Coming To America
The nightly trickle of illegal immigrants flowing out of Mexico and into California clutch inner tubes, keep their clothes dry in plastic bags, and ignore the shouts of the border patrol, reports CBS News Correspondent Jerry Bowen.
"I was trying to tell them to get out. It's raw sewage. They're going to get sick," explained Border Patrol Officer Manuel Figueroa.
Their escape route is the New River, a sewer really, of industrial pollutants, farm runoff, and human waste.
"To me it was unimaginable that someone would jump in sewage and come north, but people do it," said Figueroa.
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"We don't want our officers going in that river because every disease known to man is there. It's just an operational nightmare for us because the alien smugglers know that, as well as the aliens, that our officers are not going to get in the river," said Harold Beasley, the acting Chief of the Border Patrol.
Ever since "Operation Gatekeeeper" closed off the easy border crossings with steel fences and the increased surveillance, migrants have used riskier routes. Like the New River and the nearby All American Canal. 32 people drowned in the canal last year.
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The New River is tested monthly by technicians in hazardous materials suits. 30 viruses, from Hepatitus A to Polio, have been confirmed here.
Jose Angel of the California Water Resources Board said, "You put fish in a bowl of water and you don't change the water, the fish is going to go belly up. Well, the fish are belly up here. The river is dead in other words."
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Safer too for the flow of migrants which is not expected to stop.
"When we apprehend them, we're basically handling them like they're contaminated because of the chemicals in there. We try to send them back to Mexico as quickly as possible," said Figueroa.
But for every arrest, there are many more signs of success: empty inner tubes and plastic bags left on the banks of the New River by those who made it to America.
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