Food and Environment Reporting Network

This article was produced in collaboration with The Baffler. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. On the morning of March 25, 2023, an estimated thirty thousand protesters set out across the countryside near the village of Sainte-Soline in western France. They marched for miles in muddy fields and on country roads before coming in sight of the object of the protest: the unfinished 190-million-gallon Sainte-Soline reservoir, a taxpayer-funded boondoggle intended to create a surplus of water for irrigated agriculture. At that time, it was nothing more than a hole in the ground, fifty feet deep and as wide as several football fields. When filled with groundwater via pumps driven below the water table, however, it was to become part of a system of more than two dozen reservoirs in the Vendee, Deux-Sèvres, and Charente-Maritime departments of western France. Proposed in the late 2010s, the reservoirs’ broad purpose was to help large agricultural operators meet their already enormous water needs in the production of corn, a singularly thirsty cash crop, as heat waves and drought worsened across the country. Put another way, the reservoir complex was a form of climate adaptation, but one that attempted to monopolize a public good—water, that basic necessity of life on Earth—for the benefit of private interests. The protesters considered this both unwise and unjust. At Sainte-Soline, the largest of the planned reservoirs, they wanted construction stopped, the site demolished. By occupying the reservoir for a day, the intention was to make their displeasure known by their numbers, defying local authorities’ ban on such demonstrations. As the first group of marchers crossed the field toward the site, they saw that on the towering berm around the reservoir hundreds of cops had massed, and thousands more were posted in the cover of a forest that edged the field. Then, according to reports, the police attacked without warning. Tear gas sent the crowd running, a toxic haze obscured the landscape, and helicopters whipped overhead while armored vehicles were deployed in the distance. A hail of sting-ball grenades exploded in the air and at people’s feet, sending rubber shrapnel in all directions. A man’s skull was blown open, a woman’s foot shattered, and several people lay blinded by tear gas. As the injured screamed in agony, a few of the marchers fought back. A group of young men, masked and wearing only black and carrying wooden shields, threw Molotov cocktails and rocks dug out of the dirt; others shot fireworks at the forces de l’ordre. Per news accounts, the protesters set at least three police cars on fire and injured sixteen officers. The repression arose, in part, because the antireservoir movement, radicalized and well organized, had succeeded in monkey-wrenching agribusiness in France. The battle of Sainte-Soline, as it became known, did not issue out of a political vacuum. It was the culmination of years of conflict over the expanding reservoir system in western France. A coalition of French citizens—antireservoir activists, smallhold farmers, environmentalists, students, eco-saboteurs, and black-clad anarchists—demonstrated against several reservoirs in the Deux-Sèvres and Charente-Maritime departments in 2022, with some of the marchers tearing out pumps and pipes and ripping up and setting aflame the huge plastic tarpaulin linings that kept the water from percolating into the ground. Others had sabotaged reservoirs across the region under cover of night and escaped undetected. The police expected similar property destruction at Sainte-Soline. After two hours, the battle was over, the protesters forced to flee. The government claimed that nearly fifty police were injured but only seven demonstrators required medical aid. Protest organizers, however, counted two hundred injured in the fighting, including one who fell into a coma from a sting-ball grenade that exploded by his head. The authorities had launched as many as five thousand grenades and tear-gas canisters. Around 3,200 cops had marshalled for the attack, deployed along with nine helicopters, four armored vehicles, and four water cannons, directed from a command center overlook-ing the field of battle. The attack had been effectively greenlit by Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister in the Macron government, who in the days and weeks following the bloodshed denounced the marchers as “ecoterrorists.” Human rights investigators with the UN had a different view. They called the violence at Sainte-Soline “alarming” and “anti-democratic” and noted that France is the only country in the EU known to deploy tear gas and stun grenades against a peaceful assembly. The repression arose, in part, because the antireservoir movement, radicalized and well organized, had succeeded in monkey-wrenching agribusiness in France—direct action against entrenched interests that could not be tolerated. Machines in the Garden I visited western France in 2024 to write about the antireservoir movement, and my first stop was at the home of one of its most outspoken leaders, an elfin environmentalist in his seventies named Jean-Jacques Guillet, in the village of Amuré in the Deux-Sèvres. By trade a carpentry teacher, Guillet had spent decades in some form of elected officialdom, typically as a rabble-rouser. As mayor of Amuré for nineteen years, he clashed with local farmers about their use of GMOs. For six years he was president of the local waste management authority and made a name for himself stopping the construction of a garbage incinerator in the city of Niort and, before that, a nuclear-waste burial site in the town of Neuvy-Bouin. What most interested him were the consequences of the transformation of farming in France after World War II. It was to him a history of the destruction of a venerable peasant culture and the erasure of the landscape of his youth. “We say, ‘It is not water that flows through our veins, it is the river of our childhood,’” Guillet told me. “I was a child of agriculture, I grew up on a farm, and if today I am a seventy-three-year-old activist, it’s because, without being really conscious of it, I was traumatized in my childhood after the war,” when these terrible changes took place. If you were to look at aerial photos of France in 1950, it was a country of millions of small parcels, irregularly shaped, diverse in what they produced, a “nation of three hundred cheeses,” as Charles de Gaulle reportedly once quipped. This patchwork of distinct food cultures had evolved over centuries of experimentation and adaptation based in local knowledge of the interactions of weather and soil, crops, and livestock. “We were smart enough,” said Guillet, “to understand that one did not just do anything one wanted anywhere.” Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. EmailThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ In the wake of the privations of wartime, France turned to the American model of productivist monoculture. Traditional wisdom was jettisoned and local diversity pushed aside for the cultivation of crops best tended by machines for maximum output and efficiency. Large parts of rural France fell to a regimen that required expensive tractors; heady volumes of fossil fuels, fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides; the capture of water for irrigation; and, not least, vast open fields where machines could run unimpeded over miles of uniform terrain. “Nowhere was the transformation of the agricultural sector effected so quickly and so thoroughly as in France,” University of Oxford historian Venus Bivar writes in her account of postwar farming upheaval in the country. “At the close of the Second World War, the agricultural sector was for the most part a backward holdover of the nineteenth century, and yet by the mid-1970s, France had become the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural goods—second only to the United States.” Taming the land to make way for petroleum-powered tractors would prove devastating for western France’s bocage country, a tangled matrix of woodland, heath, fields, hedgerows, and orchards laced between brooks, rivers, and ancient canals. It was in the bocage country that Guillet romped as a child in the 1950s. Within a decade, large parts of the bocage came under assault. A teenage Guillet watched as bulldozers tore out the hedges and woods and straightened and redirected rivers and streams, transforming waterways into what was effectively “a large collector drain, the goal [being] to move water as quickly as possible for the sowing of cereals.” FNSEA defends the interests not of the workers but of the agro-chemical industry, the banks that finance Big Ag, and the largest and most powerful agribusiness companies and allied cooperatives. The dominant voice of French agriculture, and the chief proponent of the corn regime, is the National Federation of Agricultural Workers’ Union (FNSEA), established in 1946. Though its membership includes lots of individuals who own farms, FNSEA defends the interests not of the workers but of the agro-chemical industry, the banks that finance Big Ag, and the largest and most powerful agribusiness companies and allied cooperatives. According to Corporate Europe Observatory, a Belgian-based watchdog, FNSEA is “France’s agribusiness war machine.” It is “much more than just a farmer’s trade union: it has been the co-manager, together with large sections of the French State, of France’s agricultural system for the past 50 years.” FNSEA promotes the distribution and use of toxic pesticides and herbicides in Europe, and it is also a proponent of pesticide-dependent grain as a cash crop for export. The union has been the loudest booster of reservoir construction in the face of the drought that has afflicted western France. And, unsurprisingly, it has gone to extreme lengths to make sure its interests are protected against dissenters. In 2019, FNSEA partnered with the National Gendarmerie, the branch of France’s armed forces that focuses on civilian law enforcement, to establish a special intelligence unit, code-named Demeter after the Greek goddess of the harvest, that would single out for surveillance and harassment anyone who engaged in “agribashing.” Agribashing was defined to include criminal activity—trespassing on agricultural facilities, acts of sabotage, and so on—along with “actions of an ideological nature,” including “simple symbolic actions denigrating the agricultural sector.” In cities, towns, prefectures, and rural police stations, and with local members of FNSEA lending a hand, Demeter intel operatives created a network of informants across France. French courts ruled the program illegal and shut it down in 2022. The Demeter network, however, may still be in place, according to antireservoir activists. When one approaches a reservoir site in the fields of western France today, the response from watchful vigilantes can amount to a menacing display. A few months before I met with him, Jean-Jacques Guillet led a group of fifty students from a Belgian engineering school on a tour of a reservoir not far from his home in Amuré. Angry farmers on tractors—he assumed they were FNSEA—surrounded them at the site, Guillet says; not long after, gendarmes showed up, asking them what they were doing there. Before the cops arrived, Guillet was able to tell the students about the threat the reservoirs represented: They were surprised to hear that in France, a democratic country, where we consider water a public good, it can be grabbed by a few, stored in the sun, on black tarps at the mercy of evaporation, at the mercy of cyano-bacteria. To be more stupid is impossible. And the cherry on top is that to fill the reservoirs we take water from aquifers. If we were taking the flow from a river or marsh, it wouldn’t be much smarter, but at least it would be less stupid. But to take high-quality water beneath us, protected from light and to place it in the sun? And best of all, to do it using public funds, with the support of elected officials? Rivers Run Through It The rivers that flow out of the gentle uplands of western France—the Mignon, the Sèvre Niortaise, the Vendée, and others—come together at roughly a single point west of the city of Niort, by the Atlantic Ocean, in the 386-square-mile coastal wetland-cum-canal system called the Marais Poitevin. No longer a true marsh, the Poitevin is an artifact of human intervention that began in the seventh century, when local monks embarked on construction of a complex of earthen canals and small barrier dams to drain stretches of land in the delta where the many rivers debouched to the sea. The man-made Marais Poitevin acted as a natural reservoir, storing excess water from the uplands. It became a marvel of bocage country—“It is one of the most important wetlands on the European continent,” said one account of the Poitevin, “a favorite stopover for migratory birds” and habitat for European otters—maintained for most of the last 1,400 years first by the monks, then by generations of peasants. Read more Climate Change Read more Farms and Labor Read more International Reporting Among those who tended to the wounded at the battle of Sainte-Soline was a hulking, bearded forty-eight-year-old activist named Julien LeGuet, who had spent much of his life as a boat guide and self-taught naturalist in the Marais Poitevin. When the first group of reservoirs was proposed in 2017, LeGuet helped organize the opposition under the banner of a grassroots group called Bassines Non Merci, or Reservoirs No Thank You, which he cofounded that year with a collective of like-minded activists, environmentalists, and smallhold farmers. It was Reservoirs No Thank You that helped spearhead the march at Sainte-Soline. I spent a day with LeGuet poling on his punt on the Sèvre Niortaise and in the canals that connected to it in the Marais Poitevin. With the spread of industrial-scale farming and the rise of the corn regime, the water had been poisoned with agricultural runoff, so toxified that locals advised not to swim in it. Thirty years ago, when he was a teenager, he and his friends bathed in that water all summer long. Old-timers attested that at one time, as recently as seventy years ago, one could drink the water. Julien’s seventy-year-old father, Christian, a retired schoolteacher who hosted me for a week at his drafty old stone house, told me about the wetland as it once was. “When Julien was a boy, he used to collect frogs, scores of them every day. They’re gone, mostly. And the dragonflies, the variety we once had, the noise they made, the water buzzing with them, the frogs croaking, the number of insects. You don’t see the same plants in the water either.” The water lentils that typically float on the surface of healthy wetlands, richly green, a protein source for waterfowl and cover for the fry and tadpoles of fishes and amphibians, used to be so abundant that the canals of the marsh were dubbed the Green Venice. But the water lentils, according to Christian, were dying out, slowly disappearing. “We are young rebels who have grown up with the ecological disaster in the background and precariousness as our only horizon.”First Tremors LeGuet poled our boat in the cold November afternoon under gray skies, wearing a sweatshirt that said “eco-terroriste.” Not long ago, he had discovered a high-end surveillance camera camouflaged on the ground in front of his father’s neighbor’s house but pointing directly at his father’s home. He assumed it was placed there by the gendarmerie or Demeter agents to keep track of the comings and goings chez la famille LeGuet. He knew he was a target and leaned into it: hence the blaring words on the sweatshirt, which he wore every day I saw him. When I remarked on the sparkling clearness of the water, he insisted that it was full of poisons, that at least two hundred types of chemicals, including a variety of neurotoxins, have been detected there. He related this with a heaving sigh and a shake of his head. There’s only so much of this type of grief one can bear without descending into rage. In an essay he wrote that was published in 2023, LeGuet addressed the “ecocidal business executives of the sprawling tentacular FNSEA”: You who idolize to the extreme a capitalistic system and all forms of techno-solutionism, you who are ready to blow up nurturing lands to dig megacraters surrounded with megadams made waterproof by an ocean of black tarps. For 15 years, in the Marais Poitevin, some of you thought well to come here and disturb the water and soil cycles. . . . you thought we’d let this happen? You thought we wouldn’t resist? What shape, though, should resistance take? In the summer of 2021, LeGuet and other representatives of Reservoirs No Thank You met with members of a grassroots environmental action group called Les Soulèvements de la Terre, or Earth Uprisings, to answer that question. The group was an outgrowth of a successful land-defense movement that had formed in northwestern France, in the rural community of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, where farmers had been fighting for decades to protect four thousand acres of small-hold bocage farmland from destruction for a planned airport. Starting in 2008, activists and anarchists joined the farmers’ movement, and despite attempts by successive administrations to evict the land defenders, who fought repeated battles with police that involved tear gas and beatings and lots of injuries, the airport was never built and the bocage was left intact. The occupation at Notre-Dame-des-Landes—nicknamed zone à defendre (ZAD) as a middle finger at the developer’s common lingo “zone à déveloper”—provided the model for resistance that Earth Uprisings would now uphold. After the founding of Uprisings in January of 2021, chapters sprung up from one side of the country to the other, though the exact numbers of its membership were unknown. The group’s 2024 manifesto, First Tremors, a three-hundred-page, anonymously authored book published by radical Paris imprint La Fabrique Éditions, made clear their vision of ecological revolt in the context of global capitalism that had become “intoxicated by Herculean power” and left the natural world a shambles. “We are young rebels who have grown up with the ecological disaster in the background and precariousness as our only horizon,” said the manifesto. It inveighed “against the urbanization that tends to cover [the planet] with concrete, to infinitely extend the tentacles of roads, lines, and flows,” the landscape suffocated with infrastructure. It denounced the extractivist economy “that pollutes irremediably in the service of fossil capitalism.” Earth Uprisings proposed three prongs for land defense: occupation (of places, by people en masse who refuse to budge); blockade (of industrial activities and byways—roads, for example—that threaten those places); and sabotage (of industrial machines and property), which they called “disarmament.” They echoed the long history of working-class machine-breaking in Europe and hailed especially the antecedent of the Luddites of England, artisanal weavers who in the 1810s found themselves out of work with the advent of mechanical looms and took action by donning masks in the night to smash the machines with hammers and clubs. Starting in 2021, cells of direct actionists who issued communiqués via Earth Uprisings sabotaged cement and concrete factories, sand quarries, road construction sites, and road-building equipment across France. Following the meeting that summer with Reservoirs No Thank You, the list of targets expanded to include the reservoirs of the Vendee, Deux-Sèvres, and Charente-Maritime departments. The movement thereafter grew by leaps and bounds. Autonomous collectives of French anarchists joined and would become instrumental in tactical and defensive strategy to fight back against violent policing and give other protesters, most of them terrified of battle, a better chance to exercise the right of assembly. Anarchists were willing to engage in physical combat with police and use incendiaries such as Molotov cocktails. As a general policy, the representatives from Earth Uprisings neither encouraged nor discouraged these acts of revolt. All rebels were welcome, all methods were in the running, as long as a line was drawn at the taking of life. (“We’re not terrorists!” LeGuet told me.) The movement was hardly fringe. By the end of 2021, FNSEA’s old enemy, the Peasant Confederation, a formidable union of smallhold farmers established in the 1980s to oppose agribusiness, had also joined the rebellion against the reservoirs. Arrayed against the water defenders, farmers, anarchists, and environmentalists were the FNSEA patrollers—a mix of “virile fraternity, binoculars, beers, sodas, and shotguns in the trunks of utility vehicles,” as described in First Tremors—who took up posts around reservoirs deemed most threatened. The rebels evaded them again and again, raiding the sites under cover of night. Saboteurs posted communiqués using names that evoked satire and enigma: here struck the “Regional Directorate for Water Protection,” there the “Fremens of the Marais Poitevin.” By the time of the Sainte-Soline march, so much damage to reservoirs had accrued across western France that the resources of FNSEA, the Macron government, and local municipalities and police prefectures had been exhausted by a campaign of sabotage that operated across hundreds of miles of rural terrain. The campaign was fluid, organized, anonymous, and relentless. “Considering the multitude of potential targets and the extent of the territory to be protected,” stated a prefectural decree from 2022, “the available law enforce-ment agencies will not be able to contain these disturbances.” Dead Reservoirs Some in the anti-reservoir movement saw the violence of March 25, 2023, as an explosion that issued from this administrative impotence. The odd thing about the Sainte-Soline site is there was nothing for the rebels to sabotage, no pipes or pumps or plastic tarps yet installed. The government defended with ferocity an empty crater because it was symbolic to hold the ground against unruly citizens. The seriousness of the police violence fell into vivid context when a government official noted in a hearing on Sainte-Soline that five thousand tear gas and sting-ball grenades fired in one day in that rural enclave was more than had been fired in 2018 across all of France (and this during the widespread unrest that year from the Gilets Jaunes protests). Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin attempted to legitimize the bloodshed at the battle of Sainte-Soline with a declaration that Earth Uprisings should be banned under French law, its principals and adherents to be charged and imprisoned as terrorists. Some reservoir projects had “died in the cradle . . . because elected officials are terrified of seeing a ‘Sainte-Soline’ in their backyard.”Julien LeGuet By dissolving Uprisings, rendering it an illegal entity and smearing by association all who worked with the group—including Reservoirs No Thank You, Julien LeGuet, Jean-Jacques Guillet, and so on—one could open the flood gates of mass arrests of ecological rebels. Darmanin issued his order for the dissolution of Earth Uprisings in June 2023, but within months France’s high court shut him down, stating it was Darmanin who was acting outside the law. “Inciting violence against property,” stated the court, “does not justify dissolution.” (In November, journalists with the newspaper Libération and the nonprofit investigative news site Mediapart revealed bodycam footage from gendarmes at the battle of Sainte-Soline that showed officers not only violating laws themselves in their use of weapons against protesters but also rejoicing in the thrill of injuring their targets.) A few days after my visit with LeGuet in the Marais Poitevin, I went for a drive with Guillet in his little electric car to take a tour of reservoir-construction sites across the Deux-Sèvres. Some of the sites had been sabotaged in the last year, others more recently, others not at all. Piloting dirt roads, we came upon a reservoir in the afternoon light. The barbed-wire fencing of the berm rose from a sea of dead corn stalks, and when we approached the perimeter a surveillance camera flashed from a fence pole. “Uhp,” said Guillet, winking at me. “They’ve got us.” “No, my friends,” he said, addressing the camera, “we are not here today to smash things or make trouble. That’s for another day.” He speculated on the ease of blowing the camera to bits with a carbine, then we got back in his car to continue the tour. We passed a pump that supplied a reservoir that repeatedly had been put out of commission. Someone, he said, kept hitting that pump again and again, tearing out its guts. It was just terrible, said Guillet, grinning like an imp. A few days earlier, Guillet and I had attended a march of around a thousand people who gathered in the morning fog in the village of Saint-Sauvant, in the uplands thirty miles east of the Marais Poitevin, not far from the battlefield at Sainte-Soline. The goal was to walk from the village in a procession that would cross the countryside on backroads to the site of the planned Saint-Sauvant reservoir, which had yet to be built. A sizable number of police—scores of officers, allegedly—were said to be hunkered in the forests along the route of the march. No one I talked to knew what to expect. An attack was possible, for whatever reason the state deemed fit. Perhaps the marchers would be allowed to proceed without trouble. The alliance of peasant farmers with Reservoirs No Thank You and Earth Uprisings’ direct actionists had produced a good run. Reservoirs in Deux-Sèvres were on hold, and in 2025 the authorities in the department of Vienne would announce the cancellation of the planned construction of forty-one other reservoirs, according to LeGuet. Some projects had “died in the cradle,” he told me, “abandoned without anyone knowing because elected officials are terrified of seeing a ‘Sainte-Soline’ in their backyard.” Prompted by lawsuits from nature conservation, fishing, and other environmental groups, French courts had weighed in and killed or delayed projects, finding them in violation of various laws, including those protecting water quality and wildlife. The list of questionable reservoirs included Sainte-Soline; a December 2024 court decision ruled that its construction threatened the habitat of an endangered bird species. At the same time, reservoirs as a publicly funded support for agribusiness have become a growing object of revulsion across France, largely because of the negative publicity the rebellion against them brought. After the violence at Sainte-Soline scared people from fighting in the fields, they opened their pocketbooks; one fundraiser for Reservoirs No Thank You in 2024 netted a sizable sum of donations, according to Jean-Jacques Guillet, though he declined to say how much, and close to two hundred new chapters of Earth Uprisings formed across France, Belgium, and Switzerland. In some instances, however, the Macron government had defied the court orders and continued building reservoirs. “We are in a kind of Mafia state then. The law has spoken, the government doesn’t listen,” Guillet told me. He had marched at Sainte-Soline and come under attack and now was one of the marchers at Saint-Sauvant. The bitterness and pain of events a year and half earlier had not been forgotten, and many of the people mustered had been in the battle and seen the wounded and heard their cries. Julien LeGuet was also here for the march. That morning, at his father’s house, LeGuet had been chain-smoking and guzzling coffee. He looked weary, like he’d slept in a ditch, and he was worried about how the day would unfold. He expected the worst. We set out past noon, the procession stretching a mile in length along muddy dirt roads through enormous fields of corn that had been cut for harvest. People sang and shouted slogans, and loudspeakers boomed music, and the marchers wanted to tell their story. I met a woman in her thirties named Laury Gingreau, a co-owner of a cooperative farm, where she and her partners in recent years had planted three thousand trees, including sixty different species, their goal the rewilding of the landscape. She had been tear-gassed at Sainte-Soline. “It was like war,” she told me. Gingreau joined Reservoirs No Thank You at its inception in 2017 and had no intention of backing off. I met a twenty-one-year-old philosophy student named Kate Saoirse, who told me the struggle against reservoirs was about “the nation-state versus the people who live in the land. It’s about ways of life lost to progress—which means colonialism, empire, corporate power.” She said she marched because she was “on the side of people living in the land.” We reached the site of the future Saint Sauvant reservoir. For miles around, except a few remaining vestigial forests, all one saw was machine-scythed corn that crunched underfoot. Little children carrying buckets of seeds—types of peas and wheat and other grains—sowed the fields with their parents in an act of protest against monoculture. Two peasant farmers spoke about water woes; LeGuet exhorted the crowd with a chant of “No bassaran!” (a joking homage to ¡No pasarán!,” the rallying cry of Republican and anarchist forces in the Spanish Civil War); and a deputé from the National Assembly, adorned with the tricolor sash that elected officials in France often wear at public events, inveighed against agribusiness. A dozen men and women with hammers and nails then proceeded to build a bird-viewing station out of rough-hewn logs. This was in honor of the ground-nesting little bustard, which is headed for extinction in western France because of the overdevelopment of its habitat. The march unfolded without incident, though at one point a young woman went to urinate in the forest along the route and flushed out a group of armored gendarmes hidden in the brush. The gendarmes ordered her to “piss somewhere else.” A drone followed the crowd, low in the fog. Cops in the distance, armed with long-lens cameras, took photographs. It was reasonable to assume the images would be held in data banks for use under whatever laws the government passes in the future to imprison so-called ecoterrorists—which is to say all those who defend land from the progress of the capitalist machine. Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 Drinking problems: A Kansas farm town confronts a tap-water crisis Elizabeth Royte,  July 19, 2018 2 For one historically Black California town, a century of water access denied Teresa Cotsirilos,  September 12, 2022 3 Why America’s food-security crisis is a water-security crisis, too Lela Nargi,  November 20, 2022 4 Why are we paying for crop failures in the desert? 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This article was produced in collaboration with The Baffler. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. This article is part of FERN’s series The Biodiversity Crisis A new deal for nature? 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By Carson Vaughan,  September 3, 2020 Can grazing save endangered grasslands? By Lynne Curry,  August 19, 2020 Is carbon farming a climate boon, or boondoggle? By Gabriel Popkin,  March 31, 2020 Can Asia’s infectious disease-producing wildlife trade be stopped? By Brian Barth,  March 23, 2020 Are we handling the bee crisis all wrong? By Rowan Jacobsen,  July 24, 2019 An unhealthy alliance between almonds and honeybees By Paige Embry,  June 20, 2019 It was the tule elk, of all things—those velvet-pelted, doe-eyed creatures once thought extinct—that ultimately drove the organic ranchers, an imperiled species themselves, out of the Point Reyes National Seashore. Point Reyes is a place whose beauty is heightened by contrast: a foggy peninsula where, just a thirty-mile drive north of San Francisco, coastal prairie meets virgin forest, rugged tide pools meet wetland esteros and sprawling lagoons, and, at least until very recently, domesticated livestock graze on oceanfront pastures within mooing distance of the fabled elk—the oafish cows and majestic tule the town’s unofficial odd-couple mascots. In October, I took a drive through this landscape with David Evans, a rancher who grew up inside the Point Reyes National Seashore, the federally protected wilderness area that stretches along eighty miles of undeveloped coast. Evans’s family has been running cattle on the peninsula since before California was even a state, but despite his beef bona fides, he isn’t your stereotypical meat-and-potatoes cattleman: in addition to riding his ATV, he likes to forage for mushrooms and make jam. In 1999, he launched Marin Sun Farms, an organic, pasture-raised meat and egg company he now runs with his wife, Claire—a former vegetarian—that supplies some of the Bay Area’s highest-quality organic meat to its most upscale markets and restaurants. Since the Point Reyes National Seashore was established in 1972, ranches like the Evanses’ have been a part of a Bay Area sustainable-food revolution that helped reconfigure our nation’s understanding of what we should eat, how we should eat it, and the ethics of its production. Bill Niman, of Niman Ranch fame—now the largest source of humanely raised, sustainably produced meat in the entire country, sold everywhere from Whole Foods to Michelin-starred restaurants—began ranching in what is now the Point Reyes National Seashore in the early seventies. Until last year, Albert Straus, of the beloved Straus Family Creamery, sourced nearly 15 percent of his organic milk from dairies inside the park. Evans’s Marin Sun Farms created a one-stop shop where the region’s organic ranches—some of them his neighbors on the Seashore—have their meat slaughtered, butchered, and sold at market, cutting out a number of middlemen and thus reducing costs and waste. Encouraged by their geography, the high quality of land, and the environmental regulations that govern the hundreds of people and some 1,500 species of plants and animals that live within the boundaries of the Seashore, many Point Reyes ranchers have joined influential Bay Area locavores like restaurateur Alice Waters and food writers Michael Pollan and Samin Nosrat in advocating for local food systems that support regional economies, reduce carbon and the use of toxic chemicals, improve human health, and restore soil quality. Ranches like Evans’s were presented as proof that these grand designs were possible. So successful (and rare) is this regional model that, when then-Prince Charles visited the United States in 2005 on an official tour of promising organic agricultural practices, he made a point to visit the farmers market in the eponymous town of Point Reyes—situated just a few miles outside the park boundary, with a population of 485—where he chatted up vendors, celebrating the region as one of the most successful examples of a pastoral landscape that still actually fed people rather than just attracted tourists and looked quaint in social media posts. At the same time, since 1978, the Seashore has provided crucial habitat to dozens of threatened, rare, or endangered species, including the tule elk, which had nearly gone extinct until finding sanctuary in Point Reyes. In fact, the Point Reyes National Seashore has proved to be one of the only places on Earth that this imperiled subspecies has been able to thrive, flourishing alongside the cattle. If elsewhere in the United States people with an investment in the country’s natural landscapes have too often fallen into a set of antagonistic binaries—tree huggers versus loggers, conservationists versus hunters, vegetarians versus ranchers—the beef and dairy farmers and the wilderness lovers of Point Reyes achieved a rare peace. Their conviviality proved that ecosystem conservation and sustainable food production could, in fact, coexist, even on a warming planet teeming with evermore hungry humans. But that accord collapsed a few months before my ride-along with Evans and now he suddenly pulled his truck over to the road’s shoulder so that he could point out to me a sign of the changing times. A tule elk buck, rack of horns and all, marched unimpeded through its new empire: a former cow pasture whose tenants had been moved out months ago. The animal was just a tawny speck trudging through a field of browning grass, overgrown because cows no longer grazed there, but even from the car I was impressed by the tule’s stature, its silhouette bringing to mind the dramatic and rare presence of a moose. “Look at that beautiful buck,” Evans said tenderly. So tenderly, in fact, that I wondered if he’d momentarily forgotten that the elk—or their champions, in any case—had been the cause of the doom that had befallen the ranchers of Point Reyes. The story of how and why exactly the tule elk and their defenders led to the ranchers being kicked off their land has more twists and turns than the road on whose shoulder Evans and I were presently parked, but the most important part to understand is that, one day in the summer of 2012, the tule elk had suddenly and mysteriously started turning up dead, their emaciated bodies found rotting into the ground as if they were on an episode of CSI: Animal Victims Unit. That’s when the forty-year peace between the ranchers and conservationists started to go cold. Some two hundred elk died over the following two years, nearly halving the population of the imperiled species. Animal rights and environmental activists blamed the ranchers’ resource-intensive presence on the Seashore, which forced the elk to be fenced into a preserve when instead, they argued, they should be free to roam. (The activists also blamed the National Park Service for letting ranchers operate on the park’s land in the first place.) A barn on the historic H Ranch, owned by David Evans and Claire Herminjard, in Point Reyes National Seashore. The specifics of whether the ranchers’ presence really was to blame for the elks’ mass deaths and the details of the lawsuits and countersuits and counter-countersuits that followed are yet more zigzags on the switchbacked road that leads to the present, but the outcome of it all is straightforward enough. In January 2025, the Park Service announced the results of a mediation settlement that evicted all but two of the local ranch operators from the Point Reyes National Seashore, leaving the farms and creameries vacant and nearly a hundred (mostly Latino) tenants and ranch hands without jobs or homes, and halting the annual production of roughly a million gallons of organic milk and tens of thousands of pounds of sustainable and pasture-raised beef. At the behest of conservation-minded environmentalists, in other words, the local food system was being eviscerated, with some environmentalist organizations in the area now cheering the eviction of their neighbors who had produced some of the most sustainably and humanely produced meat and dairy in America. “This agreement will finally free the park’s magnificent Tule elk, forever,” wrote one organization, In Defense of Animals, celebrating the departure of ranchers like Evans, whom they mocked as “sewers of the land.” From afar—well, from my home in nearby Berkeley—I had watched the conflict unfold with a mix of skepticism and disbelief over some of the activists’ depictions of the ranchers as “greedy corporate monsters in overalls making a buck any way they can,” as one blogger put it. Environmentalists picking on small organic farms, for goodness’ sake? The whole affair seemed almost cartoonishly Californian, like an Onion gag skewering my home state’s love of litigating the absurd. The punch line to the joke came in the spring, when the kerfuffle attracted the attention of a group of Republican lawmakers on the House Committee for Natural Resources (led by Representative Ben Westerman of Arkansas, no less) who opened a congressional probe to challenge the legal decision. Along the way they made sure to milk the cow conflict for culture war clout by insinuating the ranchers’ removal was not only a Democrat conspiracy that had “muzzled” the cattlemen, per a letter penned by the lawmakers announcing their inquiry, but also evidence of what inevitably occurred if you let crazy environmentalists pass laws. When Chadwick Conover, a local surfer and wellness influencer better known as Ceadda, texted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for help fighting the supposed leftist plot, Kennedy declared he was working “full bore on a solution” and dispatched a member of the Department of Interior to visit Point Reyes. The absurdity had an air of slapstick to it, but the Republicans’ narrative about overzealous environmental legislation wasn’t funny, especially because it seemed to all too conveniently complement the unprecedented attacks that the second Trump administration has launched on wildlife and environmental protections—things like firing one thousand National Park Service employees, issuing five thousand new oil-and gas-drilling permits on public lands, and, of course, wiping out USDA funds that support organic farmers while dismantling federal regulations on the “certified organic” label. While clearly in bad faith, however, the Republican interlopers also sort of seemed to have a point. Was the war of Point Reyes yet another instance of liberals’ (decidedly non-vegetarian) lust for cannibalizing themselves? I hoped not. But