People Smugglers Inc.

Whe

n detectives came calling this summer at the 25-acre ranch of Lucio Avianeda, outside Minatitlan in southern Mexico, their mission was to arrest Avianeda and his alleged partner in crime, Constantino (Coty) Andrade. But before the lawmen got to the ranch house, they heard voices coming from the stables. Inside they found a dozen undocumented Central American migrants who had been locked up for three days with no food or water. Some lay unconscious in the stifling heat while horses munched hay a few feet away. The cops were not completely shocked: Avianeda and Andrade are reputed people smugglers. Police say the two recently gained trafficking control over a large swath of Mexico's southern isthmus — an unavoidable corridor in the perilous odyssey from Central America to the U.S. that hundreds of thousands of desperately poor migrants make each year.

But as the detectives headed to the house to make arrests, something frighteningly unusual happened. Instead of scattering like the desert animals that migrant smugglers are named for — coyotes — henchmen working for Avianeda and Andrade fired at the cops with automatic weapons. "We've never faced that kind of resistance from coyotes," says the Minatitlan detective commander, Simitrio Rodriguez. "They're usually not even armed." None of the police were hurt. When the gunfight was over, Avianeda, 39, and four others were under arrest. Andrade, 28, had fled, and is still at large.

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U.S. and Mexican authorities fear that incidents like the shootout at Minatitlan may also signal the start of a new wave of violence along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border. The U.S. believes organized smuggling rings are responsible for a dramatic increase in illegal traffic along the border — and in the unprecedented numbers of migrants dying in their attempts to get in. This year more than 250 migrants have perished along both sides of the border, including at least 100 this summer, when crossings are the most dangerous because of the desert heat. (In Arizona, 50 migrants died in July alone.) Immigration experts expect 2003's migrant death toll to surpass last year's total of 490, making this the deadliest 12 months for border crossings on record.

A group of Republican Representatives are pushing the Bush Administration to take action. In response to the rising death rate and the growing power of the coyote Mafias, Arizona Senator John McCain and a host of legislators from border states like Texas last month introduced bills that could grant permanent residency to some workers already in the U.S. and allow millions of other Mexican and perhaps Central American migrants legal but temporary "guest worker" entry into the U.S. By granting more migrants safe passage, advocates say, the reforms would reduce demand for the coyote Mafias, help stanch the tide of migrant deaths and allow U.S. authorities to spend more time securing the border against potential terrorists. The bill's backers are using Congress's August recess to lobby the White House hard to sign on to the proposed legislation. "If we create a legal mechanism for people who just want to come work and then go home," says Arizona Representative Jeff Flake, "we can focus our border interdiction on people who do want to do us real harm."

In the past, migrant-smuggling rings tended to be obscure, amateurish mom-and-pop organizations. But today they are assuming "all the indicia of more corporate, organized crime," says Michael Shelby, the U.S. attorney in Houston who is prosecuting 14 alleged coyotes in the case of 19 illegal immigrants found dead in a tractor trailer in May in Victoria, Texas. Aspiring coyote kingpins like Avianeda and Andrade employ a vast network of organized smuggling cells that Rodriguez fears "may be headed to where [Mexico's] drug cartels are today." U.S. authorities also believe that some kingpins may be forging links with potential Middle East terrorists attempting to slip into the U.S. from Mexico. "It's not unusual anymore to find a wandering Egyptian in Marfa, Texas," says Jim Chaparro, former head of the U.S. federal anti-smuggling task force and a special agent for the Homeland Security Department's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In one recent case, U.S. law-enforcement authorities busted a Mexican of Lebanese descent for smuggling migrants from the Middle East into the U.S. through his Tijuana base. Chaparro says the smuggler was "working with well-established [coyote] organizations."

Such groups profit from restrictive immigration laws. In recent years, especially after 9/11, the U.S. has tried to tighten its border with Mexico, even as economic conditions have worsened for workers in Latin America, who usually earn in a day what they could make in half an hour in the U.S. The twin pressures have created a booming business for human-smuggling professionals in Mexico and the U.S. Their industry grosses more than $5 billion a year, compared with about $20 billion for Mexico's drug cartels, according to immigration experts like University of Pennsylvania sociologist Douglas Massey. In many instances, smugglers can command more than $1,500 a head, three times the rate of a decade ago.