More from the Magazine
July
2000 Issue- Connections Not What It Seems
- From the Editors Bracing for the Imminent
- Amateur Scientist PCR at Home
- Buy the Digital Edition
CALEXICO, CALIF.-- We've been camped out on a rickety bridge since morning, and after 11 hours we have almost had it. The bridge spans a river that collects dead farm animals, tires, floating sewage and industrial waste. Desert breezes in this permanently dusty agricultural region waft choking odors across a nearby grocery store parking lot, making the idea of food unappealing.
About an hour after sunset, our patience is rewarded: my photographer and I see 10 nearly naked immigrants come through a 20-foot-high corrugated-steel fence and wade into the New River, each clutching a sack of belongings in one hand and an inflated inner tube in the other. "Aren't you afraid of the water?" I yell in Spanish to the bobbing mass that moves with piles of greasy foam on the water's surface. "No, it feels good," smartly replies one young man who looks to be no more than 15 years old. "Besides, I don't have any money."
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