even if it was, there still seemed to be something else afoot, some deeper conflict between differing visions of what “nature” even was, that had caused everything to unravel. The ranchers of Point Reyes had been stewarding this land for generations, but somewhere along the way, [Evans] felt, the Park Service—like many of his neighbors—had turned on him. All of this clanged around in my head in time to the truck’s suspension as we continued our tour of the battlefields, Evans steering us through a swath of coastal prairie, the Pacific Ocean coming into view ahead. We passed his childhood ranch near Abbotts Lagoon, where his parents still lived and which his sister now operated; it would shut down and the family would all vacate before spring. We passed two closed ranches and one soon-to-close dairy. By April 2026, all of the ranchers and their workers would be gone. Except Evans. He was one of the two ranchers staying, at least for now, the result of yet another one of those dizzying zigzags (in this case a legal one, his staying behind being the result more of an accident than defiance). But even though he’d been spared, he wasn’t sure for how long he’d be able to continue to make a living, or any kind of peaceful life, on his patch of land—what with the brutal costs of operating a small-scale ranch, the vicissitudes of his Park Service landlords, and the drone-wielding environmental activists who’d been surveilling the ranches, and his in particular, of late. As if to underscore this newfound isolation, on the drive back to Evans’s ranch we came across a final sign of change: a large, southbound truck cresting a hill, followed by two more, bellowing toward us. It was the Nunes dairy ranchers hauling the last of their livestock out of the park. The cows were headed to Oregon, meaning the milk was leaving the local foodshed for elsewhere, where it may or may not stay in the hands of organic producers. Other evicted ranchers were setting up new operations in even farther-flung states. Others still had quit ranching altogether, taking more organic food out of circulation in not just the local economy but the United States at large. Evans let out a long low. He still didn’t see why elk and cattle, organic ranchers and conservationists, couldn’t all just get along. The ranchers of Point Reyes had been stewarding this land for generations, but somewhere along the way, he felt, the Park Service—like many of his neighbors—had turned on him. “It feels like they’ve just left us out here to die.” Prairie Shadows If it wasn’t for the heroics of a cattle rancher named Henry Miller way back in 1878, there likely wouldn’t be a single tule elk left alive on Earth. Prior to that—which is to say also prior to the Gold Rush and the arrival of scores of settlers to the West Coast—the tule elk had thrived in California for thousands of years. Along with bison and pronghorn, they had been a native keystone species, an animal that held the whole ecosystem together. The elk had been so plentiful that early European visitors noted that they covered the coastal prairie like a shadow. But the settlers who rushed west chasing gold or hitching rides on the new transcontinental railroad soon decimated the tule elk’s population, in part by turning so much habitat into farms filled with cows. So drastic and rapid was the tule elk’s decline that a California law banning all elk hunting was passed in 1873. The intervention came too late, however. By then, hunters, scientists, and government representatives all thought the elk had gone extinct. So imagine Miller’s shock when, one day, at his vast ranch just west of Bakersfield, his workers discovered tule elk drinking from the tule marshes of Buena Vista Lake. (Tule, a staple of the elks’ diet, is a wispy, grass-like plant that thrives in shallow water.) It turned out they were part of a herd of thirty or so that had taken refuge on Miller’s land—the last thirty on Earth. Feeling responsible for the species’ survival and not wanting to attract the attention of trophy hunters, he fenced off a portion of his property, offered a $500 reward for reports of anyone coming after the elk, and—save for his workers and a local game warden—did his best to keep the herd’s existence a secret for decades, until it grew too large and began to trample his fences, causing him to reach out to state officials for help moving them elsewhere. A herd of tule elk in Point Reyes National Seashore. Fast-forward to 1971, a big year for the tule elk. With a population now numbered roughly five hundred alive on the entire planet, with a small herd still living at now-deceased Miller’s ranch and the rest scattered throughout different parts of California, the elk was added that year to the endangered species list, created under President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966 to provide the first federal protections for vulnerable species. That same year, the state passed legislation funding the relocation of the elk to suitable habitats with the goal of reaching two thousand tule elk statewide. One of the locations chosen was the newly created Point Reyes National Seashore, where, in 1978, the Park Service moved ten elk from the Miller ranch to a fenced-in 2,600-acre preserve on a former dairy in the northernmost tip of Point Reyes. The elk arrived to a somewhat unorthodox landscape, especially for a national park. In addition to being home to hundreds of bird species, 18 percent of all of the plant species that grow in California, and aquatic life like octopuses, anemone, and gargantuan elephant seals, the Seashore was also home to more than a dozen family-run dairy and beef ranches that took up about half of the park’s total land. Among the eighty-five million acres of federally protected parkland in the country, Point Reyes was one of the few parks that hosted year-round commercial agriculture. This peculiar arrangement was the result of the political compromise required to create the park. While Congress had recommended the creation of the Point Reyes National Seashore all the way back in 1935, the rising costs of land in the area, the machinations of local developers who saw big dollars in the landscape, and the ranchers’ longtime refusals to sell their pastures had successfully stymied that and every other attempt to seal the deal since. But in 1971, California politicians had come up with a unique financial and political proposal: buy the land from the ranchers below market value ($14 million back then, about $100 million in today’s dollars) and allow them to rent the land for years to come. It worked. Fourteen ranchers, among them David Evans’s great-grandfather, sold their land to the government in exchange for twenty-five-year leases (and, in one case, a life estate—essentially, a lifelong lease). They did so under the understanding—which was never explicitly enshrined into law—that they could ranch there in perpetuity as long as they kept their land dedicated to ranching activities that did not “upset the pastoral scenic effect of this particular area” and did not threaten the park’s fundamental purpose: to offer public recreation opportunities and preserve the cultural and natural landscape of the country’s wild spaces. Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. FacebookThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ If the terms sound somewhat vague in practice, they were—almost ensuring, if inadvertently, dueling future interpretations. As one history of Point Reyes put it, “Legislators discussed and tried to resolve some of the land-use problems, which they knew would make life complicated for future administrators at the park. They ironed out some of the potential conflicts in their construction of the Point Reyes bill, but other problems were only temporarily avoided or swept under the rug in order to ensure the bill’s passage.” They kicked the can down the road, in other words, to ensure the park’s creation. Because permanent ranching isn’t typically allowed in national parks, the architects of Point Reyes came up with another novel idea: the creation of a “pastoral zone” of some twenty-six-thousand acres to be privately managed by the ranchers with park oversight. Once the ranchers were officially operating on public land, the Park Service limited ranching activities in order to maintain the integrity of the ecosystem. Even within the pastoral zone, the service partially dictated which pastures could be grazed and when and which areas (erosion-prone hillsides, for instance) were off-limits. Only certain activities were allowed: a ranch couldn’t just start a pig operation without special permission and such permissions for expanded use were often denied. Park administrators conducted reviews, too, to ensure that no pasture was overgrazed, animals were being well maintained, and water contamination was being controlled. The Park Service strictures, while not formally prohibiting pesticides and other harmful chemicals, helped create an atmosphere that encouraged and incentivized ranchers to stay (or become) organic. Having the federal government as landlords meant a good deal of red tape for the ranchers—it could take days to get permission to build a new fence, for instance, let alone to build a new barn or dig a well—but the ranchers thrived. The elk did, too, taking easily to the Point Reyes ecosystem that had generations earlier been the creatures’ home. They remained in a relatively small fenced-in area of the park, and tourists from all over the world came to behold the miracle creature in the semiwild. The purpose of the fence was to keep the elk out of the cattle pastures to the south, so as not to disturb the cattle or their forage and also to prevent the transmission of diseases from one species to the other. The ecological impact of grazing in Point Reyes is complex—ranch-ing, after all, had contributed to the displacement of the native ruminant foragers in the first place—but grasslands do still need ruminant grazers. Cattle ranching now served an important function in the ecosystem of the park’s pastoral zone, playing the role the tule elk had once done back when they’d been numerous enough to shadow the state’s prairies. By munching grass, they help maintain the health of plants and soil, encourage a diversification of native species, prevent fires, and provide habitats and hunting grounds for the numerous animals that live there. Even though cattle aren’t a native species to California like the tule elk, they, too, can accomplish these tasks extremely well when managed correctly. The Point Reyes National Seashore administrators saw it as a success of their experiment that their ranching tenants successfully helped maintain critical habitats for raptors, who need low grasses to hunt for voles, and other creatures like the endangered California red-legged frog, who thrived in the ranches’ stock ponds. Still, even though cattle was now king, the elk population did so well in Point Reyes that the herd began to outgrow its sizable enclosure. To address this, and to encourage further growth and genetic diversity among the inbred elk, the Park Service introduced twenty-eight tule in 1998 to a wilderness area near Limantour Beach, far from the pastoral zone, where the herd roamed free. Within a few years, this group had split into two, as healthy, growing herds do: a signal that this free-range experiment was working. But there wasn’t enough space on the peninsula to set all the tule elk free—certainly not without risking angering the ranchers, who had reasonable fears that too many tule elk would cause competition for grass—and so the main herd remained hemmed in between the Pacific Ocean, Tomales Bay, and the fence that kept them off the pastoral zone. Then came the drought in 2012. The two free-roaming herds fared fine, but the enclosed elk died by the dozens. Those fenced in were living without adequate year-round water sources, and in some cases thirsty elk had been found drinking from mud pits. As tule elk biologist Julie Phillips explained to an activist at the time, the social patterns of the elk are such that the dominant bucks will guard limited water sources and keep the others away, especially during mating season. “They are a captive species,” Phillips lamented of the herd behind the fence. To her and other activists, it seemed clear that the elk could have gone elsewhere to find better water and forage sources had there not been a fence—and had there not been cattle in Point Reyes, there wouldn’t have been a fence. The fence in the Point Reyes National Seashore kept the elk from roaming into dairy and beef ranching lands leased to farmers. On the right side of the fence are native plants, and on the left side are non-native grasses grown for cattle grazing. For their part, Park Service scientists dismissed concerns over the ongoing elk deaths as a cause for alarm. The drought was an adverse factor causing a “natural” population bust, just as it would in the wild: in favorable conditions, elk thrived, and in unfavorable conditions, they died. Water wasn’t the issue, the Park Service claimed, the deaths were instead the result of “overpopulation and poor nutritional quality of forage.” It was true that the population had rebounded enough by now that the tule elk had been removed from the endangered species list. Indeed, the species’ reproductive success in Point Reyes had foreshadowed other success stories statewide, such that, by the time of the die-off, the nation’s total tule elk population had rebounded to about 3,200 animals. But this was still such a small number, and the population gains so recent and precarious, that, to the environmental groups and activists monitoring the situation, the dismissal of the mass deaths in Point Reyes as the acceptable result of overpopulation was an abdication of duty by the very agency entrusted with defending them. Even more enraging to some was the fact that the Park Service’s explanation didn’t seem to make much sense. The elk that were dying weren’t a free-ranging natural species but a captive herd unable to roam to find more favorable natural species but a captive herd unable to roam to find more favorable conditions, so deeming the deaths natural seemed odd. As the elk body count kept rising, and the Park Service refused to reverse position and release the captive herd from their enclosure, local activists grew increasingly impassioned and numerous. Animal rights groups hitched themselves to the cause and began flying drones around ranchers’ properties looking for evidence of environmental harm. The elk’s advocates become almost as notorious as the animal they defended, and they began calling themselves “elktavists.” They demanded that the elk fence—which had now come to signal the emergent and growing divide between the ranchers and the Park Service on one hand and the wilderness conservationists on the other—be taken down and that the tule be liberated from the “elk prison.” Prison Break To Chance Cutrano, the elk enclosure was a violation both ecological and moral, and the fight to try to tear it down was a triumph of recent history. “Can you believe how beautiful it is today?” he said cheerily despite the sagging gray sky overhead, as I met him near a hiking trailhead in the Seashore. He was going to give me a tour that would turn out to be almost identical to the one Dave Evans gave me but with very different points of emphasis. We ducked into his Tesla, remarkably clean for someone who spent so much time in the wild, where a “We Bought This Car Before We Knew” sticker was affixed beside the gearshift. As we drove beneath rain clouds past abandoned ranchland in the direction of the elk fence, Cutrano was cheery. As one of three staffers for the Resource Renewal Institute—a scrappy local NGO that, along with two larger nonprofits, had filed all of the important lawsuits against the park and the ranchers, including the one that was ultimately successful—Cutrano had just won the fight of his life. To boot, the Park’s elk were doing well again after a period of ups and downs. When the drought eased in 2016, their population rebounded to upward of four hundred, only to see another die-off in 2020, with 152 new elk dead. Since then, the Point Reyes elk population had stabilized yet again, with a total park-wide population of roughly seven hundred elk—an almost record high. Life for them, Cutrano assured me, was about to get even better now that the ranchers were leaving. Chance Cutrano, director of programs for the Resource Renewal Institute, one of the groups that sued the National Park Service and the ranchers. While researching the ranching issue, he discovered that the Park Service’s management plan for Point Reyes National Seashore was more than thirty years out of date. His current optimism was a far cry from the way he felt in 2014, when he relocated to California from the Midwest at the age of twenty-one. The die-off was then ongoing; some of the first elk he ever saw were corpses. Huey Johnson, the head of the Resource Renewal Institute, hired Cutrano to collect evidence that would help the nonprofit challenge the Park Service’s narrative that so many elk had died suddenly of “natural” causes. If any species was suffering in a National Park, the organization felt, then they wanted to make sure that private interests weren’t being supported over public ones. He immediately got to work assembling the case, spending his days hiking around the park, documenting the perils the elk faced, filing FOIA requests, and poring over scientific studies and Park Service paperwork. From his sleuthing, he learned that many of the tule elk suffered from Johne’s disease, a communicable bacterial infection that they likely contracted from the cattle (possibly from their manure). He obtained internal Park Service studies showing Point Reyes National Seashore administrators had known for years about the adverse impact the cattle had on the park’s water quality and terrain, including a comprehensive water-quality study from 2013 that showed high levels of fecal matter and other contaminants in areas of the park due to sewer discharges and agriculture. Cutrano pulled the Tesla over at the old McClure’s Dairy with its now-vacant white clapboard barn. This dairy, he pointed out, was one of several positioned in a basin in the topography, meaning its runoff drained into key water sources like Kehoe Creek and Abbotts Lagoon and caused rampant fecal-contamination issues. Back on the road, he pointed out the Nunes ranch, where, in 2021, hikers found what was essentially a massive trash pit of oily car parts, rusted metal, and leaking engines—a clear violation of park rules about polluting. Read more Climate Change Read more Nutrition and Food Access Cutrano’s findings constituted the bulk of evidence in the first legal case against the Park Service and the ranchers, which began in 2016. Crucial to that case and the one that followed was his discovery that the park had been following an outdated set of guidelines for years. Every national park in the country has a “general management plan”: a master plan that establishes protocols for how the park manages the interests of the different species (including humans) under its authority. Cutrano’s crucial discovery was that the Point Reyes National Seashore still operated according to a general management plan from 1980—that is, a document that was then over thirty years old. As a result, its guidelines and rules neglected to account for any impacts of climate change, any change in wildlife population that had occurred since Jimmy Carter was president, or any new impacts of the ranches on the park’s ecology. The Park Service did have a more recent tule elk management plan, which provided more detailed rules relating specifically to the species. But even these protocols hadn’t been updated since 1998, when there were hundreds fewer elk to manage. Even the 1998 plan, though, clearly outlined the problematic fact that the enclosure would soon become too small, as there was no reliable year-round source of drinking water for the elk in the preserve—just eight “water impoundments” originally built for cattle and seasonal creeks and low-lying marshes that turned to mud pits during dry spells—demonstrating that the park’s administrators knew about the potential dangers years before the die-offs occurred and did nothing to prevent them. In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs sought to show that, with its outdated management plan, the park had prioritized the ranches over the wild areas and creatures it was entrusted to protect, alleging that the Park Service had not done its due diligence in studying the impact of the ranches. The Resource Renewal Institute filed the lawsuit with the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project, two other environmental organizations that were considerably bigger, more experienced, and better resourced. Like Cutrano’s Resource Renewal Institute, these organiza-tions saw the fight in Point Reyes as part of a larger battle to protect the wild and keep it fully under the control of the public. In previous legal battles, these organizations had helped stall permits for the Keystone XL and other oil pipelines, blocked the opening of mineral mines throughout the West, and secured protective statuses and habitats for species ranging from gray wolves to spotted owls to the Florida bonneted bat. For them, the tule elk was yet another one of these fights. As part of their efforts toward wilderness protection, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project had frequently targeted ranching on public lands. Roughly 80 percent of public lands in the West and 35 percent of public lands overall are used for grazing at some point during the year (most of this land is operated by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, not the National Park Service). Part of the organizations’ objections came down to the question of public versus private use. The Center for Biological Diversity believed that, by relying on public lands, where ranchers (including those in Point Reyes) were typically given lower-than-market lease rates, the cattle industry was getting a massive subsidy at great ecological expense. “The western livestock industry would evaporate as suddenly as fur trapping,” they claimed in one report, “if it had to pay market rates for services it gets from the federal government.” It was irrelevant, to these groups, that the subsidized ranchers in Point Reyes just happened to produce very sustainable food. (When asked on the tour whether driving organic ranches out of the area—and, in some cases, out of business entirely—was ultimately bad for the environment, Cutrano admitted that he wasn’t entirely unsympathetic to the concern. Feeding people, however, was simply not the job of public lands, and of a national park in particular.) In yet another of this story’s zigzags, this initial lawsuit gave way, in 2021, to yet another lawsuit, which was settled in a three-year-long mediation that ultimately determined the fate of the ranchers last year. The mediation by all accounts was brutal. The ranchers by now had intervened in the legal proceedings, having convinced a judge they had a stake in the matter and should have a seat at the table. Like many to follow, the first mediation session was held at the Bear Valley Visitor’s Center, a building filled with taxidermized local wildlife just inside the park boundaries, where tourists come to secure camping permits, plan their routes, and pee. In June 2022, the relevant parties and their lawyers filed into the conference room and took their seats around the table: Cutrano and his compatriots, the Park Service administrators, and various members of the participating Point Reyes ranching families. (This included every ranching operation in the park except the Nimans’ and the Evanses’. The Nimans opted out of the negotiations because they held a lifelong lease to their property and thus were largely insulated from the outcome of any lawsuit. The Evanses had two small kids and simply didn’t want the bother. They assumed some deal would be worked out and the drama would just go away.) Items up for discussion included the problem of competing uses (as between the elk and cattle), the appropriate stock pond rations given the increasing water shortages, the length and terms of ranchers’ leases, and, most importantly, whether ranching was in fact intended to occur in the Seashore in perpetuity. Given the rancor that had preceded the mediation, the participants unsurprisingly struggled to make progress. Every participant was required to sign a nondisclosure agreement, barring them from even discussing the proceedings with one another outside the mediation room, which for some made finding consensus among their peers, much less their adversaries, challenging. About a year in, a powerful nonprofit called the Nature Conservancy, which had mediated numerous public-private land use matters in the past, offered to help the different groups navigate the conflict. But despite the Nature Conservancy’s guidance, the conflicts persisted. To help ease tensions, the Nature Conservancy held occasional group meetings in ranchers’ homes and met with individual ranching families to understand their perspectives and plight. One of the mediators told a local paper the disagreements were so intense that “I can remember times where I teared up on the drive back to Inverness after leaving a ranch.” Lunny was one of the last holdouts, he told me, until it became clear to him that, even if he somehow figured out a way to stay on his ranch, the rest of his life in the park would be mired in conflict, harassment, infuriating lease negotiations, and future lawsuits. For his part, Cutrano had initially been disappointed and even surprised by how intractable the parties’ disagreements seemed to be. He had entered the mediation on the defensive—stung by the results of the first lawsuit, in which the Park Service seemed to side with the ranchers, not even considering the “no-ranching option.” But as the ranchers and environmentalists settled into increasingly deadlocked positions, he saw an opportunity: If the ranchers wouldn’t agree to any of the terms his team was suggesting, might they agree instead to sell their properties and vacate the Seashore entirely? The Nature Conservancy had a wealth of financial resources that might fund such a buyout, and Cutrano knew that a number of the ranchers were near retirement anyway. Kevin Lunny, like many of the ranchers, had grown up on the Point Reyes National Seashore, and he’d always figured he’d die there. His family had been ranching its pastures since his great-grandfather’s generation. In the early 2000s, the Lunnys were the first ranch operators in Marin County to secure an organic-beef certification. But after suffering through years of lawsuits and attacks from the conservation groups (including a recent post entitled “Two Short Videos Expose Kevin Lunny’s Latest Lies” on a blog called The Shame of Point Reyes), the ever-increasing operating costs of ranching, the long odds of sustaining a small family farm, and arguing around a mediation table since 2022, Lunny was tired. He had entered the mediation hopeful for compromise, hoping above all to secure a reasonable lease length, preferably of twenty years, which would allow him to continue and even expand the activities that made his ranch profitable. He had also hoped that, by sitting face-to-face with the environmentalists, he might put an end to the idea that the rancher was an enemy to the ecological health of the land. But by now, Lunny had accepted that he’d been foolish to think that would happen. Lunny wasn’t the only rancher who was tired. Of the twelve parties, some decided that they wanted out when presented with the possibility of a buyout—they were retiring anyway and were done fighting. But others didn’t want to go at all. Because the ranchers were coplaintiffs, however, and thus a unified team, the outcome would have to be an all-or-nothing deal: either every rancher took it or none would have the chance, trapping everyone around that mediation table for the foreseeable future. Lunny was one of the last holdouts, he told me, until it became clear to him that, even if he somehow figured out a way to stay on his ranch, the rest of his life in the park would be mired in conflict, harassment, infuriating lease negotiations, and future lawsuits. “I didn’t have a gun to my head,” Lunny said, but in the end he, too, was forced to accept that there was really only one workable option: take the money and leave the ranch whose lease he’d inherited from his father, who inherited it from his father, who inherited it from his own, and whose lease Lunny had planned until now to pass along to his own children. When the Nature Conservancy announced the results of the mediation in January 2025, people in Point Reyes were shocked. Clueless as to the proceedings because of the NDAs, the Nimans and the Evanses couldn’t believe that they were going to be the only ranchers left on the peninsula. Even Cutrano, who had been part of the proceedings every step of the way, was stunned by the outcome, a coup that he’d never imagined when the proceedings began. The plaintiffs had expected to win concessions from the Park Service, and maybe even a bid to eventually phase out ranching in the future, but given how entrenched historically and economically the ranches were in Point Reyes, they hadn’t expected a full-scale buyout. To Cutrano, the fact that the ranches were gone represented a historic victory for the ecology of the National Seashore—and a road map, perhaps, for the eviction of ranching off other public lands in years to come. “We had no idea it would be this successful,” he told me now as he drove, struggling to suppress a grin as he gestured with one hand toward an abandoned dairy in the distance, the spoils of war. In contrast to the moments of frustration and hopelessness he’d just told me about feeling in the years leading up to this point, his happiness now suddenly struck me as yet another sign of change in the park—though, perhaps, not as dramatic of a change as the one he was about to show me. Parking the Tesla and rolling the car’s windows down, he instructed me to look outside, pointing into the thick mist. I could make out a two-tone field. On one side, the grass was uniform, short and brown; on the other, the earth was wild and varied, a swirl of tall grasses and thickets of coyote brush. Down the middle was an eight-foot-tall wall of mesh tethered by hefty wooden posts: the elk fence. Cutrano beamed as he pointed toward a portion of the fence that had been removed, leaving the entire park open for the elk to roam. The rest, he said, would soon be dismantled. The road to Chimney Rock in Point Reyes National Seashore passes by historic A Ranch. We turned around and headed south again past the shuttered dairies. Just as with Evans, I spotted elk in the distance, an antlered trio also tramping through what had once been pasture for cows. It was mating season, Cutrano explained, and the elk that don’t win mates are sent away by the herd. “This is the farthest south I’ve ever seen bull elk,” he said. “We’re seeing in real time the change. Wildlife coming back to these areas.” Future Primitive Today, all the Point Reyes ranches that participated in the mediation are either on their way out or already gone. The Lunnys held their final cattle run in May. After that, they began to pack up their barn and their home. Even with the settlement money—which remains confidential but has been reported to be around $3 million per lessee—the Lunnys couldn’t afford to buy a place anywhere nearby that was big enough to hold their ninety cattle. In the end, they moved a few hours away to the foothills of the Sierra, bringing just three cows with them. Of the other eleven departing or departed ranching families, one—the Nuneses—has moved to Oregon. Another ranch sold its cattle and got out of the business entirely. One dairy trucked all its cattle to Texas. Other families didn’t know where they were headed, or didn’t respond to my calls, or were unreachable—on the move and hard to locate or loath to talk about the whole affair. “That’s not milk that’s going to be available in California anymore,” Albert Straus, founder of Straus Family Creamery, told me. Before the ranches shut down, the company sourced 15 percent of its milk from Point Reyes, about three thousand gallons of milk per day that had previously ended up in local grocery stores with the Straus name. When small ranches and dairies close in California, land prices being what they are, they often move out of state. When this milk goes out of local circulation, its market share goes to the larger organic conglomerates who use far less stringent environmental practices—or to large factory farms that aren’t organic at all. Straus Family Creamery is committed to sourcing all of its milk from local producers to reduce its footprint. Until Straus manages to find new sources, consumers will have to find milk elsewhere—maybe from nonorganic dairies, with far more deleteri-ous environmental practices, or from dairies farther away, increasing the carbon footprint of each pint sold. The ersatz eviction of the ranchers so upset Straus that he had been the one to reach out to Conover, the wellness influencer, in April 2025—in turn leading to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s entrance into the affair. “Albert just kept getting more desperate,” Conover told Politico earlier this year. “I was like, you know what? Fuck it. I gotta just text [Kennedy].” Kennedy was—perhaps unsurprisingly, given the “food is medicine” pillar of his Make America Healthy Again agenda—sympathetic. “Everyone is involved,” Kennedy replied to Conover, according to reporting by the local North Bay paper the Press Democrat, “including [interior Secretary] Doug Burgam (sic) and [Agriculture Secretary] Brooke Rollins and the White House.” Burgum reportedly asked the acting deputy secretary of the Interior to help broker a solution that would have allowed ranching to continue in the park. But, as of now, like with the Republican probe led by Congressman Westerman, nothing concrete has come of the political theater—and the deal remains in place. Others, too, are waging a fight—if not to reverse the deal itself, then at least to change its outcomes and implications. Local attorney Andrew Giacomini, himself a descendent of a prominent Point Reyes ranching family, filed a lawsuit on behalf of displaced ranch workers, alleging a conspiracy between the Park Service and the Nature Conservancy “that compelled the Departing Ranchers to accept the pay offs and terminate their leases with the National Park Service.” Financial restitution, the suit argues, must be given to the workers kicked out of their homes. David and Claire Evans also joined with Bill Niman and his wife, Nicolette, to file their own lawsuit, arguing that the pastoral zone is a congressionally designated space for ranching and that the Park Service has a responsibility to protect it as part of the region’s cultural heritage; thus, even if the former leaseholders are gone, those areas must remain available for active ranching. These cases are also still pending. Claire Herminjard and David Evans on a ridge overlooking their ranch in Point Reyes National Seashore. They are one of only two ranching families still operating in the park. Meanwhile, though the Nimans are protected by their life estate, the Evans family is currently operating without a lease. After he got wind of the deal, David Evans sent a letter to the House Committee on Natural Resources, beseeching lawmakers’ help in negotiating a new lease. “We know that as the last (multigenerational) ranching family on the peninsula, we will be the next target for these green groups,” he wrote. “We will be harassed and pushed out, and family ranching on this peninsula will be gone forever.” Evans also went to the Park Service to negotiate a new lease. He wrote down twenty requests, many of them, he told me, in line with previous lease arrangements. The Park Service did not agree to a single point. “It wasn’t a negotiation,” Evans said, suspecting the agency wanted to make things as difficult as they could in hopes he’d eventually just roll over and close. To add insult to injury to the ranchers, the Nature Conservancy—which is in charge of the transition implementation for Point Reyes—plans to season-ally truck in some 1,200 cattle each year for temporary grazing, acknowledging the importance of livestock grazing on public lands to maintain the health of the Point Reyes ecosystem. Twelve hundred seasonal cattle, of course, aren’t enough to do the work of the more than six thousand that are being evicted. Theoretically, the tule elk could at some point take over the grazing work of the cattle—and without the environmental impact, like manure contaminating the waterways. At present, however, their population is nowhere near large enough to replace the departed cattle, either. Herds big enough to take over all grazing duties would cause yet another problem, however, as the tule elk no longer have real predators in Point Reyes. The Park Service would have to introduce predators as population control or bring back the wildly unpopular practice of culling the elk. And anyway, as Grey Hayes, a biologist and coastal prairie expert, impressed upon me, even if the elk were the ultimate answer to this land’s future management, which he has his doubts about, the transition should have happened more slowly, replacing cattle with elk one by one. But now that the cattle are gone, he told me, whatever plan to replace them needs to happen “immediately.” Even six months without large ruminant grazers can cause enough environmental damage to a pasture to require years of remediation and restoration. “Every month counts,” he said. “We are entering a critical first step in establishing a land stewardship program to support grazing and restoration efforts on the Seashore,” a representative for the Nature Conservancy wrote to me (they declined an interview). In collaboration with the Park Service and the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, whose ancestors managed what is now Point Reyes for millennia, the Nature Conservancy wrote that they will “develop a research and monitoring plan that will, when implemented, be the foundational science needed for the National Park Service and partners to adaptively manage the grazing and other restorative actions over time to get the best results.” It’s unclear when the temporary grazing is to begin; where these cattle will come from (in December, the organization released a request for proposals for ranchers seeking to run cattle in Point Reyes); where the 1,200 number came from (there were 6,000 cattle in the park); or how these cattle will be managed differently than those that were already here. The future of the approximately ninety farmworkers and their families is also uncertain. On my last visit to Point Reyes, just before the Thanksgiving holiday, I met up with a former Point Reyes dairy worker and his wife, whom I’ll call Diego and Maria, in the town of Point Reyes, about a ten-minute drive from the Seashore. While the Nature Conservancy awarded the ranchers $3 million settlements, the ranch workers each received a single month’s pay, around $1,000. At their suggestion, we met at Toby’s Feed Barn, a West Marin institution that hints at the region’s shifting demographics: a farming heritage store trying to survive in a context of increasingly extreme wealth. Toby’s sells feed in a towering old barn where birds nest in the rafters; the barn also houses an overpriced coffee shop (chai: $6.50), a yoga studio and art gallery, and a store selling fancy candles, food sundries, and nature-themed tchotchkes. As we spoke, a Latino employee stacked hay bales and pallets with a beeping pump truck while locals and tourists enjoyed their coffee in the sun. Originally from Mexico, Diego and Maria had moved to Point Reyes with their three children in 2018 from Tulare County in California’s Central Valley. There Diego worked in a massive industrial dairy and Maria picked grapes. Their middle son, whom I’ll call Fredy, suffered from a rare genetic disorder that required frequent medical appointments and testing. When Diego missed two days of work to take his son to see a specialist hours away in Sacramento, his employer fired him. Maria’s cousin worked not too far from Point Reyes and managed to land Diego a gig at McClure’s Dairy in the park, which Cutrano and I had visited a few months prior. The whole family moved north. When McClure’s shuttered in 2021, Diego got a job working at another dairy in the Seashore. The pay was $16.50 an hour, and the family didn’t have to pay rent because, with average rents of $6,500 for a home in the area, ranch workers and their families were typically provided free housing. Diego told me he found out about the ranch closures from his employer (he asked me to use a pseudonym, and not name his employer, for fear of retribution—especially because he is still living on the rancher’s land). One afternoon, when his shift began, his boss rounded up his three employees—Diego, another father with a young family, and a single guy, all of whom lived on the property in separate houses—and told them the news. Worse than the closures, perhaps, was the severance pay. While the Nature Conservancy awarded the ranchers $3 million settlements, the ranch workers each received a single month’s pay, around $1,000, which wouldn’t get Diego and his family a long weekend in a local Airbnb. “He was out there rain or shine, sick and healthy!” Maria told me. “A single month! He kept that place going. It’s ugly, what these ranchers have done.” The family has been in something of a tailspin since then. The ranch shuttered last spring, but they are still living on the property—the only ones there, by permission of the former owner. The kids don’t want to leave. Their youngest, now in seventh grade, wakes up crying in the night. Maria was angry at the ranchers but also at the people who’d run the ranchers out of town. As we spoke, I detected an articulation of the view of ecology that had lost out in Point Reyes—the belief, shared by many of the biologists and ranchers I spoke to while reporting, that it’s a myth that a healthy environment is one that is untouched. Humans have always managed landscapes, something that California’s leaders have begun recognizing in transitioning to controlled burns of the kind that Indigenous communities once carried out, back when the prairies were still shadowed by grazers, to thin forests and underbrush. Restoration is, by definition, a human imposition on the land. Preservation is, too, as is, of course, the pesky human need for food. “I don’t understand what environment they are trying to protect,” Maria said. From her perspective, the land was healthy, the cows part of the environment—mooing, shitting ruminants, grazing along the same zigzagging roads upon which the tule elk now run free. Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 A shipwreck killed 41 crew and 5,900 cattle. The brutal business behind it goes on. Andrew S. Lewis,  October 8, 2025 2 The ranching industry’s toxic grass problem Robert Langellier,  March 27, 2024 3 The strange future of lab-grown meat Joe Fassler,  December 17, 2024 4 Time to bust the meat trust Ted Genoways,  October 23, 2024 5 Can grazing save endangered grasslands? Lynne Curry,  August 19, 2020 6 What good is beef? Siddhartha Deb,  December 11, 2023

