BAITING IMMIGRANTS WOMEN BEAR THE BRUNT

...Despite her pleas, Reyna spent the night in an overcrowded room where about two dozen women slept on a cold floor...

...You make the deal in Tijuana, but often it doesn't turn out as planned because you pass from stranger to stranger...

...But her optimism was shattered, she says, when a border-patrol agent in El Paso, Texas, sexually abused Lopez and her friend Norma Con-treras, both twenty-three...

...The women were transferred to San Diego, where they spent two hours in shackles before they were flown, in chains, to the INS detention facility in Las Vegas...

...Because the officers remain on the job, the women worry that the agent's abuse continues unchecked...

...From there her brother promised to pay another $400 to get her to Los Angeles...

...Others, she says, find themselves separated from their children when they are deported from California workplaces...

...There was a filthy, doorless toilet at the back of the bus...

...Lopez says he took her to a back room, told her to strip, turned her against the wall, and continued to assault her sexually...

...They were chased and captured by a border-patrol agent, then handcuffed together and marched to his patrol vehicle...

...While the beating of two undocumented immigrants by sheriffs deputies in Riverside County in April briefly focused attention on some of the more dramatic abuses, the daily violations remain invisible to the public...

...Their ordeal continued when the agent brought them to the office for processing...

...They are housed, fed, and given help finding jobs, mostly as domestic workers...

...Human-rights workers speculate that he may have been sent approximately 185 miles east of Tijuana to Mexicali...

...You aren't on a tourist trip...

...The message is: 'Leave the undocumented men here so we can continue to exploit them, but send their women and children home.' They understand that women are behind the demographic growth of Latinos in this state...

...She paid a coyote $500 to get her to San Diego...

...The two women say they just stared at each other, paralyzed by terror...

...When they finished with her, I was next," she said, her voice cracking with emotion, less than a week after the alleged assault occurred...

...She suspects that the owner of the plant called the INS himself, to avoid paying the women who worked for him...

...Most of all, she is desperate because she can't find her daughters, Amalia, eleven, and Ines Carolina, seven...

...Such investigations are generally handled by the FBI...

...There are a lot of ways that INS officials have figured out how to dissuade people from pursuing complaints, and they are usually very successful," notes Collins...

...They say that, while at first respectful, investigating agent Gallardo's attitude has turned increasingly hostile and accusatory...

...The drivers stopped three times to eat, but all they gave us was a gallon of water to share," she explained...

...I don't know if it is becoming more common or if it is being reported more widely because people are paying closer attention, but it is definitely a problem...

...Attorney's office, a division of the Justice Department, will defend them...

...I have to live for her more than ever," she says through her tears...

...At dawn, guards gave the women juice and sandwiches...

...Lopez and Contreras contacted their relatives in California while they waited in Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican side of the border, where they could stretch the little money they had...

...I am hearing that it is quite common," explains Collins...

...During her interrogation, Reyna begged to be released so she could return to her two small daughters in Tijuana...

...J.L...

...I think she will carry this with her for the rest of her life," said her mother...

...The temptation is to try and garner all the evidence you are going to need to defend those officers and cut into the civil claim of these women against the United States government," he explains...

...The tomato-packing plant was raided two days after she started work, and she was deported less than a week after she left Mexico...

...Catalina didn't tell her brother what happened...

...After being held incommunicado for three days, Mirna accepted deportation rather than fight her case...

...The women who pass through the Casa are either on their way north, or have been recently deported and are pondering their next move...

...While she was in the smugglers' safe house waiting to be taken to L.A., Catalina says three young men working with the coyote raped her...

...citizen and has two young daughters born in California, Reyna has never applied for residency...

...But in July 1995, the U.S...

...The local Latino community in San Ysidro has an ambivalent relationship to increased immigration and accelerated border enforcement...

...The mesa is mined with seismic and magnetic sensors...

...He then instructed Lopez to unbutton her overalls, and fondled her as well...

