Immigrants’ Hopes for New Life Wash Away in Drainage Ditch

DOUGLAS, Ariz. —  Already wet from the drizzling rain, Norma Estrada clutched her 2-year-old daughter to her chest and peered into the storm drain.

It was nearly midnight along the Mexico-Arizona border, and Norma and a dozen other illegal immigrants had gathered in the deep, muddy ditch at the mouth of the pipe. No one wanted to be first.

Even the two guides who had promised them safe passage to new lives in the United States hesitated when the leader beamed his flashlight into the 5-foot-tall cement pipe. It was half filled with water.

A metal grate laden with debris leaned against the opening. Two bars on the grate were bent back, creating a hole big enough to slip through.

“You get in!” one of the immigrants told the younger guide. “You’re the one who knows. We don’t know.”

And so the guide, or “coyote,” climbed up the grate, shimmied through the hole and splashed into the water.

“Get in. Get in,” the second guide in the back of the group pressured the others. “It’s not deep.”

The rain was falling harder now, matting Norma’s short brown hair to her head. Water spilled out of the pipe at her feet.

This is crazy, she thought. And how was she going to make it with her little girl?

Don’t worry, the guide told her. He had just crossed several people through here, including women and children. All they had to do was walk a few blocks north through the pipe and emerge on the streets of Douglas. It would be that simple.

Determination overcame fear as Norma and nine men, two women and the baby dropped into the pipe one by one. The water was waist high. Norma took one last look over her shoulder. The second guide, who had been bringing up the rear, was turning back.

Running may have saved his life.

*

The story of what happened in the storm drain was culled from tape-recorded statements Norma and another survivor made to police and from interviews with a survivor, authorities and relatives of the crossers. It is a story of great hopes and national borders, and of the risks people take every day to come to America.

Norma had tried to cross three times before with her sister, Claudia, when she was pregnant with Evelyn.

The first time, they waded into the Rio Grande in Brownsville, Texas, but were caught by the U.S. Border Patrol. The next night, they were robbed by Mexican bandits before they stepped into the river. The third night, after selling their jewelry and watches, they made it across the river, only to be arrested after hiking through the mountains for eight hours.

Norma, now 20 and slender, with big brown eyes and high cheekbones, was determined to make it this time. Raul was waiting.

Her boyfriend and Evelyn’s father, Raul had been living in the United States for a year and had a job at a Mexican restaurant in Indiana. Claudia had finally crossed the border posing as a tourist and had married a Kentucky native. She promised to get Norma a job at a manufacturing plant in New Albany, Ind.--making $5 an hour.

It was riches compared to the 70 cents Norma charged for cutting hair at her mother’s house in the small central Mexico village of San Felipe. Norma shared the two-bedroom house with 10 relatives, mattresses covering the floors of every room but the kitchen.

Her mother supported the household by selling orange juice to workers on their way to the local clothing factory. Meals were meager, except when someone would dart across the street to steal beans, corn and potatoes from a farmer’s field.

When Claudia beckoned her north, Norma eagerly agreed. Claudia and her husband planned to buy a house filled with modern appliances. They could all live together.

For $1,500, mostly raised by Claudia, Norma and Evelyn could get there. The local coyote, Jorge, promised.

And so on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 3, Norma traveled to the village of Tonatico, where Jorge arrived in his van.

Maria Dominguez Velasquez, 27, and Socorro Ramirez Pedroza were already on board. Maria had wanted to take her 2 1/2-year-old daughter with her, but her mother convinced her that it was “too dangerous for children.” Socorro, 34, had also left her two young daughters with family to meet her husband in Chicago. They would return later for the girls.

Mario Bustos, a 21-year-old laborer, also boarded. The first thing he would buy with his wages in the United States, he told his parents, was a new mattress for them. Javier del Carmen, a 25-year-old bus driver, and his 16-year-old brother, Israel, also took their seats.

Full of excitement and hope, the strangers headed to Mexico City and boarded a plane to Hermosillo. From there, another van took them north to Agua Prieta, a bustling city of 100,000 that shared the border with the small town of Douglas. There they checked into the Hotel Yolanda, which was crowded with immigrants waiting for coyotes to lead them across.

Agua Prieta was supposed to be an easy crossing, one of the most popular from San Diego to Texas. Although the Border Patrol catches about 300 illegal immigrants a day there, about as many slip through.

