Ray Monroe

"As the Migra are always refining their strategy, so are we."

I am known as the King of the Coyotes. Coyote is slang here in Mexico and around the border for an illegal alien smuggler. I have never been a legal resident of the U.S., but I have worked there for more than thirty years. My wife and I live on Social Security checks every month from the U.S., which are sent to a “cousin’s” house in San Ysidro. I make the rest of my living teaching people how to cross the border. I am retired now, and I never take anyone across as I used to do — too much work for an old man. They come to my house and stay a few days to learn these things. After thirty years I know too many growers, labor contractors, and other contacts in many states.

"No more laughing, dancing, joyful eyes, but a kind of a mean, serious, hard look."

Ray Monroe

This is more important than just getting across the border. Where to go after you cross over and how to get there is what it’s all about. For example, a young man I taught how to cross the border from Playas, Tijuana to Imperial Beach got on the wrong bus and wound up back at the border where he was promptly arrested by the “Migra,” what we call the U.S. Border Patrol. He should have taken the northbound bus from Imperial Beach to downtown San Diego. In our village where I came from, we would say that this young man must have been drinking toloache, tea that makes you forget your head.

"You can’t imagine how poor they are. I know, because I was one of them."

Photo by Robert Burroughs

Most of my clients are very poor and come from Central Mexico. You can’t imagine how poor they are. I know, because I was one of them. My father was a coffin maker, and we lived in the little village of Amecameca, forty kilometers southeast of Mexico City. Our family has lived there for many generations in the shadows of the great twin volcanoes, the Sleeping Sisters.

"In Mexico we have a saying, “What’s the worst thing besides being approached by a robber? Well, that’s being approached by a policeman.”

Ray Monroe

We speak the old language, Nahuatl, as did our ancestors who fought Cortez. My nickname is Neza, short for “hungry” in Nahuatl. My father died when I was nine years old. As there were eight children in our family, my mother had to put some of us with relatives. I went to Mexico City to live with a cousin.

"Another lesson I try to impress upon my clients is that you just don’t walk across the border."

Photo by Robert Burroughs

There we lived in one of those terrible places, a vecindad, a collection of tiny rooms around a central court all surrounded by a high wall. Maybe 300 people lived in only forty small rooms.

"Where to go after you cross over and how to get there is what it’s all about."

Photo by Robert Burroughs

I did everything a young boy could do — sold newspapers early in the morning, shined shoes and sold chewing gum in the afternoon. I worked in the bullring during the season selling peanuts and helping skin the bulls just after they were dragged out of the ring. The government meat inspectors stamped the carcasses all over, but before they did this, we jumped up and down on to the stomachs of the bulls to make the hot blood spill out of their noses and mouths, which we drank in discarded paper beer cups. An old Aztec legend told us that this would make us brave, strong, and give us long life. At least that was what we boys thought. The meat inspectors called me Neza, and that’s how I got my nickname, Hungry.

After a year I was doing very well for a ten-year-old boy in Mexico. Soon I was selling tacos from my own cart, which I rented for about twelve pesos and fifty centavos a day, about a buck then. I spent about thirty-five pesos on meat, tortillas, cilantro, onions, tomatoes, salsa, and charcoal, or about three bucks. On a good day, I made about six bucks over expenses, but I also had to rent my space on the sidewalk from the owner of the store behind me for about a buck. I paid the cop on that street a buck and the health inspector a buck, so I cleared about three bucks a day.

My cousin demanded most of that, so I ran away after my second year with him and lived in the streets saving my three bucks per day. In 1953 that was pretty good in Mexico. I made more money than my cousin, who worked in a tire factory for about two bucks a day.

Since my location was near the bullring, I sold tacos to many tourists from the U.S. One day a Mr. Johnson, a farmer from Salinas, California, told me he would pay me one-twenty-five bucks per hour, or about ten bucks per day, to work on his farm. I said, “Put it in writing.”

This was more than three times what I could make in Mexico!

Mr. Johnson looked surprised. I said, “Write me a note that you want to hire me. I’ll be there, you wait and see.” I think he and his wife were a little high on beer, but he wrote me a note, which I carefully folded and put in my pocket book.

I began to work and save everything to finance my trip to Salinas. My friends realized that something had got a hold of me because I would never spend any money on beer or go to Rosario Street to fuck the whores with them. “What are you doing with all your money?” they used to ask me.

By that time, I was fourteen years old but looked eighteen or more and had managed to save about $500, a small fortune in those days. I got away from Mexico City one day and returned briefly to Amecameca to say my good-byes to my mother and my brothers and sisters. I was also very glad to have gotten away from Mexico City where my cousin was searching for me and planned to have me put in a home for delinquent children.

I started out for Tijuana. Being a thrifty person, I tried always to hitchhike, as you say. Mexican truck drivers in those days always picked up a traveler, and I always paid a small fee, as was the custom. Anything was better than the fast express bus in which you were a prisoner, stopping only for a few moments every four hours for a bite to eat. Or even worse, the local buses that meandered from village to village, crowded with people and cargo, chickens tied up in bunches, and even pigs in sacks stored on the roof. When they peed, the urine rained down on the passengers through the cracks in the wooden roof. Once when I was forced to take one of these local buses and found myself sandwiched between two huge fat ladies with enormous busts, I began to itch all over around my wrists and waist. I know I caught lice from them.

With good luck, I got picked up by a long-distance truck hauling corn all the way to Tijuana. As we made our way down from the highlands of central Mexico, across the lush tropical lands of Sinaloa, I found the trees were filled with parrots of all kinds. What a racket they made. We caught some to sell to the people in the north.

These truck drivers were very popular because they had lots of money. We stopped many times during the day to eat and drink at the cafes and roadstops along the way. The truck driver, it seemed, had a girlfriend at each stop, and we made presents to them of clothes and trinkets from Mexico City, as did our ancestors, the Pocteca traders in the olden days.

We always stopped about dusk to rest, eat, dance with the girls at the cafes, flirt, and fool around before continuing at night. I would become so sleepy and crawl in the back among the sacks of corn covered by an enormous tarp. The sounds of the exhaust pipes like a lullaby lured me to sleep. In those days we used no mufflers, and by the tune of the pipes, I could tell exactly what the driver was doing. In the mountains, the sound of the back pressure on the downgrades and the shifting of gears told me all about the dangerous roads we passed over.

