THE AGENT
Manjarrez knows what it means to want to come to the U.S. His father did it on foot at the age of nine. Victor Sr. illegally crossed into Arizona after traveling 800 miles from his hometown of Te-pic, Nayarit, in west-central Mexico. He had only a second-grade education and spoke no English. "I have a 14-year-old son now," says the border patrol chief, "and I cannot imagine him doing the same thing. [My father] didn't have a childhood, but when I ask him why he did it, he says, 'I didn't have a choice.'"

Manjarrez's father crossed 50 years ago and began a life that matches that of many people his son is trying to apprehend today. Victor Sr. made his way to Tucson, Ariz., worked as a dishwasher and a meat cutter and every month sent money back to his family in Nayarit. They teased him about how proud he was to be an American and nicknamed him Eisenhower. He raised his two children in the U.S. and sent his eldest — Victor Jr. — to college, then saw him join the U.S. border patrol. Its ranks are filled with agents who have similar family histories.

"The first time I did this," Manjarrez says in his office a mile from the border, "it felt like I was chasing my own family. Detainees often say to me, 'You are one of us. Why don't you let us go?' I tell them I am just doing a job. But it gives me a bit of insight, a different degree of compassion." If he forgets, his father is quick to remind him. When he visits his father's home in Tucson, Victor Sr. sometimes yells out the front window, "Viene la Migra!" (the INS is coming).

THE ALIEN
Tonight Manjarrez's agents caught 709 illegals. One was Aurelio Gonzales, 52, a farmer from Durango. He had crossed with his 20-year-old daughter, intending to link up with a sister who lives in Phoenix. Gonzales paid smugglers $800 for each passage, up sharply from the $300 it cost before the border patrol put in all its lights, cameras and extra agents. The father and daughter had been walking for two days, though their coyote had said it would take less than an hour to cross the border. "They lied to us," said Gonzales, sitting, exhausted, in a border-patrol holding cell before being taken back across the border.

Gonzales has a 40-acre farm in Durango, but half of it is covered with cactus, and the beans he grows earn him less than $5 a day. "With six children and my wife, it is not enough." He was in debt 50,000 pesos — about $5,000 — and could not pay even the interest on his loan. "I was thinking about coming to the U.S. for a while. Finally, I told my wife, and she said, 'If you can do it, get it done.'" His only other choice was to sell part of his land, which would make it even harder to earn a living for his family. He and his daughter arrived by bus in Naco, where the guides were waiting at the bus station. Says Gonzales: "They took us to a hotel. We waited there for two days. Then in the afternoon, we were taken to a ranch, and at around 7 p.m. we started walking."

Sometimes the smugglers have safe houses on the U.S. side where the immigrants can hide while awaiting transport north. Others must walk much farther. For Gonzales and his daughter, it was 10 p.m. before they crossed the border, and they had only begun their journey. Gonzales fell and twisted his knee in the dark and had trouble keeping up. With no map and no idea of the area, he was at the mercy of the two guides accompanying his group. After sleeping in the desert, they continued walking the following day and finally arrived at Highway 90, favored by smugglers for pickups. The guides disappeared. "They said they were going to find a car." Some time later, Gonzales and his group were found by a border-patrol officer. They were too tired to run away.

THE COYOTE
Aurelio Gonzales was back in Mexico four hours after being picked up, but with his twisted knee, he was not sure he would try again — at least not that night. Many others do. Mexican officials say most aliens try six times before giving up. That's partly because the first thing returnees see back in Mexico is the coyotes on the corners, waiting to make their pitch. These days coyotes get paid only when their charges make it to their U.S. destination, so there's every incentive to keep trying. Tomas Romero, 33, hangs out in the park a block from the border post, and as soon as the ejected Mexicans come across, he shouts out with an encouraging smile, "Don't be depressed! There is a better place to cross!"

Romero has been a coyote in Naco for nine months. He comes from Veracruz and has a wife and two daughters. He used to work in California driving a truck, but says, "It was too much stress, and the money here is better." In a good week Romero can make several thousand dollars, even after he has paid the standard 10% bribe to the Mexican military and police in order to operate on the Mexican side of the border. "They have soplones — snitches — to tell them how much business each coyote is doing. So you have to pay," he says. U.S. officials say people smuggling is nearly as profitable as drug smuggling in some parts of Arizona, and there is some evidence that drug cartels are expanding into the human trade.

Romero doesn't go across himself anymore. He has been caught so many times that the border patrol has him on a list of smugglers who are subject to arrest if caught again. Now he hires runners to do the guiding. And with the buildup of agents, lights and cameras along the Naco border, he's bringing his clients much farther west, to Sasabe, where they have to walk 45 miles across the desert before they reach the first road on the U.S. side. "I tell them they will walk some but not much — maybe six hours." Few realize he is lying, that it will take them several days to cross the desert, and by the time they find out, it is too late to turn back. Few guides will wait for a person who lags behind or runs out of water. Romero doesn't seem to care much. "It is just a business, no?" he says, his eyes scanning the street for more clients.