In groups as large as 50, they sprint through cattle corrals and run through ravines and brush. Others walk nonchalantly across the bridge next to the Port of Entry, pushing grocery carts and pretending to be legal crossers returning the baskets to the Safeway in Douglas.

Storm drains are considered one of the best routes because surveillance cameras can’t see underground.

There is little to stop the immigrants from crossing. Not much remains of an old chain link fence riddled with gaping holes. The Border Patrol is dismantling it to make way for a stronger one.

The time to cross seemed right for Norma and the other immigrants from central Mexico. Once the new fence was built, they’d be forced to cross in remote, desert areas. They had heard stories of crossers freezing to death in the mountains east of San Diego ever since the Border Patrol beefed up patrols and surveillance cameras around the city limits.

At least 300 die every year crossing along the entire border. Most drown in the Rio Grande in Texas and the Tijuana River in San Diego.

But until the new fence is completed in Douglas sometime next year, all that separates Mexico from the United States here, except for the Port of Entry station where cars pass, is a long, deep drainage ditch.

It was into this ditch that two young coyotes led Norma and her new friends from Tonatico. Another six young Mexican men who had been waiting eagerly at the hotel joined them. Few carried cumbersome duffel bags. Instead, many wore two layers of clothing.

It was late and dark and had just started to drizzle. Sliding down the muddy embankment of the ditch, the 13 immigrants slopped through the sandy bottom for three blocks until they reached the mouth of the storm drain.

*

Thunder reverberated through the pipe as Norma followed the group single file into the darkness. The top of the culvert was only 5 feet high, and Norma, 5 inches taller, crouched as she walked with Evelyn in her arms. The air smelled like rot and dripped with humidity.

Lightning flashed behind her; then it was dark again.

On F Street in Douglas, directly above her, rain began to fall in torrents. It pounded rooftops, funneled into downspouts and spewed over sidewalks. Gaining speed, it washed down street gutters, picking up gravel, candy wrappers and plastic bags.

Drains cut into curbs gulped down the frothing brown water as it passed the U.S. Post Office on the corner of 10th Street, the Head Start school on Fifth, and Castro Auto Parts on First. From there, it gushed into the underground pipe where the immigrants trudged ahead.

The water had risen to Norma’s ribs now. The gap widened between her and those in front. She pulled off her waterlogged boots and tied them around her waist. The coyote’s flashlight had vanished up ahead, and she could only follow the sound of sloshing.

“Help me,” she called out, scared to be so far back.

A young man doubled back. She didn’t know his name, but he took Evelyn from her arms and carried her himself.

She finally caught up to the group and passed her new friend, Socorro.

“I can’t make it anymore,” Socorro said wearily.

Her heavy sweater and purse were soaked.

“Take off your shoes and your sweater,” Norma urged her.

“No, I don’t want to leave anything behind,” she said.

Norma and the rest peeled off their shoes and outer layers, releasing them to the current.

How much farther must they walk in this dank tunnel? The guide had said just a few blocks. They must have traveled at least seven or eight by now. More than a half hour had passed, and the water was inching up to their chests.

Outside, the muddy ditch they had first walked through was becoming a river. Fed by several storm drains, it flowed west to the Port of Entry station, where a huge grate was beginning to clog with debris. After midnight, a bulldozer was called in to clear the trash from the grate.

Underground, Norma wanted to feel her daughter safe in her arms. As the young man returned Evelyn to her, the water surged, gushing over Norma’s shoulders.

She reached out frantically as the guide’s flashlight landed on iron rungs embedded in the concrete wall. She lunged against the current and grabbed on.

Like a bowling ball down an alley, the water plowed through the immigrants.

“Help me, Norma! Help me!” Socorro called out, clinging to her.

But Norma had one hand on a rung and the other on her child. In an instant, Socorro lost her grip and the current swept her away. Her screams echoed through the tunnel until they were heard no more.

The guide and another man at the top of the ladder reached for Norma and the child, pulling them from water, up the rungs and into the narrow shaft topped by a manhole cover.

She held on tight as the guide’s flashlight turned downward. Norma watched in horror as the beam captured the chaos below. Splashes. Screams. Jostling bodies, hands flailing for a precious iron rung.

The guide struggled with the manhole cover, trying desperately to open it, to make room for more people on the ladder. It wouldn’t budge.

