ABUSE AT THE BORDER
Juffer, Jane
Abuse at the Border Women face a perilous crossing BY JANE JUFFER On a hot afternoon last July at the El Tenampa cantina in Santa Rosa, Texas, three teen-aged Mexican women were just doing...
...Sonia once worked four weeks for a contractor who kept promising to pay his workers at the end of the next week but never did...
...She had no clothes, other than the ones she wore...
...After initially claiming they were from Mexico, Lilian admitted they were Nicaraguans...
...And you think wetbacks have the same rights as legals," he shot back in Spanish...
...He asked me if I wanted to go back to see my children," Marta recalls...
...He was sentenced to two years' probation, 2,000 hours of community service, and $4,000 in fines...
...He demanded $500 before he would let her go...
...Border Patrol, more men who have the power to detain, deport, and assault...
...Abuse at the Border Women face a perilous crossing BY JANE JUFFER On a hot afternoon last July at the El Tenampa cantina in Santa Rosa, Texas, three teen-aged Mexican women were just doing their job...
...Despite the new immigration reform and control act, few of the women enjoy any more safeguards than they did before...
...She wasn't beaten and her clothes weren't torn," he said...
...The marine who raped Leticia was transferred to Tampico...
...The other two marines are still in Matamoros...
...Rosa Una, a twenty-five-year-old Salvadoran woman who declined to give her last name, was caught by the U.S...
...Daily, they play a strange game of cat-and-mouse with the U.S...
...Marta and about fourteen others had already crossed the dam and gone through a drainage tunnel when la migra appeared...
...Some of the women have commuted to work this way for five, ten, even twenty years...
...After several long hours, Veronica again fell asleep, only to wake up again to find his hand on her crotch...
...Her back hurts every night...
...According to records of the trial, as the Hondurans emerged from the river, a gang of seven attacked them...
...While immigrant men find work doing onerous migrant labor in the agricultural and timber industries, women are needed in the cheap cantinas of border towns, the garment sweatshops of Los Angeles, and the middle-class and wealthy homes in the Rio Grande Valley, El Paso, San Diego, and Beverly Hills...
...The Honduran immigrants were detained six days and then deported...
...America pounded on the door until her uncle returned...
...He laughed...
...While in detention, Rosa Lina learned about a housekeeping job in Austin, Texas, for Debby Blank, a woman who would pay Rosa Lina's bond if she would take care of Blank's two children and the house...
...Yes...
...There are approximately 6,000 contract shops in the Los Angeles area, supplying the garment work for such big-name manufacturers as Guess, Jeans West, and Cherokee...
...Rosa Lina told Rodriguez how unhappy she was...
...Before he let her go, Pizana stole $40 from Meriam, along with her Bible...
...This time without harassment, they crowded into the back of a van headed for Matamoros, in Mexico's northern state of Tamaulipas, across from Brownsville...
...On May 16, 1987, her routine came to a halt...
...She called her friend, Maria Rodriguez, a paralegal at Proyecto Lib-ertad in Harlingen, a legal-aid group that was assisting Rosa Lina with her political-asylum claim...
...Although Cameron County officials issued arrest warrants for two suspects, the men have not been found...
...the marines asked...
...He showed us where to buy tortillas, he arranged for us to stay with this family...
...These women are among the most vulnerable in our society—poor, undocumented, Spanish-speaking, unfamiliar with their legal rights, and unaware of social support systems...
...They say that usually by 9 a.m., the Border Patrol allows them to pass...
...The most dangerous part of the journey to "El Norte" is the border crossing along the Rio Grande River, which separates Mexico from Texas...
...The first thing I'll do is get another job...
...The stakes are a day's wages...
...Proudly, she asks her husband to get it from the top cupboard of their kitchen...
...Then they raped and shot the sisters, leaving them for dead...
...These women are so vulnerable," says Gustavo Garza, the prosecuting attorney in the Tovar case...
...She met up with her friends at El Tenampa and they told the owner, Nick Canales, what had happened...
...The very moment they go to complain, they expose themselves to deportation...
...the man asked...
...I told him I didn't want his help...
...Juana was spared because Santiago claimed she was his wife and had an infection...
...In the car he told us he wanted to help us, that he could get us work permits that would prove how powerful he was," Olga recalls...
