Dennis Michelini is a U.S. Border Patrol pilot.

A boat on the Mexican sideA "landing" is the place where the illegal aliens first hit U.S. soil. Some parts of the river have natural shallow areas, "crossings" that allow people to forge across the river on foot. North of Laredo, a few of these would have been used by Santa Ana as he marched his troops, horses, and cannons to the Alamo. There are other crossings that are too deep to wade across, and here the people wishing to cross must take a skiff or rowboat. Either way—by foot or boat—a person will be charged a fee by someone on the Mexican side to use that departure point.

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Not every bit of land along the border gets used with the same frequency. Some areas have a high density of crossers, and some have a relatively low amount. If agents work a particular area frequently over the course of few weeks, the smuggler who owns the boat will simply relocate a mile or two away. This goes on for years. It is a business cycle.

A typical landingThe Rio Grande in southern Texas is thickly lined with cane, a densely growing bamboolike plant. Being in a landing is like being swallowed in a cave. The cane walls in the sides and may cover much of the sky. The narrow paths don't offer much lateral movement off their meandering courses. Paths splinter off up stream, down stream, away from the river, back toward it; they open to large cavernous spaces filled with discarded clothing and bags, and then abruptly narrow again. Sometimes the cane grows for only a few feet off the river and other times it may be a couple hundred yards thick.

I flew across a few landings and looked for sign on the muddy banks. I looked for the scattering of footprints or the sharp lines dug into the mud from the bow of a boat. It is not as if agents know all the crossings. New ones are always being made, popular ones forgotten, and forgotten ones rediscovered. It is a chess board that rearranges itself.

On the riverside of the Briscoe ranch I landed to take a better look at a grass trail leading away from the river. From the air, grass trails made by cattle appear different from those made by people. There are other clues. Cattle walk from shade to watering hole to shade. People also walk to water holes, but they have a direction in mind, a direction they intend to go after the water. Grass trail from humans continue on and over past fence lines. Cattle walk to a fence line and then turn to follow it. I walked out the grass trail to where it passed over a little bit of dirt. I saw one heel mark from a boot. There was not much loose dirt. I got back in the helicopter and flew the grass trail for as long as I could. Even though I had only seen one print, I knew from the size of the trail there are about 20 in this group.

I radioed agents on the ground and found out that two sign cutters had already looked at this trail. They were ahead of me and had not asked for assistance because they were having a hard time aging the sign. It looked bad, windblown, where they had it. I told them what little I had seen looked good, but that it was in some thick grass and that the grass might have protected it. The sign cutters had been walking the trail back and forth for about 20 minutes and still could not come to a conclusion. They decided to try another cut on an area further along the trail.

It is always difficult to age sign. Soil conditions, elevation, brush, moisture, and time of day all contribute in varying degrees to the quality of the print. Something as simple as knowing what time the dew settled could explain to a sign cutter why clean, fresh-looking sign suddenly looks tremendously aged; the dew settled on the ground causing the dirt to stick to the shoes and boots resulting in what appears to be a windblown print. Cattle move in rather regular schedules. Is the group walking "on top" of the cattle tracks, or is the sign of the group "cattled out" and buried underneath them?

The two sign cutters radioed to say that the sign looks good and that one of them will be walking the sign out and the other will go out ahead to make a further cut. I found the agent walking the sign and flew low over his head. He let me know the group was knocking over cactus and that the cactus looked fresh; it was still wet. A group would only be knocking over cactus if they were in a hurry.

The agent then called to say that the sign had taken a sharp turn to the south toward an arroyo, a dry creek bed. This group was close and was trying to find cover. A few moments after entering the thickly overgrown arroyo, the agent began finding bodies scattered throughout the brush. It took 30 minutes to pull them all out.

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