Las migras

So yesterday was a pretty sleepy morning here on the Desert Diamond parking lot. Don had been by earlier walking the dog, a few of the group were gathered around Larry & Carol’s bus munching doughnuts and sipping coffee, I had the outside access panel off on our fridge and was fiddling with it. I heard the sound of feet running on the sand behind the bus and looked up in time to see two young latino men jog by followed by an out of shape INS guy in full green border patrol garb. The latinos didn’t look to be running that fast but they may just have been tired. The INS guy wasn’t cut out for running. It wasn’t that he was overweight but more that his left leg was going southeast while his right leg went southwest. It was the most awkward gait I have ever seen and clearly wasn’t serving him well in this pursuit.

When I stuck my head around the front of the bus there were two more migras with two more young men but these border guards were much better pursuers and they had their captives worn out. They ended up taking them down in the middle of the parking lot, more or less right in front of where we are parked.

Meanwhile Marilyn had another view of the incident. She was sitting in the group in front of Larry & Carol’s bus when a young latino man appeared around the back of Larry’s bus and promptly sat down in one of the vacant lawn chairs. It was a pretty good plan – insinuate himself into an open conversation and escape detection in broad daylight – but it didn’t work quite that way. While Marilyn & I may have some sympathy for the plight of the Mexican illegals, there is no sympathy in the rest of this group and the newfound friends quickly encouraged the young latino to move on. Of course when he did he immediately got caught.

The two that had gone by our bus with the goofy runner in pursuit were eventually followed by two more INS guys but I didn’t see any sign that they had ever found anyone. Later in the morning I saw the INS climbing onto a 4WD pickup and leaving so I thought the adventure was over. In the early afternoon though there was a helicopter hovering over our buses and the area behind us. There’s a helo that comes and goes from the casino but this was a different one and eventually it flushed out the remaining two illegals who were loaded up in front of where we are parked.

Larry and Carol have done a superb job of entertaining us at this rally – a Titan Missile site tour, the Arasco copper mine tour, entertainment by Michael Hargis and their own incredible hospitality at their ranch but the live INS takedown was over the top. I doubt that anybody will ever top that one at any rally anywhere.

There’s all sorts of theories going through the group about what we saw. I was puzzled by the lackadaisical running that I saw from the first two guys that went by. In general it didn’t seem that any of the group were trying that hard to escape but it may just have been a hot day and they may just have been played out. Assuming they had walked across the border they had already covered over 50 miles of desert on foot. Apparently the other possibility is that they may have been ready to be caught. The drug mules make their way across the border and quickly stash their illicit cargo in some agreed upon location. At that point they are ready to be caught and sent home. They get caught, hauled to Tucson, fingerprinted, fed and then loaded on a bus to be shipped back to Nogales. If I had been out on the desert fending for myself for a couple of days I might be pretty well ready to be caught too.