This article was produced in collaboration with WWNO’s Sea Change podcast. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. This is the second episode of a two-part series exploring the future of farming seafood in the Gulf. (Listen to part one.) We know this: Demand for seafood is soaring. We won’t be able to sustainably meet that demand from wild-caught fisheries. And there’s a growing global movement to farm more and more of our seafood. The Gulf Coast is one of the last places in the world where there is still a major wild oyster harvest. Lately, though, that harvest is in trouble. In this episode, we ask: What can the downfall and resurrection of the oyster tell us about a future of farming the ocean? Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. EmailThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 Is the United States ready for offshore aquaculture? Virginia Gewin,  April 20, 2017 2 Do you care if your fish dinner was raised humanely? Animal advocates say you should. Clare Leschin-Hoar,  October 20, 2017 3 Was your seafood caught with slave labor? New tool tries to help retailers. Clare Leschin-Hoar,  February 1, 2018 4 $40 million later, a pioneering plan to boost wild fish stocks shows little success Clare Leschin-Hoar,  February 15, 2018 5 When climate adaptation goes wrong Stephen Robert Miller,  June 30, 2022

Share this This Story’s Impact total audience of 34.6 million across platforms Texas Monthly Este artículo se elaboró ​​en colaboración con Texas Monthly. No se puede reproducir sin la autorización expresa de FERN. Si le interesa republicar este artículo, póngase en contacto con [email protected]. Los hermanos estaban empezando a dudar si sus traficantes los habían abandonado a su suerte. Por más de dos días, Begaí y Mariano Santiago Hipólito habían estado escondidos con unas dos docenas de inmigrantes en una abarrotada casa de seguridad en la ciudad fronteriza de Laredo. El único cuarto de la casa no contaba con muebles y apenas tenía el espacio suficiente para que todos se acostaran. No había donde bañarse y el único inodoro era repugnante. Las escasas porciones de comida y las cajas de agua embotellada que los traficantes les habían dado tenían tiempo de haberse acabado. Ansioso y confundido, Begaí empezó a bombardear a Mariano con preguntas. ¿Por qué estaban atorados ahí? ¿Qué tan lejos estaban de su destino final? Más sobre esta historia Lea la primera parte aquí Mariano había estado una vez en Estados Unidos, casi una década antes, pero este no era para nada como el primer viaje. La primera vez que cruzó, no estaban los enjambres de delincuentes de cárteles en el lado mexicano de la frontera, y no había tenido que soportar un prolongado encierro en una escuálida y caliente casa de seguridad después de cruzar el Río Grande. Ahora, empapado en sudor, se había quitado su playera para abanicarse con ella. De vez en cuando, dejaba salir un suspiro. “Tranquilo”, le dijo a Begaí. “Tranquilo”. Los hermanos habían sido inseparables desde niños, así que cuando Mariano le dijo a Begaí que se iba a ir de su pueblo en el sur de México para encontrar trabajo en Estados Unidos, en parte para pagar las facturas médicas de su esposa enferma. Begaí a regañadientes estuvo de acuerdo con acompañarlo. Alto y delgado con una barba de candado bien recortada, Begaí, de 33 años, era el hermano mayor, más serio. Un año menor, Mariano era más fornido, y siempre buscaba cómo pasar un buen rato. Pero Begaí notó que el buen humor de su hermano estaba empezando a desmoronarse. Era la mañana del 27 de junio de 2022. Los inmigrantes con los que compartían la vivienda habían llegado de varios lugares de México, Guatemala y Honduras. Había unos cuantos niños y algunas mujeres entre ellos, pero la mayoría eran hombres en la edad ideal para trabajar. Todos habían pagado exorbitantes cantidades — hasta $15,000 dólares — para ser transportados a EE. UU. Ahora estaban esperando a alguien que los sacara de la zona fronteriza fuertemente patrullada y rumbo a San Antonio, en donde el grupo se dividiría y los inmigrantes viajarían por separado. Algunos iban hacia ciudades cercanas en Texas y otros se dirigían a sitios más lejanos como Tennessee y California. Muchos tenían planes para reunificarse con seres queridos a quienes no habían visto en años, padres, parejas románticas, hermanos, primos. Casi todos ellos habían dejado sus casas con la esperanza de encontrar un empleo. Algunos tenían una oportunidad de trabajo específica que los esperaba en su destino. Otros tomarían cualquier cosa que pudieran encontrar. Begaí y Mariano tenían familiares en Atlanta, en donde tenían planeado trabajar en la construcción. Preocupados de que alguna persona de la localidad pudiera verlos y avisar a las autoridades, los traficantes habían prohibido a los inmigrantes salir de la casa de seguridad, no debían asomarse ni por unos minutos para respirar aire fresco. Su organización había perdido dos casas decomisadas por la policía local y la Patrulla Fronteriza a principios de ese mes. En Laredo ocurren redadas como estas todo el tiempo, a veces varias al día, que resultan en unos cuantos o en docenas de inmigrantes normalmente abarrotados en condiciones terribles. En la mayoría de los casos los operadores de las casas de seguridad escapan. En cuanto a los inmigrantes, estos son enviados de vuelta a México, pero muchos regresan a Estados Unidos después de unos cuantos días. De cualquier forma, las redadas son un costoso problema para los traficantes, quienes hacen todo lo posible para evitarlas. Begaí Santiago Hipólito Cuando un camión con caja blanca finalmente se presentó para recoger a los inmigrantes, Begaí y Mariano no se sintieron exactamente aliviados. Los hombres que los apresuraron a subir al camión usaban máscaras y gritaban órdenes, confiscaron sus teléfonos y las botellas de agua de algunos tuvieron que ser rellenadas con agua del lavabo. El área de carga del camión ya estaba llena de personas que habían estado quedándose en otro sitio. A pesar de sus dudas, los hermanos subieron y pronto el camión empezó a avanzar. Recorrieron cierta distancia traqueteando por unos diez minutos hasta que sintieron que el camión se detuvo. Cuando la puerta de atrás se abrió, vieron la parte posterior de un tráiler que se había acercado a la caja del camión. Sus puertas estaban abiertas, formando algo como un túnel entre los dos vehículos. Mientras avanzaban hacia el tráiler, Begaí dudó. “¿Qué probabilidad hay si no subimos?”, preguntó. “Ahí te quedas [en Laredo]”, respondió Mariano. Fueron de los últimos en pasar al tráiler, y buscaron un lugar para sentarse en medio de la penumbra. Notaron una extraña combinación de olores, algo como un sazonador de alimentos mezclado con olores de más de cinco docenas de personas que habían estado viviendo en condiciones de inmundicia por días. Los hermanos se sentaron en contra de una de las paredes cerca de la parte media del tráiler. Entre los rostros apenas iluminados a su alrededor estaba un trío de jóvenes mujeres originarias de un pequeño pueblo de Guatemala, donde muchos viven en casas hechas de bloques de concreto y sin agua corriente, rodeadas por pequeñas parcelas de maíz. Una de ellas, una mujer de 21 años con largo cabello negro había trabajado duro para obtener su diploma como maestra, con enormes gastos pagados por sus padres. Pero debido al disfuncional gobierno del país no pudo encontrar trabajo como educadora. Determinada a pagar a sus padres, estaba en camino para unirse con una de sus hermanas en un pueblo dedicado al empaque de carne en Minnesota. Los más jóvenes en el tráiler eran dos primos de Guatemala, de trece y catorce años, quienes tenían familiares en Estados Unidos y habían convencido a sus padres de que sus futuros serían mejores si lograban asistir a la escuela en ese país. El mayor de los dos era un fanático de Lionel Messi y soñaba con jugar fútbol soccer profesional algún día, pero en el entretanto quería ganar lo suficiente para ayudar a su mamá a cuidar de su hermana y su hermano menores. El mayor era un trabajador de la construcción de 55 años y originario de Morelos, México. Él había vivido en un pequeño pueblo en el oeste de Arkansas por más de dos décadas, justo fuera de un condado en donde los hispanos son cerca de la tercera parte de la población. Había viajado a México para visitar a su familia a pesar de los riesgos del peligroso viaje de regreso. Ahora iba de vuelta a su casa, donde lo esperaban su esposa, sus tres hijos y sus cuatro nietos. Cerca de las puertas traseras del tráiler estaban un hermano y una hermana de algo más de 20 años y originarios de un suburbio de Antigua, la colonial excapital de Guatemala. El par se hacía cargo del cuidado de una chica adolescente con la que se habían topado en varias de las paradas de su viaje hacia el norte. La chica estaba ahora asustada y llorando, así que cuando los hermanos se sentaron la pusieron en medio de ellos y trataron de consolarla. Un exsoldado mexicano y su primo también estaban cuidando de un joven compañero de viaje, un chico de dieciocho años de la Ciudad de México cuya madre les había pedido que lo cuidaran. Cerca estaba una mujer hondureña de 27 años que tenía unas 12 semanas de embarazo y que hacía lo posible para mantenerse cómoda. Esa mañana, llamó a su madre, quien ya vivía cerca de Los Ángeles, para decirle que había logrado cruzar a EE. UU. “Nos vemos pronto”, le dijo. Como pudieron, se repartieron e hicieron espacio para otra persona. La temperatura era casi de 100 grados Fahrenheit afuera (unos 38 grados centígrados), y el aire dentro del tráiler era insoportablemente caliente. Momentos después, las puertas se cerraron y escucharon el inconfundible sonido de los cerrojos asegurando las puertas desde el exterior. En una oscuridad total, sintieron cómo el tráiler empezó a moverse justo antes de las 2 p. m. Si todo salía como estaba planeado, estarían en San Antonio en poco más de tres horas. “Estados unidos falló” Nada salió de acuerdo con lo planeado. La catástrofe que ocurrió ese día se convertiría en el desastre inmigratorio más mortal en la historia moderna de Estados Unidos. Cincuenta y tres pasajeros fallecieron, incluyendo a 26 mexicanos, 21 guatemaltecos y 6 hondureños. El incidente capturó brevemente los titulares de noticias a nivel internacional, pero este reportaje — con base en más de dos años de investigación— es el primer recuento completo del terrible evento, sus complejas causas y sus devastadoras consecuencias. Para hacerlo, viajé a varios lugares de México y Guatemala, para pasar tiempo con 16 familias de las víctimas. Eventualmente, también pude entrevistar a un sobreviviente, cuya desgarradora historia proporciona un recuento de primera mano sobre una operación de tráfico humano con terribles resultados. A nivel forense, había un poco de misterio sobre lo que ocurrió dentro del tráiler. Las preguntas más urgentes eran: ¿Por qué ocurrió esto? ¿Y quién fue responsable? Durante el juicio de dos de los traficantes en una corte federal en San Antonio, los jurados escucharon el testimonio de investigadores, agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza, otros traficantes, y sobrevivientes, quienes revelaron la complicada operación interna de la organización traficante, el cartel que domina el lado mexicano del Río Grande, al sur de la ciudad de Laredo, y el formidable aparato de seguridad fronteriza en el lado estadounidense. Acusados de conspiración para transportar inmigrantes indocumentados, lo que resultó en muerte, los acusados se enfrentaron a una montaña de evidencia incriminatoria. El abogado de la defensa — cuya larga barba de chivo, botas vaqueras de piel de lagarto y dramático estilo, contrastaba con el sobrio comportamiento y vestimenta de los fiscales— hizo varios intentos de acusar al gobierno de Estados Unidos de permitir que ocurriera el desastre. ¿Por qué el gobierno no desmanteló antes la red de traficantes? ¿Por qué los agentes permitieron que el tráiler cargado con más de sesenta personas pasara por los puestos de control de la Patrulla Fronteriza al norte de Laredo? “Estados Unidos falló”, dijo mientras contrainterrogaba a un agente de investigaciones del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional. “¿Estaría de acuerdo en que alguien cometió un error?”. El juez tuvo que recordar repetidamente al jurado que el juicio no era en contra del gobierno de Estados Unidos. De hecho, tal y como el juicio lo reveló, una red de traficantes compuesta por personas comunes y corrientes, que a menudo eran imprudentes e incompetentes, había logrado burlar uno de los sistemas de vigilancia fronteriza mejor financiados y más sofisticados a nivel tecnológico en el mundo. Igual que con un sinnúmero de operaciones similares, los delincuentes se habían salido con la suya una y otra vez, teniendo más éxitos en sus operaciones que fracasos — hasta el día en que fracasaron de la manera más horrible. Lo que ocurrió en el tráiler entre Laredo y San Antonio es la única parte excepcional en una narrativa que de otra forma sería un lugar común, y en los años desde el incidente, ningún progreso legislativo de importancia ha ocurrido para reducir los mortales peligros que los inmigrantes enfrentan en su camino hacia trabajos en Estados Unidos. Por el contrario, el Congreso ha continuado incrementando su presupuesto para muros y cercas, expansiones de puestos de control, tecnología de vigilancia, centros de detención y personal para agencias del orden público. Cada incremento en la militarización de la frontera aumenta el peligro para los inmigrantes, pero hay poca evidencia de que esto los desaliente a ellos o a los traficantes a largo plazo. El desastre fue el peor de su tipo, pero de ninguna forma fue el primero. Y, a menos de que algo cambie, no será el último. Una misteriosa enfermedad El viaje de Begaí y Mariano a la caja del tráiler inició en Tuxtepec, una bulliciosa ciudad localizada en los húmedos valles del este de Oaxaca, a unas cincuenta millas del Golfo de México. Habían crecido en Lázaro Cárdenas, una pequeña comunidad indígena chinanteca en las laderas de la Sierra Madre. Los hermanos y sus siete hermanos menores fueron criados en una casa construida con hojas de palma, cerca del ancho y tranquilo Río Usila, de donde sacaban el agua antes del amanecer y donde aprendieron a pescar con arpones para suplementar la escasa comida que su mamá ponía sobre la mesa. La familia subsistía principalmente de maíz y frijoles. No había calles que salieran del pueblo, solo un estrecho sendero de tierra por el que caminaban descalzos. Llegar al hospital requería un caro viaje en lancha a motor río abajo y a través del extenso lago Miguel Alemán. En cuanto tuvieron la edad suficiente para usar machetes, los hermanos se unieron a su padre y a sus tíos en los campos, talando árboles y excavando surcos con sus manos, regresando al final del día empapados en sudor, con las manos cubiertas de sangre debido a las espinas de los matorrales.  Begaí y Mariano crecieron en el este de Oaxaca, a varias horas de Tuxtepec, donde comenzó su viaje hacia el norte. Begaí, el mayor, dejó la escuela a los catorce años para ayudar a mantener a su familia. Dejó su casa por primera vez a los dieciséis años para trabajar en una plantación de caña de azúcar fuera de Tuxtepec, aproximadamente a una hora en lancha. Era un trabajo extremadamente agotador, pero su salario ayudó a que Mariano se convirtiera en el primer miembro de la familia en graduarse de la preparatoria. Armado con su diploma, Mariano se fue a la Ciudad de México, pero sus esperanzas de ahorrar para el futuro y contribuir al bienestar de la familia pronto se vieron frustradas. El caos de la capital era desconcertante para Mariano, para quien el español era su segundo idioma (su familia hablaba en una variante de chinanteco) y nunca había estado lejos de casa. Estaba solo y el único trabajo que pudo encontrar fue en una pizzería en donde apenas podía ganar lo suficiente para pagar la renta. Después de unos años, regresó a Oaxaca con los bolsillos vacíos. Había puesto sus esperanzas en EE. UU., donde uno de sus tíos trabajaba en la construcción, era dueño de su propia casa y había sentado cabeza con una esposa estadounidense. Las metas de Mariano eran similarmente humildes: quería ahorrar suficiente dinero para construir una casa en México e iniciar una familia. Alrededor de 2013, conoció a una mujer en un encuentro religioso en Tuxtepec, en donde él y Begaí tocaban la guitarra y cantaban en el grupo de alabanza. Luz Estrella Cuevas Remolino era devota, igual que Mariano, y le dijo que ella también tenía la esperanza de iniciar una familia. Pronto después de conocerse, él se fue a Estados Unidos, con dinero prestado de su tío para financiar el viaje, cruzó la frontera a pie por algún lugar del Desierto de Sonora, y eventualmente llegó a Atlanta. Mantuvo su contacto con Luz Estrella por teléfono, y la relación se tornó seria. Después de tres años de trabajar como plomero seis días a la semana y de ahorrar casi cada centavo que no era destinado para su comida y su vivienda, Mariano se lastimó la mano en el trabajo. Estaba tan arruinado económicamente cuando partió a Estados Unidos que incluso tuvo que tomar prestado unos pantalones de uno de sus hermanos menores. Con el pago del seguro de compensación para trabajadores agregado a sus ahorros, Mariano no vio el punto de quedarse hasta sanar. Se apresuró para regresar a México para casarse con Luz Estrella. En la boda, ella llevó un ramo de rosas blancas y lució un vestido blanco con un velo que arrastraba sobre el suelo tras ella. Él vistió un traje gris de tres botones, solapa metálica y una corbata de color rojo oscuro. Vivieron con los padres de ella en Tuxtepec mientras empezaban a construir una casa en una nueva subdivisión fuera del pueblo. Begaí y tres de sus hermanos menores contribuían cuando podían y, después de casi un año, la casa estaba casi terminada. Pero el proyecto agotó los ahorros de Mariano, así que empezó a hacer algunos trabajos de construcción junto con Begaí.  Un autobús avanza hacia el norte desde Tuxtepec, donde Mariano y Begaí Santiago Hipólito vivieron con sus esposas e hijos antes de dirigirse a Estados Unidos. Para entonces, Begaí también se había casado. Lo hizo con María Antonia Torres Morales, a quien todos conocían como Mari y era cuatro años mayor que él. Mari no estaba buscando una nueva relación cuando él apareció en su vida, pero le atrajo su honestidad y su deseo de empezar una familia. Cuando tenía poco más de 20 años, ella tuvo una hija con una pareja que la abandonó. Le preocupaba que Begaí fuera a enterarse sobre su hija y también la dejara, pero cuando ella se lo dijo, él prometió criar a la niña como si fuera su propia hija. Se casaron en 2014 y Mari dio a luz a un niño posteriormente en ese mismo año. Lo llamaron Jafet, el nombre de uno de los hijos de Noé. Begaí disfrutaba de la vida en familia con Mari y sus dos hijos. Vivían con los padres de ella en una casa con un frondoso jardín, árboles de plátano, pollos, cerdos y un pequeño arroyo que corría al lado de la propiedad. Él y Mariano tenían amplios conocimientos de carpintería y plomería, y en ocasiones conseguían un contrato a largo plazo juntos y trabajaban seis días a la semana, ganando unos $20 dólares al día. Pero las temporadas sin trabajo eran frecuentes, y aceptaban cualquier cosa que pudieran encontrar. Un día, en junio de 2022, habían terminado de cavar una fosa séptica, cuando Mariano le comunicó a Begaí una preocupante noticia: estaba tan quebrado que apenas podía poner comida sobre la mesa. Las finanzas de Mariano nunca se recuperaron después de que gastó todos sus ahorros para construir su casa. Con una hija de cuatro años y un hijo de dos años, ahora se enfrentaba al mismo estrés financiero que había plagado a sus padres y que él había estado tan determinado a evitar. Para empeorar las cosas, Luz Estrella necesitaba una cara prueba de diagnóstico para determinar la causa de un extraño dolor en su pecho. No costaba mucho para los estándares de Estados Unidos (unos $350 dólares) pero era más de lo que Mariano podía pagar. Luz Estrella también estaba recibiendo tratamiento para una piedra en el riñón y le habían dicho que posiblemente necesitaría una operación para removerla, lo que podría costar hasta $1,400 dólares, o el equivalente de tres meses de salario completo. Mariano ya había pedido prestado a sus tres hermanos menores que estaban trabajando en maquiladoras en Ciudad Juárez. No vio otra opción más que ir al norte. “Me voy a regresar a Estados Unidos”, le dijo a Begaí, “quiero que vengas conmigo”.  Las sobrinas de Mariano y Begaí Santiago Hipólito corren por un camino de tierra al lado de su escuela primaria. Junto a la fosa séptica, sudoroso y cubierto de tierra, Begaí se sintió enfermo de la preocupación. Le dijo a Mariano que no sabía nada sobre cómo llegar a la frontera ni de cómo pagar por un viaje como ese. Mariano le dijo que él se haría cargo de todo. Ya había hablado con un amigo que todavía estaba en Atlanta, y quien estaba de acuerdo con prestarles el dinero para pagarle a los traficantes y cubrir el exorbitante impuesto que el cártel cobraba por cada inmigrante en la frontera. Los únicos gastos iniciales serían los boletos de avión para Monterrey y los boletos de autobús para Nuevo Laredo, la ciudad fronteriza al sur de Laredo, del otro lado del Río Grande. “Solo será por dos años, y luego me regreso contigo”, dijo Mariano. El primer instinto de Begaí fue decir no. Sus finanzas estaban relativamente seguras — la madre de Mari operaba un puesto de comida que era una segura fuente de ingresos cuando el trabajo de construcción estaba lento — así que no tenía una razón urgente para irse. ¿Qué pasaría si le ocurría algo? ¿Quién cuidaría de Mari y de los niños? Begaí le dijo a Mariano que necesitaba pensarlo, pero Mariano dijo que él se iría de cualquier forma. “Ya tengo la fecha”. Begaí habló del tema con Mari unos días después, y ella le rogó que se quedara en casa. “Puedes caer en manos de gente mala, y te pueden hacer daño. ¿Yo qué voy a hacer? ¿Cómo me voy a quedar?”. Begaí argumentó que quería ahorrar dinero para construir una casa propia y ayudar a la hija de Mari, que actualmente tiene 16 años, a terminar su preparatoria. Mari se enojó. Jafet solo tenía ocho años, ella pensaba que no era un buen momento para que estuviera sin su papá. “Aquí tenemos todo lo que necesitamos”, le dijo. Begaí confesó que se sentía obligado por la más simple de las razones: “Yo no quiero que mi hermano se vaya solo”. Unos días después, Mari estaba en casa preparando la cena cuando Begaí regresó de prisa de su trabajo y empezó a empacar ropa en una mochila. “Ya me voy”, le dijo. “¿No vas a comer?”, le preguntó. “Ya no me da tiempo”, le respondió. Aturdida, Mari y los niños lo siguieron a la puerta y por la polvorienta calle, rogándole que regresara, pero él no se detuvo. Fila de traficantes Esa noche, Begaí y Mariano abordaron un vuelo a Monterrey. La comprensión de Begaí sobre el remolino al que estaba entrando era tan desconocida como la oscuridad que contemplaba por las ventanas del avión. No sabía que se precipitaba hacia una de las peores regiones sin ley en México, donde una poderosa organización criminal ejercía un control casi total, ni que un ejército de agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza respaldado por helicópteros, drones, cámaras de imagen térmica y perros entrenados para detectar olores, los esperaban al otro lado del Río Grande. El Río Grande corre entre Laredo, Texas, y Nuevo Laredo, México. Esa noche, Begaí y Mariano abordaron un vuelo a Monterrey. La comprensión de Begaí sobre el remolino al que estaba entrando era tan desconocida como la oscuridad que contemplaba por las ventanas del avión. No sabía que se precipitaba hacia una de las peores regiones sin ley en México, donde una poderosa organización criminal ejercía un control casi total, ni que un ejército de agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza respaldado por helicópteros, drones, cámaras de imagen térmica y perros entrenados para detectar olores, los esperaban al otro lado del Río Grande. El Cártel del Noreste tiene sus orígenes en Los Zetas, un grupo paramilitar fundado por exsoldados de las fuerzas especiales mexicanas. Los Zetas empezaron como un brazo armado del Cártel del Golfo antes de que sus líderes crearan uno propio, y con esto iniciaron una de las organizaciones criminales más brutales de la historia de México. Aproximadamente a partir de 2012, una serie de arrestos y asesinatos de líderes de Los Zeta desató una violenta guerra por el poder dentro de la organización. El Cártel del Noreste era uno de los varios grupos que se formó a partir de los fragmentos. Para 2022, dominaba el territorio a lo largo de la frontera en tres estados de la República Mexicana. Nuevo Laredo, la ciudad de casi medio millón de personas a donde Begaí y Mariano se dirigían, era la base para sus operaciones de tráfico de droga y de personas. De la misma forma en que la Prohibición dio pie al auge del comercio ilegal de licor e incrementó el poder de las organizaciones de la mafia que lo controlaban, la guerra de Estados Unidos en contra de las drogas, lanzada en 1971 por el Presidente Richard Nixon, ayudó a crear las condiciones para que los cárteles de la droga prosperaran. Hoy en día, esos mismos cárteles y las organizaciones de tráfico humano que operan en sus territorios, están generando enormes ganancias debido a una prohibición casi total de inmigración a través de la frontera de casi 1,900 millas (más de 3,000 km) entre Estados Unidos y México. Las personas han burlado la frontera por generaciones, pero transportarlas nunca había sido tan lucrativo. A principios de la década de los 90, los guías, conocidos como coyotes, cobraban tan poco como $20 dólares para ayudar a un inmigrante a cruzar a pie. El auge del tráfico inició a principios de enero de 1994, cuando el Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (NAFTA, por sus siglas en inglés) entró en vigor, inundando México con baratos productos agrícolas estadounidenses producidos a nivel industrial. Obligados por las circunstancias a abandonar sus propios mercados, los agricultores mexicanos empezaron a emigrar a Estados Unidos en cifras sin precedentes. Posteriormente, ese mismo año, una devaluación del peso arrojó la economía mexicana a una caída libre — el desempleo casi se duplicó y masas de trabajadores industriales se sumaron a los agricultores en los viajes hacia el norte. Un centro comercial outlet en el Río Grande, en el centro de Laredo, Texas, visto desde la orilla del lado mexicano del río. Los migrantes cruzan regularmente el Río Grande en Laredo rumbo a destinos más al interior. El comercio libre no significaba libertad de movimiento para las personas y el Presidente Bill Clinton trató de reducir el flujo de trabajadores indocumentados al ordenar la primera gran militarización de la frontera sur de Estados Unidos. Una nueva estrategia conocida como “prevención mediante la disuasión”, que debutó el mismo año que el NAFTA y que involucraba el uso de cercas, puestos de control fronterizo, patrulleros armados y otras medidas para empujar a los inmigrantes lejos de las zonas comunes de cruce urbano y enviándolos hacia terrenos hostiles. La idea era que los inmigrantes entonces decidirían que no valía la pena enfrentar el riesgo y la incomodidad de tratar de cruzar un hostil estrecho de la frontera (por ejemplo, las escabrosas montañas y los candentes desiertos de Arizona) para llegar a la recompensa. Pero los inmigrantes siguieron intentando y el número de detenciones en la frontera sur de Estados Unidos siguió aumentando cada año, de 1 millón en 1994 a casi 1.7 millones en el año 2000.  Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. InstagramThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ El presupuesto de la Patrulla Fronteriza en 1993, el año antes de que la política de prevención mediante la disuasión entrara en vigor, era de $363 millones. Tres décadas después, este presupuesto ha aumentado a más de $7,000 millones de dólares. Durante el mismo periodo, el número de agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza en la frontera sur aumentó de menos de 4,000 a cerca de 20,000. Sin embargo, ninguna cantidad de militarización en la frontera ha resultado en una reducción a largo plazo en el flujo de inmigrantes. Los arquitectos de la política y aquellos que continúan presionando por un incremento en la militarización bajo cada sucesivo gobierno, demócrata y republicano, han repetidamente subestimado la determinación de los inmigrantes y la creatividad de los traficantes, quienes han encontrado formas de burlar todo lo que la Patrulla Fronteriza pone en su camino. Mientras tanto, la mano de obra inmigrante continúa siendo una parte vital de la economía estadounidense. El resultado es un perverso sistema en el que los trabajadores inmigrantes determinados a mantener a sus familias continúan viniendo al norte, y las industrias y los pequeños negocios en todo el país siguen dependiendo de ellos. En lugar de reconocer esa realidad y aprobar leyes para atenderla — como expandir el número de visas para trabajadores temporales para sectores que ya emplean grandes números de trabajadores indocumentados — el Congreso continúa invirtiendo dinero en un complejo industrial fronterizo y en la maquinaria de deportaciones. Desde 2003, Estados Unidos ha gastado unos $400,000 millones de dólares en las agencias involucradas en la aplicación de las leyes inmigratorias — más que todas las otras agencias del orden público federales combinadas. Los principales beneficiarios de este crecimiento incluyen a los contratistas para defensa que se beneficiaron de las eternas guerras en Irak y Afganistán. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman y General Dynamics, entre otros, han gastado decenas de millones de dólares en el cabildeo y contribuciones a campañas para ambos partidos políticos. Bajo la actual administración de Donald Trump, el gasto para la aplicación de las leyes de inmigración se ha disparado y el número de tropas en la frontera sur casi se ha triplicado. Y mientras que los cruces no autorizados de la frontera han disminuido significativamente desde el pico de Diciembre de 2023 — un hecho proclamado a viva voz por los funcionarios de Trump — es poco probable que la intensificación en la vigilancia sea la causa principal. Más de dos tercios de la reducción ocurrieron el año anterior a la toma de posesión de Trump, lo que parece haber sido provocado principalmente por una reducción en la demanda de mano de obra en Estados Unidos y cambios en la política para refugiados en los puntos de entrada oficiales. Para cuando Mariano y Begaí hicieron su viaje, los días de los cruces por $20 dólares ya eran historia — los inmigrantes estaban pagando un promedio de entre $6,000 y $10,000 dólares, con algunos traficantes cobrando más de $20,000 dólares. El efecto disuasivo del aumento en la militarización es difícil de medir, pero una cosa es indiscutible: ha agregado capas de complejidad y riesgo, lo que ha hecho que el servicio de los traficantes sea de mayor valor. Un resultado es que el tráfico humano ahora compite con el tráfico de drogas en cuanto a ganancias. Otro resultado es que miles de inmigrantes han muerto tratando cruces más peligrosos y la frontera sur de Estados Unidos se ha convertido en el epicentro de la ruta inmigratoria por tierra más peligrosa del mundo. La Patrulla Fronteriza ha reportado más de 10,500 muertes de inmigrantes en la frontera desde 1994, pero la cifra real es probablemente mucho más alta. Tomando en cuenta a los inmigrantes que mueren en el lado de México y a los muchos que desaparecen y nunca son encontrados, algunos grupos de derechos humanos creen que ese número puede ser hasta 10 veces mayor. Para cuando Mariano y Begaí hicieron su viaje, los días de los cruces por $20 dólares ya eran historia — los inmigrantes estaban pagando un promedio de entre $6,000 y $10,000 dólares, con algunos traficantes cobrando más de $20,000 dólares. Estas ganancias se distribuyen entre las redes que se extienden por todo Centro y Sudamérica y en todo el mundo, divididas entre reclutadores, choferes de todo tipo, beneficiarios de sobornos, falsificadores de documentos, operadores de casas de seguridad, propietarios de hoteles, guías o coyotes, y, claro, los cárteles. En 1997, la Organización Internacional para las Migraciones de la ONU indicó que la industria de tráfico de inmigrantes a nivel mundial era de $7,000 millones de dólares. Para 2021, el Centro de Análisis Operacionales del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional estimó que el tráfico humano por la frontera sur de Estados Unidos por sí solo estaba generando entre $2,000 y $6,000 millones de dólares al año. Los cárteles que controlan el territorio a lo largo de la frontera no necesitan involucrarse en las logísticas de mover a las personas desde su punto de origen y por todo el territorio mexicano. Ellos dejan ese trabajo a organizaciones más pequeñas que tienen conexiones locales y que operan como contratistas independientes. El Cártel del Noreste simplemente se queda en Nuevo Laredo como un trol debajo del puente, extorsionando dinero de cada inmigrante que se aparece con el plan de cruzar hacia el norte. Cuando Mariano y Begaí llegaron a finales de junio de 2022, la tarifa del impuesto para mexicanos — conocida como “piso” en español y pagada directamente al cártel en efectivo o por transferencia bancaria — era de unos $2,000 dólares. Las personas que llegan de más lejos tienen que pagar más. El cártel tiene cero tolerancia para los freelancers. Los vigilantes siguen de cerca a todos los que entran y salen de la ciudad, y todos los inmigrantes que llegan de una estación de autobuses fuera de la ciudad deben tener un código para probar que están enlazados con la maquinaria de tráfico y que están en buenos términos con el cártel. Los códigos son palabras simples —Diablo, Ferrari, Demon — que ayudan a los traficantes a dar seguimiento a sus clientes y que el cártel usa para mantener un conteo detallado de los traficantes. En ocasiones, los traficantes también dan a los migrantes brazaletes de colores o playeras iguales. Pasear por las calles sin un código, y ni se diga cruzar el río, puede resultar en un secuestro, una paliza o en la muerte. Mariano había mantenido a su traficante informado sobre los detalles del viaje, enviando fotografías de sus tarjetas mexicanas de identificación, boletos de autobús, números del autobús, y actualizándolo conforme viajaban de Oaxaca hasta Nuevo Laredo. Los traficantes enviaron las fotos a su contacto en el cártel y un mensaje de texto a Mariano con su código personal — 050 Flaco — que necesitarían dar a los vigilantes del cártel en cada parada. Mariano escribió el código en tinta roja en un pedazo de una hoja de un cuaderno a rayas, junto con el nombre del hotel en donde el traficante le había indicado quedarse. Tan pronto como los hermanos llegaron a la estación de autobuses en Nuevo Laredo, un vigilante del cártel se acercó y le pidió su código. Una vez que salieron, tomaron un taxi al Hotel Calderón, un edificio de cinco pisos a unos trescientos metros del Río Grande. Era obvio que este no era un hotel normal. Begaí y Mariano se sorprendieron de la inmundicia y de las actitudes desinteresadas del personal. Había una mesa cerca de la recepción llena de pertenencias dejadas por previos migrantes que habían pasado por ahí — ropa, zapatos, mochilas. Tenían la orden de su traficante de no salir más que para comprar comida y, en ese caso, de regresar inmediatamente. Los hermanos registraron su llegada y se instalaron en un cuarto con un colchón delgado sobre una base de aluminio y barras de metal en las ventanas. En un punto, un hombre mayor toco a su puerta y les dijo que tenía miedo. Los tres hombres rezaron juntos. “Anímese”, le dijo Mariano. “Todo va a salir bien”. Hotel Calderón, cerca del Río Grande en el centro de Nuevo Laredo, donde se alojaron los migrantes involucrados en el desastre de Quintana Road en su camino a Estados Unidos. El cártel otorgaba a cada organización de traficantes autorizada el acceso a un segmento de la ribera, cada uno de estos segmentos clasificado de acuerdo con el código. Los guías locales en el lado mexicano se comunicaban con los vigilantes en el lado estadounidense quienes monitorizaban los movimientos de la Patrulla Fronteriza. Amplias secciones de la ribera estaban sin desarrollo, cubiertas con palmas y densa vegetación que ofrecían un escondite justo a la orilla del agua. En la noche del 21 de junio, Mariano y Begaí siguieron al guía hasta el río para su primer intento de cruzar. El guía preguntó a todos en el grupo compuesto por cerca de una docena de personas si sabían nadar. A pesar de que el nivel era lo suficientemente bajo como para caminar por el agua, el Río Grande tiene peligrosas corrientes y agujeros profundos que causaron la muerte por ahogamiento de 172 migrantes solo en 2022, de acuerdo con datos de la Patrulla Fronteriza para ese año. Los hermanos, habiendo crecido cerca del Río Usila, dijeron que eran buenos nadadores. “Cada uno tiene que ayudar a los que no saben nadar”, dijo el guía. Cruzaron sin incidentes, arrastrándose en el lado estadounidense hacia un espacio que olía a ganado y que le pareció a Begaí ser un corral para animales. Apenas tuvo tiempo para mirar a su alrededor cuando la luz de reflectores inundó el área, cegando su vista. Escuchó gritos y casi echó a correr, pero Mariano lo detuvo. “Ya te vieron. Ya no hay que correr”, dijo.  Los agentes esposaron a los hermanos y los subieron a una camioneta junto con cerca de otros veinte, luego los fotografiaron y escanearon sus huellas dactilares usando un dispositivo móvil. Cerca de la una de la mañana, la Patrulla Fronteriza los dejó en uno de los puentes internacionales de Laredo y los observó caminar de regreso a México. Empapados y exhaustos, encontraron a unos cuantos hombres de apariencia sospechosa en el otro lado del río que les preguntaron por su código. Tomaron un taxi de vuelta al Hotel Calderón. Menos de 24 horas después, hicieron un segundo intento. Nuevamente fueron aprehendidos y dejados en el puente. Un tercer intento también fue frustrado. La experiencia es típica —cerca del 60 por ciento de todas las detenciones en la frontera ese año fue de personas que volvieron a intentar el cruce. Fallar es tan rutinario que los traficantes garantizan múltiples intentos sin cobrar una cuota extra. En el cuarto intento, los hermanos exitosamente burlaron a la Patrulla Fronteriza y lograron llegar al encuentro con el chofer designado quien los llevó a una casa de seguridad de un solo cuarto, donde esperaron por el camión que los llevaría a San Antonio. Evadir a los perros 050 Flaco — el código que Mariano y Begaí habían usado — estaba relacionado con dos traficantes: Felipe Orduña Torres, quien vivía en San Antonio, y José Martínez Olvera, cuya base estaba en Houston. De los dos, era Orduña Torres el que mantenía contacto directo con el cártel. Ambos eran mexicanos indocumentados que habían estado en el negocio de tráfico de personas por años. Estaban al frente de operaciones separadas, pero habían formado una asociación en 2019 para capitalizar en una táctica que la Patrulla Fronteriza califica como tráfico a gran escala, es decir, mover grandes cantidades de personas en vehículos comerciales, normalmente tráileres.  