...If you have lost your daughters, it is your problem...

...Once inside the vehicle, they say he instructed Con-treras, who was wearing a skirt, to open her legs...

...Until very recently, women were far more likely to attempt to enter the United States using false documents than to risk a dangerous dash across the border...

...So far, both agents accused of assaulting the women are still on the job...

...Others risk the journey to reunite with partners and family already in California...

...Immigrant-rights advocates say that, in effect, U.S...

...While he was assaulting her, he told her she was fatter than her friend...

...Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials detained the thirty-three-year-old Guatemalan housekeeper and mother of six at the port of entry in San Ysidro, California, when she tried to reenter the United States using false documents...

...I hate him...

...People are really torn," says Andrea Skorepa, director of Casa Familiar, a social-service agency in San Ysidro...

...The blood began to stain their pants, dripping down to their ankles...

...Murillo says that the INS policy is gender-blind and that if fewer women are using false documents, it is because the policy is working...

...If she needs to use the bathroom, other women, also in shackles, must help her take her pants down...

...INS special assistant director Rudy Murillo cannot explain why Reyna was detained...

...Although her ordeal is over, Mima's nightmare was real...

...Contreras and Lopez are still haunted by their trauma...

...Copies of the correspondence have gone to INS commissioner Doris Meisner and to internal audit director John Chase, but no formal investigation into the charges of abuse has been launched...

...She asks her jailers for permission to make a phone call to find the little girls...

...Collins observes that when it is the word of an undocumented immigrant against that of a law-enforcement official, all too often the courts question the credibility of the immigrant's testimony...

...to undertake these incredibly arduous trips would deter them really shows a lack of understanding of the women's desperation," argues Claudia Smith, an attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance, who has interviewed many immigrant women...

...Human-rights workers on both sides of the border hear many rumors of sexual abuse...

...Contreras has nightmares...

...We didn't know where he was going to take us...

...They go through thick and thin, hot or cold...

...After four days and nights of trekking through the Tecate Mountains with little food, drinking from streams, Mirna returned to California...

...We didn't know where he was going to take us...

...For the women, the wait for justice is slow and tortuous...

...We are only looking for a better life...

...Although she is married to a U.S...

...Without corroborating evidence from another agent who decides to tell on his colleague—which does not happen—the case is just not prosecuted," she says...

...They hit her because she tried to resist...

...It's not just the rich and powerful—although they are the ones who can do something about it...

...When alleged crimes require the corroborating testimony of a fellow agent, the code of silence among law-enforcement officials is virtually unbreakable—many of the officers charged with investigating such allegations were once themselves field agents...

...When the increased detentions began under Operation Gatekeeper, the INS did not have any internal regulation on how detainees should be treated...

...The agent eventually released the women, gave each a dollar bus fare, and reportedly told them, "You owe me a bundle, because you won't be able to repay the favor I did in your lifetime...

...Although many had not eaten for almost twenty-four hours, most had lost their appetites...

...Although Lopez and Contreras have identified their photographs, the investigators will not turn over the names of the agent and his supervisor to the women's lawyer...

...The women's attorney, Jim Scherer, is concerned that this presents a potential conflict, since the Justice Department is also investigating the alleged crime...

...After they interviewed and booked her at the port of entry, immigration officials crammed Mirna in a small, cold holding cell with about twenty-five women, she says...

...The detainees spent the night on the floor, two or three to a blanket...

...Once he led Lopez out of the room, he processed her paperwork as if nothing had happened...

...We almost suffocated, there was so little ventilation...

...Contreras says the agent then turned his attention to her...

...The mostly first- and second-generation Chicano families who make up the community are in close proximity to the border...

...Between 60 and 75 percent of those arrested with false documents last year were women...

...Occupancy is up by 50 percent at Tijuana's Casa de la Madre Asunta, a shelter for women and children run by the nuns of the Scalabrini Order...

...As a result, illegal immigration is being pushed eastward through the Tecate Mountains and apprehensions are up...

