Samaritan Who Aided Illegals Is Latest Victim of Increasing Border Violence

His friends say Miguel Angel Cancino Rios, known as Tobi, was a kind of border good Samaritan, intervening on behalf of prospective victims targeted by the thieves who prowl the no-man’s land that is the U.S.-Mexico border strip in San Diego.

“He liked to help people,� recalled Alex Campos, a close friend who says Cancino, a Tijuana resident, roomed with him in his home in the San Diego border neighborhood of San Ysidro. “He hated to see people get robbed or hurt out there,� said Campos, gesturing to the border canyons whose many paths lead directly past his driveway. “Tobi hated to see that.�

Last Monday, Cancino, a former carwash employee and canyon vendor, played the role of border benefactor for the last time. A thief shot him several times in the head and neck, an incident that friends and a witness say occurred after Cancino directed several robbers to leave a group of immigrants alone.

Cancino was the fourth and most recent fatality in a bloody two-month period along the heavily traveled, two-mile slice of the border just to the west of the giant port of entry at San Ysidro. The violence has the community--from undocumented border-crossers to vendors to smugglers--jittery about their well-being.

“No one’s safe here now,� said Miguel Angel Ponce, a chunky smuggler who says he has guided groups into San Diego for two years and who was alongside Cancino when he was shot. The two were drinking beer, singing and talking, Ponce said, when the two assailants passed by and one gunned down Cancino after he told them to stop robbing a nearby group of immigrants.

“I’m scared. We’re all scared now,� Ponce said as he stood at a hilltop spot about 50 yards from a cross marking a fatal border shooting April 15. Half a dozen border-crossers waited for Ponce alongside the cross.

Violent thieves have long prowled the canyon-studded border zone, where hundreds of vulnerable would-be immigrants, many carrying their life’s savings, gather each afternoon, staging for the move north. Many are scared and unfamiliar with the area. Women and children are increasingly among the border-crossers.

Darkness provides convenient cover for criminals, many of whom are glue-sniffers and abusers of other drugs. The robbers usually work in groups, often encircling 15 or 20 border-crossers. Rapes and robberies are common. Assailants are usually armed, often with pistols.

Despite the area’s violent reputation, border-crossers and authorities say the last two months have been particularly bloody--especially in the hillside crossing area to the west of San Ysidro. That rugged strip has emerged as perhaps the area’s most concentrated undocumented crossing zone since U.S. authorities installed stadium-type lighting last year along the flood-control levees of the Tia Juana River, which prompted many of the migrants who once crossed in the levee area to move westward.

The thieves--known as bajadores (literally, “downers,�) or bajapollos (“chicken-downers,� after the pollo or “chicken� sobriquet widely applied to undocumented border-crossers)--have followed the movement westward. And, with more people crossing--U.S. immigration authorities say arrests of undocumented foreigners have increased by more than 50% in San Diego during the last six months--the numbers of thieves appear to have grown commensurately.

One of the most recent victims was a 13-year-old boy, Roberto Camunas Cortes, who was shot in the head March 12 near the levees. Robbery is suspected as a motive in this and the other border slayings, police say, although no suspects have been arrested.

San Diego police say they have bolstered patrols in the border area because of the violence. A uniformed, six-person Border Crime Intervention Unit regularly makes rounds through the zone.

“From what I’ve observed there has been an increase in violent crime along the border recently, and we are taking steps to correct that,� said Lt. Bill Brown of the San Ysidro station, who declined to elaborate on the steps being undertaken.

In the view of Roberto Martinez, a longtime advocate for immigrants, San Diego police should be doing a lot more to stem the crime problem against the helpless border-crossers. However, he and other activists caution that patrols must be deployed in a way to minimize shootings by the police and U.S. immigration agents, who critics say have wrongly shot migrants in the past, mistaking them in the darkness for thieves--an allegation heatedly denied by city and federal officials.

“The police need to be out there doing something, but not shooting innocent people,� said Martinez, border representative for the social-action arm of the Quaker Church. “Right now, the violence is the worst that I’ve seen it in awhile.