All of the trucks have names, and ours was Eaglewolf, painted in big letters in English across the enormous front bumper, named of course for the driver. Since my full name was Hungry Wolf, the driver was delighted to make jokes about the two “wolves” on the move. Constructed in front of the bumper was a massive grillwork of heavy steel pipe to protect us and the engine from the crazy drivers. At almost every dangerous curve in the road, clusters of crosses mark the spot where some crazy drivers were killed.

The village people in those days knew the names of all the trucks that passed by and would wait for their favorite, which they would flag down to send letters and things like repaired parts for farm equipment and news to the other villages.

Now we traveled by night only, as we had more than a 1000 kilometers to cross the Sonora Desert and the great heat was no good for the recap tires. With the exception of Hermosillo, the towns looked dirty, dusty, and poor, moreso than my own village. The people seemed less friendly. Almost no one spoke Nahuatl, only Spanish and broken English. We have a saying that the gringos and Norteijos, the people who live in the north, have hard eyes. You noticed it right away.

No more laughing, dancing, joyful eyes, but a kind of a mean, serious, hard look.

The driver fooled around in the cantinas and bars during the day, and I guarded the truck. The driver told me that bandits, throwbacks from the revolutionary days, lived around here and set up phony road blocks and detours, then robbed the truck drivers and travelers, to disappear on horseback into the desert. He showed me where he kept his pistol under the seat. Well, let me tell you, I kept my eyes glued to the road from then on, for I had a small fortune tucked away in my pocket, too. The whole trip had only cost me about fifteen dollars so far, which meant I had $485 left to finance myself in the States. I did not want to lose that after five years of hard work in Mexico.

From the Sonoyita to San Louis, for about 400 kilometers, is this most incredible desert landscape and very quiet. You can see great distances. I liked it. The border of Arizona and Mexico is only about fifteen kilometers to the north of the Mexican road. I thought about getting off right there and walking across the unfenced, unguarded border into the U.S. Eaglewolf talked me out of it, explaining that the nearest road was forty miles away and that I would die from the heat. Later I wished that I had tried it and did so in my later years on another trip. If you know where you are going, it is very easy to get to the farms of Imperial Valley from there undetected. I have sent many illegals that way with detailed maps. It is nothing for us Indians to walk many miles, traveling only at night with a little water, dried meat, and commeal. You would be surprised at how many good Mexican straw hats you can find in the ditches on either side of U.S. Highway 8 in that area.

No longer needed for protection from the heat of the day and because they were so conspicuous, they were discarded by the previous owners when they caught a ride. Testimony of the many hundreds of illegals who passed that way. We have a name for U.S. Highway 8, like the road of sombreros.

The next evening we were off to Mexicali, which I did not think too much of. Hundreds of Mexican men were swarming around the railway yards waiting to become braceros. We climbed the Rumorosa grade and the next morning arrived in Tijuana, which I thought even less of. I went directly to the old U.S. Customs House. As I left my good friend Eaglewolf, his last words were, “Watch out, there are a lot of thieves around here.”

The gringo immigration official seemed friendly enough but absolutely would not let me pass on the strength of a note from a farmer in Salinas. He laughed and said, “Good God, boy, you need a passport or a green card. You don’t even have any identification. How old are you anyway? I’ll tell you what, if you want to work, you have to get a labor contractor to vouch for you and you can get across with him as a bracero.” What he didn’t tell me was that you needed two pictures, had to wait in line for a T.B. test, then wait around with a number they gave you until a labor contractor needed so many men. This might take days or weeks. I found this out later. I don’t mind telling you I spent the rest of that day looking for a labor contractor, which I finally did find down in the worst part of town, the Zona Norte, as we call it. You go down there to drink beer and fuck a woman. Well, I found a labor contractor, and he wanted twenty dollars to sign me up, and I was to meet him at the Customs House at four-thirty the next morning. An old, ugly, skinny whore with bad teeth and terrible breath wanted to fuck me for two dollars. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I said,

“No primo,” which means, in underworld talk, one who walks around in shit. They used words like this all the time in our vecindad. Back in our village, it was unthinkable to talk like this. I then went for a haircut and got a crewcut, which I was told was the style in the States. I had this burning desire for a pair of cowboy boots, which I paid ten dollars for, which was a big mistake because I couldn’t walk very far in them. I also bought a new shirt, sun glasses, a new straw hat, and a wristwatch. This all set me back about twenty dollars, which left me $465. I hid a hundred dollars each in the toes of my boots, a hundred dollars in my hat under the lining, which I resewed, and a hundred in two large neckerchiefs, which I knotted and tied together around my waist under my shorts. I kept twenty dollars for the labor contractor in my left front pocket and fifteen dollars and some change in my right front pocket for expenses. I hid the other thirty dollars in the cuffs of my pants and resewed them. I was very uncomfortable and felt like a walking bank. I got something to eat and took a room for fifty cents near the bus station but was so nervous I couldn’t sleep. I also caught the crabs in that place and had to rush to an all-night pharmacy for some green soap. I arrived at the Customs House at four thirty, and the labor contractor was not there. I waited a long time, and he still did not show up.

It was very hot that day, and I decided to go to Playas, the beach, and go swimming in the ocean and to think about what I was going to do. Before I went, I bought some new shorts and hoped that the green soap and the salt water would finish off the crabs. I had a hard time getting there because the road was not finished in those days. Arriving at the beach, I stripped to my shorts and stacked my “banker’s” clothes, boots, shirt, and hat into a neat pile. I swam in the surf, not far out, always with an eye on my clothes. There were only a few women and children scattered up and down the beach. I kept a rock in my hand to throw at anyone who came too close to my clothes. After my swim and I had dried off, I put on my new shorts, clothes, and strolled up the beach. On a slight rise to my right, my eye caught something like a monument. It turned out to be an obelisk with something like, “The territorial limits of the Republic of Mexico as established by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848” written on it. Just across was a flagpole with a U.S. flag flying on it and a low heavy chain, something like a ship uses for the anchor, draped across several short concrete supports. That was it, no fence, no guards, nothing. Just as I was about to step across, an older man and his wife came around with a fishing line on a stick and some buckets, Henry and Rosa.

Henry lived in a trailer not too far away and made plaster statues, which he took to Tijuana every day and sold to the tourists. As we talked, he said, “If you want to go to the States, just walk up the sand to Imperial Beach.” He pointed to a village only about four miles away. “Wait till just before dawn. There is never any ‘Migra’ around then. Come, stay at my house tonight.”

