By Jim Mimiaga

A shift in immigration patterns along the U.S.-Mexico border funnels Mexican nationals through Cortez, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

INS officials say many Mexican nationals on their way to pre-arranged manual-labor jobs in Chicago and New York pass through southwest Colorado.

"A lot of the gas receipts we find in glove boxes are from Cortez, but the end destinations are not in Colorado, they’re in the Carolinas or Florida or New York," said Don Beuchner, a supervisory agent with the INS agency in Alamosa.

Because of an increased INS presence at border towns in El Paso, Texas, and Nogales, Ariz., immigrant job-seekers are now crossing between the two, entering at Douglas, Ariz., instead and traveling northward on U.S. Highway 191 towards Monticello and then eastward towards Cortez and Durango.

The new immigration corridor has prompted the INS to station agents in the Durango area, but not as a tactic to actively seek out community members who may reside in the country illegally or are here with valid work permits.

"We are not going to go on city patrol sweeps asking people for their documents, because we do not feel that is a big problem in Cortez or Durango," Beuchner said. "We’re looking for criminals in jail and transit vans that are moving through the state on their way to bigger cities; that’s what we will concentrate on."

He said that three INS special agents and two detention officers will be placed in Durango. The move, Beuchner said, is in response to law-enforcement agencies who have long criticized the INS for not responding to situations involving illegal immigration along isolated roadways in southwest Colorado.

"Usually we have to let them continue on their way because we do not have jurisdiction," said Colorado State Patrolman Steve Nowlin. "It was just not practical for the INS to send an agent from Denver or Grand Junction to begin the deportation process. Once I waited five hours on the top of Red Mountain Pass for the INS to arrive."

Part of the problem is that a booming U.S. economy has created an increase in demand for low-wage factory workers and laborers, jobs that are not attractive to most U.S. citizens but offer golden opportunities for Mexican workers fed up with a depressed economy and a corrupt democracy at home.

Beuchner said locally, the INS has already stopped vans that were heading for larger cities, part of a growing illegal labor trade he says is flourishing in U.S. manufacturing and agricultural industries.

"We have already stopped a couple of vans heading for sweatshops in New York," Buechner said. "It is a situation where employers offer good money when smugglers deliver illegal workers to them. Plus the smugglers are charging each passenger also, so it becomes quite profitable, but it causes serious safety issues for migrant workers crowded into unsafe vehicles or trucks."

The smugglers, called "coyotes," are formally deported and face a felony prosecution if caught back in the U.S., while immigrant workers sign a voluntary-return form and are taken to the Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso.

Angelica Mejia, a Catholic nun from Guadalajara, works to protect human rights for immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border through an activist group called BorderWatch. She spoke recently in Durango about the dangers immigrants face when crossing over illegally and the hypocrisy of having a closed border despite obvious U.S. demand for a pool of laborers willing to accept less than minimum wages.