At the Border, on the Night Watch

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The lanky young man with two bales of marijuana slung over his back who was apprehended by Border Patrol agents in a rugged area about a mile from the border here one recent night represented both the significant strides the country has made in controlling its southern border and the challenges that remain.

“If you would have visited 11 years ago, it was like a scene out of a movie,” said Mario Escalante, a Border Patrol agent who used to work in the Douglas area but has since moved to the headquarters in Tucson. “We were overrun. People were coming across in groups of 30 or 50 or 100 or more. We were catching thousands of people a day.”

As darkness fell on this border town in the southeast corner of Arizona, the radio inside Mr. Escalante’s Chevrolet Suburban indicated the different reality that now exists — with illegal migration down, but not out.

“Three bodies approaching the fence,” an agent reported over the radio in clipped language, using the Border Patrol slang for migrants.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/us/border-patrols-in-arizona-look-for-mexican-immigrants.html