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Up and down the border, everyone skirts the fence in his own way. A professor in south Texas says he pays someone $50 a month to smuggle his mom over in a boat for Sunday dinners. He doesn't worry, though, because a federal agent down the street does the same for his housekeeper. "Trying to stop this migration is like trying to stop a wave with a Dixie cup," says Raul Berrios, whose wife Kim runs the popular Renaissance Cafe in Bisbee, Ariz. "It's going to be impossible." There is a whisper network in Bisbee of codes and messages telling weary crossers where they can stay, safely hidden from the border patrol.
Sometimes nature lends a hand. Highway 4 through Brownsville ends with a stop sign that needs to be taken seriously. The asphalt turns into beach and leads straight into the sea. But turn right, and you can drive down the beach as in the old days at Daytona, on fine, hard-packed sand, hugging the Gulf of Mexico. It's a place to appreciate a pristine view--no condos, no concession stands, no concessions at all to anything except the fact that the border begins where the Rio Grande pours into the sea, and so it has to be guarded carefully.
For the first time in 500 years, the river is so low that about 50 ft. from its destination it just dries up altogether and turns into a salt flat. Two alien weeds, hydrilla and hyacinth--border officials don't know how they got there--are growing so fast they have blocked the flow of the river. Fighting them would require approval from both sides, which is practically impossible to get. And so here, all that is left of the border is four metal stakes in the sand, tied with orange ribbons whipping in the Gulf breeze.The border patrol has had to make a little sand berm to keep the smugglers from just driving across. The Mexicans, in their dark-windowed Pontiacs, drive right up to the very stakes, and the border patrolmen in their Suburbans get out their binoculars, look across the beach and wait to be relieved at midnight.
Just at the moment when, up and down the river, cities are arguing about where and whether to build more bridges, haggling over diplomatic papers and environmental clearances and political payoffs, all in order to build another truck bridge over a creek, here nature just went ahead and did it, all on its own.
--Reported by Hilary Hylton/Laredo, Tim Padgett/El Paso, Julie Rawe/New York, Elaine Rivera/Nogales and Cathy Booth Thomas/McAllen
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