El puesto de control 29, un cruce fronterizo en Laredo, Texas, procesa unos 6.000 camiones al día que transportan productos agrícolas y manufacturados a través del Río Grande. El tráfico a gran escala surgió primero como respuesta al explosivo crecimiento del tráfico de camiones de carga entre México y Estados Unidos con la entrada en vigor del NAFTA. Se convirtió en una opción más atractiva cuando el cambio de la manufactura de China a México — que empezó a ganar auge en alrededor de 2012 — causó un incremento sin precedentes en el tráfico fronterizo. Laredo es el puerto terrestre más ocupado de Estados Unidos, y registró más de 5.5 millones de cruces de camiones en 2022. Cada día de ese año, los camiones transportaron alrededor de $800 millones de dólares en productos agrícolas y manufacturados a través del Río Grande, y unos 6,000 de ellos pasaron por un mismo puesto de control que se encuentra en la autopista Interestatal 35, a unas 30 millas al norte de la frontera. La Patrulla Fronteriza la llama Puesto de Control 29, o C29. Para los traficantes, este es el punto más estrecho en el cuello de botella. Mezclarse con los otros grandes transportes es la mejor forma de pasar. Tan intimidante como era, el viaje en tráiler a través de los puestos de control fronterizo al norte de Laredo se promocionaba a los inmigrantes como una opción más segura y cómoda que la de ir a pie a través del desierto por las zonas menos pobladas. El calor es la principal causa de muerte entre los inmigrantes en la frontera sur de Estados Unidos, en donde cerca de 900 personas indocumentadas murieron debido a la exposición al calor extremo entre 2018 y 2022; durante ese mismo periodo, menos de 200 perdieron la vida en incidentes relacionados con vehículos. Los inmigrantes pagan cuotas mucho más caras por un viaje que incluye un lugar en un tráiler una vez que llegan al lado estadounidense, lo que los traficantes llaman la opción VIP. C29 ha estado en operación desde 2006 y cuenta con quince acres (6 hectáreas), con un centro de detención en el lugar, una zona de inspección secundaria y máquinas de rayos X que permiten a los oficiales detectar si hay seres humanos escondidos dentro de tráileres cerrados. A pesar del tamaño del puesto de control, desde hace mucho tiempo el volumen de tráfico ha sobrepasado su capacidad. En 2022, solo había dos carriles dedicados para camiones de carga, lo que significaba largas filas de camiones con remolque hacia el sur de la autopista I-35, demorando el flujo comercial e incrementando el riesgo de accidentes. Mientras peor es el tráfico en el puesto de control, mejores son las condiciones para los traficantes, quienes mantienen una vigilancia en la actividad de camiones comerciales y programan sus movimientos para llegar al puesto de control cuando está atascado y cuando los agentes, bajo presión, permiten que el tráfico fluya. Traficantes como Martínez Olvera y Orduña Torres se hacen cargo de falsificar convincentes manifiestos de embarque, los documentos que describen los contenidos de los tráileres. Si hay una amenaza que les preocupa más que cualquier otra, son los perros detectores de olores. Los traficantes usan detergentes, café y sazonadores de carne para tratar de ocultar el olor de los pasajeros escondidos, pero es casi imposible engañar a los perros. La única manera segura de evitarlos es pasar inadvertidos cuando los humanos que los controlan están ocupados en otro lugar. Normalmente había de seis a ocho perros en C29, pero solo dos trabajando en un momento dado — uno cubriendo tres carriles de automóviles de pasajeros y otro para los dos carriles de camiones de carga. Debido al riesgo de agotamiento y de los efectos del calor, cada perro trabajaba turnos de 40 minutos, seguidos por 80 minutos de descanso. Saturados de trabajo y rebasados por los números de vehículos, seguían siendo un obstáculo formidable. De las 16 cargas en tráileres que Martínez Olvera y Orduña Torres habían tratado de mover desde noviembre de 2021, seis habían sido detenidas por los perros. Nunca era una pérdida total para los traficantes: tendrían que remplazar el camión y el tráiler, y tendrían que encontrar a otro chofer, pero a diferencia de una detención de drogas, la valiosa carga no se confisca de forma permanente. Los inmigrantes detenidos — que normalmente pagan la segunda parte de la cuota al llegar a sus destinos finales — estarían de vuelta en México en cuestión de horas y listos para volverlo a intentar.  Una noche en vela alimentada de metanfetamina Para cuandolos hermanos llegaron a la casa de seguridad, Martínez Olvera y Orduña Torres ya habían movido exitosamente a más de mil personas en tráileres a través de los puestos de control fronterizo al norte de Laredo. Habían subcontratado a personas para librar la mayoría de los peligros, y supervisaban un equipo de subordinados que asumía los riesgos directos del tráfico, a menudo trabajadores con salarios bajos atraídos por la oportunidad de ganar dinero extra. El hombre del que dependían para mantener la flotilla de camiones y tráileres, que estacionaban en un lote de almacenamiento rodeado por pequeños ranchos y terrenos baldíos al este de San Antonio, era un inmigrante indocumentado mexicano de 48 años llamado Juan D’Luna Bilbao. Él había estado viviendo en Texas por más de una década después de quedarse por más tiempo del permitido por su visa de trabajador temporal, y trabajaba como mecánico en un taller local. Había llegado al negocio del tráfico de personas más o menos por accidente, después de que un amigo le encontró un trabajo extra para reparar el vehículo personal de Martínez Olvera. Durante los días de las operaciones para el tráfico de personas, Martínez Olvera y Orduña Torres a menudo asignaban a D’Luna Bilbao con el movimiento de un semitráiler desde el lote de almacenamiento hacia una de las dos paradas de camiones en la intersección de las autopistas I-35 e I-410, al sureste de San Antonio, a la vista de una bodega de Amazon y una concesionaria de Toyota. Posteriormente, cuando el camión regresaba de Laredo, D’Luna Bilbao iba a recogerlo. Por cada operación exitosa, los traficantes le pagaban $500 dólares.   D’Luna Bilbao tenía una gran preocupación sobre el tráiler que estaba preparando esa mañana: la unidad de refrigeración no estaba funcionando bien. Alrededor de las cinco de la mañana del 27 de junio de 2022, sonó el teléfono de D’Luna Bilbao. Martínez Olvera quería que llevara un tractor rojo jalando un tráiler blanco de 53 pies (16 metros) de largo a unas de las usuales paradas de camiones. “El conductor ya está en camino”, le dijo Martínez Olvera. D’Luna Bilbao manejó el lote de almacenamiento, donde realizó los chequeos normales de mantenimiento y espolvoreó sazonador para carnes dentro del tráiler. Luego tomó las fotos de los números de identificación del camión y del tráiler que sus patrones necesitaban para falsificar el manifiesto de embarque. D’Luna Bilbao tenía una gran preocupación sobre el tráiler que estaba preparando esa mañana: la unidad de refrigeración no estaba funcionando bien. Había comprado el tráiler para la organización seis meses antes por cerca de $8,000 dólares y había tenido problemas con este desde el principio. Sin importar lo que intentara, la unidad no enfriaba. Este era un problema por dos razones: la primera era que el conocimiento de embarque especificaba la configuración de la temperatura para el tráiler, y una discrepancia entre los documentos y la temperatura podría ser una señal de alarma en el puesto de control. El año anterior, la Patrulla Fronteriza había detenido cuatro de las cargas de la organización, en parte, por discrepancias en la temperatura. Pero el problema más grande era el mes de junio en el sur de Texas, y sin una unidad de refrigeración en funcionamiento, los pasajeros en el tráiler estarían en gran peligro. D’Luna Bilbao le había estado advirtiendo a Martínez Olvera sobre el averiado compresor por meses, diciendo que no tenía las partes ni el conocimiento para arreglarlo. Justo tres días antes, el 24 de junio, le envió un mensaje de texto a Martínez Olvera con un video de la defectuosa unidad. El jefe le dijo que conseguiría a alguien que lo revisara, pero nunca lo hizo. Se le había dicho a D’Luna Bilbao que no cuestionara las órdenes, así que a pesar de sus preocupaciones entregó el tráiler en la parada de camiones ubicada en la tienda Love’s al suroeste de la ciudad en donde llenó el tanque con diésel y se fue caminando. Minutos después, una aporreada camioneta Chevy Tahoe llegó, y un hombre en una playera de golf con rayas blancas salió del asiento del pasajero y subió al tráiler. Este era Homero Zamorano, quien había sido asignado para mover la carga de inmigrantes que estaba en Laredo ese día. El conductor de la Tahoe, un hombre de más de 600 libras (270 kilos) de peso llamado Christian Martínez, había estado trabajando para Martínez Olvera y Orduña Torres desde marzo del año pasado. El rol principal de Martínez era encontrar y contratar a conductores con licencia comercial que fueran ciudadanos estadounidenses o residentes permanentes, ya que debían poder pasar por los puestos de control interiores de la Patrulla Fronteriza. Algo muy importante era que tenían que estar dispuestos a tomar el riesgo de ser arrestados con una carga de inmigrantes, lo que podría significar una larga sentencia en prisión. Para cada operación, Martínez enviaba a uno de los choferes a la parada de camiones designada, donde un tráiler vacío esperaba. Luego manejaba las comunicaciones entre el chofer y sus jefes a lo largo de la jornada. (Martínez Olvera y Orduña Torres no confiaban en los conductores y preferían no comunicarse con ellos directamente).  Love’s Travel Stop, al suroeste de San Antonio, donde los contrabandistas a menudo cargaban combustible y transferían los camiones que utilizaban para transportar migrantes hacia el norte desde Laredo. Temprano esa mañana, Martínez había recogido a Zamorano cerca de Palestine, un pequeño pueblo ubicado a unas 300 millas (482 km) de San Antonio, en Piney Woods, en el este de Texas. Cuando llegó encontró a Zamorano fumando metanfetamina con su novia. No había nada de raro en eso. Ambos hombres usaban estimulantes para mantenerse despiertos durante los viajes de noche. Martínez prefería la cocaína. Zamorano era la tercera persona reclutada por Martínez y este era su cuarto viaje como socios.  El aire dentro del tráiler ya era sofocante, pero Begaí y Mariano, y los otros, habían sido advertidos de guardar silencio, ya que incluso el sonido más tenue podía advertir a los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza. Martínez, quién se crio en Palestine, sufre de profundas discapacidades cognitivas y nunca aprendió a leer. Debido a su peso, Zamorano le llamaba Gordito. Antes de relacionarse con los traficantes, lo más cerca que Martínez tuvo a un empleo estable, fue un trabajo con su primo vendiendo helados. A menudo estaba sin casa, viviendo en su Tahoe. De pronto, estaba ganando cantidades de dinero que nunca antes había visto. Cada vez que un chofer llegaba con éxito a San Antonio con una carga de inmigrantes, los traficantes pagaban a Martínez $5,000 dólares. En menos de cuatro meses había ganado $35,000 dólares. Las cosas no habían salido muy bien para los choferes que había contratado. El primero fue un amigo de la infancia de Palestine. En su tercer viaje, fue capturado en un puesto de control de la Patrulla Fronteriza con 107 inmigrantes en su tráiler. El segundo chofer contratado por Martínez también había sido detenido en su tercer viaje. Por ahora, la suerte de Zamorano parecía estar estable. “Aquí nos mataron” Cerca de las 11 a.m.,Zamorano había completado el viaje a Laredo, se había estacionado en una parada de camiones al norte del pueblo y ahí esperaba instrucciones. Como regla, los choferes no recibían información hasta el último momento posible. En lugar de enviarlos directamente a las casas de seguridad — lo que podría llamar la atención y dar información a los choferes que podrían revelar a las autoridades si eran detenidos — la organización tenía a personas en el lugar que reunían a los inmigrantes en otro vehículo y los movían al sitio en donde serían subidos al tráiler.  Un estacionamiento de camiones en la autopista 359 al este del centro de Laredo sirvió como lugar de recogida el día del desastre migratorio de Quintana Road. Justo antes de la una de la tarde, Zamorano recibió un pin de localización en Google Maps enviado por Martínez y dirigiéndolo a una calle lateral frente a una bodega de suministros de acero en un área industrial al este de la ciudad. Cuando llegó ahí, encontró un camión de caja blanca, lleno, como sabía, con los inmigrantes que llevaría a San Antonio. Nervioso y agotado por su noche en vela alimentada de metanfetamina, Zamorano batalló para dar la vuelta al tráiler y colocarlo justo contra el estrecho espacio en donde el camión de caja blanca esperaba, flanqueado en un lado por una cerca de malla ciclónica bordeada por mesquites. Cuando finalmente paró, los hombres que estaban en la calle abrieron rápidamente los compartimentos de ambos vehículos. A unos 50 metros, fluía la corriente del tráfico sobre la autopista. Cualquier transeúnte hubiera visto solo sombras sobre la grava mientras más de sesenta personas se movían entre dos camiones que no tenían nada de especial. El proceso de carga tomó alrededor de diez minutos. Aproximadamente una hora después de salir, Zamorano salió de la autopista y hacia el cobertizo del C29. El aire dentro del tráiler ya era sofocante, pero Begaí y Mariano, y los otros, habían sido advertidos de guardar silencio, ya que incluso el sonido más tenue podía advertir a los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza. Mientras Zamorana esperaba en la fila para el puesto de control, sintieron las vibraciones de los motores de otros camiones y el rechinido de los frenos de aire. Cuando el camión paró brevemente, escucharon al chofer hablar con alguien afuera. No había ningún perro trabajando en el carril de Zamorano cuando fue su turno de hablar con un agente. Portando una gorra negra con la palabra “H-Town”, Zamorano sonreía mientras se asomaba por la ventanilla del camión. De acuerdo con los documentos falsificados, Zamorano estaba cargando trece toneladas de arándanos azules y la temperatura del tráiler tenía que estar por debajo de los 66 grados Fahrenheit (19 grados centígrados). El agente hizo una señal con la mano para que el tráiler avanzara sin antes revisar el control de la temperatura, y Zamorano pasó para continuar rumbo a San Antonio. Conforme el camión continuó hacia el norte, el calor dentro del tráiler se intensificaba. Sin ventilación y con el calor de los cuerpos de 64 personas sudando a galones, es posible que la temperatura haya subido a más de 140 grados Fahrenheit (60 grados centígrados). La compostura de los inmigrantes pronto se rompió. Mariano y Begaí escucharon los desesperados llantos en la oscuridad, en todo su alrededor. Sus ojos ardían, la piel les picaba por el sazonador que D’Luna Bilbao había espolvoreado. Las personas empezaron a moverse y a caer uno sobre los otros mientras trataban de encontrar una entrada de aire, pero dentro del contenedor sellado solo estaban generando más calor y agotando el preciado oxígeno. En un punto, Mariano se puso de pie y empezó a resbalarse sobre el suelo cubierto de sudor. Begaí lo alcanzó y trató de hacer que se volviera a sentar. “No te levantes, quédate quieto”, pero Mariano se le resbalaba con el sudor. El hermano menor llegó al frente, donde con sus puños golpeó las paredes del tráiler, desesperado para tratar de captar la atención del chofer. De alguna manera, encontró el camino de regreso al lado de Begaí. “No me escuchó”, dijo. De hecho, Zamorano había escuchado ruidos dentro del tráiler. Alrededor de las 3:20 p. m., llamó a Martínez para decirle que su teléfono se había quedado sin batería y que había parado para comprar un cargador. Hizo por lo menos dos paradas más, diciéndole a Martínez en cada ocasión que había tenido que parar porque había escuchado gritos y golpes en las paredes del tráiler. Trató de reiniciar la unidad de refrigeración que estaba montada sobre el exterior del tráiler, pero sin saberlo empeoró las cosas — la unidad empezó a soplar aire caliente. Mariano apretó la mano de Begaí. “Ya no puedo, me duele mucho el pecho”, dijo. Los inmigrantes escucharon a Zamorano mover cosas en el exterior y sintieron una ráfaga de aire caliente. “¡Ya casi llegamos!”, gritó. En un punto, también escucharon a alguien moviendo los cerrojos de las puertas traseras, pero las puertas permanecieron cerradas. Cerca de las 5:30 p. m., Zamorano se encontró con una camioneta pickup en la autopista I-35 que lo guiaría al sitio designado de entrega en la calle Quintana Road, en el sur de San Antonio. Llamó a Martínez nuevamente, agitado. “Están gritando y golpeando muy fuerte”, dijo. Le preguntó qué debía hacer. Unos minutos después, Martínez volvió a llamar con un mensaje de los patrones: “Lo que se hizo ya se hizo. No vuelvas a parar”. Adentro, los inmigrantes estaban desesperados. Algunos arañaron las paredes y arrancaron pedazos del aislamiento de espuma amarilla, en un inútil esfuerzo por alcanzar el aire fresco. Un grupo de mujeres en medio del tráiler formó un grupo de oración, sus voces se levantaban por encima de los estruendos. Alguien que logró llevar un teléfono escondido a bordo hizo una llamada desesperada, pidiendo a la persona al otro lado de la línea que los rescatara. Un hombre rogaba por agua para su moribunda esposa. El hermano y la hermana que habían puesto a la pequeña chica en medio de ellos trataban de consolarla, el hermano abanicándola con su Biblia de bolsillo. Una mujer que había desobedecido las órdenes de los traficantes de no regalar su agua compartió sus últimas gotas con ellos.  Uno por uno, empezaron a morir. Al momento en que la deshidratación extrema apareció, dejaron de sudar, sus pieles estaban calientes al tacto. El agotamiento de electrolitos puede dar pie a una serie de síntomas: calambres musculares, inflamación cerebral, náusea, pérdida de coordinación, delirio y convulsiones. Después, conforme las temperaturas corporales rebasaron los 105 grados Fahrenheit (40.5 grados centígrados), sus células empezaron a morir y los órganos empezaron a fallar. Sus momentos finales antes de perder el conocimiento fueron agonizantes. Mariano apretó la mano de Begaí. “Ya no puedo, me duele mucho el pecho”, dijo. Begaí sentía como si estuviera sumergido bajo el agua, como si cada difícil inhalación fuera un breve asomo a la superficie. “Aquí nos mataron”, le dijo a Mariano. Su boca y sus extremidades se torcían de forma involuntaria. “No vinimos a morir aquí”, Begaí repetía una y otra vez. “Aguanta hermano”, le dijo Mariano. La última cosa que Begaí recuerda escuchar de Mariano fue una oración: “Dios mío, mira mi corazón, mira mi corazón. Mira mi alma”. Una sombra enorme apareció sobre Begaí. Ya no estaba en el tráiler rodeado de los muertos, sino que estaba solo, debajo de un cielo abierto sobre una vasta planicie. Sintió una inmensa presencia escuchándolo y ofreció su propia oración: “Padre mío, dame una oportunidad, solo una oportunidad”. No hubo respuesta. Alcanzó a escuchar el inconfundible ruido de un tren que venía de algún lugar cercano. Un bolsillo lleno de tarjetas de oración  El tramo lleno de bachesde Quintana Road que pasa hacia el norte desde la I-410 y corre de forma paralela a las vías férreas de Union Pacific Railroad, era conocido por la policía local y los traficantes como una zona para dejar basura y carros robados. Sus bordes estaban cubiertos por densa vegetación y números pintados con pintura en espray sobre cercas averiadas marcadas identificando depósitos de chatarra y de artículos para construcción.  El monumento a los migrantes a lo largo de Quintana Road. Estacionado en el punto de entrega y todavía sentado en la cabina del tractor rojo, Zamorano miraba por el espejo lateral mientras los varios conductores que habían llegado a recoger a los grupos de inmigrantes se reunían en la parte posterior del tráiler. Uno de ellos abrió las puertas del tráiler, pero en lugar del usual tumulto — formado por los conductores gritando códigos y separando a sus respectivos clientes — todos corrieron de vuelta a sus vehículos y se fueron de prisa. Zamorano tenía órdenes estrictas de nunca salir de la cabina durante el proceso de carga y descarga. Invadido por el pánico, llamó a Martínez, quien le dijo que fuera a mirar dentro del tráiler. Con Martínez todavía en la línea, Zamorano bajó de la cabina y caminó hacia atrás. “Hay cuerpos apilados”, dijo, y luego colgó. Con sus manos temblando, Martínez llamó a uno de los lugartenientes de Martínez Olvera y le preguntó qué debían hacer. “Ve a recogerlo”, fue la respuesta. Cuando Martínez llegó unos minutos después, notó a una niña adolescente cerca del tráiler sollozando, su playera negra empapada en sudor colgando de su piel. Unos cuantos hombres que Martínez no reconoció parecían estar ayudándola. Cuando no vio señales de Zamorano — quien ya había dejado de responder a su teléfono y a los mensajes de texto — Martínez huyó de la escena. Roberto Quintero trabajaba en una compañía de asfalto cercana al lugar, y cuando escucharon los gritos él y algunos compañeros de trabajo habían subido a un camión de la compañía para dirigirse a Quintana Road. Fue entonces cuando encontraron a la niña tambaleándose cerca del tráiler. Cuando Quintero se acercó al tráiler, justo antes de las 6 p. m., vio los cuerpos apilados adentro, sus rostros hinchados y sus labios azules. Algunos parecían haberse arrancado la ropa. Ninguno de ellos se movía. Horrorizado, llamó al 911.  La policía y otros socorristas trabajan en la escena donde 53 personas murieron y muchas otras sufrieron enfermedades relacionadas con el calor después de que se encontró un camión con remolque que contenía migrantes el 27 de junio de 2022 en San Antonio. AP Photo/Eric Gay, File. “Hay un tráiler de 18 ruedas con unas 20 personas muertas atrás”, dijo Quintero al operador, los gritos de la niña se escuchaban en el fondo. “Hay más de 20 personas”, dijo tartamudeando. “¡Hay 50 personas!” Mientras él y sus compañeros de trabajo le daban agua a la niña, notaron a un hombre con una gorra negra y una playera de golf a rallas que se escapaba corriendo por un lado del camión. La niña le dijo a Quintero que había visto a ese mismo hombre salir del lado del conductor de la cabina del tráiler. Algunos de los trabajadores de asfalto trataron de alcanzarlo, pero no pudieron. Había una estación de bomberos a menos de una milla (1.4 km) de distancia y los equipos médicos de emergencia llegaron en unos cuantos minutos. Cuando se acercaron al tráiler, recibieron la brutal patada del nauseabundo olor a sudor y heces mezclado con el olor de sazonadores de cocina. Un grupo de cuerpos estaba cerca de las puertas traseras, las extremidades flácidas colgando sobre la orilla. El personal de las ambulancias arrastró los cuerpos por sus brazos y piernas, y los colocaron sobre el suelo de tierra al lado de la calle. Desde dentro del tráiler empezaron a escuchar gemidos y a personas tratando de tomar bocanadas de aire. “¡Hay uno vivo aquí!”, gritó alguien. Dieciséis sobrevivientes fueron llevados de prisa a hospitales locales, cinco de ellos fallecieron más tarde. Después de que el tráiler fue vaciado, 48 personas yacían muertas debajo de carpas amarillas, incluyendo a dos que los oficiales de policía encontraron a varios metros del tráiler. Preocupados de que hubiera más víctimas regadas en el área, el personal de emergencia cuidadosamente revisó ambos lados de Quintana Road. Pronto encontraron a un hombre aparentemente inconsciente, tirado sobre la vegetación al lado de las vías férreas, con una gorra negra que decía “H-Town” y un teléfono Samsung Galaxy tirado junto a él. Primero asumieron que era una de las víctimas. Pero cuando uno de los policías levantó el teléfono, la pantalla no asegurada reveló un mensaje de texto en inglés, que había llegado solo unos minutos antes: “¿dónde estás carnal?”. El mensaje venía de un contacto identificado como Gordito. Zamorano reaccionó con sorpresa cuando el personal de emergencia vertió un cubo de agua helada sobre él. La policía rápidamente determinó que coincidía con la descripción que los trabajadores de asfalto habían dado sobre el conductor, y lo detuvieron. Diagnosticado con intoxicación por anfetaminas y deshidratación, pasó la noche en el hospital bajo supervisión de la policía. Esa tarde, D’Luna Bilbao escuchó lo que había pasado a través de uno de los socios de Martínez Olvera, mientras esperaba en el lote de almacenamiento para recibir la orden para ir a recoger el tráiler. El registro del tráiler llevó a la policía directamente a su casa. Paralizado por el miedo, él estaba ahí esa noche cuando la policía llegó a arrestarlo. Martínez, estaba demasiado alterado para manejar, se había refugiado en un hotel de la cadena La Quinta Inn en las afueras de San Antonio. No sabía que la policía había visto su mensaje de texto y había descubierto que él era Gordito, pero una vez que vio la fotografía de arresto de Zamorano esa noche, no tuvo duda de que lo encontrarían. Regresó a Palestine el día siguiente, donde visitó a su madre y a su hermana, consumió lo que le quedaba de cocaína, y esperó que los policías llegaran. Los policías lo arrestaron en la mañana del 29 de junio. La escala del desastre abrumó la capacidad de la Oficina del Forense del Condado de Bexar. Bajo los reflectores de los vehículos de emergencia, cinco patólogos forenses trabajaron durante la noche para procesar los cuerpos. Revisaron los bolsillos de las víctimas, el interior del tráiler, y las áreas aledañas en busca de documentos de identificación. Los agentes del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional identificaron a algunos con un escáner móvil para huellas dactilares. Nuevamente, como si fueran carga, los inmigrantes fueron subidos a la parte posterior de grandes vehículos y llevados — esta vez a la morgue. Con la ayuda de refuerzos de Dallas y Austin, los funcionarios del Condado de Bexar tomaron cinco días para completar las autopsias. La causa principal de muerte fue la hipertermia —básicamente sobrecalentamiento — pero el forense determinó que también pudieron haber sufrido asfixia al ser sofocados, aplastados por el peso de otros cuerpos, o simplemente incapaces de sobrevivir dentro del aire sin oxígeno. Los oficiales cuidadosamente recopilaron y fotografiaron los objetos personales que los difuntos tenían en sus bolsillos, lo que no era mucho. La mayoría no tenía más que algunas monedas, y algunos viajaban sin nada de dinero. En total, el grupo tenía menos de $2,500 dólares. La mujer guatemalteca que aspiraba a ser maestra y una de sus acompañantes tenían tarjetas mexicanas de identificación falsas para facilitar su tránsito por ese país, en donde es sabido que los oportunistas toman ventaja de los inmigrantes centroamericanos. Un adolescente de la Ciudad de México llevaba tres desgastadas tarjetas de oraciones. Uno de los hombres que había prometido a la madre del niño que cuidaría de él, también llevaba tarjetas con oraciones; él sobrevivió lo suficiente como para caminar a varios metros del tráiler antes de colapsarse. La mujer hondureña embarazada falleció con dos pruebas de embarazo en su bolsillo. Un fornido hombre tenía un pedazo de papel arrugado y mojado de sudor en uno de sus bolsillos, con algunas notas en rojo, que incluían el nombre del hotel en Nuevo Laredo y el código de los traficantes: 050 Flaco. La identificación del hombre indicaba que tenía 32 años y que venía de Oaxaca. Su nombre era Mariano. Su hermano Begaí yacía inconsciente, pero vivo, en un hospital al otro lado de la ciudad. El número real de víctimas Las noticias sobre el desastre se esparcieron por toda la frontera sur. Familias de todo México y Centroamérica miraban la cobertura en los canales locales y leían detenidamente las publicaciones en redes sociales, preguntándose si un ser querido podría estar debajo de las carpas en Quintana Road. Tomaría días para que las familias de las víctimas fueran notificadas, y varias semanas más para repatriar los cuerpos. Sumergidos en las deudas en las que habían incurrido para pagar a los traficantes, algunas familias tuvieron que pedir prestado aún más para pagar los funerales. En algunos lugares — como en el pequeño pueblo en Guatemala en el que crecieron los dos pasajeros más jóvenes — comunidades enteras salieron de sus casas para acompañar a los ataúdes hasta el cementerio. A pesar de que el forense del Condado de Bexar había concluido que la causa principal de la muerte era hipertermia, la forma de la muerte fue homicidio. La investigación cayó sobre la autoridad de la Fuerza de Trabajo Conjunta Alpha, un esfuerzo de varias agencias lanzado por el Procurador General Merrick Garland en 2021 para “mejorar los esfuerzos de cumplimiento con la ley de Estados Unidos en contra de los grupos más prolíficos y peligrosos de trata y tráfico humano”. Choferes de siete organizaciones estaban ya detrás de las rejas, incluyendo a Zamorano, y los teléfonos celulares confiscados a D’Luna Bilbao, Martínez y Zamorano contenían enormes cantidades de información relacionada con las actividades de la organización, pero tomaría todavía alrededor de un año para que las autoridades detectaran a los líderes.  La casa que Felipe Orduña Torres alquilaba con su esposa e hija cerca de la Base Aérea Lackland, al sur de San Antonio, a unos diez minutos en coche del lugar del desastre en Quintana Road. Orduña Torres fue arrestado aquí el 26 de junio de 2023. El 26 de junio de 2023, oficiales federales del orden público allanaron la casa de alquiler de Orduña Torres, ubicada en un modesto vecindario cercano a la Base de la Fuerza Aérea Lackland, a unos diez minutos de la escena del crimen en Quintana Road. Encontraron una camioneta Cadillac Escalade 2015 color perla, y una Ford F-350 modelo 2017, verde limón con rines de cromo personalizados y un kit para elevación tan grande que la hacía parecer casi una “Monster Truck”. Orduña Torres, que en ese entonces tenía 28 años, vivía ahí con su esposa y su hija. El interior estaba recién pintado, y en el patio trasero había instalado una pequeña piscina, pasto sintético y un patio cubierto. El gobierno valúo las mejoras en $41,000 dólares y concluyó que las había financiado con sus ingresos provenientes del tráfico. Ese mismo día, agentes federales arrestaron a otros tres hombres asociados con la organización, incluyendo al suegro de Orduña Torres. (Martínez Olvera logró evadir el arresto de alguna forma, probablemente fugándose a México). “Los traficantes de personas se aprovechan de la esperanza de los migrantes de lograr una mejor vida, pero su única prioridad son las ganancias”, dijo Garland en un comunicado de prensa anunciando los arrestos. En la casa de Orduña Torres, los agentes encontraron una porción de esas ganancias — $30,000 dólares en efectivo guardados en el fondo de una caja de cereal Special K y colocada arriba de un refrigerador, y otros $29,444 dólares en varios escondites, incluyendo la cajonera de su hija. De acuerdo con el gobierno, Orduña Torres había estado involucrado en entre 24 y 48 operaciones de tráfico humano durante un periodo de dos años antes del desastre, lo que significa que sus viajes de tráfico a gran escala con Martínez Olvera eran solo parte de su negocio. En total, el gobierno estima que Orduña Torres ganó entre $96,000 y $240,000 dólares en un periodo de dos años. La estimación más baja pondría a su familia un poco por arriba del ingreso medio para los grupos familiares de San Antonio. La cifra más alta lo pondría dentro de la clase media, pero lejos del tipo de riqueza que significa el estatus de capo en México, mucho menos en Estados Unidos. De las siete personas arrestadas, todas, menos dos — Orduña Torres y su suegro que tuvo un rol menor — se declararían culpables a los cargos de tráfico humano. En marzo pasado, casi tres años después del desastre, Orduña Torres fue llevado a un juzgado de techos altos y paredes forradas con paneles de madera en el nuevo edificio de tribunales federales en San Antonio. Incluso con los grilletes, era visible la pronunciada cojera que le ganó el apodo con el que todos los otros traficantes lo conocían, “Chuequito”. Vestía traje y corbata, con su cabello peinado con gel y en puntas. Había bajado tanto peso para entonces, que D’Luna Bilbao, quien tomó el estrado a principios del juicio, casi no lo reconoció. Dos sobrevivientes testificaron. El primero, Greysy Sanjay Bacajol, quien consolaba a la asustada niña que ella y su hermano habían conocido en camino hacia la frontera. El hermano de Greysy, Oswaldo también sobrevivió, al igual que la niña cuyo nombre era Sebastiana Morales Morales. Fueron sus gritos los que llamaron la atención de los trabajadores de asfalto. El otro sobreviviente que testificó fue José Luis Vásquez Guzmán, el exsoldado mexicano que estaba cuidando al chico adolescente. El chico, Marcos Antonio Velasco Velasco, se dirigía a un trabajo en Ohio que originalmente había sido ofrecido a su madre, pero le rogó que lo dejara ir a él en su nombre. Marcos Antonio murió, al igual que el primo del soldado, Javier Flores López. Cuando los fiscales mostraron la foto de su primo en la pantalla del tribunal, Vásquez Guzmán lloró por varios minutos. Algunos de los jurados lloraron también. Martínez Olvera sigue prófugo, al igual que legiones de otros que son parte de la descentralizada economía del tráfico —operadores de casas de seguridad, guías, vigilantes, auxiliares del cártel y choferes de varios tipos. Juan D’Luna Bilbao, Christian Martínez, y otro traficante acusado en el caso, dieron detallados testimonios sobre la forma en que la organización planeaba y realizaba sus operaciones de tráfico a gran escala. Los investigadores federales tomaron el estrado para revisar los montones de mensajes de texto, comunicaciones por WhatsApp, fotos e información de seguimiento que conectaban a Orduña Torres con varias operaciones de tráfico a gran escala, incluyendo el fatal viaje del 27 de junio de 2022. Antes de enviar al jurado a deliberar, el juez les recordó sobre la mujer embarazada de Honduras que había muerto. El verdadero número de víctimas mortales, dijo, era 54. El jurado encontró a los dos hombres culpables de todos los cargos, y el juez posteriormente los sentenció a cadena perpetua. Poco después de que los oficiales estadounidenses se llevaran al par de hombres esposados, funcionarios federales de alto rango dieron una conferencia de prensa para anunciar el veredicto. “Hoy es un día trascendental para la inagotable batalla del Departamento [de Justicia] en contra de los líderes, organizadores y principales facilitadores de las redes de tráfico humano”, dijo Matthew Galeotti, recientemente designado por Trump como el jefe de la División Criminal del Departamento de Justicia. “No hemos acabado — ni de lejos”. Marcador casero de Mariano Santiago Hipólito en el monumento a los migrantes en Quintana Road en el sur de San Antonio. Recientemente el gobierno federal se embarcó en más gastos monumentales para los esfuerzos de control inmigratorio. En julio, el Congreso le dio a Trump la cantidad sin precedentes de $190,000 millones de dólares para expandir el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional, efectivamente duplicando el presupuesto de la agencia en los siguientes varios años. Más de $80,000 millones de dólares han sido asignados para la frontera, incluyendo más de $50,000 millones de dólares para la construcción del muro e infraestructura fronteriza. El financiamiento ya ha sido asignado para la expansión que convertirá al C29 en el puesto de control fronterizo más grande del país. Entre tanto, Martínez Olvera sigue prófugo, al igual que legiones de otros que son parte de la descentralizada economía del tráfico — operadores de casas de seguridad, guías, vigilantes, auxiliares del cártel y choferes de varios tipos. Mientras haya dinero que pueda generarse transportando a personas a través de fronteras, hay pocas probabilidades de que los rangos disminuyan. ¿Ya viste a mi hermano? A Mari le tomómás de una semana llegar al lado de la cama de su esposo. Un representante de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores en México le informó que era elegible para recibir un permiso especial para visitar a Begaí en el hospital, pero primero tenía que llegar a Ciudad Juárez, en el otro lado de la frontera de El Paso. No podía pagar el boleto de avión, pero un hombre para el que Begaí había trabajado años antes, se puso en contacto con ella y ofreció financiar su viaje. Alguien del consulado en El Paso estaba esperándola cuando aterrizó en Ciudad Juárez y la llevó al Puente de las Américas, donde caminó por encima del canal de seco concreto del Río Grande, pasando filas de carros esperando, y hacia la estación del Servicio de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza de EE. UU. Explicó su situación al agente, quien le pidió llenar un formulario, tomó su fotografía, y le dijo que podía quedarse en Estados Unidos por 30 días. Cuando la dejó pasar, le dijo, “Dios la bendiga, señora”. Viajó por el oeste de Texas en autobús durante la noche, preocupada durante todo su trayecto hacia San Antonio sobre lo que encontraría al llegar ahí: cómo reaccionaría Begaí cuando la viera, y si podría ella mantenerse fuerte. Begaí la miró. “Perdóname”, fue la primera palabra que le dijo a Mari. “Porque no te escuché”. Amós, uno de los hermanos de Begaí, quien trabajaba en una maquiladora en Ciudad Juárez, también había obtenido un permiso especial para cruzar y estaba en la estación de autobuses para recibir a Mari cuando llegó a San Antonio el 5 de julio. Otro representante consular los llevó al Hospital Christus Santa Rosa, en donde una enfermera los actualizó sobre la condición de Begaí mientras caminaban a su habitación. Para entonces, él llevaba nueve días en el hospital. La enfermera les dijo que Begaí estaba inconsciente cuando la ambulancia lo llevó a la sala de emergencias, y el personal pensaba que probablemente moriría. Sus órganos se habían marchitado, como fruta seca, y había tenido dos infartos cerebrales. Pero eventualmente, después de unos tres días en coma, despertó. Desorientado y con un debilitante dolor a lo largo de su columna vertebral, no recordaba haber salido de Laredo. “Lo primero que pidió fue una Biblia”, dijo la enfermera. En el corredor, Mari escuchó la voz de Begaí antes de verlo, y reconoció las palabras inmediatamente: “El que habita al abrigo del Altísimo descansará a la sombra del Todopoderoso”. Begaí estaba recitando el Salmo 91:1, que ambos sabían de memoria. Ella secó las lágrimas de sus mejillas y, por un momento, escuchó. Recuperando la compostura, entró al cuarto en donde vio a Begaí, con su cabeza cubierta de vendas. Había una intricada red de cables y tubos conectados a sus extremidades y a máquinas parpadeantes y bolsas con líquidos. Su cara estaba pálida y triste, y miró a Mari con una mirada que parecía haber envejecido muchos años. “Alguien vino a verte”, dijo la enfermera. “¿Sabes quién es?” Begaí la miró. “Perdóname”, fue la primera palabra que le dijo a Mari. “Porque no te escuché”. No le tomó mucho darse cuenta de que la memoria de corto plazo de Begaí estaba muy dañada. Perdía el hilo de las conversaciones y olvidaba cosas que ella le acababa de decir. Pero la laguna en su memoria sobre el 27 de junio y su confusión sobre lo que había pasado ese día era lo que más le preocupaba. De alguna forma, Begaí creía que Mariano nunca se había subido al tráiler. “Está bien mi hermano, ¿verdad?”, le preguntaba. “¿Verdad que mi hermano se regresó (a México)? ¿Cómo está? ¿Ya lo viste?” Al principio no encontraba el valor para decirle la verdad. Evitaba las preguntas y lo motivaba a que se enfocara en mejorar, pero le atormentaba no decirle la verdad. Cuando finalmente le dijo, Begaí gritó con tanta agonía, que a Mari le pareció que algo se estaba rompiendo dentro de él. Bajo cuidado constante, Begaí mejoró poco a poco. El 12 de julio, el doctor lo dio de alta con una receta de opioides para el dolor y otra para antibióticos. Ese día, un agente del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional le hizo firmar a Begaí un formulario indicando que había sido arrestado y que estaba en el proceso de deportación, pero que se le liberaba en espera de su comparecencia frente a un juez de inmigración tres meses después en Atlanta, donde tenía planeado ir a trabajar. El documento y todo el proceso era confuso para Begaí, quien estaba físicamente débil y cognitivamente afectado, y se le tenía que cuidar como si fuera un niño pequeño. Después, recibió un permiso temporal de trabajo del gobierno federal y un abogado de inmigración le ayudó a solicitar una Visa U — una categoría especial para víctimas de delitos que ocurren en suelo estadounidense y que fue creada en el año 2000 para motivar a las personas indocumentadas a cooperar con investigaciones policiales. Pero el abogado le dijo que la aprobación podría tardar hasta seis años y, en el entretanto, su estatus inmigratorio era incierto. Mari viajó con él a un suburbio de Atlanta, en donde se quedaron con su tía y su tío. Durante esas primeras semanas, Begaí sufrió de dolor de espalda severo y en ocasiones se perdía cuando trataba de encontrar el baño. Mari lo llevaba a una clínica cercana en donde un doctor que hablaba español ofrecía servicios a bajo costo. Le ponía una pomada en su espalda y lo consolaba cuando despertaba desorientado en medio de la noche. Ella escribió una carta solicitando una extensión de su permiso provisional humanitario y la envió a la oficina del Servicio de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza en Atlanta junto con una carta de respaldo del doctor de Begaí. Su solicitud fue denegada. Se apresuró a regresar a casa cuando su permiso de treinta días venció. A Begaí le tomó ocho meses recuperar la fuerza para poder trabajar nuevamente. Le ayudaba a su tío con trabajos de plomería y en ocasiones hacía algunos trabajos de piso de mosaico que conseguía con un hombre que había conocido en la iglesia. Primero, solo podía trabajar unas cuantas horas antes de necesitar un descanso. Trabajando uno o dos días a la semana, no podía mandar mucho dinero a Mari, lo cual incrementaba su desesperación.  