AGUA PRIETA, Mexico The number of Mexican migrants trying to sneak into the U.S.across the Arizona border has dropped by half since hundreds of U.S. civilians began guarding the area earlier this week, say Mexican officials assigned to protect their citizens.
But that does not mean that the migrants have given up. Most remain determined to enter the United States and say they will find other places to cross.
Before volunteers with the Minuteman Project began patrolling, Mexican officials encountered at least 400 undocumented migrants daily. On Monday, the second day that Minutemen were present, they spotted 198, said Bertha de la Rosa of Grupo Beta, a group sponsored by the Mexican government that discourages people from crossing illegally and aids those stranded in the desert.
"They say they will look for another place (to cross), or wait a while - but they are not giving up,"said de la Rosa, the group's coordinator in Agua Prieta, a town across the border from Douglas, Ariz.
Grupo Beta, along with armed state police officers, began patrolling the Mexican side of the border on Sunday.
Jose Luis Mercado is among those determined to cross.
Mercado, a farm worker from central Mexico state, was one of 10 migrants who had walked through the desert all night Monday and early Tuesday before they were abandoned by the smuggler they had paid to get them across the border.
Like most migrants trying to cross into the United States from this dusty border city, Mercado had been unaware of the Minuteman Project, despite extensive news-media coverage about the group.
He and his companions were resting in a ditch when they were spotted by Hector Salazar, a Grupo Beta agent.
"It's not only border patrol, but also armed civilians," Salazar said. "Don't give them the pleasure of detaining you."
The migrants declined Grupo Beta's offer of a discounted bus ticket back home. They vowed to attempt the crossing as many times as it takes to make it into the United States.
The Minutemen say that their purpose is partly to draw attention to the influx of migrants across the Arizona-Mexico border. Of the 1.1 million illegal migrants caught by the U.S. Border Patrol last year, 51 percent crossed at the Arizona border.