Border Patrol agents call it el Tour de Los Estados Unidos. The winners of this Tour gain illegal entry into the US from Mexico on bicycles they use to cross the border.
The rundown bikes cost $20 to $25 each. They run the gamut from mountain bikes to Chinese models with wing handlebars. The reflectors are removed; one bike was painted camouflage green, while others are spray painted black.
The immigrants ride the bikes at night on hiking trails or unused desert roads. The Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, right, is a favorite route.
“Usually you hear what sounds like off-road truck tires coming toward you down the road 'cuz there's so many of them,” Border Patrol spokesman Sean King told KVOA-TV in Tucson. Usually groups of 8 to 10 ride together, although he's seen as many as 30.
On foot, it takes persons crossing over from Mexico about three days to make the trip to Three Points, a staging area for smugglers south of Tucson, according to Reuters. On a bicycle, the trip can be made overnight.
The Border Patrol seems to be responding, however. The Border Patrol website says it “even employs horses, all-terrain motorcycles, bicycles, and snowmobiles.”
In its 2002 article “Death in the Desert,” the National Catholic Reporter described a bicycle found and displayed by volunteers for Humane Borders, a group that sets up water stations for migrants in the desert so they don't succumb to the heat.
“The exhibit also holds a stroller and a Caribou bicycle, its tire tubes all shot to hell, punctured by cactus needles, on the trek through impossible terrain.”
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One Mexicano told me that footsteps are picked up by the listening devices, but a bicycle does not set off those instruments