TECATE, Mexico — Isabella Angeles sits in the shade outside a general store, crunching on potato chips. In a few hours, she will try to beat the U.S. government's expanding campaign to stop illegal immigration.
Angeles, 25, has flown from the southern state of Guerrero to the border with California. She has never been this far north, but Mexico's underground railroad has prepared her well.
"At Tijuana, they told us to go east," she says through a mouth full of chips. " 'Head to the mountains,' they said."
A U.S. program called Operation Gatekeeper was started 18 months ago to beef up border patrols at Imperial Beach in San Diego County. Until Gatekeeper began, one in four illegal immigrants passing through Tijuana crossed the border at Imperial Beach.
Word has spread on the streets that Gatekeeper has shut down the five-mile Imperial Beach zone and crossers from Tijuana should attempt to start their journey into the U.S. by crossing to the east--into southeastern California, Arizona or New Mexico.
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Angeles has been told to cross at least 40 miles east of Imperial Beach, and she knows to bring extra money for Tecate's municipal police officers. The bribe will enable her to break local rules with impunity and rest for a few hours in an abandoned shack before making her move.
Even though U.S. Border Patrol reinforcements have not arrived in this zone yet, the shift eastward plays into the agency's hands. It wants to force migrants into isolated mountains and deserts where the terrain is rougher, the weather more brutal and the crossing time longer.
Human-rights advocates criticize Gatekeeper, contending it is militarizing the border and endangering crossers' lives.
"Gatekeeper is forcing these people east into more dangerous situations," said Roberto Martinez of the American Friends Service Committee.
The steep peso devaluation that battered Mexico's economy one month after Gatekeeper began is forcing more "economic refugees" into the U.S., he said. "These are desperate times and they're taking desperate measures."
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Washington is spending $206 million this year to bolster the campaign against illegal immigrants all along the border with Mexico. In Arizona, the project is called Operation Safeguard and in Texas and parts of New Mexico it is Operation Hold the Line.
About 800 new Border Patrol officers have been added in the Southwest, bringing the total to 5,700.