...One twenty-one-year-old marine then raped Leticia in front of her two friends...
...Tovar borrowed money from his friend to pay for a two-bedroom suite and took Rosa into the back bedroom, she says...
...Rosa did not escape...
...While waiting to cross the border, America's uncle and nephews went to buy food for dinner...
...Lilian took out $50 to offer the official...
...The bond money would be returned to Blank when Rosa Lina appeared at her asylum hearing...
...Rosa Lina was excited when she left the asylum center after almost two months...
...J.J...
...Tovar has also been charged with one count of aggravated sexual assault and one count of aggravated kidnapping...
...At 10:30 p.m...
...Are you Mexicans...
...Most choose to remain silent...
...Elsa Leticia Vanegas Carranza and Juana Hinestros Macia left Honduras last July, crossing Guatemala and entering Mexico, where they met their friend Santiago Posado Aguilar...
...In four years, I haven't had one...
...But the official told me we wouldn't be released because they didn't want the press to find out about this," Marta says...
...11 Two Salvadoran women were abducted by river rapists last July after crossing the Rio Grande near Brownsville with their husbands...
...Initially, Mexican marine officer Rear Admiral Rodolfo Rodriguez Jurado responded to Solis's claims by denying there had ever been a rape...
...Some get as little as $40 a week, but it still far exceeds the $25 a week they would earn in the maquila-doras of Juarez—the plants owned by U.S...
...The women found their way to a church, Our Lady of Good Counsel, where the priest discovered them in the morning...
...Adifferent sort of river crossing awaits the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Juarez women who make the daily commute from the poor barrios of Juarez to the middle- and upper-class homes of El Paso...
...The official then rose from his desk and came around behind Veronica's chair, putting his hand on her shoulder, then her breast...
...border with Mexico, from the Rio Grande Valley west to San Diego and Tijuana, women immigrants face physical and sexual abuse...
...Lilian recalls...
...Haydee, the pseudonym for another undocumented Salvadoran woman, has worked for four years in the Los Angeles garment shops, developing expertise at putting in pants zippers...
...He followed her in, closed the door, and forced her to the floor, ripping off her blouse and unzipping her pants...
...The judge ruled that he be suspended from his position in the constabulary...
...The only bonus Haydee has received was a Christmas present one year from her employer...
...Sonia and her sister came to Los Angeles, where they both went to work in garment contract shops...
...All along the U.S...
...Tovar then drove the women to the Rode-way Hotel in Mercedes...
...He was Albert Tovar, constable of nearby La Feria...
...J.J...
...Helping them was un patero, a transporter named Emilio Cruz Trejo...
...This makes them even more enticing to the abuser...
...We're saving it for something special," she says...
...Veronica, a pseudonym for a fourteen-year-old Nicaraguan, sits on the porch of the Casa Oscar Romero refugee shelter in Brownsville, Texas...
...There they earn between $40 and $100 a week cleaning houses and caring for children...
...Again, no arrests were made...
...magistrate or an INS judge...
...Rosa Maria Castillo, Olga Lydia Reyes, and Luisa Contreras Rodriguez were barmaids, and they didn't mind the work...
...But it became clear that he never had any intention of turning them in...
...I just need a vacation," she says...
...Coyotes (as those who specialize in smuggling immigrants across the border are called) charge exorbitant rates and often do not deliver on their promises of reaching "El Norte...
...Several weeks later, when Rodriguez went to Austin and visited Rosa Lina, she begged Rodriguez to take her away from the louse...
...However, under pressure from Solis's organization and other groups, Rodriguez announced that the case would be investigated...
...Border Patrol in February 1987 and detained with a $3,000 bond that lawyers later managed to reduce to $1,500...
...If you see her, tell her she still owes me $385...
...village in the Rio Grande Valley...
...Tovar was arrested the next day...
...Olga and Luisa scuffled with Tovar's friends...
...He said he was interested in other things...
...she never left the house...
...Lilian opened her purse and pulled out another $50, but the official just laughed again and continued to fondle Veronica's breast until Lilian laid $500 on his desk...
...The trip across the border is fraught with hazards...
...The coyote told Lilian to get in the back with about ten other people and took Veronica to the cab of the truck, where another man drove...
...The two men forced Esmeralda Vas-quez, sixteen, and Leticia, eighteen, to wade across the river...