Pioquinto Santiago (izquierda) y Elodia Hipólito (derecha), padres de Mariano y Begaí Santiago Hipólito, en la casa familiar con la hermana de los hermanos, Nancy Santiago Hipólito. Mientras tanto, la salud de la esposa de Mariano, Luz Estrella, se había deteriorado rápidamente. A pesar de que Mariano había decidido irse a Estados Unidos para pagar los gastos médicos de su esposa, en realidad sus ganancias no hubieran hecho una gran diferencia. Unos tres meses después de que Mariano murió, ella fue diagnosticada con cáncer de mama. Para pagar sus tratamientos, la familia recaudó unos $1,000 dólares vendiendo tamales en el vecindario, deshaciéndose de la motocicleta de Mariano y reuniendo los pocos ahorros que tenían. Pero el cáncer se propagó, llegando a sus huesos. Antes de que la enfermedad invadiera su cuerpo, Luz Estrella decidió preservar un recuerdo para ella y para sus hijos. Vistió a su hija de cinco años, Jade, con un vestido rosa bordado y a su hijo de tres años, Mariano, con una camisa a cuadros con botones. Ella se puso un vestido color lavanda, peinó su largo cabello hacia atrás y posó con sus hijos frente a ella y colocó sus manos sobre sus hombros. Los niños, con sus pequeñas manos sostenían las de ella, quien mostraba una sonrisa. La foto ahora está en la pared de la cocina de su madre, junto a una foto de Mariano junto a Luz Estrella el día de su boda. Ella falleció el 31 de julio de 2023.   El purgatorio estadounidense Durante el año anterior, todos los 11 sobrevivientes del desastre seguían viviendo en Estados Unidos, pero sus paraderos exactos eran desconocidos. Encontré unas cuantas organizaciones sin fines de lucro y un bufete de abogados que ayudaron a algunos de ellos, pero todos se negaron a ayudarme a concertar una entrevista. Durante mi viaje de investigación a México y a Guatemala, logré hablar con algunos familiares de cinco sobrevivientes. En ese momento, ninguno estuvo dispuesto a ponerme en contacto directo con sus seres queridos. Aun así, yo tenía la esperanza. Solo los sobrevivientes podían describir los horrores de ese día y la dificultad de sanar en el país extranjero al que casi les había costado la vida tratar de llegar — y su estatus legal sigue incierto. A lo largo de los meses, me mantuve en contacto con muchas de las familias a las que conocí, y durante el juicio hice un grupo de WhatsApp para actualizarlas sobre lo que estaba ocurriendo en el tribunal. Mari era parte de ese grupo, junto con la madre de Begaí y dos de sus hermanos, y ellos le pasaban mis mensajes a él. Luego, unos días después de que el juicio terminó, mi teléfono sonó. Era Begaí. Cristina Ramírez, sentada en el centro a la izquierda, y Oslidio López, sentado en el centro a la derecha, los padres de Deisy Fermina López Ramírez, de 24 años, quien murió en el incidente de Quintana Road, fotografiados con sus hijos sobrevivientes en su casa en Comitancillo, Guatemala. En un cálido día de abril pasado, nos reunimos en un parque público cerca de su casa, que estaba ocupado con personas disfrutando días de campo y caminando con sus perros. Begaí vestía pantalones vaqueros, una playera gris y zapatos de agujetas. Era reservado y hablaba con una voz tan baja que era casi difícil de escuchar sobre el bullicio del tráfico cercano y de los niños en el jardín de juegos. Le pregunté si tenía miedo de ser deportado. “¿Por qué voy a tener miedo?”, dijo. “De cierta forma, sería una bendición”. Casi tres años después de despedirse de su esposa y sus hijos, Begaí sigue viviendo en Estados Unidos, solo y consumido por la pena. Sufre de dolor crónico atrás de su pulmón derecho y se cansa rápidamente con el trabajo pesado y la exposición al calor. Cuando Mari habla con él por teléfono, nota que en ocasiones se le olvida de lo que estaban hablando solo unos minutos antes. Con el tiempo, ha recuperado algunos de sus recuerdos sobre el 27 de junio, pero la memoria de los días previos y posteriores siguen siendo algo vagas. Begaí trabaja ahora en un camión de comida, diez horas al día, seis días a la semana. Finalmente, está ganando suficiente para mejorar las finanzas de su familia, pero el dolor de estar separado de su esposa y de sus hijos lo ha llevado a un punto de quiebre. Su incapacidad de consolar y apoyar a los hijos de Mariano es una fuente constante de angustia. “Lo que más quiero es darles un abrazo”, me dijo. Begaí sigue confundido sobre su estatus inmigratorio. A más de la mitad del posible periodo de espera para la decisión de su Visa U, no hay señales de que las cosas estén progresando y no sabe dónde pedir información sobre su caso, o si hacerlo es una buena idea. A pesar de lo que dice sobre el posible aspecto positivo de la deportación, entiende que ser arrestado no significaría ser dejado en el puente y caminar de vuelta a México — probablemente significaría un largo periodo de detención en una prisión privada en Estados Unidos.  Delfina Bacajol, madre de Oswaldo Sanjay Bacajol y Greisy Sanjay Bacajol, hermanos que sobrevivieron al incidente del tractocamión de San Antonio en junio de 2022, en su casa en Xenacoj, Guatemala. Cuando estaba cerca de la muerte, Begaí rezó por una oportunidad de vivir, pero terminó en una especie de purgatorio. Frente a la espera de una visa que podría no llegar nunca, está al borde de darse por vencido. Si regresa a Lázaro Cárdenas a visitar a sus padres algún día, tomará el puente peatonal a través del Río Usila y pasará bajo el arco de árboles. Nuevas casas de concreto, la mayoría de ellas construidas con dinero de remesas de inmigrantes que trabajan en el extranjero, agrega ahora un toque de novedad a los que regresan. Dentro de la casa de sus padres, llena del bullicio de sus propios hijos y varios jóvenes sobrinos, y el olor a humo de leña desde la cocina de su madre, Mariano será una presencia inquietante. Begaí verá los versos de la Biblia que su hermano pintó en las paredes, con una letra nítida y colorida. En la habitación sin ventanas, donde su madre duerme en un colchón sobre el piso, Mariano cubrió toda una pared con el Salmo 103. Las letras están ahora borrosas, pero todavía son legibles. Una línea puede parecer más enigmática después de la travesía de Begaí: “El Señor hace justicia y derecho a todos los oprimidos”. La noción de justicia divina puede ofrecer algo de consuelo a Begaí, pero es posible que tenga que esperar un largo tiempo por una reparación del gobierno de EE. UU., si es que llega. El reportaje para esta historia fue apoyado por la organización periodística sin fines de lucro Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 A deadly passage Elliott Woods,  February 26, 2025 2 Farmworkers face a life-and-death commute to Arizona’s lettuce fields Esther Honig,  April 29, 2021 3 The farmworkers in California’s fire zones Teresa Cotsirilos,  November 23, 2021 4 As heat rises, who will protect farmworkers? Bridget Huber and Nancy Averett and Teresa Cotsirilos,  June 29, 2022 5 Extreme weather creates a food crisis for California farmworkers Teresa Cotsirilos,  January 26, 2023 6 Acknowledging the work of farmworkers through art Jennifer Sahn,  September 5, 2025 7 The child workers who feed you Teresa Cotsirilos,  April 18, 2023 8 A tell-tale tragedy Esther Honig and Johnathan Hettinger,  October 26, 2023 9 The essential workers missing from the farm bill Teresa Cotsirilos,  February 14, 2024 10 Alone on the Range Teresa Cotsirilos,  October 3, 2023

Share this This Story’s Impact total audience of 34.6 million across platforms Texas Monthly This article was produced in collaboration with Texas Monthly. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. The brothers were starting to wonder if their smugglers had left them to rot. For more than two days, Begaí and Mariano Santiago Hipólito had been holed up with roughly two dozen other migrants in a cramped stash house in the border city of Laredo. The single room had no furniture and had barely enough space for everyone to lie down. There was no place to bathe, and the only toilet was foul. The meager food rations and cases of bottled water the smugglers had given them were long gone. Anxious and confused, Begaí began peppering Mariano with questions. Why were they stuck here? How far were they from their final destination? More on this story Leer en EspañolRead the first piece in this two-part series Mariano had been to the U.S. once before, nearly a decade earlier, but this was nothing like his previous trip. His first time crossing, there hadn’t been swarms of cartel thugs on the Mexican side of the border, and he hadn’t had to endure prolonged confinement in a squalid and sweltering stash house after crossing the Rio Grande. Now, drenched in sweat, he had taken off his T-shirt to fan himself. Every so often, he let out a long sigh. “Tranquilo,” he told Begaí. “Chill out.”  The brothers had been inseparable since they were kids, so when Mariano told Begaí he was leaving their hometown in southern Mexico to find work in the U.S., in part to pay for his ailing wife’s medical bills, Begaí reluctantly agreed to join him. Tall and lean with a neatly trimmed goatee, 33-year-old Begaí was the more serious older brother. One year younger, Mariano was stocky, outgoing, and always looking for a laugh. But Begaí noticed that his brother’s upbeat demeanor was beginning to crack.  It was the morning of June 27, 2022. The migrants they shared their quarters with had come from all across Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. There were a few children and some women among them, but most were men in their prime working years. They had all paid extraordinary amounts—as much as $15,000—to be smuggled into the U.S. Now they were waiting for a ride out of the heavily patrolled border zone to San Antonio, where they would fan out and travel on separately. Some were bound for nearby cities in Texas, and others were heading as far as Tennessee and California. Many had plans to reunite with loved ones they hadn’t seen in years—parents, romantic partners, siblings, cousins. Almost all of them had left their homes in hopes of landing a job. Some had a specific opportunity waiting for them. Others would take whatever they could find. Begaí and Mariano had family in Atlanta, where they planned to work construction. Concerned that a local might spot them and tip off authorities, the smugglers had forbidden the migrants from leaving the stash house, even for a quick breath of fresh air. Their organization had lost two houses to local police and the U.S. Border Patrol earlier that month. Similar busts happened in Laredo all the time, sometimes several in a day, turning up anywhere from a handful of migrants to dozens, usually lodged in abysmal conditions. In most cases the stash-house operators got away. As for the migrants, they were expelled to Mexico, but many would be back in the U.S. within a few days. Still, busts were a costly disruption for the smugglers, and they did everything they could to avoid them. Begaí Santiago Hipólito When a white box truck finally showed up to pick up the migrants, Begaí and Mariano weren’t exactly relieved. The men who ushered them aboard wore masks and barked orders, confiscating their phones and the water bottles some of them had refilled from the sink. The truck’s cargo area was already jammed full of people who’d been staying at another spot. Despite their reservations, the brothers climbed in, and soon the truck was moving. It rattled along for about ten minutes until they felt it come to a stop. When the rear gate was rolled up, they saw that a tractor trailer had backed up to the box truck, its open doors forming a tunnel between the two vehicles. As they shuffled toward the trailer, Begaí hesitated. “What happens if we don’t get in?” he said. “Then you’ll stay here, in Laredo,” Mariano replied.  They were among the last to leap across to the trailer, jostling in the semidarkness for a place to sit. They noticed a strange combination of scents, some kind of cooking seasoning mixed with the odors of more than five dozen people who had been living in filthy conditions for days. The brothers sank down along one of the walls somewhere near the middle.  Among the dimly lit faces around them was a trio of young women from a small town in Guatemala, where many live in concrete-block homes with dirt floors and no running water amid small plots of maize. One of them, a 21-year-old with long black hair, had worked hard to earn an education degree, at great cost to her parents, but because of her country’s dysfunctional government, she couldn’t find work as a teacher. Determined to repay her parents, she was on her way to join a sister in a meatpacking town in Minnesota.  The youngest in the trailer were two cousins from Guatemala, thirteen and fourteen years old, who had relatives in the U.S. and had convinced their parents that their futures would be brighter if they could attend school there. The older of the two was a fan of Lionel Messi and dreamed of playing professional soccer someday, but in the meantime he wanted to earn enough to help his mother care for his sister and younger brother.  The oldest was a 55-year-old construction worker from Morelos, Mexico. He had lived in a small town in western Arkansas for more than two decades, just outside a county where Hispanic residents make up about a third of the population. He had traveled back to Mexico to visit relatives despite the risks of a dangerous return voyage. Now he was on his way home to his wife, three children, and four grandchildren.  Near the rear doors of the trailer were a brother and sister in their twenties from a suburb of Antigua, Guatemala’s former colonial capital. The pair had all but adopted a teenage girl they’d met at various points along their journey north. The girl was now scared and crying, so when they sat down, the siblings placed her between them and tried to comfort her. A former Mexican soldier and his cousin were also caring for a younger traveling companion, an eighteen-year-old boy from Mexico City whose mother had asked them to keep an eye on him. Somewhere nearby, a 27-year-old Honduran woman who was around twelve weeks pregnant did her best to get comfortable. That morning she had called her mom, who was already living near Los Angeles, to tell her she’d made it to the U.S. “We’ll see each other soon,” she’d said. They all spread out and made room for one another as best they could. It was nearly 100 degrees outside, and the air inside the trailer was already unbearably hot. Moments later, the doors swung closed, and they heard the unmistakable sound of the exterior latches turning and dropping into place. In complete darkness, they felt the truck lurch into motion just before 2 p.m. If all went according to plan, they would be in San Antonio in a little more than three hours. “The U.S. Failed” Everything did not go according to plan. The catastrophe that unfolded that day would result in the deadliest immigration-related disaster in modern American history. Fifty-three passengers perished, including 26 Mexicans, 21 Guatemalans, and 6 Hondurans. The incident briefly captured international headlines, but this story—based on more than two years of reporting—is the first full account of that awful event, its complex causes, and its wrenching aftermath.  To piece it together, I traveled throughout Mexico and Guatemala, ultimately spending time with sixteen of the victims’ families. Eventually, I was also able to interview a survivor whose harrowing tale provided rare firsthand insight into a smuggling operation gone terribly wrong. On a forensic level, there was little mystery about what happened inside the trailer. The more urgent questions were: Why did it happen? And who was responsible? During the trial of two of the smugglers, at a federal courthouse in San Antonio, jurors heard testimony from investigators, Border Patrol agents, other smugglers, and survivors that revealed the complicated inner workings of the smuggling organization, the cartel that dominates the Mexican side of the Rio Grande across from Laredo, and the formidable border-security apparatus on the U.S. side. Charged with conspiracy to transport illegal aliens resulting in death, the accused faced a mountain of damning evidence. The defense attorney—whose long goatee, alligator cowboy boots, and theatrical delivery contrasted with the staid dress and demeanor of the prosecutors—made several attempts to blame the U.S. government for allowing the disaster to occur. Why didn’t the government take down the smuggling network sooner? Why had agents allowed a trailer loaded with more than sixty people to pass through a Border Patrol checkpoint north of Laredo? “The U.S. failed,” he said while cross-examining a Homeland Security Investigations agent. “Would you agree that somebody dropped the ball?” The judge had to repeatedly remind the jury that the U.S. government was not on trial. In fact, as the trial revealed, a smuggling network composed of ordinary people who were often reckless and incompetent had managed to slip through one of the best-funded and most technologically sophisticated border-policing systems in the world. As with countless similar operations, the perpetrators had gotten away with their scheme over and over, succeeding far more often than they failed—until the day they failed in the most horrific way. What happened in that trailer between Laredo and San Antonio is the only exceptional part of an otherwise commonplace narrative, and in the years since, no meaningful legislative progress has been made to reduce the mortal dangers that migrants confront en route to jobs in the U.S. Instead, Congress has continued to increase the budget for walls and fences, checkpoint expansions, surveillance technology, detention facilities, and law enforcement personnel. Every escalation of border militarization heightens the danger to migrants, but there’s little evidence that it will deter them or their smugglers over the long term. The disaster was the worst of its kind but by no means the first. And unless something changes, it won’t be the last. A Mysterious Ailment  Begaí and Mariano’s journey to the back of the truck began in Tuxtepec, a bustling city on the humid plains of eastern Oaxaca, about fifty miles from the Gulf. They had grown up in Lázaro Cárdenas, a tiny Chinanteco Indigenous community in the foothills of the Sierra Madre. The brothers and their seven younger siblings were raised in a house made of palm leaves near the wide and gentle Usila River, where they fetched water before daybreak and learned to spearfish to supplement their mother’s sparse table—the family subsisted mostly on maize and beans. There were no roads leaving the village, only a narrow dirt path that they walked barefoot. To get to a hospital required an expensive trip by motorboat downriver and across the sprawling Lake Miguel Alemán. As soon as they were old enough to swing machetes, the siblings joined their father and uncles in the fields, felling trees and digging furrows by hand, returning at the end of the day soaked in sweat, their hands bloody from the thorny brush.  Begaí and Mariano grew up in eastern Oaxaca, several hours from Tuxtepec, where their journey north began. Begaí, the eldest, dropped out of school when he was fourteen to help support his family. He left home for the first time at sixteen to work on a sugarcane plantation outside Tuxtepec, about an hour away by boat. It was punishing labor, but his wages helped Mariano become the first in the family to graduate from high school. Armed with his diploma, Mariano set off for Mexico City, but whatever hopes he’d had of saving for his future and contributing to his family’s welfare were quickly dashed. The chaos of the capital was bewildering for Mariano, who spoke Spanish as a second language (his family spoke a variant of Chinanteco) and had never been away from home. He was lonely, and the only job he could find was in a pizzeria, where he barely made enough to pay rent. After a few years, he returned to Oaxaca with empty pockets. He trained his sights on the U.S., where one of his uncles worked construction, owned a house, and had settled down with an American wife. Mariano’s goals were similarly humble: He wanted to save enough money to build a house in Mexico and start a family.  Around 2013, he met a woman at a religious gathering in Tuxtepec, where he and Begaí played guitar and sang in a worship band. Luz Estrella Cuevas Remolino was devout, like Mariano, and told him she also dreamed of starting a family. Soon after they met, he departed for the U.S., borrowing money from his uncle to finance the journey, crossing the border on foot somewhere in the Sonoran Desert, and eventually making his way to Atlanta. He kept in touch with Luz Estrella by phone, and the relationship grew serious.  After three years of working as a plumber six days a week and saving almost every penny that didn’t go to food or housing, Mariano injured his hand on the job. He’d been so broke when he left for the U.S. that he’d had to borrow a pair of pants from one of his younger brothers. With a workers’ compensation payout padding his savings, Mariano saw no point in staying until he healed. He rushed back to Mexico to marry Luz Estrella.  At the wedding, she carried white roses and wore a white dress with a veil that trailed on the floor behind her. He sported a gray three-button suit with a metallic sheen and a dark red tie. They lived with her parents in Tuxtepec while he began building a home in a new subdivision outside town. Begaí and three of their younger brothers pitched in whenever they could, and after about a year, the house was mostly finished. But the project depleted Mariano’s savings, so he started picking up construction gigs alongside Begaí.  A bus makes its way north from Tuxtepec, where Mariano and Begaí Santiago Hipólito lived with their wives and children before heading to the U.S. By then, Begaí had also gotten married. María Antonia Torres Morales, who went by Mari, was four years older than her husband. She wasn’t looking for a new relationship when he came along, but she was drawn to his earnestness and his desire to start a family. When she was in her early twenties, she’d had a daughter with a partner who’d abandoned her. She worried that when Begaí found out about her daughter, he would also flee, but when she told him, he promised to raise the girl as if she were his own. They were married in 2014, and Mari gave birth to a son later that year. They called him Jafet, after one of the sons of Noah. Begaí enjoyed family life with Mari and the two kids. They lived with her parents in a house that had a lush garden, banana trees, chickens, pigs, and a small creek that ran along one side of the property. He and Mariano were both skilled at carpentry and plumbing, and sometimes they landed a long-term contract together and worked six days a week, making about $20 a day. But dry spells were frequent, so they took whatever they could get.  One day in June 2022, they had just finished digging a septic pit when Mariano told Begaí some distressing news: He was so broke that he was barely able to put food on the table. Mariano’s finances had never recovered after he’d wiped out his savings building his house. With a four-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son, he now faced the same financial stress that had plagued his parents and that he’d been so determined to avoid.  Making matters worse, Luz Estrella needed an expensive diagnostic test to determine the cause of a strange pain in her chest. It didn’t cost much by U.S. standards—about $350—but it was more than Mariano could afford. Luz Estrella was also receiving treatment for a kidney stone and had been told she might need an operation to remove it, which could cost upward of $1,400, or about three months’ worth of full-time wages. Mariano had already borrowed from three of his younger brothers who were working factory jobs in Ciudad Juárez. He saw no other option than to trek north. “I’m going back to the U.S.,” he told Begaí, “and I want you to come with me.”  Nieces of Mariano and Begaí Santiago Hipólito race down a dirt road next to their primary school. Standing beside the septic pit, sweaty and caked with dirt, Begaí felt sick with worry. He told Mariano that he didn’t know the first thing about how to get to the border or how to pay for a trip like that. Mariano told him that he would handle everything. He had already talked to a friend who was still in Atlanta, and who had agreed to lend them the money to pay the smugglers and to cover the exorbitant tax the cartel charged to every migrant at the border. The only up-front costs would be plane tickets to Monterrey and bus tickets to Nuevo Laredo, the border city across the Rio Grande from Laredo. “It will only be for two years, and then I’ll come back with you,” Mariano said.  Begaí’s first instinct was to say no. His family’s finances were relatively secure—Mari’s mother ran a food stall that was a reliable backstop when construction was slow—so he had no urgent reason to leave. What if something happened to him? Who would take care of Mari and the kids? Begaí told Mariano he needed to think about it, but Mariano said he was going either way. “I’ve already got the date.”  Begaí broached the subject with Mari a few days later, and she pleaded with him to stay home. “You could fall into the hands of bad people, and they could hurt you. Then what would I do?” Begaí said he wanted to save money to build a house of their own and to help Mari’s daughter, now sixteen, finish high school. Mari became angry. Jafet was only eight, and she didn’t think it was a good time for him to be without his father. “We have everything we need here,” she said.  Begaí confessed that he felt obligated for the simplest of reasons: “I don’t want my brother to go alone.” A few days later, Mari was at home preparing dinner when Begaí burst in after work and started throwing clothes into a backpack. “I’m leaving,” he told her.  “You’re not going to eat?” she asked.  “I don’t have time,” he said.  Stunned, Mari and the children followed him out the door and down the dusty street, begging him to come back, but he didn’t stop. Smugglers Row That evening, Begaí and Mariano boarded a flight to Monterrey. Begaí’s understanding of the gauntlet he was entering was as featureless as the darkness outside the airplane windows. He didn’t know that he was hurtling toward one of the most lawless regions in Mexico, where a powerful criminal organization exercised near-total control, or that an army of Border Patrol agents backed by helicopters, drones, thermal-imaging cameras, and scent-detecting dogs awaited them on the other side of the Rio Grande. The Rio Grande runs between Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The Cártel del Noreste traced its origins to Los Zetas, a paramilitary group founded by former Mexican special forces soldiers. The Zetas began as an enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel before its leaders struck out on their own, creating one of the most brutal criminal organizations in Mexican history. Starting in about 2012, a series of arrests and assassinations of Zeta leaders unleashed a vicious power struggle within the organization. The Cártel del Noreste was one of several groups that formed from the fragments. By 2022 it dominated territory along the border in three Mexican states. Nuevo Laredo—the city of nearly half a million people where Begaí and Mariano were headed—was the base for its drug-trafficking and human-smuggling operations.  Just as Prohibition gave rise to the illicit liquor trade and increased the power of the mafia organizations that controlled it, the U.S. war on drugs, launched in 1971 by President Richard Nixon, had helped create the conditions for drug cartels to flourish. Today those same cartels and the smuggling organizations that operate in their territories are raking in enormous profits because of the near-total ban on migration across the roughly 1,900-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico.  People have been sneaking across the border for generations, but transporting them wasn’t always so lucrative. In the early nineties, guides known as coyotes charged as little as $20 to help a migrant cross on foot. The smuggling boom began in earnest in January 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, flooding Mexico with cheap, industrially produced American agricultural products. Squeezed out of their own markets, Mexican farmers began migrating to the U.S. in unprecedented numbers. Later that same year, a devaluation of the peso sent Mexico’s economy into free fall—unemployment nearly doubled, and masses of displaced industrial workers joined the farmers heading north. An outlet mall on the Rio Grande in downtown Laredo, Texas, seen from the bank on the Mexican side of the river. Migrants regularly wade across the Rio Grande in Laredo on their way to destinations further inland. Free trade did not mean freedom of movement for people, and President Bill Clinton sought to clamp down on the flow of undocumented workers by ordering the first major militarization of the U.S. southern border. A new approach known as “prevention through deterrence,” which debuted the same year that NAFTA kicked in, involved the use of fences, checkpoints, armed patrols, and other measures to push migrants away from common urban crossing zones and into harsh terrain. The idea was that migrants would then decide that the risk and discomfort of attempting to cross a hostile stretch of the border—the rugged mountains and scorching deserts of Arizona, for example—were not worth the reward. But migrants kept trying, and the number of apprehensions at the U.S. southern border each year rose from about 1 million in 1994 to nearly 1.7 million in 2000.  Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. LinkedInThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ The Border Patrol’s budget in 1993, the year before prevention through deterrence went into effect, was $363 million. Three decades later, it had swelled to more than $7 billion. Over that same period, the number of Border Patrol agents on the southern border climbed from fewer than 4,000 to roughly 20,000. Yet no amount of militarization at the border has ever resulted in a long-term reduction in migrant flows. The policy’s engineers, and those who have continued to push for increased militarization under every successive Democratic and Republican administration, have repeatedly underestimated the migrants’ determination and the creativity of smugglers, who have found ways to circumvent everything the Border Patrol puts in their way.  Immigrant labor, meanwhile, remains vital to every part of the U.S. economy. The result is a perverse system in which migrant workers determined to provide for their families continue to come north, and industries and small businesses across the country continue to rely on them. Rather than acknowledge that reality and pass legislation to address it—such as expanding the number of temporary work visas for sectors that already employ large numbers of undocumented people—Congress continues to pour money into the border-industrial complex and the deportation machine.  Since 2003 the U.S. has spent an estimated $400 billion on the agencies involved in immigration enforcement—more than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. The primary beneficiaries of this buildup include the defense contractors that profited from the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics, among others, have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to both political parties.  Under Donald Trump’s current administration, immigration-enforcement spending has skyrocketed, and the number of troops on the southern border has nearly tripled. And while unauthorized crossings have decreased significantly from the December 2023 peak—a fact loudly proclaimed by Trump officials—it’s unlikely that intensified policing was the primary cause. More than two-thirds of the drop occurred during the year before Trump’s inauguration, and it appears to have been driven mostly by reduced labor demand in the U.S. and changes to refugee policy at official points of entry. By the time Mariano and Begaí made their journey, migrants were paying an average of $6,000 to $10,000, with some smugglers charging more than $20,000. The deterrent effect of escalating militarization is hard to gauge, but one thing is inarguable: It has added layers of complexity and risk that have made the smugglers’ services more valuable. One result is that human smuggling now rivals drug trafficking in profits. Another is that thousands of migrants have died attempting more dangerous crossings, and the U.S. southern border has become the epicenter of the world’s deadliest land-migration route. The Border Patrol has reported more than 10,500 migrant deaths on the border since 1994, but the true figure is likely much higher. Taking into account the migrants who die on the Mexican side and the many who go missing and are never found, some human rights groups believe the number could be as much as ten times greater.  By the time Mariano and Begaí made their journey, the days of $20 crossings were history—migrants were paying an average of $6,000 to $10,000, with some smugglers charging more than $20,000. Those revenues are distributed across networks that stretch into Central and South America and throughout the world, divided among recruiters, drivers of all types, recipients of bribes, document forgers, stash-house operators, hotel owners, guides, and, of course, the cartels. In 1997 the U.N. International Organization for Migration put the value of the worldwide migrant-smuggling industry at $7 billion. By 2021 the Department of Homeland Security’s Operational Analysis Center estimated that human smuggling across the U.S. southern border alone was generating between $2 and $6 billion annually. The cartels that control territory along the border don’t need to get involved in the logistics of moving people from their points of origin all the way up through Mexico. They leave that work to smaller organizations that have local ties and operate like independent contractors. The Cártel del Noreste simply sits in Nuevo Laredo like a troll beneath a bridge, extorting money from every migrant who shows up planning to cross. When Mariano and Begaí arrived in late June 2022, the going rate for the tax for Mexicans—known as a piso in Spanish and paid directly to the cartel by cash or bank transfer—was about $2,000. People arriving from farther afield paid more. The cartel does not tolerate freelancers. Scouts keep a close eye on everyone entering and leaving the city, and all migrants who arrive from an out-of-town bus station are expected to have a code to prove that they’re linked to a smuggling outfit that’s in good standing with the cartel. The codes are simple words—Diablo, Ferrari, Demon—that help the smugglers keep track of their clients and that the cartel uses to maintain detailed accounts on the smugglers. Sometimes the smugglers also give their migrants colored armbands or matching T-shirts. Wandering the streets without a code—let alone trying to cross the river—can get you kidnapped, beaten, or killed.  Mariano had kept his smuggler informed of their travel details, sending photographs of their Mexican identification cards, bus tickets, and bus numbers, and updating him as they made their way from Oaxaca to Nuevo Laredo. The smuggler relayed the photos to his cartel contact and texted Mariano his personal code—050 Flaco—which they would need to provide to cartel scouts at every stop. Mariano scribbled the code in red ink on a scrap of lined notebook paper, along with the name of the hotel where the smuggler had directed them to stay.  As soon as the brothers got to the bus station in Nuevo Laredo, a cartel scout approached and asked for their code. Once they’d been cleared, they took a taxi to Hotel Calderón, a five-story brick building about three hundred yards from the Rio Grande. It was obvious that this was no normal hotel. Begaí and Mariano were struck by its filth and the disinterested attitudes of the staff. There was a table near reception heaped with belongings left behind by earlier migrants who had passed through—clothing, shoes, backpacks. They were under orders from their smuggler not to leave except to buy food, and in that case to return immediately. The brothers checked into a room with thin mattresses on aluminum frames and metal grates on the windows. At one point, an older man knocked on their door and confided that he was afraid. The three of them prayed together. “Cheer up,” Mariano told him. “Everything’s going to be okay.” Hotel Calderon, near the Rio Grande in downtown Nuevo Laredo, where the migrants involved in the Quintana Road disaster stayed on their way to the U.S. The cartel granted each approved smuggling organization exclusive access to a stretch of the riverbank linked to its code. Local guides on the Mexican side communicated with lookouts on the U.S. side who monitored Border Patrol movements. Wide sections on both banks were undeveloped, covered with palms and riverine vegetation that offered concealment up to the water’s edge. On the night of June 21, Mariano and Begaí followed a guide to the river for their first crossing attempt.  The guide asked everyone in the group of about a dozen if they knew how to swim. Though it’s shallow enough to wade in many places, the Rio Grande still has dangerous currents and deep holes that drowned 172 migrants in 2022 alone, according to Border Patrol data from that year. The brothers, having grown up beside the Usila River, said they were strong swimmers. “Each of you needs to choose someone who doesn’t know how to swim and help them,” the guide said.  They crossed without incident, crawling out on the U.S. side into a clearing that smelled like livestock and appeared to Begaí to be a cattle corral. He barely had time to take in his surroundings when spotlights flooded the area, blinding him. He heard shouts and almost took off, but Mariano grabbed him. “They already saw you. There’s no point running,” he said.   Agents handcuffed the brothers and loaded them into a truck with about twenty others, then photographed them and scanned their fingerprints using a mobile device. At about one in the morning, the Border Patrol dropped them off at one of Laredo’s international bridges and watched them walk back into Mexico. Soaked and exhausted, they found a few sketchy men hanging around on the other side who demanded their code. They then took a taxi back to Hotel Calderón. Less than 24 hours later, they made their second attempt. Again, they got caught and dumped at the bridge. A third effort failed as well. Their experience was typical—about 60 percent of all apprehensions on the border that year were repeat crossers. Failure is so routine that smugglers guarantee multiple attempts without an extra fee. On their fourth try, the brothers successfully evaded the Border Patrol and managed to rendezvous with an appointed driver who took them to the single-room stash house, where they waited for the truck that would take them to San Antonio. Evading the Dogs 050 Flaco—the code that Mariano and Begaí had used—was associated with two smugglers: Felipe Orduña Torres, who lived in San Antonio, and José Martínez Olvera, based in Houston. Of the two, it was Orduña Torres who maintained direct contact with the cartel. Both were undocumented Mexicans who had been in the smuggling game for years. They ran separate operations, but they’d formed a partnership in 2019 to capitalize on a tactic referred to by the Border Patrol as bulk smuggling—moving large numbers of people in commercial vehicles, usually tractor trailers.  Checkpoint 29, a border crossing in Laredo, Texas, processes some 6,000 trucks a day hauling agricultural and manufactured products across the Rio Grande. Bulk smuggling first emerged as a response to the explosive growth of commercial trucking between Mexico and the U.S. after NAFTA came into force. It became more attractive when the shift in manufacturing from China to Mexico—which started gaining momentum in about 2012—caused an unprecedented traffic surge on the border. Laredo is the busiest of all U.S. land ports, and it saw more than 5.5 million commercial truck crossings in 2022. Every day that year, trucks carried about $800 million worth of agricultural and manufactured products across the Rio Grande, and some six thousand of them passed through a single checkpoint that straddles Interstate 35 about thirty miles north of the border. The Border Patrol refers to it as Checkpoint 29, or C29. For smugglers, it was the narrowest part of the funnel. Blending in with all the other big rigs was the most efficient way to get past it. Daunting as it was, travel by trailer through the checkpoints north of Laredo was marketed to migrants as a safer and more comfortable option than slogging on foot across the desert in less populous areas. Heat is the number one killer of migrants on the U.S. southern border, where about nine hundred undocumented people died from exposure to extreme heat between 2018 and 2022; during the same period, fewer than two hundred died in vehicle-related incidents. Migrants forked over steep fees for a journey that included a spot in a trailer once they reached the U.S. side, what some smugglers called the VIP option.  