...I think these policies are here to stav...

...Late last year, Reyna and her family went to stay with relatives in Guerrero, Mexico, for several months while her husband recovered from chemotherapy...

...Attorney Alan Bersin...

...Her daughters made it through the border using false documents, but for days she did not know if they were all right...

...Justice Department began throwing the book at immigrants who try to enter the country with false documents...

...About sixty women and their children can live in the dormitories...

...So far, those petitions have met with silence...

...We didn't even fit sitting down," she said...

...The two women were given six-month visas pending investigation of their charges...

...The two women waded across the Rio Grande near El Paso, where the INS's Operation Hold the Line is in effect...

...To say that forcing the women...

...officials but also by the smugglers, known as "coyotes," who guide immigrants across the border...

...I will never forget what he did to me...

...I don't find it hard to believe when you look at INS contract facilities such as the one in Esmor, New Jersey, where last year INS detainees suffered some serious kinds of degradation, where women were not provided with undergarments or sanitary napkins," says Allyson Collins, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, which has been monitoring border abuses since 1991...

...The women boarded a bus for the more than ten-hour drive to an INS detention center in Las Vegas...

...Because such crimes usually go unreported and unpunished, they say it is impossible to confirm whether such incidents are on the rise, although many believe they are...

...She was not fed for the first twelve hours she was held for questioning...

...I was struck completely dumb," she says...

...She feels as if her wrists are handcuffed together and chained to her waist...

...The two women have identified in a photo lineup both the agent they accuse of sexually assaulting them and his supervisor...

...citizen to receive a green card...

...Individual border-patrol agents must feel freer to make migrants as physically miserable as possible while they are in their custody...

...They just want to get back [to their children...

...A ten-to-twelve-foot-high fence separates the two countries...

...It was as if we all felt the same pain...

...Mary Galvan, a social worker at the Casa, says U.S...

...Julie Light is a San Francisco-based journalist who frequently covers immigrant issues...

...Operation Gatekeeper is detaining a record 1,800 undocumented immigrants per day in the sixty-six-mile stretch of border near San Diego...

...Their attorney has filed two written requests, which were copied to INS Commissioner Doris Meisner...

...Women often make emergency trips south to deal with a family crisis, only to find themselves separated from children and spouses left behind in the United States...

...I couldn't cry or speak or shout...

...Ines has problems concentrating in school...

...They have filed a complaint that the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is currently investigating...

...At dawn, guards handcuffed all the women but Reyna...

...Some of them were menstruating, but in Las Vegas the guards denied them sanitary napkins, according to Mirna...

...Meanwhile, her husband continues to suffer from stomach cancer...

...policy is criminalizing family reunification and penalizing poor women...

...Both Mima's and Reyna's cases have been brought to the attention of top INS officials...

...According to the women, the supervisor watched while the agent continued to fondle Con-treras and began fondling Lopez again...

...Reyna, twenty-one, was seven months pregnant with her third child when she lied to immigration officials at the San Ysidro crossing, claiming in English that she had lost her documents...

...Under pressure from human-rights groups, the INS issued guidelines regarding sanitation, the availability of food, overcrowding in the detention cells, and transportation...

...Her daughters, separated from her at the port of entry, were also scarred by the experience...

...We were practically inviting people to try [to enter the United States with false documents] again until they succeeded," says Rudy Murillo, special assistant to the district director of the INS in San Diego...

...The Justice Department then ordinarily decides whether to press criminal charges in federal court...

...Human-rights activists believe that INS policy deliberately attempts to split up families...

...INS policy exempts women who are six months pregnant from detention, according to a February 6, 1996, memo from the INS district director in San Diego...

...One woman I spoke to in the shelter says she has not heard from her husband in the week since they and their children, ages six and eight, were detained by the border patrol...

...Their stays range from a couple of weeks to a few months...

...Mirna never imagined the horror that awaited her when she and the girls tried to get home to California from Guatemala after an emergency trip to care for her dying grandmother...

