GRAND ISLAND, Neb. — Two or three times a week, alongside one of the fields of corn, wheat and alfalfa that line Interstate 80 in Iowa and Nebraska, an unlikely confrontation of cultures takes place.
A state trooper pulls over an overloaded van or truck. The driver doesn't speak English, but the trooper manages to make himself understood. A moment later, a dozen or more men and women spill out, citizens of Mexico, El Salvador and other countries who are being smuggled across the heartland of the United States.
Faced with the unfamiliar landscape of the Great Plains, hardly anyone tries to escape. "They wouldn't know where to go if they did run," said Lt. Dave Anderson of the Nebraska State Patrol. "They'd be lost in a strange land."
Even though the nearest Border Patrol outpost is 400 miles away in North Dakota, the Midwestern highway has become a busy corridor for immigrant smugglers and for the small band of federal agents assigned to catch them.
Last year, authorities in Nebraska and Iowa detained more than 1,700 people in vans, trucks and other vehicles transporting illegal immigrants. Federal officials in Omaha said that there has been an eightfold increase in the number of illegal immigrants detained along the highway since 1996.
Large-scale smuggling has spread to most of the major east-west interstates across the middle of the country, officials say, from Interstate 90, which cuts across South Dakota and Minnesota, to Interstate 40, which runs through northern New Mexico, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
In response, Immigration and Naturalization Service officials this year began opening offices in three dozen rural and heartland communities, from Fayetteville, Ark., and London, Ky., to North Platte, Neb., and Brush, Colo.
Immigration officials say smugglers have adopted new routes through the Midwest in order to avoid Border Patrol agents in California and Texas, where an intense crackdown has shut down traditional routes. (The INS in general, has more than doubled the number of illegal immigrants it has apprehended and deported since 1996).
"It's amazing to us because here we are in the heartland of America, about as far from the border as you can get," said Jerry Heinauer, a top aide in the INS Omaha office. "People don't know we have an illegal immigration problem here."
The dangers of the smuggling trade were highlighted last month when a van spun out of control on Interstate 40 east of Albuquerque, killing 13 people. The men and women inside, Mexican immigrants, were headed for Kentucky.