C29 has been in operation since 2006 and encompasses fifteen acres, with an on-site detention facility, a secondary inspection bay, and X-ray machines that allow officers to detect humans concealed inside closed trailers. Despite the checkpoint’s size, traffic volume has long overwhelmed its capacity. In 2022 there were only two dedicated commercial truck lanes, which meant long lines of idling rigs often stretched south onto I-35, slowing the flow of commerce and increasing the risk of accidents. The worse the traffic at the checkpoint, the better for the smugglers. They kept an eye on commercial truck activity and timed their movements to hit the checkpoint when things were backed up and agents would be under pressure to keep traffic rolling. Smugglers like Martínez Olvera and Orduña Torres took care to forge convincing bills of lading, the documents that describe the contents of the trailers. If there was one threat they worried about more than any other, it was the scent-detecting dogs. Smugglers used detergents, coffee, and meat seasonings to try to mask the smell of hidden passengers, but the dogs were almost impossible to fool. The only surefire way to get around them was to slide through while the handlers were busy elsewhere.  There were usually six to eight dogs present at C29 but only two on duty at a time—one covering the three passenger-car lanes and another for the two commercial lanes. At risk of exhaustion from overexertion and heat, each dog worked forty-minute stints followed by eighty minutes of rest. Overworked and outnumbered, they still presented a formidable obstacle. Of the sixteen semi loads that Martínez Olvera and Orduña Torres had attempted to move since November 2021, six had been busted by dogs. It was never a total loss for the smugglers: The truck and trailer would have to be replaced, and they’d have to find another driver, but unlike in a drug bust, the valuable cargo wasn’t permanently confiscated. The detained migrants—who usually paid the second half of the smugglers’ fee after arriving at their final destinations—would be back in Mexico in a matter of hours, ready to try again.  A Meth-Fueled All-Nighter By the time the brothers arrived at the stash house, Martínez Olvera and Orduña Torres had successfully moved more than a thousand people in trailers through the checkpoints north of Laredo. They outsourced most of the hazards, overseeing a team of subordinates who took on the direct risks of smuggling, often low-wage workers lured by the chance to earn extra cash. The man they relied on to maintain their fleet of trucks and trailers, which they kept at a storage lot surrounded by ranchettes and undeveloped scrubland east of San Antonio, was a 48-year-old undocumented Mexican immigrant named Juan D’Luna Bilbao. He had been living in Texas for more than a decade after overstaying a temporary work visa, working as a mechanic at a local garage. He had fallen into the smuggling business more or less by accident after a friend found him a side gig working on Martínez Olvera’s personal vehicle.  On days of smuggling operations, Martínez Olvera and Orduña Torres often tasked D’Luna Bilbao with moving a semi from the storage lot to one of two truck stops at the junction of I-35 and I-410, southwest of San Antonio, within sight of an Amazon warehouse and a Toyota dealership. Later, when the truck returned from Laredo, D’Luna Bilbao would retrieve it. For every successful operation, the smugglers paid him $500. D’Luna Bilbao harbored a major concern about the trailer that he was preparing that morning: Its refrigeration unit was malfunctioning. At about five in the morning on June 27, 2022, D’Luna Bilbao’s phone rang. Martínez Olvera wanted him to take a red tractor hooked to a 53-foot white trailer to one of the usual truck stops. “The driver’s already on his way,” Martínez Olvera told him. D’Luna Bilbao drove to the storage lot, where he performed his usual maintenance checks and sprinkled meat seasoning inside the trailer. Then he snapped photos of the identification numbers on the truck and trailer that his bosses would need to forge a bill of lading. D’Luna Bilbao harbored a major concern about the trailer that he was preparing that morning: Its refrigeration unit was malfunctioning. He’d bought the trailer for the organization six months earlier for about $8,000 and had been having trouble with it ever since. No matter what he tried, the unit wouldn’t cool. This was a problem for two reasons. For one, the bill of lading specified a temperature setting for the trailer, and a mismatch between the paperwork and the actual temperature could raise alarms at the checkpoint. Over the previous year, the Border Patrol had busted four of the organization’s loads partly because of temperature discrepancies. Worse still, it was June in South Texas, and without a functioning refrigeration unit, the passengers in the trailer would be at grave risk. D’Luna Bilbao had been warning Martínez Olvera about the faulty compressor for months, saying he didn’t have the parts or the know-how to fix it. Just three days earlier, on June 24, he’d texted Martínez Olvera a video of the faltering unit. The boss said he would get someone out to look at it but never did. D’Luna Bilbao had been told not to question orders, so despite his concerns, he delivered the tractor to a Love’s Travel Stop southwest of the city, where he filled it with diesel and walked away. Minutes later, a beat-up Chevy Tahoe arrived, and a man in a black golf shirt with white stripes jumped out of the passenger seat and climbed into the rig. This was Homero Zamorano, who was tasked with hauling the load of migrants from Laredo that day.  The Tahoe’s driver, a six-hundred-plus-pound man named Christian Martinez, had been working for Martínez Olvera and Orduña Torres since March of that year. Martinez’s primary role was to find and hire commercially licensed drivers who were U.S. citizens or permanent residents, because they had to be able to pass through interior Border Patrol checkpoints. Critically, they had to be willing to risk getting arrested with a load of migrants, which would probably mean a long prison sentence. For each operation, Martinez would shuttle one of the drivers to the designated truck stop, where an empty tractor trailer waited. Then he would manage communications between the driver and his bosses throughout the journey. (Martínez Olvera and Orduña Torres didn’t trust the drivers and preferred not to communicate with them directly.)  Love’s Travel Stop, southwest of San Antonio, where the smugglers often gassed up and transferred the semis used to haul migrants north from Laredo. Early that morning, Martinez had picked up Zamorano near Palestine, a small town some three hundred miles from San Antonio, in the Piney Woods of East Texas. When he arrived, he’d found Zamorano smoking meth with his girlfriend. There was nothing unusual about that. Both men used stimulants to stay awake on overnight hauls. Martinez preferred cocaine. Zamorano was Martinez’s third recruit, and this was their fourth run together.  The air inside the trailer was already suffocating, but Begaí, Mariano, and the others had been warned to stay silent, lest the slightest noise tip off Border Patrol agents. Martinez, who grew up in Palestine, suffers from severe cognitive disabilities and never learned to read. Because of his weight, Zamorano called him Gordito. Before he linked up with the smugglers, the closest Martinez had come to a steady job was working for his cousin selling ice cream. He was often homeless, living out of his Tahoe. All of a sudden he was pulling in money like he’d never seen. Every time a driver successfully made it to San Antonio with a load of migrants, the smugglers paid Martinez $5,000. In less than four months he’d earned $35,000.  Things had not worked out so well for the drivers he’d recruited. The first was a childhood friend from Palestine. On his third run, that driver got busted at a Border Patrol checkpoint with 107 migrants in his trailer. The second driver Martinez recruited also went down on his third trip. For now, Zamorano’s luck seemed to be holding out. “They’re Murdering Us in Here” By around 11 a.m., Zamorano had completed the drive to Laredo and parked at a truck stop on the north end of town, where he awaited further instructions. As a rule, drivers were kept in the dark until the last possible moment. Rather than send them directly to the stash houses—which could draw attention and give the drivers information they might spill if they got caught—the organization had operatives on the ground gather migrants in another vehicle and move them to the site where they would be loaded into the trailer.  A truck parking lot on Highway 359 east of downtown Laredo served as the pick-up location on the day of the Quintana Road migrant disaster. Just before one in the afternoon, Zamorano received a Google Maps pin from Martinez directing him to a side street across from a steel supply warehouse in an industrial area east of town. When he got there, he found a white box truck—filled, as he knew, with the migrants he would carry to San Antonio. Nervous and worn out from his meth-fueled all-nighter, Zamorano struggled to turn the trailer around and back it into the tight space where the box truck sat waiting, flanked on one side by a chain-link fence overhung with mesquites. When he finally came to a stop, men on the ground quickly flung open the compartments of both vehicles. Fifty yards away, a steady stream of traffic flowed by on the highway. Anyone passing would have seen only shadows on the gravel as some sixty people moved between two unremarkable trucks. The loading process took about ten minutes.  Roughly an hour after pulling out, Zamorano veered off the highway and toward the canopy of C29. The air inside the trailer was already suffocating, but Begaí, Mariano, and the others had been warned to stay silent, lest the slightest noise tip off Border Patrol agents. As Zamorano waited in the checkpoint line, they felt the vibrations of other trucks’ engines and heard the squeal of air brakes. When the truck briefly halted, they heard the driver talking to someone outside. There weren’t any dogs working Zamorano’s lane when it was his turn to speak to an agent. Wearing a black H-Town baseball cap, he smiled as he leaned out of the truck’s window. According to the forged paperwork, Zamorano was hauling thirteen tons of blueberries, and the temperature in the trailer should have been below 66 degrees. The agent waved the truck through without checking the bill of lading or the trailer’s temperature display, and Zamorano pressed on toward San Antonio.  As the truck continued north, the heat inside the trailer intensified. With no ventilation and the body heat of 64 people pumping out gallons of sweat, it’s likely the temperature soared above 140 degrees. The migrants’ composure soon broke.  Mariano and Begaí listened to the frantic wails in the darkness all around them. Their eyes burned and their skin itched from the seasoning that D’Luna Bilbao had scattered. People began scrambling, tripping over each other trying to find an outlet for air, but inside the sealed container they only generated more heat and depleted precious oxygen. At one point, Mariano stood up and began sliding on the sweat-slicked floor. Begaí reached up and tried to pull him back down. “Don’t get up, just keep still,” he said, but Mariano slipped out of his grip. The younger brother made his way to the front, where he slammed the wall with his fists, desperate to get the driver’s attention. Somehow, he found his way back to Begaí’s side. “He didn’t hear me,” he said. In fact, Zamorano had heard noises from inside the trailer. At about 3:20 p.m. he called Martinez to say that his phone had died and he’d stopped to buy a phone charger. He pulled over at least twice more, telling Martinez each time that he’d had to stop because he’d heard screaming and banging on the trailer walls. He tried to reset the refrigeration unit, which was mounted on the trailer’s exterior, but he’d unwittingly made things worse—the unit started blowing hot air. Mariano squeezed Begaí’s hand. “I can’t take the pain in my chest,” he said. The migrants heard Zamorano tinkering outside and felt the sudden rush of heat. “We’re almost there!” he shouted. At one point, they also heard someone fiddling with the latches of the back doors, but the doors remained sealed.  At about 5:30 p.m., Zamorano linked up with a pickup on I-35 that would lead him to the designated drop-off spot on Quintana Road in south San Antonio. He called Martinez again, agitated. “They’re screaming and banging real bad,” he said. He asked what he should do. A few minutes later, Martinez called back with a message from the bosses: “What’s done is done. Don’t stop again.” Inside, the migrants had grown desperate. Some clawed at the walls and tore out chunks of yellow foam insulation, a futile effort to reach fresh air. A group of women in the middle of the trailer formed a prayer circle, their voices rising above the din. Someone who’d managed to carry a phone onboard made a frantic call, pleading with the person on the other end to rescue them. A man begged for water for his dying wife. The brother and sister who had placed the young girl between them tried to comfort her, the brother fanning her with his pocket Bible. A woman who’d defied the smugglers’ orders to give up her water bottle shared her last drops with them.   One by one, they began to die. As extreme dehydration set in, they ceased sweating, their skin becoming hot to the touch. Electrolyte depletion can trigger a range of symptoms: muscle cramps, brain swelling, nausea, loss of coordination, delirium, and seizures. Then, as their body temperatures climbed above 105 degrees, their cells began to die and their organs began to fail. Their final moments before slipping out of consciousness were agonizing.  Mariano squeezed Begaí’s hand. “I can’t take the pain in my chest,” he said. Begaí felt like he was submerged underwater, as if each labored inhalation was a smaller sip from the surface. “They’re murdering us in here,” he said to Mariano. His mouth and limbs twisted involuntarily. “We’re not going to die in here,” Begaí repeated over and over.  “Stay strong, my brother,” Mariano said.  The last thing Begaí remembers hearing from Mariano was a prayer: “My God, look after my heart, look after my soul.”  A giant shadow appeared above Begaí. He was no longer in the trailer surrounded by the dead but all alone beneath a wide-open sky on a vast plain. He sensed an immense presence listening to him, and he offered his own prayer: “Give me one opportunity, just one opportunity.” There was no response. Somewhere close by, he heard the unmistakable rumble of a train.  Pocket Full of Prayer Cards  The potholed stretch of Quintana Road that runs north from I-410 alongside the Union Pacific Railroad tracks was known to local police and the smugglers as a dumping ground for garbage and stolen cars. Its edges were overgrown with heavy brush, and spray-painted numbers on banged-up panel fences marked junkyards and construction depots.  The migrant memorial along Quintana Road. Parked at the drop-off point and still sitting in the cab of the red tractor, Zamorano watched in the side-view mirror as the various drivers who had arrived to retrieve groups of migrants converged on the rear of the trailer. One of them threw open the doors, but instead of the usual melee—drivers shouting codes and separating out their respective clients—everyone scrambled back to their vehicles and sped away.  Zamorano was under strict orders to never leave the cab during loading or unloading. Panicked, he called Martinez, who told him to go look in the trailer. With Martinez still on the line, Zamorano climbed down and walked to the back. “There’s bodies stacked up,” he said, then hung up.  His hands trembling, Martinez called one of Martínez Olvera’s lieutenants and asked what to do. “Go pick him up,” was the reply. When Martinez arrived a few minutes later, he noticed a teenage girl sobbing near the semi, her sweat-soaked black T-shirt clinging to her skin. A handful of men whom Martinez didn’t recognize appeared to be helping her. Seeing no trace of Zamorano—who’d stopped answering his phone and responding to texts—Martinez fled the scene.  Roberto Quintero worked for a nearby asphalt company, and he and a few coworkers had jumped in a company truck and rushed out to Quintana Road after hearing screams. That’s where they found the girl staggering near the semi. When Quintero approached the trailer, just before 6 p.m., he saw bodies piled inside, their faces swollen and their lips blue. Some appeared to have torn their clothes off. None were moving. Horrified, he dialed 911.  Police and other first responders work the scene where 53 people died and multiple others suffered heat-related illnesses after a tractor-trailer containing migrants was found on June 27, 2022, in San Antonio. AP Photo/Eric Gay, File. “There’s an eighteen-wheeler with about twenty dead people in the back,” Quintero told the dispatcher, the girl’s screams audible in the background. “There’s more than twenty people,” he then stammered. “There’s fifty people!” As he and his coworkers gave water to the girl, they noticed a man in a black cap and striped golf shirt take off running from beside the truck. The girl told Quintero that she’d seen the same man climb down from the driver’s side of the cab. Some of the asphalt workers gave chase but weren’t able to catch him. There was a fire station less than a mile away, and police and emergency medical teams arrived within minutes. As they approached the trailer, they were hit with the sickening stench of sweat and fecal matter mixed with the odor of cooking seasoning. A tangle of corpses lay near the rear doors, limp limbs dangling over the edge. Ambulance personnel dragged bodies out by their arms and legs, arranging them in the dirt on the side of the road. From inside the trailer they began to hear moaning and gasping for air. “Got a live one!” someone shouted.  Sixteen survivors were rushed to local hospitals, five of whom would later die. After the trailer was emptied, 48 people lay dead beneath yellow tarps, including two that police officers had found several hundred feet from the truck. Worried that there might be more victims scattered in the area, emergency personnel carefully swept both sides of Quintana Road. They soon came across an apparently unconscious man sprawled in the brush beside the railroad tracks, a black H-Town baseball hat and a Samsung Galaxy phone lying beside him. They assumed at first that he was one of the victims. But when a policeman picked up the phone, its unlocked screen revealed a text message in English, delivered only a few minutes earlier: “wya bro?” The message—an abbreviation of “where you at bro?”—was from a contact labeled Gordito.  Zamorano startled when emergency personnel dumped a cooler of frigid water on him. Police quickly determined that he fit the asphalt workers’ description of the driver and detained him. Diagnosed with amphetamine intoxication and dehydration, he spent that night in a hospital bed under police supervision. D’Luna Bilbao heard about what had happened from one of Martínez Olvera’s associates that afternoon while he was waiting at the storage lot for the order to retrieve the semi. The trailer’s registration led police straight to his home. Frozen by fear, he was there when police arrived to arrest him that night.  Martinez, too shaken to drive, had holed up in a La Quinta Inn just outside San Antonio. He didn’t know that the police had seen his text and figured out that he was Gordito, but once he saw Zamorano’s mug shot on the news that night he had no doubt they would find him. He returned to Palestine the next day, where he visited his mother and sister, blew the last of his cocaine, and waited for the cops to show up. Police arrested him in the morning hours of June 29.  The scale of the disaster overwhelmed the capacity of the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office. Under the glare of emergency-vehicle headlights, five forensic pathologists worked through the night to process the bodies. They combed through the victims’ pockets, the interior of the trailer, and the surrounding area for identifying documents. Homeland Security agents identified some of them with a mobile fingerprint scanner. Once again, the migrants were loaded like cargo into the backs of large vehicles and hauled away—this time to the morgue.  With the help of reinforcements called in from Dallas and Austin, Bexar County officials would take five days to complete the autopsies. The main cause of death was hyperthermia—basically, overheating—but the medical examiner determined that many may have also suffered asphyxiation from being smothered, crushed under the weight of other bodies, or simply unable to survive on the oxygen-depleted air. Officials carefully collected and photographed the personal items that the deceased had in their pockets, which didn’t amount to much. Most had little more than loose change, and some traveled without any money at all. As a group, they had less than $2,500. The aspiring Guatemalan schoolteacher and one of her traveling companions carried fake Mexican identification cards to ease their passage through the country, where opportunists are known to prey on Central American migrants. The teenage boy from Mexico City carried three well-worn prayer cards. One of the men who’d promised the boy’s mother he’d look after him was also carrying prayer cards; he’d survived long enough to stagger several hundred feet from the trailer before collapsing. The pregnant Honduran woman died with two pregnancy tests in her pocket.  One stocky male had a sweat-wrinkled scrap of paper in one pocket with a few notes scrawled in bleeding red ink, including the name of a hotel in Nuevo Laredo and a smuggler’s code: 050 Flaco. The man’s Mexican identification indicated that he was 32 years old and came from Oaxaca. His name was Mariano.  His brother Begaí lay unconscious but alive in a hospital on the other side of town. The Real Number of Victims News of the disaster shot across the southern border. Families from all over Mexico and Central America watched the coverage on local channels and pored over social media posts, wondering if a loved one might be under the tarps on Quintana Road. It would take days for all of the victims’ families to be notified, and several weeks to repatriate all of the bodies. Saddled with debts they’d taken on to pay the smugglers, some families had to borrow still more for funerals. In some places—like the tiny Guatemalan village where the two youngest passengers grew up—entire communities poured out of their homes to follow the caskets to the cemetery. Though the Bexar County medical examiner had concluded that the primary cause of death was hyperthermia, the manner of death was homicide. The investigation fell under the authority of Joint Task Force Alpha, a multiagency effort launched by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2021 to “enhance U.S. enforcement efforts against the most prolific and dangerous human smuggling and trafficking groups.” Seven of the organization’s drivers were already behind bars, including Zamorano, and cellphones confiscated from D’Luna Bilbao, Martinez, and Zamorano contained troves of data related to the organization’s activities, but it would still take a year for the authorities to close in on the more senior figures.  The home Felipe Orduña Torres rented with his wife and daughter near Lackland Air Force Base, in south San Antonio, about ten minutes drive from the disaster site on Quintana Road. Orduña Torres was arrested here on June 26, 2023. On June 26, 2023, federal law enforcement officers swarmed Orduña Torres’s rental home in a modest neighborhood near Lackland Air Force Base, about ten minutes from the crime scene on Quintana Road. They found a pearl 2015 Cadillac Escalade and a lime-green 2017 Ford F-350 with custom chrome rims and a lift kit so massive it was almost a monster truck. Orduña Torres, 28 by then, lived there with his wife and daughter. The interior was freshly painted, and in the backyard he had installed a small swimming pool, synthetic grass, and a covered patio. The government valued the improvements at $41,000 and concluded that he had financed them with his smuggling revenues. The same day, federal officers arrested three other men associated with the organization, including Orduña Torres’s father-in-law. (Martínez Olvera somehow managed to avoid arrest, probably by fleeing to Mexico.) “Human smugglers prey on migrants’ hope for a better life—but their only priority is profit,” Garland said in a press release announcing the arrests. At Orduña Torres’s house, the agents found a portion of that profit—$30,000 in cash stuffed into the bottom of a Special K cereal box perched on top of his refrigerator and another $29,444 in various hiding places, including his daughter’s dresser. According to the government, he was involved in between 24 and 48 human-smuggling operations over the two-year period leading up to the disaster, which meant that his bulk-smuggling runs with Martínez Olvera were only part of his business. In total, the government estimates that Orduña Torres earned between $96,000 and $240,000 during that two-year stretch. The lower estimate would put his family slightly above San Antonio’s median household income. The upper figure would place him in the middle class but far from the kind of wealth that signifies kingpin status in Mexico, let alone in the U.S.  Of the seven arrested, all but two—Orduña Torres and his father-in-law, who played a minor role—would plead guilty to human-smuggling charges. Last March, nearly three years after the disaster, Orduña Torres shuffled into a high-ceilinged courtroom with wood-paneled walls in the new federal courthouse in San Antonio. The pronounced limp that earned him the nickname by which all of the other smugglers knew him—Chuekito, from the Spanish word for “crooked”—was noticeable even in leg-irons. He wore a suit and tie, with his hair gelled and spiked. He’d lost so much weight that D’Luna Bilbao, who took the stand early in the trial, hardly recognized him.  Two survivors testified. The first, Greysy Sanjay Bacajol, had comforted the frightened young girl she and her brother had met en route to the border. Greysy’s brother Oswaldo also survived, as did the girl, whose name was Sebastiana Morales Morales. It was her screams that had caught the attention of the asphalt workers.  The other survivor who testified, José Luis Vásquez Guzmán, was the former Mexican soldier who was looking after the teenage boy. The boy, Marcos Antonio Velasco Velasco, had been headed to a job in Ohio that was originally offered to his mother, but he’d begged to go on her behalf. Marcos Antonio died, as did the soldier’s cousin, Javier Flores López. When the prosecutors displayed a photo of his cousin on a screen in the courtroom, Vásquez Guzmán wept for several minutes. Some of the jurors wept with him. Martínez Olvera remains at large, as do legions of others who make up the decentralized smuggling economy—stash-house operators, guides, scouts, cartel henchmen, drivers of various kinds. Juan D’Luna Bilbao, Christian Martinez, and another smuggler charged in the case gave detailed testimony about how the organization planned and carried out its bulk smuggling operations. Federal investigators took the stand to walk through reams of text messages, WhatsApp communications, photos, and tracking data that connected Orduña Torres to numerous bulk smuggling operations, including the fateful trip on June 27, 2022.  Before sending the jury to deliberate, the judge reminded them of the pregnant Honduran woman who died. The real number of victims, he said, was 54.  The jury found both men guilty on all charges, and the judge later sentenced them to life in prison. Shortly after U.S. marshals led the pair away in cuffs, top-ranking federal officials held a press conference to announce the verdict. “ Today is a momentous day in the department’s relentless fight against the leaders, organizers, and key facilitators of human smuggling networks,” said Matthew Galeotti, Trump’s recently appointed acting head of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division. “We’re not done—not even by a long shot.” Mariano Santiago Hipólito’s homemade marker at the migrant memorial on Quintana Road in south San Antonio. Recently the federal government has unleashed another immigration-enforcement spending spree. In July, Congress gave Trump a record-shattering $190 billion to expand the Department of Homeland Security, effectively doubling the agency’s budget over the next several years. Upward of $80 billion is allocated for the border, including more than $50 billion for wall construction and border infrastructure. Funding is already in place for an expansion that will make C29 the largest checkpoint in the country.  Meanwhile, Martínez Olvera remains at large, as do legions of others who make up the decentralized smuggling economy—stash-house operators, guides, scouts, cartel henchmen, drivers of various kinds. As long as there is money to be made transporting people across borders, their ranks are unlikely to diminish. Have You Seen My Brother? It took Mari more than a week to reach her husband’s bedside. A representative of the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed her that she was eligible for a special permit to visit Begaí in the hospital, but she had to first get to Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso. She couldn’t afford the airfare, but a former employer of Begaí’s got in touch and offered to finance her trip.  Someone from the consulate in El Paso was waiting for her when she landed in Juárez and drove her to the Bridge of the Americas, where she walked over the dry concrete channel of the Rio Grande, past rows of idling cars and into the U.S. Customs and Border Protection station. She explained her situation to an agent, who asked her to fill out a form, took her photograph, and told her she could stay in the U.S. for thirty days. As he waved her through, he said, “God bless you, señora.”  She traversed West Texas by bus in the black of night, worrying all the way to San Antonio about what she would find when she got there—how Begaí would react to seeing her and whether she would be able to keep herself together. “Forgive me,” were Begaí’s first words to Mari. “I didn’t listen to you.” Amós, one of Begaí’s brothers, who worked in a factory in Ciudad Juárez, had also gotten special permission to cross and was at the bus station to greet Mari when she arrived in San Antonio on July 5. Another consular representative drove them to Christus Santa Rosa Hospital, where a nurse briefed them on Begaí’s condition as they walked to his room. By then, he had been in the hospital for nine days. The nurse told them that Begaí had been unconscious when the ambulance delivered him to the emergency room, and the staff had thought he would probably die. His organs had shriveled like dried fruit, and he’d suffered two strokes. But eventually, after about three days in a coma, he awoke. Disoriented and with a debilitating pain along his spine, he had no memory of leaving Laredo. “The first thing he asked for was a Bible,” the nurse said.  In the hallway, Mari heard Begaí’s voice before she saw him, and she recognized the words immediately: “Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” Begaí was reciting Psalm 91:1, which they both knew by heart. She wiped a tear from her cheek and listened for a moment. Steadying herself, she slipped into the room, where she saw Begaí with his head covered in bandages. An intricate web of wires and tubes connected his limbs to blinking machines and bags of fluid. His face was pale and sad, and he looked to Mari as if he’d aged many years. “Someone came to visit you,” the nurse said. “Do you know who this is?”  Begaí looked up. “Forgive me,” were his first words to Mari. “I didn’t listen to you.”  It didn’t take her long to notice that Begaí’s short-term memory was badly damaged. He would lose the thread of conversations, forgetting things she’d told him only moments before. But it was the hole in his memory from June 27 and his confusion about what happened that day that troubled her most. Somehow, Begaí had come to believe that Mariano had never gotten in the trailer. “My brother’s okay, right?” he asked. “Is it true that he went back to Mexico? Have you seen him?”  At first she couldn’t bear to tell him the truth. She dodged his questions and encouraged him to focus on getting better, but the deceit troubled her. When she finally told him, he cried out in such agony that it sounded to Mari as if something within him was shattering.  Under constant care, Begaí gradually improved. On July 12, his doctor discharged him with one prescription for opioid painkillers and another for antibiotics. That day, an agent from the Department of Homeland Security had Begaí sign a form stating that he had been arrested and placed into removal proceedings but that he was being released pending an appearance before an immigration judge three months later in Atlanta, where he still planned to work. The document and the entire process were confusing to Begaí, who was so physically weak and cognitively impaired that he had to be cared for like a small child. Later, he received a temporary work authorization from the federal government, and an immigration attorney helped him apply for a U visa—a special category for victims of crimes that occur on U.S. soil that was created in 2000 to encourage undocumented people to cooperate with law enforcement investigations. But the lawyer told him that approval could take as long as six years, and in the meantime his immigration status was unclear.  Mari traveled with him to a suburb of Atlanta, where they stayed with his aunt and uncle. During those initial weeks, Begaí suffered severe back pain and sometimes got lost looking for the bathroom. Mari escorted him to a nearby clinic where a Spanish-speaking doctor offered low-cost services. She applied ointment to his back and comforted him when he woke disoriented in the middle of the night. She wrote a letter requesting an extension of her humanitarian parole and sent it to the Customs and Border Protection office in Atlanta along with a supporting letter from Begaí’s doctor. Her request was denied. She flew home when her thirty-day permit expired.  It would take eight months for Begaí to regain the strength to begin working again. He helped his uncle on plumbing jobs and picked up the occasional floor-tiling gig from a guy he met at church. At first he could only manage a few hours before needing to rest. Working one or two days a week, he wasn’t able to send much home to Mari, which deepened his despair.  Pioquinto Santiago (left) and Elodia Hipólito (right), parents of Mariano and Begaí Santiago Hipólito, at the family home with the brothers’ sister Nancy Santiago Hipólito. Meanwhile, the health of Mariano’s wife, Luz Estrella, had deteriorated swiftly. Though Mariano had gone to the U.S. to help pay her medical expenses, it turned out his earnings wouldn’t have made much difference. About three months after Mariano died, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. To pay for her treatments, her family raised about $1,000 by selling tamales around the neighborhood, offloading Mariano’s motorcycle, and pooling what little savings they had. But the cancer spread, making its way into her bones.  Before disease ravaged her body, Luz Estrella decided to preserve a memory of herself for her children. She dressed her five-year-old daughter, Jade, in an embroidered pink dress and her three-year-old son, Mariano, in a plaid button-down shirt. Wearing a lavender dress, her long black hair brushed back, she posed her children in front of her and placed her hands on their shoulders. They reached their own small hands up to grab hers, and she mustered a smile. The photo now hangs in her mother’s kitchen, next to a picture of Mariano beaming beside Luz Estrella on their wedding day. She died on July 31, 2023.  American Purgatory As of last year, all eleven survivors of the disaster were still living in the U.S., but their exact locations were unknown. I tracked down a few nonprofits and one attorney’s office that had aided some of them, but all declined to help me arrange an interview. During my reporting trip to Mexico and Guatemala, I managed to speak with relatives of five survivors. At the time, none were willing to put me in direct contact with their loved one. Still, I held out hope. Only the survivors could describe the horrors of that day and the difficulty of healing in a foreign country they had nearly died trying to reach—and where their legal status remains uncertain.  Over the months, I kept in touch with many of the families I’d met, and during the trial I created a WhatsApp group to update them on everything that transpired in the courtroom. Mari was part of the group, along with Begaí’s mother and two of his siblings, and they passed my messages on to him. Then, a few days after the trial ended, my phone rang. It was Begaí. Cristina Ramirez, seated left center, and Oslidio López, seated right center, the parents of Deisy Fermina López Ramirez, 24, who died in the Quintana Road incident, pictured with their surviving children at their home in Comitancillo, Guatemala. On a warm day last April, we met in a public park near his home that was busy with picnickers and dog walkers. Begaí wore jeans, a gray T-shirt, and lace-up leather shoes. He was reserved and spoke in a voice almost too quiet to hear over the noise of nearby traffic and children on the playground. I asked whether he was afraid of being deported. “Why would I be afraid?” he said. “In some ways, it would be a blessing.”  Almost three years since he said goodbye to his wife and children, Begaí is still living in the U.S., lonely and racked by grief. He suffers chronic pain behind his right lung and tires quickly from rigorous labor or heat exposure. When Mari talks to him on the phone, she notices that he sometimes forgets what they’d been discussing minutes earlier. With time, his recollections of June 27 have grown more vivid, but memories of the days leading up to it and the period after remain hazy.  Begaí works in a food truck now, ten hours a day, six days a week. He’s finally making enough to improve his family’s finances, but the pain of being separated from his wife and children has pushed him to a breaking point. His inability to comfort and support Mariano’s children is a source of constant anguish. “What I want more than anything is just to give them a hug,” he told me.  Begaí remains confused about his immigration status. More than halfway through the potentially six-year wait for his U visa decision, he has no indication that things are progressing and does not know where to ask for information about his case, or whether that’s even a good idea. Despite what he said about the potential upside of deportation, he understands that being arrested wouldn’t mean getting dropped off at a bridge and walking back to Mexico—it would likely mean a long detention in a private prison in the U.S.  Delfina Bacajol, mother of Oswaldo Sanjay Bacajol and Greisy Sanjay Bacajol, siblings who survived the San Antonio tractor trailer incident in June 2022, at her home in Xenacoj, Guatemala. When he was near death, Begaí had prayed for an opportunity to live, but he wound up in a kind of purgatory. Faced with waiting for a visa that may never come, he’s close to giving up. If he does return to Lázaro Cárdenas to visit his parents someday, he’ll take a footbridge across the Usila River and pass under an arcade of towering trees. New concrete homes, most of them built with money sent home by migrants working abroad, will add a layer of unfamiliarity to the homecoming. Inside his parents’ house, filled with the commotion of his own children and many young nieces and nephews and the smell of woodsmoke from his mother’s kitchen, Mariano will be a haunting presence. Begaí will see the Bible verses his brother painted on the walls in neat, brightly colored script. In the windowless room where their mother sleeps on a mattress on the floor, Mariano covered an entire wall with Psalm 103. The lettering is faded now but still legible. One line may seem more enigmatic after all that Begaí has endured: “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.”  The notion of divine justice might offer some comfort to Begaí, but he may wait a long time for redress from the U.S. government, if it ever comes at all. Reporting for this story was supported by the journalism nonprofit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 A deadly passage Elliott Woods,  February 26, 2025 2 Farmworkers face a life-and-death commute to Arizona’s lettuce fields Esther Honig,  April 29, 2021 3 The farmworkers in California’s fire zones Teresa Cotsirilos,  November 23, 2021 4 As heat rises, who will protect farmworkers? Bridget Huber and Nancy Averett and Teresa Cotsirilos,  June 29, 2022 5 Extreme weather creates a food crisis for California farmworkers Teresa Cotsirilos,  January 26, 2023 6 Acknowledging the work of farmworkers through art Jennifer Sahn,  September 5, 2025 7 The child workers who feed you Teresa Cotsirilos,  April 18, 2023 8 A tell-tale tragedy Esther Honig and Johnathan Hettinger,  October 26, 2023 9 The essential workers missing from the farm bill Teresa Cotsirilos,  February 14, 2024 10 Alone on the Range Teresa Cotsirilos,  October 3, 2023