...He began to fondle her legs and breasts, and forced his fingers into her vagina...

...If the accused officers are indicted, the U.S...

...First they took the other girl, my friend, and they abused her...

...I hope that it is so, because the days pass very slowly...

...INS officials say the stricter policy serves as a deterrent...

...After the six months, which are up in September, the women are deportable...

...Both are now in psychiatric counseling, and Con-treras was recently released from the San Bernardino County Hospital, where she received treatment after she slit her wrists...

...Although her husband was recently granted a green card, she must now wait until the government lifts her exclusion before she can legalize her immigration status...

...But without systematic outside monitoring, human-rights advocates say there is no guarantee that the INS will enforce its own guidelines...

...Lee Douglass, a Justice Department spokesperson, would confirm only that an investigation by the Civil Rights Division was under way...

...The women were doubly humiliated because guards had confiscated their underwear...

...but now I think of my daughter...

...Reyna worries that she may be faced with applying for residency as the widow, rather than the wife, of a U.S...

...citizen...

...She spent six weeks in Tijuana trying to return to her family...

...In the post-Proposition 187 climate in California, says Smith, the public views women and children as a drain on social services and men as a source of cheap labor...

...While the majority of these immigrants are men, a growing number of women are taking the increased risk of crossing under stepped-up border enforcement...

...Immigration has become an election-year hot-button issue...

...Reyna is now excluded from legally entering the United States for the next year...

...says attorney Claudia Smith...

...We feared the worst...

...Until recently, it was not uncommon for the border patrol to chase immigrants through their backyards, and residents complain that their stolen cars are taken over the border to Mexico...

...Very slowly...

...That's why I slit my wrists...

...M RAPE on the Border When Luz Lopez left Guatemala to join relatives in Southern California, she dreamed of learning English, going to college, and leaving behind the poverty she grew up in...

...She and a friend hoped to find work in a tomato-packing plant in Los Angeles...

...I foolishly thought that there was justice here...

...We come to work and they treat us in a way that leaves deep wounds in our souls," Mirna said through her tears...

...Attorney Claudia Smith is conducting a memo war with Mark Reed, district director at the INS in San Diego, and with U.S...

...She agreed to tell her story only if her last name was not used, because she faces felony charges for illegally returning to the United States after being deported...

...If border patrols find her crossing the border illegally again, she faces prison...

...Human-rights advocates charge that stepped-up border enforcement does not act as a deterrent, but rather encourages women to brave the dangerous mountain crossing...

...Catalina, a single mother, left her young son in Guadalajara...

...But I don't think that this is something that will go away after the electioneering is over...

...After a week, their relatives picked them up, and Lopez and Contreras made a formal complaint at the border crossing in El Paso...

...They are human beings and once they get settled, not-in-my-backyardism takes hold...

...She accepted exclusion proceedings in order to return to her little girls in Tijuana, rather than wait out an appeal in detention...

...Once the scene of more than a quarter of a million illegal border crossings each year, San Diego has become a testing ground for the INS's Operation Gatekeeper, launched in October 1994...

...She planned to send money home to her grandmother and her five-year-old daughter...

...Her husband returned alone to Los Angeles...

...Just the sight of him with a badge and a gun was enough to intimidate anyone...

...Mirna is not alone...

...In many ways, women bear the brunt of our nation's punitive immigration policies...

...After the agent had assaulted them, the two men laughed, the women say...

...Even though she was in the last few months of pregnancy, she was given only limited access to a bathroom and told she would be handcuffed to a chair if she got up without permission...

...After a particularly bad night, she attempted suicide and wound up in San Bernardino County Hospital...

...There is harassment, and there is also misdirection...

...Officially, Mirna was given a year's exclusion from legal entry into the United States...

...She describes the official who interviewed her as "rude and despotic...

...The prosecution rate is incredibly low . . . something like one or two complaints actually make it to an indictment stage out of hundreds that are received by the Justice Department," explains Allyson Collins, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch who is familiar with the case...

