Debbie Nathan

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Oh my goodness — Iraqis smuggled through our southern border! The FBI says so. ABC does, too. It sounds real!

But so does the story of that poor woman in the 1980s who shampooed her little dog then put it in the microwave to dry off, and you know the rest. Remember “Friend of a Friend” (FOAF) urban myths? They’re believable because they sound so up to date, so utterly contemporary. Who would guess they’re a species of folktale, with themes that often go back hundreds, even thousands, of years?

(Take the one about adults hanging around grade schools, seducing tykes with tiny paper panes laced with LSD and illustrated with Mickey Mouse cartoons. Folklorists trace this apocryphal tale to the mid-19th century, when English postage stamps were first outfitted with lickable glue. This new adhesive technology apparently scared the beejeezus out of people, and the story spread that the glue side of the stamps was conspiratorially drenched with poison.)

And now, Iraqis on the border. ABC reported yesterday (July 17) that it recently obtained a Joint Terrorism Task Force FBI intelligence report indicating the FBI is investigating a human smuggling operation based in Chaparral, New Mexico, a tiny town near El Paso, Texas. The report claimed the ring is bringing “Iraqis and other Middle Eastern” people across the Rio Grande from Mexico. The smugglers purportedly have been sneaking Iraqis in for more than a year. Each customer is said to pay $20,000 to $25,000. They’re transported from Mexico to “train stations in El Paso, Texas or Belen, New Mexico,” according to the FBI.

As a former El Pasoan, I’m ready to eat my cachucha if this “report” turns out to be anything more than a FOAFtale (with that second “F” standing for FBI). First of all, both ABC and follow-up news reports in West Texas and New Mexico indicate that local officials are in the dark about the FBI’s claims. Border Patrol officials say they have no details about about the report. Ditto for federal prosecutors in New Mexico — they don’t have any cases involving smuggled Iraqis. An FBI spokesman in Albuquerque said the agency had “no viable information” that could lead to a case. The El Paso FBI said the same.

And the Las Cruces Sun-News further suggests there’s no there there. “Some intelligence information is provided in a raw, unsubstantiated format,” the paper quoted El Paso FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons demurring about the report. “That information can later be proven or disproven but is often provided in this raw format to inform the intelligence community of possible threats.”

Duh. Hey, border rats — do you think a bunch of Iraqis could hang around dumpy little Chaparral, New Mexico without being noticed? The place is so funky and boring and bored that anyone walking down one of its unpaved streets, or peeking out of its 1960s-era trailer windows, is a veritable Broadway show to everyone else around. Don’t believe that old Cormac McCarthy hype about the wild, loner west: in El Paso you can’t lose yourself in a crowd like in New York, but on the other hand you can’t do much where at least a few people aren’t looking. (And believe me, self-proclaimed “hermit” McCarthy liked to be seen when he lived on the border. He was quite the regular at cocktail parties and such.) Amtrak stations?? I’ve never been to El Paso’s when there have been more than three people — besides the vigilant ticket agent, train administrators, and yeah, Border Patrol officers — in the whole building. At least one is usually an ambulatory psychotic white lady, and that leaves only two others to melt into the woodwork — as if. Belen is even harder to hide in.

The last terrorism FOAF-scare in El Paso happened in about 1987. The local papers were full of dire warnings about Iraqi air strips in the desert, and Iraqis massed in Ciudad Juarez to invade and plant bombs or something. Finally the FBI staged a daring raid on a hotel on Avenida 16 de Septiembre, in downtown Juarez, and came back to El Paso with a couple who agents excitedly said were Middle Eastern terrorists.

Turned out they were tourists from, like, Estonia.

Sorry I don’t have pictures for this piece. If anyone finds one of an Iraqi smuggled through Chaparral, send it along. I’m laminate it on my hat, then wolf it down with chipotle salsa and tikka.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 12:36 am and is filed under MexUSA: Border Crossing Words & Photos, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.