...She must weigh the importance of her job and home in this country against the risks of deportation—and the war and poverty she left behind...
...Haydee is too good: Each week, the contractor lowers the piece rate slightly so she must work harder to make the same amount of money...
...He danced with Rosa, and eventually offered them both $200 to "go and party" with him for the evening...
...But he ignored her, she says...
...She never heard back...
...Many started running back to the tunnel, but Marta stopped, apparently blocking the path of a young white Border Patrol agent who was chasing the others...
...You may go and return tomorrow to continue through Mexico...
...Marta was transferred to the El Paso County Jail...
...In the last five years, however, the proportion of women and children crossing the border illegally has risen dramatically, according to Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials and refugee-assistance groups...
...I wasn't going to give it to her for fear she wouldn't stay in the country," she says...
...He thought because we didn't have papers, he could do anything he wanted with us...
...And 80 per cent are women...
...This week, I'm going to get my [papers...
...They then took the women, aged eighteen and nineteen, into the woods and raped and beat them before releasing them...
...But Leticia survived and managed to walk nude to a home in a nearby village, despite a gunshot wound to the stomach...
...After paying a Juarez man a few hundred pesos to cross the river in his pad-dleboat, about fifty women and fifty men huddle together against the cold qf a January morning, debating when to make a break for the streets...
...Two factors make it extremely difficult to change this violent situation: the mafia-like cooperation of coyotes and Mexican officials, and the reluctance of the victims to pursue justice...
...They come not only to join family but to support family left behind...
...For three months this past winter, I talked with a hundred undocumented women who recounted their perilous voyages to the United States...
...I still have nightmares," says Veronica...
...Exhausted, Veronica fell asleep...
...She never worked it off...
...She says she expected the journey to be an adventure, but not the kind of adventure she encountered...
...The man began talking to Olga, asked her to sit down, and called Rosa over to his table...
...At about 5:30 p.m., a Hispanic man in his early thirties came to the bar with a friend and checked a gun with the bartender...
...Then we'll have to deport you to the [Guatemalan] border," one official told her...
...Crossing the border, women fall prey to river bandits who rape and rob...
...He was charged, convicted of two counts of aggravated robbery and one count of aggravated sexual assault, and sentenced to twenty-two years...
...Los federates give me a $50 bonus for each Central American I turn in," he said...
...The officials chased Pizana and caught him in the restroom of a nearby grocery store...
...He said he would let them go for 50,000 today and let me go for nothing tomorrow...
...On the Mexican side of the river, the three were approached by two armed men...
...he said...
...Two men who identified themselves as members of the Border Patrol robbed and stripped the husbands, forcing them to lie on the ground at gunpoint...
...Four days out of five, says one woman, they arrive at their jobs...
...Rodriguez was transferred and promoted...
...Tovar dropped Rosa off in nearby Har-lingen, where she, Olga, and Luisa lived...
...INS statistics on detainees confirm the trend...
...My child was screaming, 'Leave my mother alone, you're making her bleed,'" Meriam testified...
...He said he'd let them all go for 100,000 pesos if they left me...
...The next hurdle is the U.S...
...Soon, however, Rosa Lina says she began to feel a total loss of freedom...
...Together, they have built a better life for their three children...
...Even when Solis can document an abuse, justice is elusive...
...Marta Castro has been doing cleaning work in El Paso for many years to support her eight children and her mother...
...He said thank you and showed us into the next office, where they began the deportation process," says Lilian...
...In the last year, his department, which covers the Brownsville area, has investigated at least twelve rapes and four murders of undocumented women...
...At the bus terminal in Mexico City, the family was forced off the bus into a small office, where a member of the federal judicial police questioned them...
...She brushed his hand off, and he pretended to be asleep...
...Maids were terrorized in 1986 when the bodies of seven Mexican women—at least four of whom had been raped and strangled—were found in the river and its canals...
...He told them he was going to take them to immigration headquarters...
...The next day, immigration officials raided the hotel...
...As a result, they are forced farther and farther underground...
...companies taking advantage of cheap Mexican labor...
...She asked for medical attention because of the pain in her back but was ignored...
...Her husband, who works for Cherokee, makes about the same...
...If they choose to exercise their right to apply for political asylum* the stay is even longer...
