Antelope Wells, an isolated point of entry in New Mexico, is where hundreds cross over, seeking refuge from violence

The black shadows of yucca shrubs huddled under a three-quarter moon. A stiff desert wind hushed all but the deafening crunch of footsteps where a chest-high barrier divides the US and Mexico.

This story is published in collaboration with Searchlight New Mexico. Photograph: SLNM

Behind María and her son were the thousands of miles they covered overland from Guatemala, with Mexico streaming by the bus window, day and night. On the way, she broke her ankle but pressed on with few stops.

Then came the last leg: the night crossing into the New Mexico Bootheel. The state’s rugged, remote south-western corner was where seven-year-old Guatemalan girl Jakelin Caal crossed with her father one December night and became gravely ill.

Her death earlier this month became the symbol of a dangerous new pattern of human smuggling through New Mexico, where 20 groups of more than 100 migrants each have arrived since October, a massive increase from just eight large groups in all of fiscal 2018, according to US Customs and Border Protection. A record number are asking for asylum in the US.

At Antelope Wells, the isolated port of entry in New Mexico’s southernmost Hidalgo County, hundreds of children have crossed the dark desert in near-freezing temperatures alone or with their parents to seek refuge from hunger and violence in their home countries.

María, who asked for her real name to be withheld, recently made the crossing with her 16-year old son – and more than 140 others – near the tiny community of Antelope Wells.

Why did a little Guatemalan girl die after crossing the US border? Read more

“At the end, the bus drove without lights, without anything, so quiet,” said María, a mother from Guatemala City who made the crossing with the aid of a smuggler. “We walked the last mile.”

Antelope Wells is no Liberty Island. But, illuminated by dozens of white floodlights, the port of entry is still a beacon in the dark: “There were so many lights,” she said. “All I can remember is the lights.”

On a recent night at St Anthony’s Catholic Church in southern New Mexico, where María and her son were given temporary shelter, she wore a hospital gown, blue scrubs and a cast on her broken right ankle.

“It’s too hard to make it on your own,” María said, alluding to her smugglers. “You don’t know where to go.”

Migrants, largely from Central America, are turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents who staff a barracks known as a “forward operating base” in the Antelope Wells compound. For years, this pattern of “give-ups” has been common in south Texas and California, but the number of asylum-seeking families is now swelling in New Mexico.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Luis Acosta keeps a tight grip on five-year-old Angel Jesus as a caravan of migrants crossed into Mexico from Guatemala. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters

Over the course of 15 days, María and her son traveled across the Mexico-Guatemala border, through Mexico City, Queretaro and into San Miguel de Allendewhere they spent a night with other migrants in a warehouse. There, they boarded a final bus through the city of Chihuahua and north to the New Mexico border.

María wouldn’t say what she paid the smuggler. But she questioned whether she would make the journey again – then recanted. “I would do it again to save my son,” she said.

On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security abruptly announced a new policy to turn back Central American asylum seekers to Mexico, where they could wait months or years for their asylum claim to be heard by a US judge.

Should the new policy hold, María and her son could be among the last to cross under a practice in place since the Refugee Act of 1980, under which migrants can request asylum on the basis of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular group or political opinion. The law has allowed migrants to make such requests whether they arrived legally or illegally.

Border Patrol apprehended 396,579 unauthorized immigrants in fiscal 2018, and 54,690 of them – 14% – expressed credible fear of returning to their home country, a preliminary step toward seeking asylum. That figure is far more than the 38,269 people who asked for asylum in fiscal 2018 by entering through an official port of entry where officials are restricting the number who can cross.

The desert landscape around Antelope Wells is deceptively beautiful. In the daytime, black cattle graze on blond grasslands between the rugged Big Hatchet and Animas mountains, and the wide-open sky evokes dreams of the American West.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Border Patrol agent searches the terrain in the Animas mountains in New Mexico’s boot heel. Photograph: Roberto E Rosales/AP

But the remote port of entry closes at 4pm, and nighttime makes the terrain – pocked with burrows and washouts – especially treacherous.

Fleeing a hell the US helped create: why Central Americans journey north Read more

The port compound offers relative safety from the elements outside. But medical care is nearly 100 miles away on the US side, and the distances are as risky for agents as they are for migrants.

“There is no difference whether it is an agent or an alien,” said Ramiro Cordero, a Border Patrol spokesman. Antelope Wells “is 94 miles away from the Lordsburg Border Patrol station, 70 miles away from any major highway.”

Caal became sick and feverish at Antelope Wells, according to CBP officials. When the transport bus arrived at the Lordsburg Border Patrol station an hour and a half later, her father said she wasn’t breathing, according to the account by CBP officials.

Emergency responders resuscitated the child twice, then airlifted her to an El Paso hospital, where she died. An autopsy is underway.

When she made the crossing, María walked the last mile to the port of entry with a broken ankle, having twisted it days earlier in Mexico; Border Patrol agents took her to a hospital.

She had pressed on through the pain, she said, with the hope of claiming asylum in the US. She plans to send for the police reports and documents she has gathered to prove they have come to escape extortion by criminal gangs, she said.

“We live in a red-light district, and organized crime has grown,” she said. “They started to extort me. And because I didn’t want to pay, they wanted to take my son for the gang. I couldn’t allow him to become part of the maras.”

Many of those migrating today will see their asylum claims denied. US immigration judges denied 65% of the 42,224 asylum cases reviewed in 2018, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The denial rate has risen 55% over six years.

CBP officials cast doubt on the relevance of the migrants’ asylum claims in a media call earlier this month, charging that migrants make claims after they “have been coached by others”.

But despite poor chances, the people have kept coming, and this deadly swathe of desert beckons: 163 people arrived on 6 December, when Caal crossed with her father; 257 came on 15 December; 239 on 17 and 18 December. The large groups have been sporadic but persistent, Cordero said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A four-year-old boy weeps in the arms of his uncle as he and others were apprehended by border control agents near the US border. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters

Last week, María and her son were headed to San Francisco, to meet family and start a new life.

And the desert at Antelope Wells had fallen quiet. There was no movement of shadows across the line or babies crying in the cold. Only the sound of barking dogs in the compound and yelping coyotes cut through the gnawing wind. An American flag whipped and waved.