Since I started my two-way smuggling career doing the more usual border people-smuggling, I’ll explain that part of the business first. Even with everything written about it, not many people really understand the process of moving Mexicans into the United States illegally. Most people have a very mistaken notion of the pollero business, like somebody is going down to a village in southern Mexico, bringing a group up to Tijuana, taking them across, then hauling them to some field or restaurant somewhere. No. It’s all done in little segments by specialists of the trade and everybody gets a little piece. For instance, there’s a guy who works the villages, who ropes together a string of people to bring up to Tijuana in his truck or on the train. Then he sells them to a local pollero for a commission of around fifty bucks a head. He has the smallest profit and he has his own problems. The Mexican police are looking for him and they’ll come right on the train or bus and pull people off.

See, for all the bitching about how rotten it is that the United States limits immigration, people don’t often realize that it’s also illegal in Mexico to steer people out of the country. So a bunch of country boys heading north on a bus in their own country can be arrested for “suspicion of intent to emigrate”. This is in their own country. Think about that and what it means. It’s a lot nastier situation than the migra, but it gets less press. We could probably call being a wetback “technically illegal” in Mexico, since the real trick is for bribe money. The Mexican police will frequently stop the bus right before it gets to Tijuana and shake down the hicks. If the guide has money on him, he can kiss it goodby. Maybe they beat the guy up. But the main gig is that they steal his “pollos” (illegals are called “chickens” in the trade) and sell them to another pollero themselves. That’s literally what happens.

So there’s your “roper” down in Oaxaca or Sinaloa getting people up to Tijuana. They generally come up by train because these people have no money. Train to Mexicali, bus to Tijuana. The cops do the same thing on the train, too. They get on the train and go through looking for pollos. They can spot them because they’re the biggest hicks. They look like they’re right off the ranchitos because they are. A bunch of them sitting together in huaraches chewing with their mouths open. Bingo. They “arrest” them and dump them off to their own tame polleros in town. Who are not going to be the safest or most ethical polleros, you can believe that. It’s like most businesses in Mexico and at the border, the more the cops touch it the uglier it gets.

But say our hicks make it up to TJ in one piece. Quite frequently they stay with relatives until a load of people is assembled. Or their guy puts them up in a place called a clavadero. Since the pollos are chickens, everything in the business gets this poultry imagry. A clavadero is really a henhouse, but in the business it’s a safehouse, a warehouse for the “chickens”, really. I’ve dealt with a number of people at that level of the process and what they do is pack houses, both in Mexico and on this side, with illegal aliens. On this side they charge ten bucks per person per day and they’ll fill an apartment up, put fifty people in an apartment. I really looked into that “leg” of business, setting up a clavadero. I mean, look at those numbers, five hundred a day. It seems risky because so many get caught in the places and the owners get arrested. But done properly…