We talked about many things and Rosa made tortillas and fried fish, which Henry had caught in the surf just a few hours before. He told me that I was very lucky to have avoided a labor contractor because I would have to work where he took me and would never get to Salinas unless I ran away. He told me about the long lines of men waiting at the Customs House to be certified and of the even longer wait for your number to come up. He told me that these labor contractors made plenty of money from the growers anyway and that the twenty-dollar fee was just a ripoff. When Henry found I had met that man at a place called the Windmill, he nearly exploded. He said, “Don’t you know that’s one of the most notorious cantinas in Tijuana? Many of the road workers here in Playas have been robbed there. What they do is the girls get you to go to the rooms in the back after you have paid them, then they scream out something that you hurt them, and a big guy comes in the room and demands five bucks or he’s going to turn you over to the police who work with these guys, and you never even get your pants down.” You know, in Mexico we have a saying, “What’s the worst thing besides being approached by a robber? Well, that’s being approached by a policeman.”

Even today, thirty-three years later, they are pulling the same scam at the same places. Many of my clients have come to me from the Zona Norte broke, their life savings wiped out. These border jumpers, polios, chickens, as we call them, are attracted there by the cheap beers they can buy and the girls. If the whores don’t get you, the bartender will. Chloral hydrate drops put in special beers with their caps removed and then replaced are reserved for customers found dumb enough to carry a lot of money. A lot of these poor, gullible country people like to talk, and pretty soon they are out cold, minus their money, shirt, and shoes.

They have so many dodges down there that it would take a book to describe them all. The first lesson I teach anyone coming to me is to stay away from the Zona. A lot of coyotes operate from down there and pick on the country people and border jumpers passing their time for the chance. Many of those coyotes are drunks and dopers, and as soon as they get you across the fence, they rob their clients and beat it back to Mexico. Henry and I talked far into the night, and I told him about the terrible life in the vecindad. He coached me on how to catch the bus at Imperial Beach to downtown San Diego and then catch the Greyhound to Salinas.

That morning at four, I started out. I crossed the line by the monument, an illegal alien now to be shot, robbed, stabbed, thrown in jail or something. To my great relief, nothing happened. The very next morning, I was in Salinas, knocking at Mr. Johnson’s door. I still had $450 after paying my bus fare and eating. Let me tell you though, I was shocked about how expensive even a cheap meal was in the states, about a dollar twenty-five. You could get the same thing in Mexico for thirty-five cents.

I cannot tell you the expression on Mrs. Johnson’s face when I knocked on the door. If you can imagine a white woman turning even whiter, then that was it. At first I thought she didn’t remember me because of my crewcut and everything. I had left my new straw hat with Henry after I took the money out of it, because he said it looked too Mexican. Mrs. Johnson took me inside their house and made me a glass of iced tea, the first I had ever tasted. She then went for her husband. While she was gone, I noticed that they were very rich. They had a real gas range and a huge refrigerator. My mother cooked on a wood fire outside the house and made tortillas on a sheet of metal over the fire. My cousin in Mexico City had only a two-burner petrol stove, and we had no refrigerators.

Mrs. Johnson came back with her' husband, and he was laughing to beat hell. He said to me, “You little son of a bitch, I never expected you to show up here,” or something like that. I had learned to speak some English in Mexico City because I had to go to school or my cousin wouldn’t let me stay, and I learned a lot from the tourists and the hundreds of movies I went to see. I remember my teacher told me, “Neza, I know you don’t like this, but English might come in very handy for you someday.” When I got my bus ticket for Salinas, I said to the clerk, “Gimme uh ticket to Salinas,” which, of course, I practiced over and over as I walked from Playas to Imperial Beach. Today I coach my clients in English.

After I told my story about how I got to Salinas, the Johnsons were amazed. Then I asked Mr. Johnson right away, was it true that they only paid sixty cents per hour in California, but he had promised to pay me a dollar twenty-five? You know, we have a saying in my village, which is about the same as “strike while the iron is hot,” and I did not want the issue to die. I could make sixty cents per hour in Mexico easy, and the only reason I came to Salinas was for the one twenty-five per hour. Mr. Johnson said, “Yes, that was true,” but he would pay me what he promised and to keep my mouth shut to the other workers. Well, I earned my one twenty-five per hour all right.

I not only worked in the fields, but washed windows, washed and waxed cars, cut the lawn and garden, painted the house and sheds. At the end of the first month, I had earned $240, as opposed to seventy-six dollars in Mexico. I was getting rich fast, and I still had $400 left that I brought from Mexico. I had spent fifty dollars of that for a month of food. We workers all pitched in and bought rice, beans, tortillas, meat, soda pop, and beer, which we stored in the bunk house where we cooked our own meals.

The next month, I had a total of about $800, and one Sunday, I slipped into town and bought a 1948 light-green Chevy coupe with a sun visor over the windshield. The salesman wanted to know my name for the title. Well, I knew that if I told him my full name, which was Nezahual Coyotl, Hungry Wolf, son of the coffin maker, it would be a great trouble. Like a lightning bolt striking me with an idea, I blurted out, “Nez Johnson.” I drove back to the farm, and everyone passed out. Mr. Johnson wanted to know where I got the money for the car.

I told him, and he said, “You get right down to the bank first thing Monday, and put the rest of your money in it, and you need insurance and a driver’s license.” Monday the bank would not accept my money without a Social Security card. The insurance man would not accept my money without a driver’s license. The driver’s license people would not give me one without proof of age. Well, never mind, I went back to the farm and worked ’til knockoff time, and, you know, working makes you think. As it turned out,

I got the Social Security card because the bank had to report my earnings on interest. The local high school offered a class for drivers fourteen years or older, and I just told them I was Nez Johnson, age eighteen, born in Salinas, December 1, 1936. With your driving school diploma, the driver’s license people accepted you for the test, which I passed. Then I got the insurance.

You know, these very same things are why many of us in Mexico cannot legally enter the U.S. Many of us do not have birth certificates and all of these other kinds of documents the U.S. Embassy required in those days and still does for green cards and border-crossing permits, like a letter from your employer, proof of money in the bank, a letter from your school. We were all simple people, some of us being born in remote places to free-union parents where no one bothered to record births or marriages. We earned our living by trade, not by an employer. Many of us did not go to school. We had no money in the bank. We couldn’t prove anything to anybody outside our village.

That’s why so many of us are forced to become illegals when we come to the U.S.

I worked for Mr. Johnson for a year and a half and went back to Mexico in December 1954. And yes, Mr. Johnson could use another hand when I returned.

