"Walk a couple of hours and you'll reach a highway," the "coyotes" said. "We'll be back with water."
With that the smugglers, coyotes, abandoned 26 men in the sweltering desert of south-western Arizona 50 miles from the nearest highway. Each of the men, aged between 17 and 35 and mostly from the Mexican province of Veracruz, had paid $1,000-$3,000 for the chance to find work in the US. Most would end up paying a far heavier price.
On Thursday, five days later, 14 of them were dead from exposure, the worst death toll in a single incident yet on this border. Mexican police say they are looking for a particular suspect who may face extradition to the possibility of a death sentence.
The initial sighting was at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, about 30 miles north of the border. Four men were found badly dehydrated, and they told agents that 22 others were behind them.
Before 1 p.m. 17 people were found just to the south by a Marine helicopter crew, which airlifted them to a hospital. Ten were already dead, and one more died before the helicopter landed. Over the next 24 hours search parties discovered six clusters of immigrants, some living, some dead.
Two men made it to within 10 miles of Interstate 8, the road they were trying to reach.
Twelve people survived, with one telling doctors he drank his own urine in desperation. One was found in a shallow hole, apparently dug to escape the heat. For some, food and water had run out by Monday.
"It was dirt, some rock, just a few small trees," said Sheriff Ralph E. Ogden of Yuma County, who added that the temperatures on the desert floor had risen to nearly 130F.
"They did not appear to have any water when we found them," Sheriff Ogden said. "The bodies were already decomposing."
Marine Corps Maj Robert Lack, who piloted one of the rescue helicopters, described a gruesome scene of bodies sprawled on the ground. Most of the survivors were too weak from dehydration to walk. They had eaten cactus to survive.
Dr David Haynes, who worked on five of the men at Yuma Regional Medical Centre, said most of the survivors suffered kidney failure along with severe heat exhaustion, dehydration and sunburn.
Border officials said that in years of patrolling this region they had rarely found immigrants in such desolate surroundings. Every year more than 100,000 immigrants are caught crossing the border illegally near Yuma but usually on better marked and less dangerous routes.
Southern Arizona has become a popular crossing point for illegal immigrants since Border Patrol crackdowns in Texas and California prompted people to try to enter the US through more isolated, inhospitable areas.
A total of 851 border-crossers have died in the past three years, 158 of them in Arizona, with heat and cold exposure accounting for as much as 40 per cent of the deaths.
"This is an atrocity," a spokesman for the Border Patrol said. "Sure, being in the country illegally is a violation of the law, but they shouldn't have to pay for it with their lives."
But who is to blame?
"We knew this was coming," said Isabel Garcia, a lawyer in Tucson and co-founder of the Arizona Border Rights Project, an umbrella group of 60 organisations that assist immigrants.
"We've been forewarning, lobbying, begging, cajoling, protesting, shouting, praying. We've done everything to bring attention to this very deadly law enforcement strategy that has been used by the Border Patrol of driving people into the most remote areas, where they have to know this will occur."
Jay Michaels, a ranch manager, said people in south-eastern Arizona were shocked. He was putting water and relief supplies at remote spots on his ranch for immigrants.
"What you hear people around here saying is that these are not illegal immigrants, they're humans, and we have to treat them that way," he said. Yet, while Mexican and US diplomats issue joint statements of regret, the Bush administration is seeking to fortify its side of the border even more.
Under the President's budget, the number of Border Patrol agents is due to be increased by 1,140 in the next two years. If Congress approves, the number of guards would reach 11,000 by 2003, a doubling of personnel in six years.
Analysts of Mexican immigration, however, question Mr Bush's pledge to protect the US border in "humane ways".
"I never understood what that meant," says Wayne Cornelius, an immigration expert at the University of California at San Diego. "It is impossible to continue the current strategy of border operations without a steadily mounting death toll."
psmyth@irish-times.ie
