A human smuggler, and the wall that will make him rich

The ground rules: No revealing the smuggler’s identity. No photos or video showing his face. Alter the sound to disguise his voice.

For nearly two hours, the pollero describes how he has smuggled thousands of migrants into the U.S. for the past 20 years.

His voice is calm, except when he talks about the risks of his line of work.

The Border Patrol agents who increasingly lock up smugglers.

The drug gangs that charge tolls to pass through their turf.

And finally, the Mexican police, who demand bribes to look the other way.

But he is not scared of the prospect of President Donald Trump’s border wall.

The border wall won’t hurt his business. It might actually help.

Mexicali, Mexico His trade name is Alexis.

He practices a specialized form of human smuggling common in urban areas that straddle the border.

Mexicali is filled with people headed to the United States or on their way back. It’s a city of more than 900,000 in Baja California, just across the fence from tiny Calexico, California.

Instead of taking migrants through remote areas of the desert, which are less heavily guarded by the Border Patrol but also far more dangerous, Alexis guides migrants over the border fence right in the center of town, practically under the noses of Border Patrol agents. He explains the strategy. Polleros like Alexis create a diversion, or wait until Border Patrol agents leave an area unguarded. Polleros then send migrants over using a rope or ladder, or through a hole in the fence. Once on the other side, the migrants try to evade the Border Patrol by blending in with the local population in Calexico, which is almost entirely Latino.

He describes how a week earlier, he and a team of polleros working together managed to get four people across in a single night without getting caught by the Border Patrol. The migrants were from Guadalajara, Mexico’s secondlargest city, and Tepic, the capital of the coastal state of Nayarit.

“We got lucky, thank God. Sometimes that happens, things just go your way. We crossed here in the center of town,” Alexis says in Spanish.

“It was easy because we got them up and over the wall by the parking lot and had them lay down on the ground by the cars. We waited until the Border Patrol agent was distracted with their phone or looking in the opposite direction with binoculars.

“We tell the migrants to roll away from the fence and get up as if they are exiting one of the cars in the parking lot. If the agent and the camera didn’t see them, the migrant can walk away as if nothing happened. They can walk right by a Border Patrol agent and if they keep their cool, they are gone.”

Alexis knows his strategy so well, he can walk somebody through it in real time.

He pulls out his phone, opens Google Maps, and pinches his fingers and zooms in on the street view of Chapultepec Park.

As he talks, it’s almost as if the street images come to life as he recounts his work the day before.

It is between 5 and 7 in the evening, just before dark.

Through the slats in the border fence, you can see a parking lot on the Calexico side.

Alexis points to the parking lot. “The Border Patrol is always there. Always,” he says, referring to the parking lot.

“This is the park, right here,” Alexis says, continuing to gesture at his phone. “Over here, that’s where the Border Patrol parks their truck. This is the street in Calexico, First Street. If you look closely, you can see the Border Patrol. I’ll show you exactly from where so you have an idea of how it’s done.”

Alexis zooms in on the parking lot. “We get them over the fence and have them roll on the ground until they reach the cars. Then they get up and walk away.”

Alexis flicks through map images until a large building appears.

“See that warehouse on the corner? That warehouse used to be empty,” Alexis says. “We would send people in there to hide. The easiest way to hide somebody, at least for me, was the houses. Look at that green house over there. That house has a platform. We would send someone to cut a hole on the platform and hide migrants under the porch. We wouldn’t send him directly to the house. He would go down the block and then hide under where someone else cut a hole. The Border Patrol will search for him but won’t find him. Those are some of the ways we get people across.

“This entire area, Calexico, I know it very well,” Alexis continues. “I know it like the back of my hand because over the years I’ve jumped the fence many times and gotten to know all of the houses, the streets. When I send people across, I tell them exactly where they need to go, like I did just now with the map.”

His own story

Like so many things in the world of smuggling — where truth and true identities lie outside the bounds of the law — much of what Alexis says is impossible to verify. His story, as he tells it, is his alone.

Alexis crossed the border illegally in 1994 after growing up in poverty in Veracruz, a state on Mexico’s Gulf Coast.

He got a job in San Diego earning $240 a week, but he was deported six months later. The Border Patrol dropped him off in Mexicali.

Alexis tried making an honest living there, working construction and other jobs. But he earned only 30 pesos a day — about $1.70. He ended up standing on the street washing windshields on vehicles waiting to cross into Calexico. But the competition among windshield washers was fierce. Then one day, he was in the park washing windshields when a pollero approached him and asked if he wanted to be a decoy.

“I asked how much he was willing to pay and he said $50,” he says. “That’s how I started. That same person gave me people to cross. It was very easy back then. If I was craving a cheeseburger, I would cross to get one.”

Smuggling, however, has become much more difficult, Alexis says.

When he started, most of the fencing along the border was constructed from surplus landing mats. The corrugated metal barriers were easy to cut through, and simple to climb over. There also were far fewer Border Patrol agents.

“It was easy because you could distract the Border Patrol by jumping over and getting them to abandon the area they were patrolling and chase you,” Alexis says. “Honestly, it was very easy.” But not anymore.

In the mid-1990s, the United States began ramping up border security. Things intensified after Sept. 11, 2001.

There are now as many as 18,600 Border Patrol agents deployed along the southern border, three times as many as 1996. There are cameras on poles and motion sensors underground. And of course, there are fences.

The 2006 Secure Fence Act provided for hundreds of miles of new fencing.

