The Devil’s Highway

Ten years have passed since the publication of The Devil’s Highway, and thirteen have passed since the deaths of the Yuma 14. “Everything has changed,” Urrea writes, “and the worst of it remains the same.”

Urrea was “surprised” to watch his book take off, and take on a life of its own as it became required reading at many high schools and colleges across the country. Urrea remembers a question from someone he sarcastically refers to as a “helpful young man” who, in a group discussion of the book, asked: “Why should we read a book about people who shouldn’t even be here? They’re like, illegal.”

While the idea behind the book’s creation was to generate discussion, Urrea reveals that the deeper idea eventually became one of bearing witness to “an exodus straight from the biblical template,” to  which nobody seemed to be paying any attention. As Urrea dropped his personal agenda for the book and allowed it to become a story about all of humanity, he began to realize the ways in which blame is often mislaid in border issues, especially where the Border Patrol is concerned.

Though in his initial research on and contact with the Border Patrol, the agents were suspicious of Urrea, he notes that it was a “holy” experience to eventually have the rescuers open up to him. He writes that the “triumvirate of Desolation—walkers, smugglers, and Migra—all were worthy of witness.” 

Urrea wonders if the border is a region or simply “an idea nobody can agree on.” He laments that radio talk show hosts still attempt to “horrify their listeners,” acting as though there is a “biblical flood of ‘illegals’” coming across the border. The immigration debate is about regulating illegals—that is, human beings—rather than the border itself. More than anything, Urrea laments that all of this is still going on despite the fact that “illegal immigration has fallen by over 70 percent” in the ten years since his book was initially published.

The Wellton Station has grown, in ten years, from a thirty-two agent operation to a three-hundred agent one, though with waning illegal immigration numbers there has been a “drop-off in clients.” Urrea describes Border Patrol agents as “warriors,” and expresses his gratitude for the fact that so many have been supportive of his book and have provided him with “a constant flow of witness.”

Urrea considers the current state of smuggling. Now that “some villages in Mexico are devoid of working men,” it is now mostly women and children crossing the border out of necessity. Over one third of women who cross the border are raped or sexually assaulted at some point on their journey, and, often, women are led over the border with their children only to have the children “dragged back to Mexico” and kept for ransom, such that the mother must work to buy her children back once she arrives in America. Now, the drug cartels control the smuggling routes.

Urrea briefly notes that he left out his own personal experiences along the border during the research and writing of The Devil’s Highway. He left them out, initially, because he felt it would be a “sin” to write about them alongside the stories of those who risked everything to come to America. He reveals that he had accidentally crossed paths with Don Moi before he even knew who he was, and that he learned a great deal from Border Patrol Agents, though, unfortunately, Urrea has “lost track” of the survivors. He also revealed that Reymundo Sr.’s nephew wrote to him after the book’s publication, expressing gratitude to Urrea for writing the truth of what happened to his uncle, and confessing that he himself had made the same journey his uncle did—and survived. Reymundo’s nephew now holds a Ph.D., and is a professor and scholar in world economics. He hopes to “save the border” and “heal relations” between the U.S. and Mexico.