found El Gato and another young Latin male drinking beers on the couch. The tan Nike backpacks that they had carried across the river were on the coffee table.
The Traffickers Page 14