...Mirna chokes back tears when she remembers these women's shame...

...While the supervisor stood watch at the office front door, the patrol agent followed her into the bathroom and, despite her protests, groped her and forced his fingers into her vagina...

...At night, patrol agents use infrared scopes...

...They did not even treat us like human beings," Mirna says...

...This isn't a hotel," they yell back to her...

...Skorepa adds that while the local community has been besieged by its own problems, including cutbacks in social services and unemployment, it also opposed what people in the area perceived as a sharp rise in anti-immigrant sentiment among Anglos...

...Just the sight of him with a badge and a gun was enough to intimidate anyone.' Neither agent Nick Gallardo, who is carrying out the investigation for the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General, nor Deborah Carr, an attorney overseeing the case for the department's Civil Rights Division, would comment on the ongoing investigation...

...She can barely walk because her feet are in leg irons...

...Human-rights advocates familiar with Mima's story say it is credible...

...We feared the worst," said Lopez...

...But human-rights advocates say that such cases rarely make it to court...

...She tried for more than a month before she succeeded in returning to her family in Santa Barbara, where she has lived for the last six years...

...The seat was smeared with feces...

...Immigrant-rights activists worry that such violations have become the price politicians and the public are willing to pay for increased border enforcement...

...In order to give themselves a semblance of privacy, the women stood in front of the door to block the view of the male detainees who were seated at the rear of the bus...

...And things are the same for us," says Lopez...

...Pregnant women are especially vulnerable...

...policy is deliberately splitting up families...

...After a week, Reyna appeared before an immigration judge in San Diego...

...It often takes about two years for the spouse of a U.S...

...Other people begin to protect their turf and their own...

...What the rhetoric of the election year does is create a climate of license...

...Lopez and Contreras have been interviewed extensively by investigators...

...Many of the deported women at the Casa have been separated from their partners...

...He drove them back toward the river and spoke with his supervisor...

...When she tried again the next day, INS arrested her and held her for a week...

...We are not the first, nor the last," says Contreras...

...Collins says that overcrowding in detention is common and that Mima's testimony is "not beyond the pale...

...She produces and co-hosts "Flashpoints," KPFA-FM'S daily news magazine...

...The war on illegal immigration is not without casualties: According to the Mexican consulate in San Diego, at least eighteen people, including four women, died trying to cross the mountains in the first six months of 1996...

...You won't believe what these women will do: anything and everything," says veteran border-patrol agent Marco Ramirez...

...Skorepa points out that while the local community identifies with the immigrant experience, residents looking for jobs often find themselves in direct competition with undocumented immigrants...

...In accordance with INS policy, Reyna was turned away the first time she tried to get through without documents...

...Since the policy change a year ago, some 20,000 immigrants have been arrested and prosecuted through the immigration courts for using false documents, according to INS records...

...Reyna planned to join him in time to give birth...

...border-patrol agents in four-wheel-drive vehicles keep vigil from a hilltop along the open mesa...

...Mirna was deported upon reentering the United States...

...I do not believe that animals should be treated that way...

...The women say the agent's supervisor looked on and stood guard while the assault occurred...

...An appeal would have meant a detention sentence longer by weeks, if not months...

...Collins, at Human Rights Watch, points out that even when the Justice Department does investigate, abuse charges rarely stick because of a code of silence among INS and border-patrol officers...

...She adds that in the rush to beef up the border patrol, many new agents have been hired or promoted without the proper training, opening the door to abuses...

...In the case of rape, Collins says that agents count on women not to come forward and hold their perpetrators accountable...

...Most would-be immigrants are detected before they know it, and detained by the 1,600 border-patrol agents deployed under Gatekeeper...

...The process requires detailed documentation and one or more interviews with the INS and can cost hundreds of dollars in legal fees...

...Women in the Casa de la Madre Asunta tell horror stories of abuses not only by U.S...

...Sometimes you feel as if you can't go on...