Of course, I drove my Chevy and relived my original journey in reverse. What struck me so funny was that when I had to stop at the Sonoyita checkpoint, the Mexicans put a tourist sticker on my windshield, being as I had California plates, driver’s license, and Social Security card. I had picked up enough pocho, Mexican-English slang, to fool them. Otherwise, they make it very tough, because if you are not a U.S. tourist, they think you are going to sell the car somewhere for an enormous profit and shake you down for import taxes or a bribe and even take it away from you right there. I also had a phony U.S. birth certificate, which I made up in the bunkhouse. Some guys shows me how. First, you get a hold of a real one. Any kind will do, but it needs to be a photostat. You then blank out the white writing and make another photostat of the blank. Then using ordinary washing bleach, with a fine crow quill pen, you enter your name and the rest of the information.

So there I was, an illegal alien in my own land. When you are young like that and have your own car, you know, you feel like a bigshot. I picked up other travelers, and we all had a magnificent time. We are a generous people, which we get from the habits of the olden days.

I arrived in my village, and I was something of a hero. I bought my mother a TV, fridge, a gas cooking stove, and a new sewing machine. I put about $1000 into the hands of one of my uncles, as he was struggling to make a success with my father’s business as a coffin maker. The rest of the time, I tried to school my next oldest brother, who was fourteen now, in a clever plan where he would drive my car across the border at Tijuana and pick me up in Imperial Beach, crossing as I had done before. My brother looked a lot like me anyway and was mature for his age. This is exactly what we did, and it came off okay. We spent all of our days learning how to do this and far into the nights. I drew detailed maps, and we tried to think about what to do if something went wrong. I coached my brother in English and taught him the questions the immigration inspectors usually asked.

One of the village girls had her eye on me, and when I was not instructing my brother, I found myself romancing her. When the time was right, we planned to marry.

All too soon, we were back in Salinas, and my brother was making good money also. I became a foreman. In the next ten years, I never left Mr. Johnson’s farm, except to go back to my village every year and bring another one of my brothers across the border.

In 1964 a terrible thing happened. The U.S. quit the Bracero Program. So we had to think of ingenious ways to get across the border. By that time, I was bringing my cousins one by one into the states. Our favorite trick was to cross the border just north of Sonoyita at Lukeville, Arizona. In those days, there was no fence and only two customs house shacks, Mexican and U.S. The people that lived in the area moved freely back and forth across the line. Just to the left on the stateside were several general stores where the Mexicans could buy almost anything they needed. Especially ammunition for hunting, I remember, which is hard to get in Mexico. Well, the trick was to let my cousin off on the Mexican side. He would walk across on the left, and I would drive across on the right and park by the stores to the side or behind. I would go into the store and buy a few groceries while my cousin would sneak into my back seat, all the time cleverly concealing himself from the line of sight of the U.S. Immigration Inspectors on the other side. I would then return to my car and drive away. This was on Arizona Highway 85 and just north of Ajo, the “Migra” had a checkpoint.

We would stop before we reached the checkpoint, and my cousin would get out and make a long walk around the checkpoint out of sight. I would wait for him up the road after I crossed the checkpoint. We got caught there once because I didn’t know about the checkpoint. We had thought about this happening in our many rehearsals. What happens is the “Migra” separate you right away. If they find out conflicting stories, you are in deep trouble. An alien smuggler goes to federal prison. So what you say is, “I just picked this guy up down the road,” and your passenger says, “The guy just picked me up down the road.” In that area, if your passenger got caught, he was also to say that he lived in Quitovac or some other small village near Sonoyita. Otherwise, they detained you for about a week and shipped you off to Central Mexico in special buses. If they thought you were from around the border area, they took you back to the line and turned you over to the Mexicans, who just kind of looked the other way if you were poor.

You know, where we come from, in the olden days our ancestors had the capulli. I can only explain to you that it is something like an Aztec United Way, Red Cross, Boy Scouts, and orphanage home all rolled up in the same ball of wax. We take care of our own. You will never see a Mexican starving. The main reason we are so successful in crossing the border and implanting ourselves into the gringo culture is that we have refined it to an art form, and the capulli includes a vast network all over the U.S. Jobs are waiting, the money is there, and a place to stay.

Another thing that I teach my clients is never go across in a group. One person acting alone is best, or two at the most. You hear about truckloads of Mexicans being caught, as they are bound to, because there is so much greed and squealers around. And besides, those types of coyotes have a lot of accidents on the road and often abandon their clients if they have trouble. Too many of their clients have been killed by truck fumes and have died from the heat and freezing cold. Those greedy coyotes never stop, except for gas, and let me tell you, three days and four nights from El Paso to Chicago locked in the back of a van is no picnic.

It has always amazed me how some coyotes take groups of ten or twenty people through the fence around here in Tijuana and expect to make it — women, children, and babies included, all dressed in bright colors and white shirts. They are almost always picked up, unless the short-handed “Migra” was busy somewhere else. The coyote has already gotten their money and beat it back to Tijuana while the group is just standing a round wondering what to do next.

Which reminds me that I often hire just such a group. We call them ducks, to create a diversion while two of my clients slip across. The “Migra” would have this group of people back in Tijuana that morning, happy with the few dollars they had earned.

In the meantime, the other two dressed in dark grey, almost impossible to see at night and sometimes wearing a camouflage-type shirt, make their way to a predestined pickup point for a private car. These are best. Taxis are good, the drivers are hungry for a long fare and are almost never stopped, but you and the driver have to keep your stories straight if caught. Public transportation is good, but the “Migra” board the buses, the trolley, watch the bus, train stations, and the airport. I will tell you more about how to use the public transportation later.

Another lesson I try to impress upon my clients is that you just don’t walk across the border. You don’t ever stand up if you do not have cover; never smoke; the burning end of a cigarette can be seen a long ways off, and the smell will give you away. You always crouch, squat, or crawl, never talk, and breathe through your mouth to cut down on the noise. If there is any wind, stay on the downwind side of the “Migra.” They most usually sit in jeeps or vans at a high point, and you will spot them before they see you. We once passed within 200 paces of the “Migra.” They use binoculars a lot and look too far into the distance. Keep down, and you are almost impossible to see.

Around the Tijuana- San Diego border area, the “Migra” use helicopters and spotter aircraft. The point is that they use a powerful light. If you stay down and don’t move, one or two men spaced twenty meters apart are hard to see, and only by sheer luck will they hit you with a direct beam. If they do, forget it.

A jeep will be there in a matter of minutes to pick you up. If you are not too far from the fence, get back. Around midnight I send a spotter whom I hire, usually a young boy equipped with field glasses and walkie-talkie, just over the line, and he relays conditions to us before we ever start out. We pretty much know what we are up against.