Share this This Story’s Impact 142.5 thousand weekly viewers on kakm Alaska Public Media This article was produced in collaboration with Alaska Public Media. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. Despite having the most prolific remaining wild salmon runs on Earth, Alaska leads the world in salmon hatchery production. The state’s modern hatchery industry began in the 1970s as a way to boost commercial salmon harvests. Today, salmon hatcheries are a way of life here. Alaskans catch hatchery fish to fill their dinner plates and freezers. Commercial fishermen net hatchery salmon by the millions—providing one-quarter of the value of the state’s salmon harvests and generating more than $500 million annually in the process. Hatcheries in Alaska—along with facilities mainly in Russia and Japan as well as Korea, Canada, and the Pacific Northwest—release around five billion young salmon into the North Pacific each year. This production comes at a cost. Hatchery salmon weaken wild fish genetics through interbreeding and compete with wild salmon for food. And there is evidence they are playing a role in reshaping ocean food webs from plankton to whales. Trouble at Sea explores ecological ripple effects of salmon hatcheries and asks Alaskans to engage in hard conversations about the future of our changing oceans. This documentary grew out of a story FERN produced in 2023 with bioGraphic. Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. PhoneThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 Trouble at sea Miranda Weiss,  January 11, 2023 2 The strange, uncertain fate of Alaska’s biggest wild salmon habitat Julia O’Malley,  October 1, 2019 3 As Covid-19 rises, Alaskans crowd rivers to stock up on wild salmon Miranda Weiss,  July 30, 2020 4 One Alaska bay is booming with salmon, for now Miranda Weiss,  October 6, 2021 5 With thousands of seafood workers coming to Alaska, state tries to contain Covid-19 Miranda Weiss,  June 11, 2020 6 As halibut decline, Alaska Native fishers square off against industrial fleets Miranda Weiss,  April 8, 2021 7 Alaska’s herring row Brett Simpson,  August 29, 2022

Share this This Story’s Impact 28m monthly uniques21m social following Rolling Stone This article was produced in collaboration with Rolling Stone. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. Reporting for this story was supported by the Robert B. Silvers Foundation and the Fund for Investigative Journalism. In the spring of 2022, Jim Doherty kept having the same conversation with folks at the only grocery store in Boardman, his eastern Oregon hometown, or at the grain depot where he picked up food for his four ranch dogs. Healthy adults that these people knew were coming down with unexplained medical conditions, including diseases and cancers that usually afflicted the elderly. “It was kinda grim,” Doherty says. Sixty years old, broad-chested, with a salt-and-pepper goatee, Doherty had been running a cattle ranch business with his wife for 25 years when he entered public service in 2016, winning a seat on Morrow County’s three-person board of commissioners. What stood out about those conversations was the way people connected them to a problem with water in the area. Doherty knew what they meant: The county’s underground water supply had been tainted with nitrates — a byproduct of chemical fertilizers used by the megafarms and food processing plants where most of his constituents worked. The aquifer underneath Morrow County, known as the Lower Umatilla Basin, is the only source of water for as many as 45,000 residents in and around the county, the majority of whom rely on private wells that draw on the basin. Since 1991, regulators at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) have been collecting samples from the aquifer that show a slow and steady increase of chemical toxins in the water. “One man about 60 years old had his voice box taken out because of a cancer that only smokers get, but that guy hadn’t smoked a day of his life.”Jim Doherty Water hadn’t really been a political priority for Doherty — he’s a Republican, and he focused mostly on economic development and transportation projects — until a couple of years into his second term, when the uptick of stories he heard about young women enduring miscarriages and middle-aged men with organ failure started making him uneasy. Scientists believe that excess consumption of even a small amount of nitrates can do significant harm to the human body; they can cause debilitating conditions in newborns and have been linked to increased risks of cancer. Doherty wasn’t familiar with the research at the time, but he wondered if there was a connection between the contamination in the water and those conversations he kept having. In June 2022, he decided to do something about it. He went out and collected tap water samples from six homes he chose at random and sent them to a nearby laboratory. The lab called a few days later and explained that it was their policy to notify anyone with a sample that tested above the federal limit for the presence of nitrates in drinking water — 10 parts per million. Doherty asked which family was going to receive the bad news about their water. But the lab tech corrected him. It wasn’t one of the homes he visited that had a toxic well. It was all six. Doherty says he picked up 70 more test kits and went back out a week later, this time knocking on doors across a wider swath of the county. The results were equally bleak. Of the 70 wells he tested, 68 violated the safety threshold, with an average concentration of nitrates close to four times the federal limit.  When Doherty collected the water samples, accompanied by an official with the county health office, they’d taken an informal survey. Talking mostly to farmhands and factory workers who were reliant on well water, they asked if anyone in their household had one or more of the known medical conditions linked to nitrate exposure. According to Doherty, within the first 30 homes they visited, they heard of at least 25 miscarriages and a half dozen people living with one kidney. “One man about 60 years old had his voice box taken out because of a cancer that only smokers get,” Doherty says, “but that guy hadn’t smoked a day of his life.” It never occurred to Doherty that his effort to fix the water problem would provoke the ire of a group of local officials who resented scrutiny of their role in the pollution. That it would end his political career, tank his cattle sales, and cause him so much stress he’d lose 50 pounds. He couldn’t have foreseen the multibillion-dollar political scandal submerged in that fouled water, the class action lawsuit that would rise from it, the intervention by the Oregon governor and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a civil suit from the Oregon attorney general, or sanctions from the state’s ethics commission and Department of Environmental Quality. He never thought parents in the area would be terrified that their children might sneak a glass of poisonous water from the kitchen sink. And he never imagined that one of the world’s largest tech companies — Amazon — could play a part in the crisis. “The historical precedent here is Flint, Michigan,” says Kristin Ostrom, executive director of Oregon Rural Action (ORA), a water rights advocacy group. “In part because of how slow the response to the crisis has been, and in part because of who’s affected. These are people who have no political or economic power, and very little knowledge of the risk.” Jim Doherty, a former Morrow County commissioner, tears up while speaking with The Associated Press on Wednesday, August 21, 2024, in Boardman, Oregon. He and fellow commissioner Melissa Lindsay were removed from office following a recall campaign spearheaded by other public officials and business leaders angry that the pair had questioned their dealings with Amazon. AP Photo by Jenny Kane. Amazon opened Morrow County’s first “hyperscale” data center in 2011 — nearly 10,000 square feet of warehouse space filled with rows of computer servers. The facility services the company’s most profitable division, its cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon’s presence lent Big Tech cachet to the county’s industrial district and diversified its investment portfolio away from a reliance on agriculture. Amazon has generated commercial taxes for the county worth more than $100 million over the course of a decade. Eager to compete with other rural communities looking to host data center campuses, local officials had offered Amazon a 15-year tax abatement for each hyperscale data center it built, which would be worth billions to the company. Amazon has since constructed seven such facilities in the area, with agreements for five more underway. There was good reason for Amazon to set itself up in a place like Morrow County. With $107 billion in cloud computing sales in 2024, Amazon Web Services has the dominant position with 30 percent of the market. But the company faces stiff competition from Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, and Google. In the third quarter of 2024, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft increased their investment in data centers 81 percent compared to the previous year, per the telecom market researcher Dell’Oro Group, and have already spent $360 billion on capital expenditures over the last 12 months. S&P predicts that demand for new construction is expected to double by 2030, most of it in rural counties like Morrow that are otherwise reliant on agriculture. Around the country, and the world, there is a land race among the big tech companies for sites for their data centers. The stakes of the game are high: A recent Goldman Sachs analysis found AI technology could unlock as much as $5 to $19 trillion for the American economy. But data centers pose a variety of climate and environmental problems, including their impact on the water supply. The volume of water needed to cool the servers in data centers — most of which need to be kept at 70 to 80 degrees to run effectively — has become a nationwide water resource issue particularly in areas facing water scarcity across the West. This year, a Bloomberg News analysis found that roughly “two-thirds of new data centers built or in development since 2022 are in places already gripped by high levels of water stress.” Droughts have plagued Morrow County, occurring annually since 2020. But even areas with ample water reserves are vulnerable to the outsized demand from data centers. Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency reported that data centers could consume 1,200 billion liters by 2030 worldwide, nearly double the 560 billion liters of water they use currently. The volume of water isn’t the most pressing problem in Morrow County, however. The issue is pollution, which Amazon’s data centers have exacerbated since their arrival. In response to a request for comment, Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski replied that “the apparent narrative” of this story “is misleading and inaccurate.” Levandowski went on to say: “The truth is that this region has long-documented groundwater quality challenges that significantly predate AWS’ presence, and federal, state, and local agencies have spent years working to address nitrates from agricultural fertilizer, manure, septic systems, and wastewater from food processing plants. Our data centers draw water from the same supply as other community members; nitrates are not an additive we use in any of our processes, and the volume of water our facilities use and return represents only a very small fraction of the overall water system — not enough to have any meaningful impact on water quality.” Morrow is an unlikely location for an agricultural juggernaut. Essentially desert country, its porous, sandy soil is inhospitable to all but a few types of shallow-root crops. Yet over the last few decades, it was transformed by a group of entrepreneurial local officials and farm operators who leveraged chemical fertilizers to make the desert bloom. To compensate for the dry conditions and create more capacity for large agricultural operations, vast irrigation systems were built in the 1990s by officials at the Port of Morrow, the county’s transportation and food-processing hub along the bank of the Columbia River. Increased water flow meant large agricultural companies could use fertilizers in fields year-round. That drew some of the Pacific Northwest’s largest dairy concerns and producers of onions and potatoes to Morrow County. Lamb Weston, which supplies virtually all of the potatoes for McDonald’s french fries, set up shop. So did Threemile Canyon Farms, one of the largest dairy operators in the nation. Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. EmailThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ The massive inputs of fertilizer to grow crops and feed for the animals came at a price: the contamination of the Lower Umatilla Basin. In 1992, DEQ measured an average nitrate concentration of 9.2 ppm across a cluster of wells pulling from the basin. By 2015, that average had risen 46 percent, to 15.3 ppm. For some wells, DEQ found nitrate levels nearly as high as 73 ppm, more than 10 times the state limit of 7 ppm. Every day, the megafarms and food processing plants in Morrow County send millions of gallons of wastewater to the Port of Morrow. The Port in turn pumps it to one of several lagoons that hold tens or hundreds of millions of gallons of tainted water. Vast pools of this wastewater are covered in football field-sized tarps, which trap the solids that rise to the surface. Microbes metabolize some of the solids, expelling methane gas which then burns out of thin chimney pipes sticking up from the tarps, the flames flickering atop like birthday candles. Once the solid waste has burned off, the water under the tarp is laden with residual nitrogen chemicals — the remains of the fertilizers, animal manure, and plant material. At no cost to farm operators, the Port then pumps that nitrogen-dense water back out onto the farms, where nitrogen turns into nitrates when it interacts with the soil. It is a novel recycling process that alleviates the Port’s wastewater burden and offers farms a steady flow of highly concentrated fertilized water to expand their industrial-ag footprints. When the Port sprays that water back over the farms, some of the nitrates are absorbed by the crops, but there’s a limit to how much the sandy soil and shallow-root plants can hold before it leaks all the way through the dirt, polluting the aquifer below. “The aquifer is basically one giant sandbox, and the water flows through there very quickly,” says Chad Gubala, a hydrologist who managed Oregon DEQ’s oversight of the Port of Morrow’s wastewater permit from 2018 to 2022. Once the crops have absorbed what they can, the rest of the nitrates “get flushed right through [to the basin].” Experts say Amazon’s arrival supercharged this process. The data centers suck up tens of millions of gallons of water from the aquifer each year to cool their computer equipment, which then gets funneled to the Port’s wastewater system. All of the data center water gets mixed into the dirty lagoon wastewater, which only increases how much water the Port must then discard over the fields. As Greg Pettit, who served at the DEQ for 38 years and led the development of Oregon’s Groundwater Quality, explains, “the more water you put on, the faster you’re going to drive the nitrogen through the soil and down into the aquifer.” Wastewater lagoons filled with nitrate-laced water that is sprayed over the area’s farmland as fertilizer. Courtesy of Food & Water Watch, Oregon Rural Action, and Lighthawk. Gubula is likewise critical of how the Port historically has dealt with the overwhelming volume of wastewater, which included spraying the fields during the cold winter months, even when no crops were planted. “This idea of winter irrigation was the goofiest thing on God’s green earth,” he says. “The farmers and the Port facility folks argued that maintaining irrigation during a non-growing season was a reasonable thing to keep the soil ‘in appropriate condition’ they called it, so it’d be ready for spring seed sowing and early growth. Well, it was functionally a load of shit, a way to maintain year-round discharge of wastewater from their facilities.” (In an Oct. 30 press release, the Port pledged to end the practice this winter. The Port’s executive director, Lisa Mittelsdorf, told Rolling Stone in a statement, “The Port and DEQ have worked together to ban non-growing season land application of industrial wastewater.”) The nonstop spraying during the winter months helped the Port and Amazon manage the incredible volume of wastewater coming out of the farms and data centers, but it raised alarm bells for DEQ rank-and-file analysts. The winter irrigation practice “provides a significant risk to … to groundwater,” Larry Brown, a DEQ Environmental Health Specialist, wrote in an email in 2023, summarizing concerns he had shared with DEQ administrators a year earlier. “[It] must be phased out as soon as reasonably possible.” The warning signs were ignored. As the underground aquifer became tainted with more nitrates, even the ostensibly clean water that the Port pulled from the aquifer’s deepest wells — which it used to service its large industrial customers like Amazon — became polluted. Soon, Amazon was using water to cool its data warehouses with nitrates as high as 13 ppm — above the federal and state limits. When that tainted water moves through the data centers to absorb heat from the server systems, some of the water is evaporated, but the nitrates remain, increasing the concentration. That means that when the polluted water has moved through the data centers and back into the wastewater system, it’s even more contaminated, sometimes averaging as high as 56 ppm, eight times Oregon’s safety limit. On June 9, 2022, Jim Doherty called a public hearing for the county commission to vote on a state of emergency for the county’s drinking water. As word spread about the meeting, some residents were angry — and not necessarily about the health threat. Many feared an emergency declaration would expose the county to intervention by the Oregon DEQ or the federal Environmental Protection Agency, whose regulators might shut down businesses to halt the contamination. Local residents and farm managers packed the hearing at the county courthouse in the town of Heppner, with dozens more watching the livestream. “Our legacy will be what we are doing now,” Doherty said of the emergency decree. The county, he argued, needed to unlock emergency funds to buy bottled water for anyone living with tainted wells and provide test kits to the thousands of residents who didn’t yet know if they were drinking polluted water. Melissa Lindsay was one of Doherty’s fellow county commissioners, elected the same year as him. She said she had reservations about the state of emergency, because it would mean giving broad authority to the governor over resource allocation, emergency services, and communication about the crisis to the public. Doherty disagreed. He had received a phone call from then-Governor Kate Brown a few days earlier, and she’d offered emergency assistance without strings attached. “She did not say they would come run our county,” Doherty said. That was enough for Lindsay, but not everyone at the meeting was swayed. The agricultural operators who accounted for the $2 billion local economy remained wary. Doherty says one farm manager spent 15 minutes at a second meeting telling him “what a godawful person I was for trying to shut down farming and the local ag industry.” The tensions laid bare the economic realities of Morrow County, a place where the gap between rich and poor is extreme. Roughly 30 percent of the county lives in mobile homes — the vast majority of which rely on well water — and 40 percent live below the poverty line. Meanwhile, the top 5 percent earn an average income of $374,000, more than 20 times the bottom 20 percent. These farm managers and factory executives tend to live in McMansions scattered around the countryside or in manicured developments in Boardman. In sharp contrast to the potholed gravel roads and slanted bungalows where the workers live, the new developments have freshly paved streets and sidewalks, and they drink and cook with water from city water pipes that go deep into the aquifer, where the water is less concentrated with nitrates — although the contamination levels for even the deepest wells are starting to rise. At the end of the June 9 meeting, commissioner Lindsay endorsed the declaration — a move that would free up county funds for bottled water and prompt the state to open up its own emergency response coffers. “The safe drinking water of our constituents is  number one,” Lindsay said. Her vote, along with Doherty’s, was enough. The third commissioner, Don Russell, who had worked at the Port before winning a seat on the county board, did not show up to the emergency hearing. With the initial $250,000 in emergency funds, the county hired water trucks for well users to fill large jugs. Health officials began distributing bilingual flyers that warned wells could be tainted, advising that “residents who have a high level of nitrate in their well water should not boil their water. Boiling does not get rid of nitrate.” By the end of the summer, the county had spent $500,000 addressing the water problem, including additional deliveries of bottled water to residents’ homes. Despite the concern about the state’s involvement, the county received little help from state agencies and lawmakers. Doherty was particularly upset that Gov. Brown didn’t release a statement supporting the county. He pressured her office about the $4 million in emergency funds he’d requested, but the county only received $881,000 from the state for testing and home water-filtration kits. Doherty suspected that the lobbyists representing Morrow County business interests were working behind the scenes to thwart an aggressive state-level intervention. “That was the mafia mentality at work,” he says. “‘We’re going to take care of it, don’t you worry about it. Just keep it in the family.’” (Former governor Brown declined to directly address these allegations, instead suggesting Rolling Stone file a public records request.) Members of West Glen United gather August 27, 2025, at Sam Boardman Elementary School to offer their thoughts on nitrate pollution solutions from Morrow County’s government. Oregon Rural Action/Contributed Photo. Other state agencies seemed to fall in line with farm operators’ assertion that this wasn’t much of an emergency, and if it was, the burden of solving the problem lay with the agriculture industry and not the state. “[To] move the needle on reducing contamination to healthy levels…it’s going to take work and creative solutions from farmers, ranchers, homeowners, really anyone who uses water or land in this area,” a DEQ spokesperson said that June. By September 2022, 248 additional homes had been found to have nitrate levels above the state’s safety limit. At another packed town hall meeting, “county leaders and people with contaminated wells expressed growing frustration at the lack of direct intervention from the state in public testimony,” one local newspaper wrote in its coverage. Despite several invitations, Gov. Brown did not attend, nor did any representatives from DEQ or Oregon Health Authority. Speaking to the crowd, Doherty emphasized the significance of raising awareness among the worker enclaves. Some immigrants in the area, many of whom are undocumented, were reluctant to seek help. According to several sources with direct knowledge of the incidents, managers at several of the food processing plants and farm operations were telling employees that the emergency declaration was a bad-faith campaign that would endanger their jobs. Gathering at town halls or speaking about the pollution to reporters was tantamount to inviting the shutdown of your place of employment. Doherty tried to counter the disinformation: “We need you. We need you to walk across the street and talk to your neighbor,” he told the crowd. “You need to talk to your friend or, better yet, make a new damn friend, tell them to test their water.” But as word continued to spread across the county that residents had potentially been drinking contaminated water for years, if not decades, Doherty was besieged with emails, texts, and Facebook messages from concerned residents who encouraged him to fight the pollution. “Out of the kitchen sink is the way we all get our life,” one local wrote to Doherty. “Make it right. You’re the man to do it.” Another person contacted him who had just moved away. “My husband had kidney cancer in his early 40s. His doctor thought it was due to exposure to herbicides and pesticides. He lost a kidney but he lived,” she wrote. “We had acceptable levels of [toxins in our] drinking water when we first moved there. After my husband’s cancer we realized they went up and up through the years. It’s very sad.” Some of the larger agriculture operators in the area, including Tillamook Creamery and Lamb Weston, offered financial support to people who needed water. But they stopped short of acknowledging that they might have played a part in the water crisis. (Tillamook did not reply to multiple requests for comment on this story from Rolling Stone. Lamb Weston replied in a statement that “while only a very small percent of nitrates, as confirmed by the Oregon DEQ, are attributable to the land application of food processing water, we are committed to doing our part to protect safe drinking water in the region. Among other actions, we are improving water treatment to reduce the nitrogen content in our process water and taking steps to reduce water use, including the amount of process water ultimately land-applied as irrigation.”) The Port, which is overseen by the county, issued its own anodyne statement at the time, never conceding any role in the problem. “The Port of Morrow welcomes the County’s emergency declaration on groundwater,” the statement read. “This has been a community issue for decades and it is past time to address the issue on a regional basis. The Port is eager to play its role in finding workable solutions.” Lisa Mittelsdorf, executive director of the Port, said in an email to Rolling Stone that the “DEQ has consistently acknowledged Port operations have had minimal effect on nitrate levels in the basin’s groundwater.” Since 2011 Oregon DEQ has issued more than a thousand violations and more than $3 million in fines against the Port for excessive spraying of nitrate-laden water over farmland. Amazon pitched in money as well, “to help neighbors, families and workers impacted by the water emergency,” as the company put it in a press release. Behind closed doors, however, members of Amazon’s legal, communications, and AWS teams debated the cost of being associated with the industrial agriculture operators who, in the public imagination at least, were the cause of the pollution. “Is there any risk in having our name in this, or any reason why we wouldn’t do this?” one staffer wrote, according to a review of hundreds of internal emails obtained through a public records request. “There is always potential for some risk of affiliation with the causation,” Amazon director of public policy Roger Wehner wrote, though he underscored how the company’s donation would “also offer an opportunity to position AWS [as] an engaged corporate citizen doing good for the community.” Being seen as an “engaged corporate citizen” would be helpful to Amazon as it negotiated for the next round of multibillion-dollar tax abatements from Morrow County’s business development committee for building out five new data centers. “This is a rare, highly impactful opportunity (could critically help influence $2b incentives) in our 2nd largest region globally. … We simply cannot miss the window given high risk/impact to the business,” AWS economic development principal Hillary Lambert wrote in the email thread. “Our absence … will be noted not only by the public but also very important stakeholders who 1) hold the keys to $2B of tax abatements currently in negotiation for the business 2) gate keep for key land acquisitions to meet supply needs, and 3) facilitate our permitting and water/fiber infrastructure approvals,” wrote one AWS team member. “All of which are very critical for our continued success.” Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski characterized the use of these quotes from the emails as “misleading,” adding, “We have been investing and creating jobs in eastern Oregon since before the launch of our data centers there. Any suggestion that our support during this emergency was connected to tax negotiations or regulatory approvals misrepresents the facts — our response was driven by our commitment to the community’s wellbeing.” Doherty wasn’t surprised by the corporate messaging and philanthropic support by Amazon and the other major industrial players in Morrow County. It was in their interest to curry favor with the public, particularly if it meant they could avoid any commitment to altering the wastewater management practices that continued to exacerbate the crisis. But it wasn’t just the C-suite executives who were keeping a close eye on Doherty’s emergency declaration. Behind the scenes, powerful local officials were coordinating their own response. Morrow County’s transformation from a rural backwater into an agricultural powerhouse is, in many ways, the work of a single man. Gary Neal was elected general manager of the Port of Morrow in 1989, when the waterfront terminal was still a modest operation. Built in the 1960s as a rail and shipping hub to distribute the county’s crops and dairy products, it had one dock and only a few food processors. That’s where Neal came in. Over the course of more than 30 years, utilizing grants and revenue bonds to finance infrastructure investments, Neal built miles of rail track at the Port to ship exports out to the Union Pacific line. Hundreds of acres of land owned by the Port were rezoned for industrial use, hooked up to new water and waste pipes, and powered by substations installed near the Port after Neal lobbied the local utilities. Creating plug-and-play spaces for new industrial tenants allowed Neal to court increasingly larger businesses to sites that had “all the services” they could need, he said during one board meeting. (Neal did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.) Neal also built roads and irrigation systems, constructed fiber optic internet connections for business offices, and expanded a network of pumps and pipes that collected the wastewater from the food and dairy operators. By 2017, the Port was doing $2.8 billion in annual business. In 2019, state lawmakers passed a resolution honoring Neal, noting that when he had taken over the Port “the local economy was in rough shape with high unemployment” and that through his “vision and leadership,” it was now “one of the most productive areas in the State of Oregon.” Neal’s pumps and pipes were an essential part of the vision. It was Neal who built the massive lagoons that effectively recycled the fertilizer used by the farm and food operators. This created another incentive for industrial expansion, as the wastewater was free in exchange for taking it off the Port’s hands, and it significantly reduced how much farm operators had to spend on fertilizers. “[We] beneficially reuse approximately 3.6 billion gallons per year of industrial wastewater generated by the food processing and other industrial facilities,” the Port wrote in a 2022 statement touting their wastewater program. The chemical-laced water “provides the local farmers with a valuable service,” delivering “nutrient rich wastewater…in this water-deficient region.” A feedlot and waste ponds in Morrow County, which is essentially desert country, but has been irrigated over the decades to facilitate the growth of factory farms. Those include some big names, such as Tillamook Creamery, which produces 180 million pounds of cheese annually, and Lamb Weston, the largest frozen potato producer in North America. Courtesy of Food & Water Watch, Oregon Rural Action, and Lighthawk. In 1989, Neal took a seat on the Columbia River Enterprise Zone (CREZ), a committee that decides which areas are designated for business development incentives. Handing out tax breaks on the committee made him popular with businesspeople. Major additions to the Port during his tenure included Lamb Weston (the largest frozen potato producer in North America, with a more than $9 billion market cap) and Tillamook Creamery (a $1.2 billion operation that produces 180 million pounds of cheese annually). By the beginning of the 2010s, the Port employed around 8,450 full-time workers, a 36 percent increase from 2006.  “He took sand and sagebrush and turned it into the second-largest port in the state,” wrote Oregon representative Greg Smith, a co-sponsor of the resolution honoring Neal. Smith had worked with Neal at the Port before his election to the statehouse in 2001. “I don’t think many people would have the foresight like Gary,” said J.R. Cook, an agriculture industry consultant, when he spoke to the county commission about how Neal utilized his zoning authority. “Looking back on it now, it was a stroke of genius.” Neal developed a reputation as an adept bureaucratic salesman, but one with a sometimes combative style. “It became widely known that you didn’t speak out against Gary or anyone on his committees,” says Jim Doherty. “Folks out here started to call them the mafia. He wanted to build up the Port and do his deals, and by and large he did them. If he needed approval from the state to build pipes under the highway, or whatever it was, he’d rather do the crime and pay the fine before he wasted the time and effort to go through the proper channels. That was his mindset.” Those tactics became apparent in the deals to expand Amazon’s data centers. Amazon initially came to the county in 2008, three years before it opened its first data center. The company agreed to pay $1.6 million for 80 acres along the Port’s waterfront on the condition that no one involved in the deal could publicly acknowledge Amazon’s involvement, according to Don Russell, who was on the county commission at the time. (Amazon spokesperson Levandowski called the company’s use of nondisclosure agreements “an industry-wide common practice.” Russell did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) Using strict nondisclosure agreements, Amazon required Neal, who effectively led negotiations with the tech giant, and his colleagues, to refer publicly to the Silicon Valley giant as VAData, a holding company. Jerry Healy, a Port commissioner involved in the deal, would later tell an investigator at the Oregon Ethics Commission that no one was “permitted to use the word Amazon.” (Healy did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) But it wasn’t long before news of Morrow County landing business with one of the world’s largest companies leaked out. “Everyone knew who they were,” Healy said. By the time the first data center opened in 2011, Neal and his team were already lobbying state legislators for better tax incentive packages that would benefit Amazon. In 2015, those efforts bore fruit: The state passed Senate Bill 611, which exempted data centers from central assessment taxation. Amazon state public policy adviser Eileen Sullivan testified before the Oregon Senate Committee on Finance and Revenue that the bill made it possible for the company to build at least 11 new data centers. “It goes back to jobs and stability,” Neal told reporters. “This helps us round out our economy.” “[Local officials] knew from the get-go how big Amazon would become in Morrow County. They knew it, they planned for it, and they watched it all happen. It’s wild.”Melissa Lindsay In 2017, with these new tax breaks in his pocket, Neal began negotiating with Amazon in secret CREZ executive sessions to bring in five more data centers that were each worth $1.9 billion, with footprints twice or triple the size of the first. The tax abatement rules would allow the county, the Port of Morrow, and the city of Boardman to trade tax abatements worth between $1 and $2 billion to the tech giant over the next 15 years. The question was what the county would get in exchange for that trade. As the negotiations got underway, Melissa Lindsay joined Jim Doherty as a freshman board member on the County Commission. A fourth-generation farmer with 12,000 acres of rolling hills about 25 miles south of the Port, Lindsay was aware of Neal’s success on the waterfront. “The economy that he essentially created here brought him a lot of power and respect,” she tells me. She’d been eager to work with Neal on the CREZ committee that was in talks with Amazon. Her goal was to win commitments from the company to provide funds for the school district and emergency services in exchange for the tax breaks. But in CREZ meetings — which along with the three county commissioners included the elected leaders of the city of Boardman, plus Neal and his deputies, who’d been appointed to their roles by the elected Port commissioners — she was struck by how deferential everyone was toward Neal, and seemingly supportive of every one of his ideas and decisions. “He came across as this steward of the county,” Lindsay says.  