...By pure chance three years ago, one river rapist was brought to trial and convicted...
...Castro had been crossing the border daily for several years to do house work in El Paso until one day last May when she was clubbed by a U.S...
...He said he was tired of our little gifts," Life in the Garment Shops We all dream of leaving the clothes factories," says a thirty-five-year-old Guatemalan woman standing on a street corner in downtown Los Angeles...
...The commute is not without danger...
...America is the real first name of a twenty-year-old woman who left her home in Aguilares, El Salvador, with her uncle and two young nephews last December 1. The Mexican immigration authorities twice forced them to pay 10,000 pesos for each person before allowing them to con-tinue...
...He just looked at me...
...Only about 10 to 15 per cent of the garment laborers receive amnesty under the new immigration law, estimates the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in Los Angeles...
...Mexican immigration officials in Vil-lahermosa forced Veronica and her mother Lilian (also a pseudonym) off their bus and took them into a small office...
...The other, Rigo, didn't say anything...
...Roberto never returned, stranding the family in Juarez for a month until they found a sympathetic Juarez man who helped them cross for $40...
...You don't realize who I am, do you...
...Then he got up, stood behind me, and touched my hair, then my breast inside my blouse and my bra," says America with a shudder...
...First, the women must survive the journey through Mexico...
...But Olga and Luisa managed to escape and hitchhiked back to El Tenampa...
...As they were bringing Meriam down the steps, she spotted Pizana in the lobby and screamed, "That's him, the one who raped me...
...By the time they arrive at the border, they're so eager to leave Mexico that the last thing they want to do is open a case against a Mexican official," says Arturo Solis, director of the Centro de Estudios y Informacion Migratorios in Reynosa, a group that documents abuses against immigrants...
...The couples were placed in deportation proceedings...
...When they enter a detention center, the Government sets bond—often at $3,000...
...Women are the new immigrants from Central America...
...Local press along the border have reported the following cases in the last year: It On a June evening last year, two sisters from Guanajuato, Mexico, were trying to cross the river near El Ranchito, a small Indentured Servitude, 1988 Hundreds of Central American women are held in the Immigration and Naturalization Service's detention centers, sometimes for months before their deportation hearings...
...She was strip-searched and placed in a cell with eight other women...
...But she knew she could ask for it if she wanted it...
...What results is a type of indentured servitude...
...Your daughter must be detained tonight," he said...
...Because of their illegal status, they seldom report their attacks, for a woman who turns in her assailant turns in herself...
...Meriam and her daughter finally met up with the other Hondurans...
...Another young, pretty woman...
...She had no money or transportation...
...Olga served them Lite beers...
...Many more go uninvestigated, he admits...
...But that doesn't deter more than 110,000 people from working for minimum wage or less in the thriving southern California garment industry—largely because an estimated 80 per cent of the work force are undocumented, the majority from Mexico and Central America...
...She pleaded with Tovar not to rape her, she says, telling him she had had a baby a month earlier and was still recovering...
...The police took sixteen of them in three cars...
...They come here to survive economically, and they will do almost any job, no matter how onerous or demeaning...
...In fiscal 1986, the Border Patrol detained 226,945 Mexican women and children, a 40 per cent increase from fiscal 1984...
...Solis found them there without adequate food, living in complete squalor, squeezed among 600 people in a jail built to hold 250...
...He called the Santa Rosa police, who arrived to help him arrest the women...
...After the long bus ride back to the Guatemalan border, Lilian and Veronica began their journey again, arriving once more in Villahermosa, where their original coyote had agreed to wait for them...
...Another story of abuse...
...Like the rest of the garment workers, Haydee receives no benefits, no insurance, no workers' compensation...
...Furious, she reported the incident to the National Labor Relations Board...
...Together, they made their way to El Jardin hotel...
...They asked for voluntary departure...
...Rapes by river bandits are the most common, says Lieutenant George Gavito of the Cameron County criminal investigation department...
...said the official, his hand still on Veronica's breast...
...In January, he was convicted of four counts of official oppression for illegally detaining the women...
...Every ten minutes or so, la migra sweeps down on them, forcing them back behind a metal fence yards from the river...
...Border Patrol...
...Tovar began checking the women's identification papers and discovered that all nineteen of the barmaids were undocumented Mexicans...
