Cellphones Replacing Coyotes as Mexico Border Crossings Go High-Tech Perla Trevizo - Arizona Daily Star
go to original April 15, 2015

Gerardo Ramirez tried unsuccessfully to cross near Douglas using the cellphone method. He was quickly spotted by Border Patrol agents. (A.E. Araiza/Arizona Daily Star)

The business of smuggling people across the border is going high-tech.

Rather than paying a guide to lead them across the Southern Arizona desert, migrants are hiring smugglers who watch from nearby hilltops and tell them via cellphone when to run, when to stop, when to hide and when to crawl.

In places such as Naco, near Bisbee, and Agua Prieta, which abuts Douglas, the use of cellphones to guide migrants started about five years ago. Already, more than three-quarters of migrants who go through the local shelter or resource center are choosing that option, said Adalberto Ramos, who coordinates both places.

And now it’s spreading to Nogales.

This year, people who work with migrants said they are hearing stories about women taken to a bridge near the Mariposa Port of Entry and held there, sometimes for days, until their smugglers tell them it’s safe to cross.

The shift from live guide to cellphone is happening even though it’s more expensive — up to $7,000 versus roughly $3,500 to be led through the desert. That’s because it’s supposed to be a shorter and safer walk to the city from the border fence, which they jump with a ladder and rope. But it’s just one more way immigrants are misled, migrant aid workers said.

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