A word of caution — never carry a gun or a knife. The “Migra” get real jumpy if they find them on you. A lot of Vietnam vets and other such types work in the “Migra,” and they have a tendency to get mean.

The “Migra” also use night sight scopes, electronic sensors above and below ground, all-terrain vehicles, and horses.

A few years back, I got a jaguar from down south, which I keep penned up at the back of my house. I always throw a lot of old clothes in there for him to sleep on. At first I didn’t think about it, but now we use those old clothes to dress some of our clients in when we know the “Migra” is using horses. I have been told that this jaguar scent will drive a horse crazy, even from a long ways off.

I must mention that during the summer months we get a lot of heavy fog up here along the coast. You have to watch out; if you walk the beach, you run right into the “Migra” who sit all night in a jeep just before you get to Imperial Beach. When it’s foggy, all hell breaks loose from way out by the Tijuana airport to the beach. Thousands of people are on the move. The “Migra” is paralyzed because nothing works. The choppers are down, nobody can see anything. The heatseeking night scopes are useless even if they pick up movement because they can’t pick you up after they spot you. The real trouble is that you’d get lost, everyone gets lost. On nights like this, you need detailed maps and a small compass.

Well, I am getting ahead of myself again.

In 1967, another terrible thing happened. Mr. Johnson died, and although his wife tried to hang on to the farm, she finally sold out to a large company who brought in their own union workers and bosses. We had a lot of trouble in those days, lots of strikes and marches. Caesar Chavez had some good ideas with his original plan, co-op credit unions, stores, and gas stations for farm workers. When the United Farm Workers Union got going full swing, they got out of hand. There were all kinds of dues and regulations. It became just like our old sindicatos, unions, in Mexico where everyone wants his palm greased.

When I think back, Chavez put many people out of work because a lot of small farms were lost whose owners couldn’t pay union wages. You know, the UFW used to make me real mad. They screamed and hollered around about La Raza, the Mexican race and used what they called an Aztec Eagle, looked more like a Tecate beer label, on a red and black flag to me. They were always displaying lots of picket signs with pictures of the Mexican “hero,” Emiliano Zapata, who, to our minds and the people around our village, all knew was just a crazy criminal murderer. I know, because my great grandfather blew up one of Zapata’s trains because he murdered a lot of innocent people in our village.

Then the Teamsters Union got into the act, too, and tried to steal the farm workers away from Chavez. The long and the short of it was, you couldn’t get a job in the fields anymore unless you joined a union. Malinche! we used to say about Chavez. Malinche was one of us who married Cortez and acted as his interpreter and spy.

Another thing that makes our blood boil is you see a lot of cholos, used to be called pachucos, with their cholas riding around San Diego, East L.A., and Whittier. Low-riders they call them, smoking dope. They all screaming about La Raza, the race and la causa, the cause, writing all over walls and buildings, showing off their tattoos, like black dots, tear drops, and crosses, and I think how stupid they are. You know, in our village, anyone with a tattoo we knew right away was a criminal who had been in the penitentiary. Well, anyway, it makes me sick. They claim to represent our race. I have a lot of these types come to me for help from around Tijuana, and I refuse to help them. I say the border is too tight now or something like that. I never help anyone who is not clean. I would like each and every one of them to live in my village for about a month or in one of the filthy, dangerous vecindades in Mexico City. That would set their heads straight, and they would thank God that they are so fortunate to be able to live in the U.S. They give us a bad name, and in our minds they are scum and lazy bastards, just like the gangs that prey on the poor people of the vecindades in Mexico.

I am getting ahead of myself again. Back in the Sixties, my brothers and I got out of California because of all the disruption. We worked all over the country then, traveling around. We used to practically manage small farms and had an excellent reputation as a team. We worked nonunion and had small growers begging for us. Anything that grew from the soil, we planted, raised, picked, and boxed. Well, to tell you the truth,

I got tired of it. One day I said, “The hell with it.” I drove back to my village in Mexico and stayed about six months.

In the States, you get this habit of running around like a crazy person looking at your watch every five minutes. Back home I don’t think I’ve looked at it once.

I was too busy romancing. Up to that time, I had brought twenty-three of my kin to the U.S., all illegals. The next passenger I brought, and the most precious, was my wife. I crossed her over at Lukeville, Arizona, and you know all about that. I fixed her up with a Social Security card, driver’s license, and other papers, and we had a glorious honeymoon. We traveled all over the West. We stayed away from the big cities and fancy hotels. What we did was camp out in all the great National Parks — Death Valley, Sequoia, Yosemite, the Redwoods, and Yellowstone. We found ourselves most welcome at the Indian reservations in New Mexico, where we thought a lot of their words were like those of ours in Nahuatl.

After about a year, we started back to Playas, Tijuana, where our house was finished and my wife was getting big. After we got settled down in our new home, my life changed a great deal, and all I could think about was my family. I got a steady job in San Diego making good money in a shipyard.

We continued to have so many people from my village, who had heard about me, come to our house for help that we began to devise even more ingenious plans to get them across the border.

As I promised you before, let me tell you about the public transportation system in San Diego. Of all the frontiers in the world, none offers such an excellent opportunity for an illegal alien. Within fifty paces of the exit doors of the new U.S.

Customs House in San Ysidro, one can find the Greyhound Bus Station, the local bus, the trolley, and numerous taxi cabs, small vans, and private cars for hire. These private car owners do nothing but shuttle people back and forth to L.A. If you have the money, they will take you anywhere you want to go. Most of them are coyotes, anyway, and have a counterpart working for them on the Mexican side like me. There are so many of them that they often have to be driven away from the exit doors of the Customs House where they bunch up like flies trying to get at the customers coming out first. In the Greyhound Bus Station, there is a large sign advising passengers not to hire a private car because, as they point out, it is dangerous and illegal because they are not licensed. The truth of the matter is that they take away all of the business. These private car owners know how to get around the “Migra” checkpoints on Interstate 5 at San Clemente on the way to L.A. and the checkpoint on Highway 15 to Riverside. They use Highway 79 and 74 a lot and know all the back roads. They use CB radios and know what the “Migra” is doing, if the checkpoints are closed or if they have set up temporary ones on some of the back roads. In return for their expertise, it will cost you $300, if you are an illegal, to get to L.A.

I know you are thinking, “Well, the hell with that, I’ll use the bus or the trolley.” Fine, but remember, everyone else is thinking that too.