...Sonia's sister, for instance, made $15 for a ten-hour day for Jeans West...
...She says she agreed to pay Rosa Lina $50 a week, but decided against regular disbursements...
...If they clear all these hurdles, women face exploitation in the workplace from employers who realize the women are powerless to report abuses...
...She shouted at Rosa Lina for not working hard enough...
...The woman is bound to her employer until the time of her immigration hearing, when the bond money is returned...
...One of the men hit them and threatened to kill them...
...She was impressed with Debby Blank's beautiful home in Austin...
...In a good week, Haydee makes about $200 for fifty to sixty hours of work...
...Because of her experience at a Levi Strauss factory in El Salvador, Sonia at times made $6 an hour working piece rate...
...The women seem resigned to this game...
...Malta's younger sister, Socorro, stood up for her...
...Crossing had become routine for her...
...Because she arrived in 1984, she will not qualify for amnesty and is virtually trapped in the garment industry...
...They refused, explaining that the owner of the cantina didn't permit them to leave...
...You don't know I have more power than any policeman or sheriff...
...Border Patrol officer...
...She's just a liar," Blank says...
...Together, the twelve people in the group, mainly Nica-raguans, raised the money, and the coyote left...
...You won't be serving any more beer here...
...the owner treated them well, paid them $125 a week, and gave them free soda pop...
...Agua1...
...She awoke shortly, however, thinking she had had a nightmare, only to find the coyote's hand on her breast...
...Are you carrying money...
...Canales called the Cameron County sheriffs department...
...When she tried to escape, he grabbed her and stuck his fingers into her vagina until she bled...
...You have the right to deport us but not to mistreat us," she yelled...
...He got mad and told me I should be afraid of him and his gun, that he could deport me...
...One man grabbed her daughter, another held Meriam's arms, and another—Martin Pizana Diaz—threw her on the ground and undressed her...
...Desperate, they occasionally offer their services to someone who will pay their bond in exchange for their labor...
...After traveling for two more days, the group reached Matamoros, and that night the coyote led them to an area where the river was low and they could walk across...
...The contractors have no morals," says Sonia, the pseudonym of a young Salvadoran woman who fled her home country in 1981 because of her trade-union activity...
...The official drove her to a bridge and told her he hoped she had learned her lesson, then dropped her off in the darkness...
...The agent turned on Marta, clubbing her in the back with such force that the frail, five-foot two-inch woman fell...
...She hoped she could become part of the family...
...My father is telling me to watch out for the coyote, watch out for the coyote...
...Research for this article was funded, in part, by a grant from the Dick Goldensohn Fund...
...The next day, the family safely boarded a bus for Juarez, where they paid two coyotes to help them cross into El Paso...
...And she told me I was eating too much food from the refrigerator," Rosa Lina says...
...She opens the box to reveal six sherbet glasses and small spoons, obviously unused...
...You must be dreaming about la migra [the INS]," he told her...
...He then showed her daughter the blood on his hands...
...Employers use this against the immigrants, telling them that low wages are the price for the risks the employers take in hiring them...
...America's uncle refused, saying they would return to El Salvador before leaving her...
...She has just spent eight hours bent over an industrial sewing machine in a sweatshop evocative of Dickens...
...Finally, Rosa Lina felt she could take no more...
...One day, Sonia reported to work only to find the shop closed...
...Her uncle again refused, and the police threw them out of the terminal...
...After four and a half months, Rosa Lina had made only $ 150 to send her family...
...Sometimes, the situation is much bleaker...
...Another refugee house in another border city...
...Blank told her she was deducting money to help cover the bond and some phone calls, including those Rosa Lina had made collect to Blank while in detention, Rosa Lina says...
...When the van stopped for a break, Veronica crawled into the back with her mother and collapsed in tears...
...But for thirty of them, it was even worse: a horrifying encounter with assault...
...After she explained what had happened, they decided not to cross with Rigo...
...One of the coyotes, Roberto, was so friendly," says America...
...He locked her in and told her she should be quiet if she wanted to cross to the other side...
...Without the maids and babysitters, the working women of El Paso could not go to work...
...Few families of these women can afford that amount, so the women will languish in the detention center unless they find someone to post bond for them...
...If lucky, they receive $20 a day for eight to ten hours of work, with a fifteen-minute lunch break...
