Terror Hoax Uncovers Border Threat

(CBS/AP)  Sitting 120 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, on the edge of a desert, this sprawling industrial city would seem an unlikely stop for Chinese migrants seeking to sneak across the U.S. border.

Only the small city of Calexico, Calif., sits across the brackish Colorado River in a sparsely populated farm region. Mountains rising to 4,000 feet stand in the way to California's coast and its jobs in Asian restaurants and garment shops. Desert stretches eastward hundreds of miles.

But the recent false alarm about Chinese nationals being smuggled across the border for a terrorist attack in Boston put a spotlight on Mexicali's role in illegal immigration from China. U.S. authorities say it is one of the busiest points of entry used by Chinese people smugglers, along with Los Angeles, New York and Seattle.

One attraction is that this city of 800,000 people has a large Chinese community. Chinese have been living here since around 1900, after the United States halted Chinese immigration and cotton growers in this part of Mexico began looking for cheap labor.

Eduardo Auyon Gerardo, president of the 86-year-old Chinese Association of Mexicali, says the city has 35,000 residents of Chinese descent and two dozen Chinese community groups. There are about 300 Chinese restaurants, some of which can seat up to 2,000 people.

That makes it easy for Chinese migrants to blend in while trying to get across the border, said Michael Unzueta, acting special agent in charge of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau in San Diego.

The trip from China to the United States typically costs $30,000 to $50,000, U.S. law enforcement officials say. Migrants fly to Milan or Paris, then Mexico City, then Tijuana or Mexicali on the U.S. border to link up with people smugglers.

Last June, for example, federal agents were tipped that a Cessna was ferrying illegal immigrants from an airstrip just over the frontier from Mexicali. Officers found five Chinese nationals — ranging in age from a 17-year-old girl to a 51-year-old man — after the plane landed at El Monte Airport, near Los Angeles.

"A lot of it is probably put in place before they even leave China," Unzueta said.

The Border Patrol refuses to say how many Chinese are caught illegally crossing the border, but the number is small. Mexicans accounted for 94 percent of the 1.1 million arrests last year and much of the rest were Central Americans. Along this part of the frontier, Mexicans accounted for 99 percent of the 75,000 arrests.

But the Chinese gained attention after a Mexicali man warned of a terrorist plot in Boston Jan. 17. A week later, Jose Ernesto Beltran Quinones admitted calling 911 from a cell phone to make the fake warning, Mexico's federal attorney general's office said.

One of 13 Chinese nationals who were briefly sought for questioning about the alleged plot turned out to have been in U.S. custody in San Diego since Nov. 11 after being arrested in Calexico. Investigators said Mei Xia Dong, 21, paid a smuggler to get her into the United States through Mexico and she came looking for work.

Mexicali is an appealing stop for Chinese migrants. An orange, gold and green pagoda — a gift from sister city Nanjing — decorates a small plaza at one of the city's two border crossings.

Chinatown, a downtown cluster of one- and two-story buildings known as "La Chinesqua," has a few dozen Chinese restaurants and Cantonese is widely heard on its narrow sidewalks. Cantonese also is spoken at the Monte Alban apartments; four huge cinderblock buildings surrounded by a dirt road and abandoned cars. Gravestones at a downtown cemetery are written in Chinese.

In the heart of Chinatown, the Chinese Association's two-story building occupies nearly a half block. On weekends, 90 children come to learn Chinese. During the week, about two-dozen Chinese who have settled here take Spanish five mornings before going off to work, typically at a Chinese restaurant or shoe repair shop.

"All of them already have family here, that's why they come," said Luis Wong, an 80-year-old who teaches the class.

Wong came in 1940 to join his father, a miner who moved to Mexicali from the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa in the 1930s to escape anti-Chinese sentiment there.

Auyon, the 69-year-old Chinese Association president, immigrated as a young man from Macao to be with his brother, who was a Mexicali cop at the time.

"People who come here like it because they can bring over their families," he says. "They feel comfortable here."

By Elliot Spagat