In our eagerness to cross the border within two kilometers either side of the Customs House, to make use of all this public transportation, is where most of us get caught. This area is crawling with “Migra.” Now don’t think they are fools, either; they also board the buses and the trolley, too, looking for illegals who have managed to slip by the border for some strange reason. However, you never see them on the buses or trolley in the early-morning hours, say, from 5:30 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. In all the years that I have ridden the bus and, lately, the trolley to work, I have never seen the “Migra” work them during these hours. Maybe it is because of the shift change, and a lot of the “Migra” like to go to a nice, warm cafe and drink coffee and have breakfast at that time, or maybe the crowded conditions on the buses and trolley make it almost impossible.

If you choose to go at this time, wear workman’s clothes, and carry a metal lunchbox like the gringos do, not a string shopping bag like we Mexicans use. Carry lots of U.S. twenty-five-cent pieces. The bus drivers do not make change like they do here in Mexico. Do net try to put paper money in the fare box; it will jam the machine, and you will have the driver all over you. Do not get smart with these guys; they will call the police on their radio. Do not stand around and gawk at the machines. Don’t worry. There are instructions in Spanish posted on the machines. Get on the trolley right away, and act like you know what you are doing. Do not be afraid to ask questions. Most all of the people in San Ysidro are Mexicans anyway and very helpful.

Now, again, I know you are thinking, “Well, so what, you really haven’t told us how we get across to start with, and I would say that’s what my school is for.” Don’t worry, I am going to let you in on some of our secrets, even if it does cut down on my business and make the “Migra” hopping mad.

Suppose you decide to go with a coyote in a private car. What you do is contact one of these guys on the Mexican side where they hang out around the ramp that crosses over the roadway by the Mexican Customs House. They are always saying something like, “Hey, man, you goin’ to L.A. You wanna get across, come here, I tell you how.” Remember, these guys are experts, and they each work their own favorite route, which they have refined over the years. Most of these guys have green cards or are U.S. citizens and scoot back and forth across the border all the time.

One of the boldest things I have known them to do is to instruct you to go to the old U.S. Customs House to a point where a fourteen-foot wall joins the new Customs House to the old. There you wait until you hear the okay.

You wait at the left end of the wall where there is a slight vertical niche that runs the height of the wall. Just right to use for a wedge for your feet. The other guy, who has been waiting for the right moment on the other side, part of a coyote team, tosses a knotted rope over, and you scramble over.

You better be quick about it. This wall is slightly out of view of the customs inspectors at the auto pass-through gates, but they can see you if they happen to look that way. They are usually so busy with the motorists that they don’t see anything. After you jump down on the other side, you find yourself smack dab in the middle of the U.S. Customs House maintenance yard, and you have to move fast getting out of there.

Just beyond the opening to the compound lies the public street, and it is usually swarming with San Diego Police cars, trolley security vans, and the “Migra,” but they are often called away.

Your escape to a slowly cruising car has to be made in seconds because there is no place to park the pickup car. If the passenger car inspectors see you going over the wall, they call the inspectors inside the Customs House, and they have to leave their post, run out the exit doors and around the side of the building and down the street to catch you. As you can see, timing is very important. You have to get over the wall, out of the yard, and into the car before the inspector gets through those exit doors. You would be surprised how many inspectors just don’t give a damn, even if they do see you. They think “Oh well, somebody else will catch them,” so you have this attitude counting in your favor. Also, no one expects you to go over this wall.

Another very bold approach is found at the southwest end of the motorcar passing gates. There is a twelve-meter-long wall that selves for a support for the overhead that covers the gates. It is the northeast side of this wall that is out of the line of sight of the U.S. Customs inspector who sits in a little box just before the one-way turnstile as you pass into Mexico from the U.S. on foot. Next to the northeast side of this wall is lane number twenty-four. As the inspectors are very busy in the other lanes, their attention is not always focused on this wall. Lane twenty-four is often closed, as are a lot of the other lanes up to about lane eighteen, depending on the traffic. So you have a chance then of rapidly scooting along this northeast side of the wall, up and over the gate at lane twenty-four, to be picked up by a coyote in a private car at a conveniently located U-turn right in front, not three meters away, of this lane twenty-four. Again, your timing has to be perfect because your coyote is coming south on Interstate 5, and when he starts his U-turn, he can’t stop, maybe only for the slightest second, and he can’t park, so you have to be right there ready to jump in the car. A little grease money paid to the Mexican Immigration inspectors helps because they are working their own south-bound inspection lanes, which are almost next to this wall and U.S. lane twenty-four. They are instructed to stop anyone who tries to sneak by that way. The best time to try this approach is about 2:00 a.m. on a weekday night when perhaps only lanes one, two, and three are open at the U.S. Port of Entry and the Mexicans might have two men working their side.

If you decide to save your $300 and go on your own, here’s what to do. Nose around the Colonia Libertad, a section of Tijuana just east of the bordercrossing area. You will find someone willing to let you use a ladder to get over the fence or a tunnel for a small fee. There are many holes cut into the fence also. A lot of those property owners claim the right to charge you to get through because their land is so close to the fence. The people there are so poor they will do anything to get your money and watch it on the other side.

This is where they have all the robberies and trouble. The San Diego Police Border Task Force works this area, too, so you have them, the “Migra,” the bandits that come over from Libertad, and the U.S.-Mexican punks who work this area to evade. Look out for the Mexican Police before you cross. They have what they call Operation Eagle to try and catch you. The only thing good about this area is that you can work your way along the steep sides of canyons, like a goat, to northeast San Ysidro, where you can catch a bus on Beyer Street or the trolley at the Iris Street station, avoiding the “Migra” around the congested central San Ysidro area. Stay out of the canyon bottoms where it is easier to walk; the bandits wait there. They are not about to chase you across the steep slopes. Do not be tempted to walk the trolley tracks because they are fenced in, and the trolley operator will radio your position to the trolley security, who will then report you to the “Migra.” If you are good over rough terrain, it is possible to cross the canyons going west to enter the center commercial section of San Ysidro where you can mix in which the crowds.

If it were my choice, I would attempt to cross a point about three kilometers west of the Port of Entry where the Tijuana River viaduct ends. From there you can make your way across the scrub brush to the gravel pits and into the K-Mart shopping center, where a lot of businesses are closed down due to the recession. A lot of these stores are now used for storage by Mexican-American truckers who just might help you out. The west side of the Port of Entry had its danger too. Just north of the K-Mart shopping center is a new residential area, and the people who live in the area keep a lot of dogs who raise hell. If you are seen, the people call the police. Just to the northeast of these new homes is a dangerous swamp. If you go on your own, devise a plan; without one you are going to find yourself faced with a bewildering maze of roads, fences and freeways.

