A Tragic Journey Home

Julio Cesar Gallegos last talked to his family in June from a hotel in Tijuana. The 23-year-old illegal immigrant had just been robbed trying to cross the border through the mountains east of San Diego.

In Los Angeles, his wife, Jacqueline, was six months pregnant with their second child, and he was eager to make another try at getting home, this time through the vast expanses of the Imperial Valley.

Her sister tried to convince him that it was too remote, too dangerous. He agreed, but he didn’t call home again.

Days passed and Gallegos never arrived at his apartment in Boyle Heights, never returned to his job packing frozen Chinese food in Vernon. His family waited, growing inevitably nervous, and then began searching through Baja California.

That search ended with a phone call Aug. 13, when he and six others were found lying dead in the desert in the withered shade of a lone salt cedar tree. The Imperial County coroner’s office says they died weeks before, overheated and dehydrated in a place where temperatures in the sun often rise above 120 degrees.

“It’s something so awful,” said Jacqueline Gallegos, who is an American citizen. “They’re just people trying to cross for a better life. His life was a lot better here.”

Thursday, her husband was buried in a land that offered decent work and the hope that his children would rise above simple labor. Scores of loved ones came to say goodbye on a green hillside in Montebello, far from the flat desert inferno that took his life and at least 11 others this month.

At Resurrection Cemetery, while Father Rafael Casillas denounced the smugglers who often leave immigrants without food and water in the desert, Jacqueline Gallegos held her 2-year-old son and cried. At the coffin, Julio’s father, Florentino, a former Mexican police officer, stood at her side, resolute and holding his head high until he broke down sobbing and bracing himself against his other son.

“The coyotes,” Casillas resounded, “who charge a fee and then leave the people to die, they are murderers.”

Based on reports from victims’ relatives, immigration authorities suspect that up to 23 immigrants may have been traveling in Gallegos’ group. One of the dead was a man with a pager who authorities suspect was a coyote. Another body was found Wednesday three to four miles east of the victims, and last week a body was discovered a couple miles north, officials said. Gallegos was traveling with his 17-year-old niece, Irma Estrada, and his nephew, Everardo Garcia. The young woman’s body has been found, but the nephew is still missing.

The valley has become a thriving underground immigration route since the recent crackdown 120 miles west in San Diego. So far this year, 21 immigrants have perished in the desert while 37 have drowned in the All-American Canal, said Jesse Lopez, deputy coroner investigator in Imperial County.

Gallegos tragic journey began in January when he left to visit his father who was sick in his small pueblo of Juchupila in central Mexico. He stayed there for months, waiting for his wife to raise funds to pay a coyote so that he could cross back into the United States.

He arrived in Tijuana in June, where he made one failed attempt to cross.

“He said he was going to get another coyote,” said Jacqueline Gallegos. “The last thing he said was, ‘He’s going to take me to Mexicali.’ ”

When he never arrived, his brothers and other relatives began spending their weekends in northern Baja California, showing pictures of Gallegos and trying to persuade Mexican authorities to investigate the case. They said police would not help them and suspect that they have been paid off by a powerful smuggling ring that charges more than $1,000 for each immigrant to cross. They said they did not want to mention the name of the ring for fear of retaliation.

Friends of Gallegos who have made illegal border crossings themselves felt certain that unscrupulous coyotes were responsible for his death.

“They tell you lies,” said one man from Gallegos’ hometown who asked that his name be withheld. “They tell you you are going to walk two or three hours. But once you’re inside, you can’t do anything because you’ll get lost. They keep saying one more hour, even if it will take more than a day.”

Casillas, who emigrated seven years ago from Jalisco, faulted corrupt Mexican officials, from police who take bribes to wealthy government officials who never provide work and food for the people they serve.

“I mainly put blame on the Mexican government because they haven’t done anything to stop the flood of people crossing the border. The people are desperate,” he said. “They should put these officials in the desert to experience what these people feel. That would be wonderful.”

Gallegos died with nothing but his wallet, a picture of his boy, who is named after him, and some ticket stubs from the lottery, which he loved to play. At first, his widow thought that he had been robbed, and that immigration authorities had merely found the body of the thief. She couldn’t accept that the man who loved taking his family to Chuckie Cheese, who used to work at a carnival and brought home enormous stuffed animals for his son, was dead.

“It was so ugly how he died,” she said. “No one deserved that.”

The family plans to pursue the investigation and the Immigration and Naturalization Service has offered $5,000 for help in determining who abandoned the immigrants.