Oft-Deported Mexican Migrants Keep Trying to Cross Along Tougher US Border Nick Miroff - The Washington Post
go to original February 10, 2013

A Border Patrol vehicle drives alongside the fence that separates Tecate, Mexico, from the United States. Despite the security, a nearby path known as “La Rumorosa,” or the “Whisper Trail,” is considered one of the last places left along the California border where a Mexican deportee with no money has a decent shot of getting back into U.S. territory. (Javier Manzano/The Washington Post)

TECATE, Mexico — It does not matter much, when you are on this side of the fence, whether there will be a path to citizenship or something short of it.

The path that matters is the one up and over the canyons and ridges of “La Rumorosa,” the Whisper Trail, one of the last places left along the California border where someone with no money and a little desert smarts has a decent shot of getting back in.

Which is why Lazaro Limon, 44 and recently deported for the fifth time, was back at the migrant shelter in Tecate this past week, waiting for rain. Border Patrol agents do not like to get out of their warm SUVs in a downpour, Limon figured, at least not to chase a solitary migrant.

“My family called yesterday,” he said. “My daughters told me, ‘Go for it, Dad.’ ”

Limon was one of a few here who had heard the talk in recent weeks of U.S. immigration reform, on Telemundo newscasts or secondhand, and he said it had added extra urgency to get back into the States. The finer points of the faraway debate were not particularly relevant. But if the Americans were finally going to change their laws and offer a chance to stay, no one wanted to be stuck on the wrong side of the border.

“I think President Obama is going to give preference to people like me, whose children are American, who have never taken welfare and who don’t have criminal records,” said Limon, who has spent the past 21 years cutting grass and clipping topiaries in the beach towns south of Los Angeles. His oldest daughter, 13, is among the top three students in her seventh-grade class, he said, repeating that part of his story twice.

Limon said his only offense over the years has been unlawful reentry, meaning he has been caught multiple times by the Border Patrol after being deported, serving months in federal prison.

How many violations?

“Thirty,” he said.

Read the whole story at The Washington Post

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