Now suppose you make it across the line and use the public transportation to get to downtown San Diego undetected. What next? I am sorry to say your problems will start all over again. You can use the Amtrak train at the Santa Fe Depot, the bus stations, or the airport at Lindbergh Field, but the "Migra” are there, too. Well, never mind, try to always plan your transportation needs for the early-morning departures where you can mingle with the crowds of people going to work. Dress accordingly. The “Migra” are trained to spot someone dressed in Mexican clothes or someone overly dressed in new clothes. Do not pussyfoot around and try to act with a lot of confidence. At my school, we select disguises to suit the person. Everything about you depends on how you should travel. Your height, your walk, the kind of face you have, and your command of the English language. We use wigs, colored contact lenses, cosmetics, and bleaching the skin. One of our best disguises is to select the right person and darken their skin like a Negro and use an Afro wig. It works real well. Carry a briefcase and an English newspaper, and pretend to read it while waiting around. Let’s face it, our real poor country people, especially the little short ones, should never try these things. They stand out like sore thumbs, even if they are dressed like Rockefeller. A lot of our people wear what we used to call “miners’ shoes.” They are solid and sturdy with thick soles and heels and last forever. Do not wear them in the States. They are a sure tip-off to the well-trained “Migra.” One of our most famous actresses in Mexico, “India Maria,” made a hilarious film about trying to cross the border at El Paso, Texas, with her pet zopilote, a turkey. What can I say but leave your turkeys, chickens, “miners’ shoes,” and sombreros at home. If you are one of our little short people, make arrangements with a coyote in a private car.

I know you are wondering how my clients can manage to pay for all of these things. Don’t forget, some of them have worked and saved for many years as I did. It is not uncommon for them to have two or three thousand dollars for the border jump.

An almost perfect way to get across the border is with phony identification, but this is also the most expensive. A good-quality green card costs from $500 to $1000. U.S. or Mexican passports are about the same. You can obtain these fake documents and anything else, birth certificates, you name it, right here in Tijuana. The only one that I can handle and get printed without getting into the hundreds of dollars in cost is the Form 1-94, the simple one to duplicate. If you use this, you have to back it up with something else with your name and picture on it. The best thing to do is to use the look-alike scheme my brother and I used years ago. The gringos will admit that to them, a Mexican looks about like any other Mexican. If one member of a family gets a green card, you can bet that anyone else in that family that even slightly resembles this person is going to use that green card to get across the border.

The forms of some documents change from time to time and differ from locale to locale. A temporary pass issued at Brownsville, Texas, may be a lot different from one issued by the American Consulate in Tijuana. Even the U.S. Immigration inspectors have a hard time keeping up with all the different kinds of passes. We also have to keep up to date on these things, like what colors they are stamped or endorsed with. Some of our printers specialize in these forms and make it a science. There are so many fake green cards that this very moment the border-crossing inspectors are using ultra-high-power magnification machines with a prototype green card to check against forgeries. If you cannot afford to obtain excellent forgeries, do without. If you cross the border on foot in the many ways I have described, do not carry any identification. The less the “Migra” knows about you, the better off you are. Never give your real name. The “Migra” are supposed to keep records, and if they decide to check up on you and find out you have been caught a lot of times before or were involved in a coyote scheme, you may be in jail for a long time. Being a coyote is a crime, and so is being an illegal. If you’re caught, just tell them you live in Tijuana. They will have you back the next morning. Detention of illegal aliens is a big problem for the “Migra.” They are short on funds and facilities and would like to get rid of you as soon as possible.

Don’t get the idea that this makes it any easier for us peons to get across the border. As the “Migra” are always refining their strategy, so are we. These next methods of getting across, which I am going to describe in detail, fall into the category of high intrigue and require the boldest of the bold. One false move, and you’ve had it because you will be operating right under the noses of all the officials at the border complex. Pay attention. These are our most well kept secrets.

The U.S. Border Crossing Complex employs many workers to do cleanup and maintenance. Most of these people are U.S.-Mexicans and wear green pants and a shirt with a little cloth badge of white with green and red letters sewn to the left breast. Often they wear ordinary clothes with the cloth emblem merely pinned to their shirt, especially if they are new employees and have not gotten their uniforms yet. What we do is dress you up in one of these uniforms with the cloth emblem. To your left as you enter the border pedestrian walkthrough, the area next to auto pass-through, Gate 1 — which is used exclusively for tourist buses and emergency cars, diplomats, and ambulances and is closed a lot of the time — you will find a wall thirty paces long. At your left is a fence of steel bars curved up at the bottom; it is in a place in the corner at the bottom of this fence next to the wall; it is very easy to pass under. No one dares use this because it is in direct sight of the inspectors at the automobile pass-through gates, not twelve meters away. It is also in sight of the inspectors inside the building, who are about thirty meters ahead at the pass-through counters after the automated glass doors. When pedestrian traffic is heavy, their view in blocked, and the automobile inspectors get very busy and do not always keep their eye on this spot. Carrying a broom, which we provide, and a slightly full black-plastic trash bag, you quickly crawl under the fence in the corner, dragging your broom and trash bag with you. Saunter along the pavement, sweeping a little, or bend over to pick up a piece of paper. Stay next to the Customs building’s west wall, and a hundred paces north you will find a small garden to your right with a sliding-fence gate that is not locked and only three feet high. Pass through this gate or over. Discard your green shirt, broom, and trash bag, and mingle with the crowds waiting for the buses or trolley just to your right, or go into the McDonald’s hamburger house across the street, and use the bathrooms to correct your appearance. The old Customs House and lawn is located just before you enter the pedestrian walk-through area, and the maintenance workers are always cleaning up around there, so you will not attract undue notice in that area before you get to that fence where you slipped under the hole in the corner. This method works best during daylight working hours at about lunchtime, when the maintenance foreman is eating his lunch somewhere and is not walking around.

The other and better way to do this, dressed as a maintenance worker, is simply to push a grey plastic trash can on wheels with some brooms, which we also provide, right through the pedestrian entrance. Continue to the inspection counters and over to the far right where there is a small, waist-high gate of wrought-iron bars. You can reach over and trip the latch in the top left corner and continue on your way with your trash can right out through the exit doors and leave it somewhere. We have sent guys through there carrying shovels, rakes, tools, and electric cords draped over their shoulders, and even a man with a stepladder once.