Maria clasped a rung. Then another man caught on. The others clawed for a handhold but found only smooth concrete walls. Their screams faded downstream until the human cry was swallowed by the water’s deafening roar.

Gone were Mario Bustos and the del Carmen brothers who had yearned for a better life. Gone was Socorro, whose husband was waiting in Chicago. And another four men Norma had never met before that night--gone.

*

Of the seven who set out from Tonatico just two days earlier, only Maria, Norma and Evelyn remained. There they were, clinging to a ladder with a guide and two other men they didn’t know.

The six held onto the rungs in the 15-foot shaft shaped like an inverted funnel, wider at the bottom and narrowing to 2 feet at the top.

The water had drenched them, but now sweat poured down their faces. The humidity stifled them. Oxygen was so thin they could barely breathe. The baby was listless, and Norma worried she might be dying.

Norma sobbed as the guide pounded on the manhole cover again and again.

“Call out! Call out!” Norma cried. Maybe someone on the street above would hear them.

No, the guide said, immigration might catch them.

As long as they get us out, what does it matter, Norma pleaded.

Finally the guide gave in and shouted for help. The others joined in.

But their muffled cries went unheard as rain pelted the corner of Ninth and F streets above. At 1 a.m., no one stirred in the pink stucco building that housed “Haircuts by Tony.” Across the street, the Brown-Page Mortuary was dark.

Inside the shaft, the man clinging to the bottom rung of the ladder decided his life was over. He was going to let go.

“Let it be God’s will,” he said.

No! the others cried, grabbing his shoulders.

For two hours they clung to the ladder as the water gushed. This was the end, Norma thought. They were all going to die.

Together, they bowed their heads in prayer.

And then, ever so slowly, the water began to recede. The roaring current changed to a rush, then a stream, then, finally, a trickle.

One by one, they descended the ladder. The water barely covered their feet. Again they walked north until they came upon another ladder, another shaft, another manhole cover. But that one was stuck too. With all their might, the men pounded the cover, to no avail. One man tried to whistle for help but was too exhausted to make a sound.

In puddles on the tunnel floor they sat. Water dripped off the ceiling. Maybe they should turn back, they discussed, find the others. Then someone heard a cough. Yes, a cough, coming from inside the tunnel! Maybe someone survived! Maybe it was Socorro! The guide went to investigate but returned without survivors. His hands clutched a rusted iron wrench that he had stumbled upon.

Up the manhole they went, and with a few swift blows from the wrench, the cover popped open. The six survivors emerged in the middle of a deserted intersection and gulped in the fresh air of Arizona.

“Let’s go back,” Norma said, her dreams of a life with Raul in Indiana clouded by fear and exhaustion.

“No. You’re already here,” the guide said. “Come on.”

The survivors walked north to a little stucco motel with cactus out front. They were barefoot.

About the same time a mile away, the bulldozer working at the clogged grate near the Port of Entry scooped up a pile of debris and dumped it on the pavement. Socorro’s lifeless body tumbled out.

*

Early the next morning, Border Patrol agents on a routine sweep of McClain’s Motel in Douglas knocked on the door of room no. 2 and found Norma and Maria draped in bedsheets while their clothes dried.

The agents questioned them, but they were too afraid of the coyote’s warning to tell their story. That day, the authorities sent Norma, Maria and the baby back to Agua Prieta. That night, they tried to cross again, walking across the border on foot. Border agents caught them and sent them back to Agua Prieta again.

From there, Norma called her sister, Claudia, and blurted out the terrible story.

“Everybody died,” she said, sobbing. “It’s terrible.”

Norma had a duty to tell the police what happened and help identify the dead, Claudia told her. But Norma was afraid of retaliation by the coyotes who had sworn her to secrecy.

“We are all human beings,” Claudia told her. “The best we can do for them is bury them. Nobody deserves to die that way.”

Norma agreed, and the Douglas police brought her back across the border. They took Norma and Maria to the morgue, where the women helped identify Socorro and the del Carmen brothers. Mario Bustos wasn’t found for another 11 days.

On Monday, Aug. 11, Norma, Maria and Evelyn were put on a bus back to Tonatico. It was Norma’s 21st birthday.

Last month, Norma told Maria, Raul moved back to Mexico and they married. Although they no longer have the promise of the American dream, Norma, Raul and their baby, Evelyn, are finally a family, together.

Norma wants to forget the tragedy, but can’t. Every time Evelyn sees running water, she screams.