It's so dead-simple, it's easy to overlook how burners have streamlined the far-flung routes that comprise the smuggling underground by connecting the people moving through it with those who keep it moving. With more and more migrants carrying burners, certain smugglers see opportunity.Take what US Border Patrol agents call "remote control." This is a border crossing tactic in which polleros guide pollos across the border over the phone. The polleros relay the instructions in real-time from Mexico, where they face less risk of arrest than they would if they set foot on US soil. Just like when Chino crossed.Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents dismantled one such remotely-guided smuggling cell in late 2011. The smugglers weren't leading large groups of migrants across on foot, but rather relaying instructions over the phone to migrants who crossed the border from Jacume, in Baja California, Mexico, to Jacumba, California, southeast of San Diego. Eight individuals were detained on federal charges in connection to the smuggling ring.Burners aren't new technology. But they are now widely available for as low as $11 a pop throughout the borderlands, where cell towers continually pop up and the trafficking business is sustained in a marketplace of one-stop smuggling towns like Altar, Sonora, where migrants can gear up at Telcel stores and camouflage clothing shops before rendezvousing with smugglers and finally migrating north. Human trafficking has never been this personal.If burners are a lifeline for migrants while they cross, then it would also seem the ubiquitous "no-contract" technology has necessarily made business more efficient for smugglers.
The wall as seen from Nogales, Sonora. Photo: MOTHERBOARD.
John Lawson guides us to Top of the World from the north. Photo: MOTHERBOARD
Of those eight, the Tucson sector is the longest and one of the more active human and drug trafficking passages on the border. It runs 262 linear miles, from Yuma County to the New Mexico state line, and is divided into three corridors and eight field offices with 4,200 agents total. Lawson, a broad guy with closely cropped grey-blonde hair and a slight hitch in his step, has an elemental understanding of the tract he patrols. He knows all the peaks and valleys and culverts around Naco like a cartographer or rancher would. Or a narco."This is prime dope smugglin' area, right here," Lawson says.Lawson throws his truck into park at an elevated stretch of wall known among Border Patrol agents as "the limestones." We hop out and take it in. The view is panoramic.Atop the Naco border limestones with Border Patrol agents Michael Hyatt (foreground) and John Lawson (background). The night before this image was captured, Border Patrol agents nabbed a remote-control pollero at this very spot along the wall. Image: MOTHERBOARD"It's kind of hard to catch the bad guy when he's in Mexico sitting on a hill."
A remote-guided smuggler spotted near Naco, Arizona, in February 2016. Photo courtesy US Customs and Border Protection - Tucson.
Lawson with an assortment of confiscated burners and smartphones. Photo: MOTHERBOARD
The puntero's hill near the Ambos Nogales port of entry. Photo: MOTHERBOARD
Daniel. Screengrab courtesy Luis Chaparro
Leaving Puebla. Photo courtesy Chino
Chino, in Brooklyn, stares across the East River at Manhattan.. Gif by Evan Rodgers
Solar cell on South Mountain. Photo: MOTHERBOARD
Up here, scouts have sweeping line-of-sight views from which they can direct foot traffic heading north from Ambos Nogales on the desert floor below. The scouts wear camouflage and will stay up here for stretches of up to 30 days, according to S.O. At a moment's notice, when a Border Patrol AS350 or Black Hawk comes thumping down, the scouts can duck into caves or slide into crevices that are easily covered with small boulders. They use the solar panels to keep charge on the car batteries, which in turn keep the scouts' cell phones and two-way radios powered up."They're in direct communication with the cartel on the south side and with the guide who's bringing the group," S.O. says.That would be the Sinaloa cartel, specifically, and polleros like the late Daniel of Caborca, who notify pollos like Chino as well as drug mules, who are sometimes pollos themselves, when it's clear to cross the border. But crossing la línea is just one leg of what's often a long road to an uncertain future. After crossing the border itself and getting picked up by a driver, pollos are relayed from one handoff point to the next—from pollero to pollero, who sync their movements over the phone—until finally they're out of Border Patrol's sights."It seems like the middle of nowhere but you've got four bars"
South Mountain scout cave. Photo: MOTHERBOARD
Helo shadow cast on South Mountain. Photo: MOTHERBOARD
The circumstances will remain a mystery, though the Guatemalan migrant was likely killed by armed South Mountain scouts. He was alone when BORSTAR found his body earlier this year on the bare outcrop, which has now become some kind of sacrificial altar. He is one of at least 16 Guatemalan migrants found dead in the Sonoran desert since the beginning of 2015, according to Carlos Enrique de León López, consul of Guatemala in Tucson.That's why he and other officials urge migrants to not just bring phones while crossing through miles of desert but to call for help if they run into trouble. The problem, López explains, is that 911 is too often the last number migrants call. They will drain their phones' batteries by repeat dialing family members and friends. But by that point, it's too late."When family members call back is when they call us to see if we can help somehow. In this scenario, you can't help."
Cell tower near Naco, Arizona. Photo: MOTHERBOARD
Martin's phone. Photo: MOTHERBOARD
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The phone. Photo: MOTHERBOARD