You know, we can still buy old clunker cars here in Tijuana for about two or three hundred dollars. You can drive one of these right up to one of the pass-through gates, and when they ask you where you were born, say Fresno or Bakersfield or something like that. You would be surprised, sometimes they let you go. Mostly they give you a little yellow piece of paper with something written on it, like no I.D. or no green card. You then proceed to the customs sheds where another inspector questions you, and if you persist and ask to see his boss, they will send you on foot back into a part of the main Customs House. Remember, your old car is still parked under the shed. You talk to the authorities inside, and they say no and to go back to your car. Well, what they don’t know is that you are wearing a Customs inspector’s shirt with an emblem sewn on your left sleeve and a gold badge or a maintenance worker’s shirt under your light jacket. You also are wearing a straw hat, and we use false mustaches sometimes. It so happens that there is a bathroom to your right on your way out where you can go in and come out another person.

While you’re in the bathroom, dump your light jacket, hat, and false mustache in the trash can, perhaps putting on a pair of eye glasses, and come out dressed as a customs inspector. Head for the little garden with the sliding gate I told you about before. Remove your shirt, and join the crowd. If you choose to come out of the bathroom as a maintenance worker, throw your jacket, hat, mustache, and some paper towels into a black plastic trash bag, which you have kept in one of your pockets, and walk out carrying this bag as if you had just been in there cleaning up. Head for the little garden to the right as before. You have abandoned the old car to the puzzled inspectors in the shed area, and all you really needed it for was to get through the gates. Remember, you have to drive through the gates nearest to lane one to get your car into inspection shed number one.

Okay, let’s back up. If you feel that this quick-change-artist stuff is just impossible for you to do and have managed to get your car into one of the customs sheds, what will happen is, one of the inspectors will, after questioning you, write out another slip of paper that says, return to Mexico. You proceed to the north end of the customs shed, where yet another inspector jn a booth asks for your slip of paper and directs you to a one-way lane specially designed for cars that have to return to Mexico. This one-way lane cuts across the north end of the customs sheds and goes south along the west side of the customs sheds.

Remember, the inspectors’ view from inside the shed is blocked by a chain-link fence with a redwood backing, shrubs, and small trees, which are to your left as you are going south in this one-way lane. To your right is a continuous curb and a fifty-meter-long divided space between you and the heavy traffic going south on Interstate 5. You cannot wait too long, but pull your car up over the curb and into this divider space right away. The best time to do this is on a Friday evening about seven o’clock, when it is dark in the wintertime. The long lines of southbound cars are waiting to pass into Mexico.

These lines of cars block the view of the “Migra” and a Customs inspector who are stationed on the other side of the traffic just before the turnstile pedestrian entrance to Mexico.

Abandon your car, and walk west across the southbound traffic, which is just barely moving, and you will find an entrance in the chain-link fence that is used by motorists to make a right-hand U-turn. The “Migra” headquarters is just to the southwest as you enter this entrance, but don’t worry about being seen. So many people have tapped on the windows there wanting to ask questions or to use the bathroom and generally pestering the “Migra” that they have boarded all the windows up. Sometimes it helps before abandoning your car to lift the hood or let the air out of one of the tires. If anyone comes around from the inspection sheds before you get away, you can say you are having car trouble. If you do not abandon the car, it is possible to continue on this one-way lane to a point just before you converge into the southbound traffic to Mexico. That is where the right hand U-turn I described to you, in front of lane twenty-four, is located. You can then double back to the U.S.

Many other coyotes use this trick, letting a passenger off there, and the coyote then returns to Mexico. I must tell you this: there is a sentry box at the north end of this one-way-to-Mexico lane and one at the south end, but they never have a man posted in them. If you see that they do, forget it. They will prevent you from pulling off into the divider and from making a U-turn at the south end.

The use of look-alike uniforms is a good trick and also a very dangerous one. The agencies of the U.S. government frown upon this and have all kinds of penalties for it. We want to look alike, but not exactly alike. We alter some of the wording on the patches to give the appearance only of the real thing. We do this because a good lawyer can get you off the hook by using this technicality.

We also use a lot of sailor uniforms that we get from the thrift shops in San Diego. Here in Tijuana, many sailors get drunk and lose their wallets and identification cards in the bars and cantinas. We buy these, too, and fix them up for our clients. A lot of sailors use the trolley to get to their bases in the morning, and we mix our clients in with them. As soon as they get where they are going, they dump the uniform and I.D. card. Some sailors, when they get drunk and run out of money, will sell their I.D. cards. Never dress like a sailor and expect to get across the border. They are not supposed to wear their uniforms down here, and the immigration inspectors will turn you over to the shore patrol.

We have also sent a young man that looked the part as a “Migra.” He got away with it but gave us some bad moments. This man was determined to get to Chula Vista, where he had relatives. He begged me to use the “Migra” uniform bit, black belt with holster and fake gun. I gave in and concentrated on this scheme. This young man elected to use the Colonia Libertad route during the night and make his way west across the canyons to San Ysidro, where he could pick up the trolley in the morning. We dressed him in desert camouflage over his dark-green “Migra” clothes. He made it to the top of the high ridge of the canyon that looks down over San Ysidro. In broad daylight, he inched his way down the steep canyonside by the seat of his pants, ever so slowly, to the rail tracks, where he discarded his camouflage. He boldly walked up to and over the tracks. At the time, the “Migra” were parked in their van at the south end of the tracks not more than a hundred meters away. Whether they saw him or not, I cannot say, but he was not pursued. He continued to the trolley station but did not board there as planned.

That morning I was drinking coffee at the counter, as is my custom, in Bob’s Big Boy Cafe in San Ysidro. We coyotes meet there to trade information and tell each other big lies, what you gringos call “bullshitting.” I was in the middle of my story about how we had devised a plan to send a young man dressed as the “Migra” when someone tapped me on the shoulder. To our astonishment, it was the “Migra.” He said to me in perfect English, “Mr. Johnson, would you step outside please.” Not known to the other coyotes, it was our young man. When we got outside, I was furious. I said, “You know you’re going to get us all arrested parading around in that ‘Migra’ uniform. Take off that shirt, gun belt, and holster, throw it in the back of my car, and get out of here. Don’t come back.” I returned to the cafe to finish my coffee, and the other coyotes wanted to know what was going on. I explained that he was the one I was just telling them about. That’s when they all decided to call me the King of Coyotes. The rest you know.

Coyote: Confessions of an Illegal Alien Smuggler is excerpted from Ray Monroe's book of the same title, published in 1987 by Carlton Press. Nezahual Coyotl and other characters are fictionalized, but events and facts are based on actual interviews and experiences.