...I said yes, even though I was scared to go home that late at night because of the gangs in my neighborhood...
...He brought them to a bar in La Feria and left them there with a friend, only to return with another man...
...He then raped her...
...Many do not apply for amnesty even when they qualify, and the vast majority don't qualify because they entered the United States after 1982...
...The three arrived several days later in Matamoros and went directly to the river to see how they could cross...
...At times, however, the pay didn't make minimum wage...
...Esmeralda was dead, killed by a gunshot wound to the head...
...For America, a twenty-year-old woman who left her home in El Salvador to come to the United States, was molested twice on her voyage: once by a Mexican police officer and once by a 'coyote,' who was supposed to help her cross the border...
...The victim, a twenty-four-year-old Honduran named Meriam Jeneth Nunez, was crossing the river near Brownsville with her husband, three-year-old daughter, and four other Hondurans in November 1984...
...Cruz fled...
...They were eventually reunited with their husbands...
...He told her she had fat thighs and with an ice pick stabbed her legs...
...Socorro insisted on being released because she needed to breastfeed her baby, and the officials did let her go at 6:30 p.m., her shirt soaked with milk...
...Nearly all the women lose their money and meager possessions in bribes to Mexican officials who stand in their way...
...Rodriguez did, and arranged for ilosa Lina to stay with another woman in Austin until she could join relatives in California...
...Jane Juffer is an associate editor of Pacific News Service...
...brave ones venture out across the cement lot, then a few more, at first stealthily, then a bit more boldly, finally making a run for the line of warehouses and safety...
...But at a cost...
...After they had made it to the other side, the coyote put his arm around Veronica and pulled a knife...
...They were afraid to complain, however, for fear the coyote would not help them continue...
...all of them, the trip was an ordeal...
...And you have only $50...
...Rigo arrived with the van and told America to go inside to see if the panel would adequately hide her...
...Shortly thereafter, the three Honduran immigrants were arrested by the municipal police and placed in the local jail...
...I told him I'd rather be deported a thousand times than do anything with him...
...I'm going to close this fucking whorehouse down...
...The family found a taxi, but were astounded to hear the driver demand a $10 tip...
...Early that morning, Marta walked from her tiny home in the dirt-poor barrio of Felipe Angeles to a popular crossing place called "Las Campuertas," a dam which some enterprising Juarez men had turned into a bridge by attaching a small ladder and charging a user fee of a few hundred pesos...
...He smiled and leaned across his desk, looking at me, but talking to my uncle as if I wasn't there," America remembers...
...Maybe for the party we have when I find another job...
...Sometimes,'the employers genuinely want to help refugees, treat them well, and pay them fairly...
...Three men dragged Meriam and her daugher several hundred yards away...
...She bites at the chipped pink polish on her nails and swings her legs nervously...
...Lilian refused...
...After the migra vans leave, a few Marta Castro in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico...
...Rosa Lina understood through telephone conversations with Blank that she would receive $240 a month in addition to room and board...
...screams a woman, and they all rush back to the water as the dreaded light green van speeds to the lot...
...No...
...The money was important to her because she wanted to send it to her family in El Salvador...
...It has been just one week since she and her mother joined her two brothers here...
...Until the mid-1980s, the undocumented worker from south of the border was usually male: Mexican men seeking to survive economically, Central American men fleeing political persecution...
...This time she screamed...
...that Monday, the same official who arrested Marta arrived at the jail...
...The Los Angeles Health Department estimates that 90 to 95 per cent of the contract shops violate health regulations...
...Their choices are so limited...
...All the detainees except the sisters were taken to the downtown Border Patrol office...
...There they were intercepted by three armed Mexican marines...
...Only her screams kept him from further assaulting her...
...Tovar told them to ask the bar owner to allow them to leave, and when Olga did and returned with the same answer, he exploded...
...He has pleaded innocent to the charges...
...Debby Blank was not satisfied with Rosa Lina's work...
...From Saturday until Monday night, she was never told why she was being held, and she never saw a U.S...
...Debby Blank calls Rosa Lina a "lousy, lazy worker...
...Tovar took Olga, Rosa, and Luisa...
...Marta and Socorro were brought to the INS processing center...
Vol. 52 • April 1988 • No. 4