The newer bollard-style fencing, constructed of vertical concrete-filled steel beams, is designed to be harder to climb over.

But smugglers are constantly adjusting their tactics, Alexis says. The trade is more sophisticated than when he started out.

“One person alone used to be able to do it all, but not anymore,” Alexis says. “Now it’s like a team.”

‘I do it for the money’

Each pollero on the team has a role. Some are decoys; others are guides or drivers, transporting migrants to Los Angeles, the main destination for smugglers in Mexicali.

The vertical metal slats on the newer fencing were designed to allow border agents in the U.S. to see smuggling activity on the other side in Mexico.

But smugglers use the newer fencing to their advantage, too. By peering through, smugglers can see where Border Patrol agents are stationed. Polleros pay people to work as lookouts on both sides of the border, calling in locations of the Border Patrol agents.

Alexis has helped thousands of migrants from all over the world cross into the U.S. His customers mainly come from poorer states in southern Mexico — Chiapas, Oaxaca, Veracruz and, to a lesser extent, from Jalisco, the Yucatan, Tabasco — or from Central America.

As a former migrant himself, Alexis sympathizes with the people he helps get across. But that’s not why he’s a smuggler.

“Look, I’m not a hypocrite,” he says. “I do it for the money.”

The job pays well. With the money he’s earned moving people illegally across the border, Alexis says he has bought three houses and several cars, though he’s since lost them in a divorce.

When he started, almost every migrant eventually made it across, Alexis says. No longer. The night before, he tried to get a migrant from Veracruz across the border but gave up because there were too many Border Patrol agents.

Alexis has noticed a big drop in migrants trying to cross the border, especially since Trump took office in January.

In the old days, “it rained customers,” he says.

Rising prices

When Alexis started out, smugglers charged $200 to get migrants across the border, and then drive them to Los Angeles, a 31⁄2-hour car trip, Alexis says.

The price has skyrocketed, Alexis says.

It’s simple economics: The higher the risk, the higher the price.

Right now, the going rate to get from Mexicali, across the border and to Los Angeles is $5,000 to $6,500.

Of that, Alexis might keep $2,500. Most of the fee goes to the other polleros who help him. The biggest share, $2,800 to $3,000, goes to the guy driving the migrants to Los Angeles, because he’s taking the biggest risk if caught by the Border Patrol. Alexis pays another $100 to $300 per migrant to polleros who work as decoys, lookouts, pickups, or who operate safe houses in Calexico.

Alexis says he also has to pay off the Mexican police. They get $200 per migrant.

“If I don’t pay and I get caught, I’m going to jail 100 percent of the time,” Alexis says. “Even if we work but don’t get anyone across.”

On the other hand, the more migrants are willing to pay, the better chances of getting across, Alexis says.

“If you were to tell me, ‘Alexis I want to cross but I don’t want to be caught. I have money to pay you,’ then I can offer you something that will make the crossing easier,” Alexis says. “I’ll find a house on the other side for you to hide in. I’ll bring you right up to the fence and point out the house you are going to hide in. I will introduce you to the person who will be waiting for you. He’ll even meet you in Mexicali so you know what he looks like. That costs more because we use multiple decoys. It involves more people, more equipment, and perfect synchronicity between everyone involved. If we are not all on the same page, the plan won’t work. That’s the difference between us charging $7,000 and $12,000 or $13,000.”

Will a wall work?

A border wall will definitely make it harder for migrants to get across.

“Right now, I can’t imagine exactly how (a wall would be built) but I can tell you that it would be a lot harder if they build that wall,” Alexis says. “Really, because it’s already hard with the fence we have now. It’s difficult because, to start, not just any ordinary person who decides they want to scale it can do it. It requires skill to get up there. And to get down, oh man, one of two things can happen. You jump and if you’re athletic you can land OK, but if you’re not you can break a foot.”

But Alexis is sure migrants without papers will still keep trying to get into the U.S.

“There will always be people who want to get across and there will always be people willing to help them. They want to reach their destination, and we want to get them there to make some money.”

That will mean more money in his pocket.

“I can assure you prices will go up,” Alexis says. “I honestly can’t tell you by how much. I can’t say, ‘We’re charging $5,000 now and it’s going to go up to $10,000.’ But prices will increase.”

A wall would put some smuggling organizations out of business. But the ones who remain would become more sophisticated. With less competition, they would be able to charge more money, and reap higher profits, says Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration-policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C.

Nowrasteh predicts that if a border wall is built, smugglers will just find more creative ways, such as building more tunnels, to get migrants illegally into the U.S.

Higher smuggling fees have already prevented some would-be migrants from crossing.

But most migrants don’t pay smuggling fees themselves. They pay smugglers once they reach the U.S. with money borrowed from relatives or friends. They then repay the fee by working illegally in the U.S.

Another try

The conversation is drawing to a close. Alexis has work to do.

“Right now, I don’t have too many clients,” Alexis says. “I work with another person who gets more people. Every couple of days he’ll get new people.”

Later, Alexis plans to return to Chapultepec Park in downtown Mexicali with a migrant from Veracruz who failed to get across the night before. They’ll try again. He also has three customers from Oaxaca lined up.

He opens the door and heads out into the street, letting the sunlight stream into the darkened room.

Early the next day, a Mexican officer is patrolling the border fence in Chapultepec Park. The officer reaches up and pulls something off the border fence.

It is a homemade metal ladder, left there the night before.