My friend and frequent border-crosser Pedro in San Diego sent me this image from his iPhone the other night of two women who had been caught being smuggled north in the dashboard of a van at the U.S.-Mexico crossing at San Ysidro. Yes, the dashboard. This is what Pedro reported, in the raw:
Was sent to second revision cause I didnt have a passport or birth certificate... Was
parked waiting for INS to check my orange ticket when this INS chick
comes to the van in front of me with some tools...she starts to break
down the inside of the van... took out the chairs, steering wheel, then
as she was taking out the dashboard there was these two chicks hidden
behind the board... they helped these ladies out of the van.. and asked
them to sit down next to the van...thats when I took the pic... the INS
guy saw that I took the pic.. and took away my phone... but he gave it
back when i left....
Daniel.. what I was very happy and surprised about was that when INS found these "criminals" not once did I see them disrespect these women, they asked in what city they were born, helped them find their shoes that were lost in the dashboard, very friendly to them, and never talked down to them.... explained what was going to happen to them... then they handcuffed them and took them away....
Then after the INS guy was done interrogating me... I told him what I had observed from them.... he said, "They are already embarrassed enough that we caught them, we dont want them to feel any worse, this is what we do every day."
Another night at the border. It's a phenomenon artfully depicted by Tijuana-born Julio Cesar Morales in his "Immigrant Interventions" series. See also here.
* See previous posts in the Intersections category, Borderlands. It's a term that I've noticed gradually entering the mainstream U.S. lexicon but let's never forget its conceptual roots: "Borderlands/La Frontera," the seminal queer Chicana feminist text by the late Gloria Anzaldua. We can only imagine what she would have to say of the image above ...