With everyone following Neal’s lead, Lindsay realized that other than her and Doherty, no one was interested in wringing much out of Amazon. The deal, it seemed to Lindsay, was already done, and Amazon would give up little to secure the tax abatements. Lindsay raised her concerns with Marv Padberg, a commissioner working under Neal at the Port. According to Lindsay, Padberg urged her to avoid meddling and let Neal and his team work with Amazon behind closed doors. “Melissa, you just need to figure out the easy button,” she says Padberg told her. (Padberg did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) Lindsay says she also spoke to Sandy Toms, the mayor of Boardman, who represented the city on the enterprise committee and who frequently made the first or second motion for Neal’s proposals. Toms, Lindsay says, brushed off her concerns. (Toms died in 2024.) “I kept pointing out that we’re negotiating billions of dollars,” Lindsay says. “But I was just laughed at, or accused of being jealous, or described as being hard to work with.” She noted that her attempts to bring in outside financial advisers or attorneys to negotiate on behalf of the committee were dismissed as unnecessary. Eventually, she was no longer included in talks about the deal with Amazon. That year, Amazon broke ground on the first of the five data centers, a 200,000-square-foot facility with the energy demand equivalent of 30,000 homes and a 15-year tax abatement worth nearly $200 million. In 2018, after 29 years as the Port director, Gary Neal stepped down. His son, Ryan, was chosen by the elected members of the Port commission as his successor — a selection process that included Gary’s input on potential candidates, according to sources familiar with the appointment. Gary stayed on with the Port as an informal advisor, frequently traveling with his son to meetings with representatives of Amazon and other industrial clients. (Ryan Neal died of Covid complications in 2022 and was succeeded by Lisa Mittelsdorf.) “How can you live with yourself knowing that the water you put in people’s houses is causing miscarriages or cancer, or God only knows how it stunts the growth of a kid?Kathy Mendoza Melissa Lindsay, for her part, could never understand why Neal was so willing to give in to Amazon’s demands. “It was brutal to watch how we got nothing for it,” she says of the deals. “But you couldn’t stop it. No matter what idea you brought up for a better deal, you were met with extreme pushback.” In 2008, Pat Lauritsen moved to Heppner from Tri-Cities, Washington, to join a struggling fiber optic company called Windwave. An experienced telecom salesperson, Lauritsen would eventually take over Windwave’s operation as CEO to “try to make money with the company instead of just losing it all the time,” she says. Some of those losses were born of Windwave’s unusual corporate structure. Windwave was a for-profit subsidiary of a nonprofit called Inland Development Corporation. Inland’s mission was to provide much-needed fiber optic internet to remote rural hospitals and schools, which didn’t pay well; Windwave was a commercial pursuit, hooking up internet to industrial clients and private businesses in eastern Oregon. But for years after Windwave was founded in 2004, the profits didn’t materialize. Lauritsen answered to two distinct boards of directors that shared several members and largely functioned as one oversight body. The board members — who included Gary Neal, Don Russell, Jerry Healy, and Marv Padberg — always seemed skeptical that Windwave would survive. “Gary Neal at every board meeting told me that it’d be a zillion years before we’d become a viable company,” Lauritsen says. “They didn’t expect that we would ever make it.” None of the board members had experience in commercial telecom. Instead, they’d been selected by Lauritsen’s predecessor for their influence in the region’s agriculture-dominated industry. “I don’t know a thing about putting fiber in the ground,” Healy, who had served on the Port commission since 1994, later told an investigator from the Oregon Ethics Commission. He said that Neal and the other board members focused instead on “financial performance, income statements, balance sheets, cash flows, [and] to set policy.” Often, at board meetings, the public officials would evaluate the real estate tied to fiber optic projects for potential disposal of the Port’s wastewater. “Right from the beginning I thought, ‘Oh, this doesn’t look good,’” Lauritsen says. In 2010, Amazon signed a nearly million-dollar deal with Windwave to install and service miles of underground fiber optic lines for its first data center. Suddenly, Lauritsen noticed, the board members viewed Windwave in a new light. “When we turned the corner and were making a real profit, Don Russell said to the board, ‘Oh man, we need to look at this, there might actually be some money in the company.’” For Amazon, there was terrific efficiency to doing business in Morrow County. Gary Neal and his fellow public officials negotiated lucrative tax breaks for new data centers from their positions on the CREZ board, while at the same time Neal and the others oversaw Windwave’s board of directors, hammering out what would become dozens of contracts as Amazon’s primary fiber optic service provider. Likewise, in his role as the general manager of the Port, Neal ensured that Amazon had no problem dispensing with tens of millions of gallons of its nitrate-laced wastewater. Morrow County, it seemed, had become a one-stop shop for Amazon’s data centers. (Amazon spokesperson Levandowski told Rolling Stone, “We work with local officials in their official capacities as representatives of their communities and jurisdictions. Economic development discussions, utility planning, and infrastructure services are handled through standard procurement and regulatory processes with appropriate oversight and transparency.”) Lauritsen says she wasn’t aware that members of the Windwave board were negotiating tax breaks with Amazon or managing the data center wastewater as they were making deals for Windwave fiber optic. She was too busy working 60-hour weeks trying to install enough underground concrete vaults and wire conduits to keep up with the demand from the Amazon campuses. Indeed, according to Lindsay, much of Amazon’s dealings with Morrow County officials were kept secret, with those officials often citing NDAs with Amazon as a pretext to move public discussions into private executive sessions. In 2016, Gary Neal and his associates embarked on a campaign that would transform Windwave and line their own pockets: an effort to spin off Windwave from Inland and set it up as a stand-alone company — with Neal and the other officials as owners and equal partners. Lauritsen assumed the idea was Neal’s: “No decision was ever made that Gary didn’t say what he thought first and then the other ones would follow suit,” she says. “The people whose rights are being violated don’t have a lot of power, and the people responsible for the pollution are huge mega corporations with a lot of power. And they’ve been getting away with this for decades now.”Steve Berman Lauritsen says she was the only member of the Windwave board who objected to slicing up the company into equal portions shared by Neal, Healy, Padberg, Russell, and Blake Lawrence, another board member who’d helped Lauritsen manage construction. (Lawrence did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) She suggested instead that it should be an employee-owned operation as a reward for the loyal crew that had spent years building the fiber optic network that became the backbone of Amazon’s data center enterprise. “I thought they deserved to have that money go to their 401k’s and not to the board members who didn’t even believe in the company,” she says. “I asked Gary why did he think that they deserved to have the company and the money it would make, and his comment back to me was, ‘They got their wages, didn’t they?’” The tension between Lauritsen and the other board members sharpened as she declined an offer to join them as a part owner. “The Inland papers of incorporation write it out fairly clear at the top: No board member is allowed to make or do anything with the company for personal profit,” she says. The hostilities weren’t always subtle, with Padberg at one point warning her to “be careful,” she recalls, which she took as a threat. (Padberg did not respond to requests for comment.) Lauritsen resigned from Windwave in 2017; Lawrence replaced her as CEO, and the five men completed the buyout of the company in May 2018. News of their financial maneuvering did eventually come to light. An explosive investigation published by The Oregonian in September 2022 accused Amazon of “benefiting mightily from the deals it cut with local officials.” The article quoted Lindsay and Doherty. “Incentives were given,” Lindsay said. “It wasn’t always clear what other benefits people at the table might be receiving.” Doherty alleged that Neal and the others had been “working these deals behind the scenes…[setting] themselves up for a windfall.” (An attorney for Neal submitted a letter to the Oregon Ethics Commission claiming Neal recused himself from two discussions of Amazon business and that “all the objective information…demonstrates that no offense or violation occurred during the period at issue.” Russell told The Oregonian that his investment in Windwave was his “private business” and defended his approval of tax breaks for Amazon based on the company’s economic contributions to the region.) There was no accountability for anyone involved until this past July, when Oregon’s Attorney General Dan Rayfield sued the men (and three “disinterested directors” recruited by the owners to approve the sale from the Inland board) in circuit court, alleging that these “established community leaders” had “abused their authority and breached the public trust for their personal financial gain.” In a press release announcing the lawsuit, Rayfield said “this nonprofit was created to connect eastern Oregon communities — not to quietly enrich a handful of officials behind closed doors.”        In the lawsuit, Rayfield describes in detail how Neal and the others went about taking Windwave. Their first step was to arrange for a sale price that was well under the actual value of the company. To do that, “the Insiders” — which is how Rayfield described Neal, Healy, Padberg, and Russell — had to get around the Cogence Group, a financial forensics and business valuation firm, which was brought in to conduct a valuation of Windwave. According to Rayfield, the men did this by withholding important financial information about Windwave, namely the lucrative deals they were negotiating with Amazon Web Services. Without that information, Cogence put Windwave’s fair market value at $1.8 million. But Windwave’s new owners knew the company’s value was about to soar, thanks to the Amazon contracts in the pipeline. Read more Toxins and Pollution In March 2018, a change in federal tax law led Cogence to increase Windwave’s valuation to $2.6 million. The board members purchased Windwave at that price two months later. But that figure was still far below the firm’s actual value. The AG estimated that at the time Windwave was worth “at least $9.5 million.” All told, they’d reaped $6.9 million in savings by keeping information from Cogence. But these insiders did more than just hide the company’s value, according to Rayfield. They also ignored the advice of Inland’s attorneys to seek what’s called a “fairness opinion” before the purchase, to ensure an organization is treated fairly by its directors. And they used their seats on the board to approve two loans to themselves from Inland’s nonprofit coffers to cover the entire $2.6 purchase price. What’s more, those loans, according to the AG, had “sub-market interest rates [that] required a one-time balloon payment of the loan’s balance after five years.” The sale of Windwave did not end its financial relationship with Inland — it sweetened it. Inland hired Windwave to continue “its charitable mission of serving rural Oregonians” with fiber optic connections for “schools, libraries, hospitals, courts, law enforcement, and veteran’s services.” Only now Inland would have to pay Windwave $200,000 a year over the next five years, ensuring another million-dollar stream of revenue beyond the Amazon data centers. (Windwave later almost doubled the fees it charged its former parent company, earning $350,000 from Inland in 2019, according to the nonprofit’s IRS filings.) Before the sale was complete, Healy sought one final concession, massaging the terms of the sub-market loan so that Windwave wouldn’t have to repay the balloon payment “for at least another 5 years,” according to emails cited in Rayfield’s filing. The sequence of events is complex, but worth summarizing for its audacity. Gary Neal and his partners wrested control of Windwave from its nonprofit parent and sold it to themselves, hiding insider knowledge of lucrative deals with Amazon to keep the price low. They financed the purchase from Inland with money from Inland itself, with below-market loan terms, and made sure that Inland continued to pay them for fiber optic services. They also ensured that they wouldn’t have to pay that money back to Inland for a decade, even as they made millions as Windwave’s new owners. The AG’s civil suit seeks a minimum of $6.9 million in damages from Neal and the other Windwave owners, the difference between the falsely undervalued original sale price and the actual estimated value at the time. It also seeks to void the sale itself and return Windwave to Inland. “It’s incredibly clear that their motivations were based on profit, and they were willing to use insider information to facilitate their desire to make money,” Rayfield says. “These were elected officials, people in positions of trust in the community, who were cutting deals with Amazon. At the same time, they knew those deals they were sitting on would cause the profits of this company they wanted to purchase to explode.” News of the lawsuit ripped through Morrow County in July. Many residents were outraged, and relieved that powerful public officials were finally being held to account for at least some of their misdeeds, even if it wasn’t for the water pollution. On local Facebook groups, commenters expressed disgust at “the cloud of corruption and exploitation behind it all,” as one person wrote. “They were sitting on boards and commissions meant to represent the public while secretly enriching themselves — using insider knowledge of Amazon’s data center expansion that was never shared with the public.” Another person wrote, “Justice rides a slow horse, but it does eventually arrive.” Rayfield has not ruled out the possibility of pressing criminal charges, including fraud, if the evidence he uncovers during discovery can be pursued under existing statutes of limitations. He’s also left open the possibility that he could add Amazon as a defendant to the civil suit. “Amazon was benefiting from the business deals they were getting,” he told The Oregonian. “It created an economic incentive to be in the area. They chose to make those internal business decisions and be in the community based upon those things.” (In September, attorneys for the Windwave defendants sought to have the suit dismissed, citing in part the state’s approval of the sale of Windwave; days later the attorney amended that motion, acknowledging that Windwave board members had not been transparent about their forthcoming business with Amazon while the deal was underway.) When reports of the Windwave deal reached Melissa Lindsay, her confusion over Neal’s softball negotiating tactics with Amazon disappeared. “They literally gave up taxpayer money for the sake of putting money into their own pockets. They knew from the get-go how big Amazon would become in Morrow County,” she says. “They knew it, they planned for it, and they watched it all happen. It’s wild.” Melissa Lindsay and Jim Doherty would pay a stiff price for speaking out publicly against Neal and the Windwave owners in their dealings with Amazon. In October 2022, a month after The Oregonian investigation was published, several of Neal’s longtime political allies launched a recall campaign against both commissioners. Annetta Spicer, a former district attorney in Morrow County and a longtime associate of Neal, filed the petition. She framed Doherty’s efforts around the water emergency as a way to gain votes among the area’s Latino voters. (Spicer did not respond to repeated requests for comment.) “I don’t have a problem with the Hispanic citizens being treated appropriately,” she told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “But [Doherty is] not following through and solving the problem for them.” Public officials and business leaders with close ties to Neal and his Windwave partners supported the recall campaign, with aggressive attacks at public events and on social media against Doherty and Lindsay’s character and motives. The campaign corresponded with decreased sales for Doherty’s cattle business. Lindsay says, “It was horrible for myself and my family. It was very painful. They’d gotten away with it for so long. They thought they were untouchable — and they were.” In November 2022, the votes were cast. The 165- and 21-vote margins against Doherty and Lindsay, respectively, were enough to remove them from the county commission, effective immediately. Doherty and Lindsay weren’t the only ones facing consequences for their actions. With the two commissioners out of office, the advocacy group Oregon Rural Action stepped up its efforts to lobby Oregon lawmakers and Brown’s successor, Governor Tina Kotek, to intervene in Morrow County. In November 2023, they hosted a group of state representatives for a tour of homes where wells had nitrate levels as high as 45 ppm. Kathy Mendoza is a resident of Boardman, Oregon, whose water is contaminated. Every eight weeks she goes for an infusion of drugs that calms her inflamed immune system. Courtesy of Kathy Mendoza. During the tour, Kaleb Lay, ORA’s research and policy director, said one of his colleagues got a call that his truck was on fire. The ORA member rushed to the vehicle and discovered it torched. Flyers explaining how residents could receive free nitrate tests had been removed from the truck and ripped up, lying in pieces on the street just a few feet away. The fire department — some of whose members had publicly griped about Doherty and Lindsay — initially suggested the fire was an act of arson, with one firefighter stating so via the company’s dispatch and later noting the presence of turpentine, a flammable solvent. But the fire marshal, Marty Broadbent, told me in November the arson designation “was an internal glitch on our part  . . . something you should never say on the radio.” The identification of turpentine, he said, was also a mistake. He attributed both errors “to one of the firefighters who didn’t have any fire investigation skills,” adding, “We’ve since changed our protocol.” Ultimately, the department ruled the fire an accident and closed its investigation.  In November 2024, I sat down with a woman named Kathy Mendoza at her home in Boardman. She’d prepared a plate of cookies she baked that morning, set atop the red tablecloth of her dining room table. With us were members of ORA. Mendoza is 71 years old and had worked for the county’s workforce development program for 36 years. She said she’d been forced to retire in 2019 due to a debilitating joint and muscle condition that she believes was caused by exposure to nitrates. “When Jim declared the emergency, I told him I’d been sick for the last three years, and he came out the next day and got my water tested and it was 50.9 ppm. This summer it’s up to 55.7 ppm,” she said. “If it wasn’t for these people here,” she added, referring to ORA, “and Jim Doherty exposing it all, I don’t know that we would ever have been told.” Mendoza relies on a biweekly water delivery of five five-gallon jugs for cooking all her meals and to drink. Every eight weeks she goes for an infusion of drugs that calms her inflamed immune system. “How can you live with yourself knowing that the water you put in people’s houses is causing miscarriages or cancer, or God only knows how it stunts the growth of a kid? How could they do that? Then these people go out and show their faces in public. And they’re still making money with it, every time those deals get cut for new data centers.” “There are so many bad actors all at once,” says Lay. “Each of these polluters bears direct responsibility for the pollution that they’re putting out there and they should be held responsible. But also, at some point, you got to blame the cop for not pulling someone over for speeding every day of their lives for the last 34 years. Every one of these agencies, from the DEQ to the Oregon Department of Agriculture, they all have regulatory authority and they haven’t used it.” In April 2024, the DEQ hit the Port of Morrow with a $727,000 fine for 880 permit violations incurred for spraying excess contaminated water over winter fields between November 2023 and February 2024. But the Port carried on with its winter application until its announcement this fall that it would suspend the practice. “There is no alternative short of closing processing plants,” Port director Lisa Mittelsdorf told a reporter last January. The Port has pursued several strategies to mitigate the water crisis, including the purchase of a 5,300-acre dairy farm last year to expand its wastewater dumping. The DEQ allowed the Port to modify its permit in October 2024 to proceed with winter application on the new property, but the crop farmer who still holds a lease on the land from the previous owner had not granted the Port the permission it required to spray on the fields. In December 2024, the Port gave the governor’s office a dramatic ultimatum: If the governor didn’t step in with an emergency order suspending the DEQ from levying fines for the illegal dumping of contaminated water during the winter season, the Port would stop accepting wastewater from industrial operators. Citing concerns that the move would lead to “furloughs of potentially thousands of workers resulting in substantial economic harm to the region and the State of Oregon,” the governor granted the Port’s request, allowing it to spray contaminated water without fines for a six-week period starting in January 2025. “We must balance protecting thousands of jobs in the region, the national food supply, and domestic well users during this short period of time,” Gov. Kotek explained afterward in a statement. The Port is now waiting for approval of a $432 million federal grant that could allow the construction of additional wastewater storage as well as new facilities to eventually reduce wastewater nitrate levels. Meanwhile, Amazon has been paying the Port to help offset the expensive burden of its permit violations and making contributions to the community, including $850,000 to the SAGE Center, a local museum that features an Amazon learning environment called the AWS Think Big Space. Since the public declaration of the water emergency in 2022, a growing number of residents in Morrow County have become frustrated at a lack of accountability. The attorney general’s lawsuit was a step in the right direction, many locals feel, but it was about fiscal self-dealing, not the water that created the opportunity for those actions. In 2024, before the AG suit, investigators from the Oregon Ethics Commission recommended that Neal, Padberg, Healy, and Russell be penalized for failing to disclose their conflicts of interest while negotiating Amazon transactions on behalf of the public. The penalty for the men was $2,000 each, although that did not include Neal. Commission rules limit the scope of any inquiry to the four years prior to the investigation’s opening — which in this case stemmed from a whistleblower complaint. This meant that all but a few months of Neal’s tenure at Windwave and the Port fell outside the ethics panel’s inquiry. Still, staff investigators stated that they found an October 2018 meeting discussing Amazon’s tax break deal that appeared to warrant Neal being sanctioned. It was during that meeting where “Neal may have engaged in a prohibited use of position and may have failed to disclose his conflicts of interest,” the commission investigators found in their preliminary review. In the end, however, the ethics board overruled its staff and rejected its own investigators’ findings, on the grounds that Neal didn’t substantially influence the meeting about Amazon, as they wrote in a report. Amazon and the new owners of Windwave were able to continue operating as before. That could all change, however, because of an attorney in Seattle named Steve Berman. A class action specialist, Berman rose to prominence in the 1990s during the landmark big tobacco lawsuits by winning the largest single settlement of those suits ($260 billion) on behalf of a consortium of states, and more recently as the lead attorney on behalf of NCAA athletes who can now make money off their own names and likeness competing in college sports. In February 2024, representing a group of six Morrow County residents, Berman filed a federal suit against the Port of Morrow, Lamb Weston, and three other large agriculture operators for their role in causing and perpetuating the region’s water crisis. Berman tells me that on Dec. 1 he will add Tillamook and Portland General Electric, a local utility, to the list of defendants. (A representative for PG&E confirmed the utility received “a notice of intent to sue” and added that the water used “at its Coyote Springs plant [is] for non-contact cooling operations and does not add nitrates to the water supplied by the Port of Morrow.”) Crucially, Berman’s suit also lists unnamed John Doe defendants, which several sources close to the case believe to be a placeholder for Berman’s biggest target: Amazon. On March 7, 2024, Berman and his local co-counsel, Michael Bliven, sent what’s known as an RCRA Notice, a reference to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, to Amazon. Such notices warn of a pending civil lawsuit and offer potential defendants the opportunity to remediate harm within a given timeframe. Berman and Bliven’s RCRA Notice demanded that Amazon “immediately cease all improper storage, transferring, and disposal of the hazardous industrial wastewater and to remediate the harm your company has caused” within 90 days. Berman says Amazon took no action. (When asked about the RCRA Notice, Amazon referred Rolling Stone to its original response to this story. The company stressed in that response that its data centers do not add nitrates to the water supply and touted its job creation and an investment of “$39.2 billion in the community since 2011.”) “It’s considered a basic civic right in the U.S. that the water you drink from your wells or that you get from your town should be clean and not contaminated,” Berman says. “And that right is currently being violated here.” Should Berman include Amazon, it would seem to be in the company’s best interest to hammer out a pretrial settlement, if only as a strategy to contain the public relations blowback that would result from a lengthy, high-profile class action trial. Weeks of media coverage unpacking the data center public health threat would complicate matters for Amazon as it continues its aggressive rollout of new data centers in rural farming communities across the country. Amazon’s connections to Windwave only make the situation more acute: Their representatives engaged in negotiations with public officials in violation of state ethics rules while at the same time paying millions of dollars to a company whose officials are now being sued by the state attorney general. A week before the Oregon attorney general filed the Windwave complaint, I heard from sources in Boardman who are close to Berman’s case. They had been told that Berman’s office was in advanced talks with Amazon to settle for $100 million before a trial begins. When I spoke to Berman earlier this month, I asked him if Amazon was seeking a settlement. Berman demurred on the record, saying that he could not comment on any negotiations or discussions with current or past defendants while the case was still pending. Amazon did not respond directly to questions about a pending settlement. Should a settlement be in the final stages, the court would issue sealed orders for a federal settlement judge to oversee private hearings for the terms of the deal, a process that could take several months, at which point the court’s findings and all of the submitted evidence would be released to the public. “The people whose rights are being violated don’t have a lot of power, and the people responsible for the pollution are huge mega corporations with a lot of power,” Berman says. “And they’ve been getting away with this for decades now.” A legal outcome would provide a measure of relief for Morrow County. But some damage is hard to undo. Situated on 40 acres along a long, quiet blacktop road, Jim Doherty’s ranch home, where he lives with his wife, Kelly, has windows looking out to the pasture where their cattle graze. The Dohertys are in close proximity to dozens of properties with tainted wells. When I visited in November 2024, it had been more than a year since the Dohertys’ water had tested “hot,” as Jim described the contamination. Still, Kelly periodically dunks a rapid-test strip in her morning coffee just to be safe. “There’s 14 people that live on my road,” Kelly says. “I think nine of them have cancer right now.” The Dohertys’ son, Bryce, lives a few miles away. He and his wife bought their land in 2018, built a new house, and drilled a well that hadn’t tested positive for nitrate contamination at the time they moved in. They were eager to start a family. But two years after moving in, they suffered a miscarriage. When that happened, Kelly says, she told Bryce to have their water checked. “And he’s like, ‘Mom, we just built the place, it’s all undetectable,’” she recalls. “I told him, ‘Bryce, check the goddamn water.’ Finally, he tested it. It came back 27 ppm, nearly four times the Oregon limit. “They feel guilty that they might have lost that baby because they didn’t go back and check the water,” she says.  “I told him look, you didn’t know. No one knew.” Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 Power failure Mya Frazier,  December 18, 2024 2 Drinking problems: A Kansas farm town confronts a tap-water crisis Elizabeth Royte,  July 19, 2018 3 Back Forty: For one New Mexico farmer, a slow-moving PFAS disaster Sara Van Note,  March 14, 2023 4 Sludge report Bridget Huber,  April 10, 2024 5 Q&A: How Pretty Prairie, Kansas, dealt with its drinking problem Elizabeth Royte,  April 19, 2018

This article was produced in collaboration with WWNO’s Sea Change podcast. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. The world now eats more farmed seafood than we eat from the wild ocean. That’s turned farming fish into a massive business, one that American consumers have benefited from. We get the vast majority of our seafood from overseas, at cheap prices — and about half of what we import is farmed. But here in the U.S., we have very few fish farms. Now, though, that might start to change. There are proposals to build massive fish farms in U.S. federal waters. And the Gulf of Mexico is where some of the early action is unfolding. In the first of two episodes on the future of seafood farming in the Gulf, reporter Boyce Upholt explores how the shift from wild-caught to farmed is affecting the connection residents of the region have with the ocean. What will these new, offshore fish farms look like? And how should those who love the Gulf, and want to eat fish in a way that’s healthy for themselves and environment, feel about them? Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. LinkedInThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ Read more Nutrition and Food Access Read more Oceans and Freshwater Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 Is the United States ready for offshore aquaculture? Virginia Gewin,  April 20, 2017 2 Trump’s executive order seeks controversial overhaul of seafood industry Leah Douglas,  May 8, 2020 3 Hu tieu, a Vietnamese dish spiced with prosperity and climate change George Black,  December 14, 2014 4 Do you care if your fish dinner was raised humanely? Animal advocates say you should. Clare Leschin-Hoar,  October 20, 2017 5 $40 million later, a pioneering plan to boost wild fish stocks shows little success Clare Leschin-Hoar,  February 15, 2018 6 When climate adaptation goes wrong Stephen Robert Miller,  June 30, 2022 7 Climate savior or ‘Monsanto of the sea’? Bridget Huber,  June 1, 2023

This article was produced in collaboration with Radio Café’s podcast Down to Earth. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. In this postscript to FERN’s special issue of High Country News, Food and Power in the West, Mary-Charlotte Domandi, host of Radio Café’s Down to Earth podcast, goes deep with writers Rick Bass and Laureli Ivanoff about their essays in the special issue. Domandi also gets the issue’s backstory from HCN Editor-in-Chief, Jennifer Sahn. Be sure to check out all the Food and Power extras on our YouTube channel @FERNnews, and at REAP/SOW, the home for all of FERN’s audio. Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. InstagramThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 Food, power, and hope in the American West FERN Editorial,  October 28, 2025 2 Food, power, and hope in the American West FERN Editorial,  October 28, 2025

Share this This Story’s Impact reaches 10m people a month across platforms Reveal This article was produced in collaboration with Reveal. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. When we released this story, as a podcast and text feature, back in February, President Trump was threatening to rescind Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for more than 200,000 Haitians working in the U.S., and force them to return to Haiti, which has been consumed by gang violence and instability. FERN senior editor Ted Genoways investigated how JBS, the world’s largest meat producer, had come to rely heavily on those Haitian migrants and other refugees—a vulnerable but legal workforce—at its plant in Greeley, Colorado. His reporting shined a light on a burgeoning food economy in the United States, one that is shifting away from undocumented labor and relying on immigrant workers with legal, but often tenuous, status. Despite a series of legal challenges, TPS for Haitians is now set to expire in February 2026, and JBS has already begun firing workers—as many as 400 in the last nine months, according to union officials. In this podcast update, produced in partnership with Reveal, Genoways describes a scramble by some Haitian workers to remain in the country, and JBS’s efforts to replace them with Somali refugees, a population whose TBS status is still active.   Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. PhoneThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 Trouble on the line Ted Genoways,  February 3, 2025 2 At Colorado meatpacking plant, a vulnerable workforce braces for Trump 2.0 Ted Genoways and Mary Anne Andrei,  January 13, 2025 3 Immigrants on the line Ted Genoways,  March 20, 2025 4 How refugees remade a Colorado meatpacking town Esther Honig,  September 23, 2025 5 How America’s largest beef producer exploits refugees for profit Ted Genoways and Esther Honig and Bryan Chou,  September 1, 2025

Share this This Story’s Impact 91m+ audience across platforms Bloomberg Businessweek This article was produced in collaboration with Bloomberg Businessweek. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. Captain Dante Addug must have been uneasy thinking about the 48 hours to come. It was Aug. 30, 2020, and his ship, the Gulf Livestock 1, was steaming into the path of Maysak, a Category 4 typhoon that was hurtling up the Philippine Sea with 130-mph winds and 20-foot waves. Even the sturdiest cargo ship would take a beating in such conditions, but for the Gulf, Maysak almost certainly promised catastrophe. The Gulf was due to arrive at Tangshan, a massive port complex about 100 miles from Beijing, in four days. It was the height of pandemic gridlock in ports around the world, especially in China, where ships often waited more than two days to offload. For a vessel full of appliances, car parts or electronics, such a delay would be little more than an inconvenience, but for the Gulf, which carried a shifting, easily frightened cargo of 5,867 dairy cattle, every extra day at anchor heightened the risk of the animals becoming ill or dying—and of costing the exporter and ship owner money. The Gulf was trying to make its way through the shipping lanes around Japan’s southern archipelago, the gateway between the Philippine Sea and the East China Sea. Almost every day, hundreds of cargo ships coming to or from China, Japan, South Korea or Taiwan pass through these lanes. By Aug. 31 virtually every other vessel in the region had rerouted around the storm or was doing so. The Gulf was alone in a swath of ocean that stretched hundreds of nautical miles. A satellite image of Typhoon Maysak as it crosses Japan’s southernmost islands on September 1, 2020. Photo by EOSDIS via AP. In a message, the ship’s Hamburg-based manager, MarConsult Schiffahrt GmbH, instructed Addug to “proceed on a safe passage to the destination.” After this delivery, the young captain was scheduled to return home to the Philippines to meet his 4-month-old son for the first time. He pressed on, following the scheduled route. Around 8 p.m. on Sept. 1, the Gulf ’s engines failed. The ship began swinging broadside into the swell. Two crew, Australian William Mainprize and New Zealander Scott Harris, communicated the chaos to their families and friends on messaging apps. “At least two decks completely washed out,” Harris texted. Hundreds of cattle were likely already injured or dead. Soon water was rushing into the engine room. Mainprize and Harris ventured out into the hallway on one deck; Harris braced against a bulkhead as a torrent of water swept between his legs. Mainprize managed to text a friend: “Engine control room is taking on water,” he wrote. “Engine is off and we are floating sideways in huge sea.” By midnight the phones of friends and family scattered across the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand had gone silent. In the early morning of Sept. 2, the only signals emitted from the Gulf were two pings from its emergency radio beacon. The search-and-rescue effort was conducted by Japan, the nearest country to the vessel’s final distress signal. Despite pleas from the crew’s families, who felt the Japanese effort was too brief and limited in scope, the governments of Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines didn’t assist. Ultimately, family members were left to organize a monthslong search at their own expense. Of the ship’s 43 crew, only 3 were rescued, and one of them, Joe Canete Linao, died soon after. The remaining 40 men, including Mainprize, Harris and Captain Addug, have never been found. Tom Mainprize at his home in Sydney with his brother William’s bike. William Mainprize died when the Gulf Livestock 1 sunk in a typhoon in 2020. “The Australian Maritime Safety Authority had no jurisdiction over the ship, the search operation, or the resulting investigation,” an AMSA spokesperson said in a statement. A New Zealand government spokesperson told the news site Stuff much the same in 2021, stressing that its maritime safety agency had provided regular updates and other assistance to the families of its missing citizens. The sinking of the Gulf was the worst disaster in the history of the live-export trade, an industry made up of about 150 ships with a market value totaling $20 billion to $30 billion. While the industry’s size makes it a tiny fraction of the $2.2 trillion global commercial shipping fleet, which numbers around 100,000 vessels, the live-export fleet was already disproportionately prone to catastrophic accidents before Addug headed into the path of the typhoon. “The Gulf Livestock 1 sinking was a tragedy that really brought a focus to the potential dangers of the whole trade,” says Damien O’Connor, who, as New Zealand’s minister of agriculture, spearheaded a ban on his country’s export of live cattle afterward. In 2024 the UK followed suit, and Australia announced plans to phase out seaborne exports of live sheep. But in recent years other countries, especially Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, have been ramping up the export of live cattle, swine and sheep. At the same time, Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam have become key importers. All of this raises questions about whether the trade is dying or just shifting to less regulated places. Why Addug chose to sail into the jaws of a major typhoon remains a mystery. The ship’s black boxes, which might explain his decision-making in his final hours, lie 3,000 to 6,000 feet beneath the surface of the East China Sea. Family members of the lost men remain frustrated that the ship’s owner, Gulf Navigation Holding PJSC in Dubai, chose to move on instead of continuing the hunt for answers. The company didn’t respond to repeated requests for interviews or comment for this story. “They don’t want to know,” says Ulrich Orda, the father of the Gulf ’s veterinarian, Lukas Orda, who was among the dead. “They want to make sure that all failings, everything, is buried with the ship.” A handful of countries export livestock, including the US. From 2013 to 2018 the country shipped 2.2 million farm animals internationally, 545,495 of them by sea. (The rest were sent by land or air, primarily to Canada and Mexico.) Prior to its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia was the biggest importer of American cattle. Middle Eastern countries with climate headwinds, like Jordan and Saudi Arabia, are notable importers, too. But for many years, the two most important countries in this business, by far, were Australia, the No. 1 exporter, and China, until recently the No. 1 importer. In 2019 alone, Australia shipped 2.4 million animals abroad, mostly cattle and sheep. (It also does a healthy trade in goats, buffalo and alpacas.) Traditionally, China leaned on live export to shore up its supplies. In 2020 it imported more than 250,000 live cattle, though the number has declined more recently as domestic stocks have grown and customer demand has dipped. Problems have arisen with the way this trade is conducted. According to a 2020 investigation by the Guardian, five livestock vessels were lost in the decade preceding the Gulf disaster, resulting in the deaths of crew members and tens of thousands of animals. The human and animal suffering is difficult to calculate, but what’s clear is that those five sunk ships accounted for more than 3% of the global live-export fleet, making such vessels twice as likely to suffer a total loss as general cargo carriers. In these scenarios, it’s often the animals that face the longest odds. In 2015, the carrier Haidar sank in Brazil while being loaded with 5,000 cattle. In 2019, those lost included the Queen Hind, which capsized in a Romanian port with 22 crew and 14,600 sheep on board. In both of these cases, the crew survived, but most of the livestock drowned. The Girolando Express, a livestock carrier built in 2014, is docked at Darwin Port, awaiting loading, 2025. There are several reasons the industry is so dangerous. Although the average ship age for the global general-cargo fleet is 20 years, the average for livestock carriers is 36. About 80% of livestock vessels weren’t built to transport animals, despite the unique weight and stability issues they pose. “What happens is somebody buys a tanker or a car carrier at the end of its days, when the former owner was ready to send it to Bangladesh and have it scrapped for recycled steel,” says Lynn Simpson, a former live-export ship veterinarian who’s since become an industry whistleblower. “And they just refit it with animal pens and give it another 10, 20, 30, 40 years of potentially precarious work.” The Gulf was one of these secondhand vessels. Built in Germany as a container ship in 2002 and christened the Maersk Waterford, the vessel changed ownership and names three times before it was bought in 2015 by Gulf Navigation, which owns a fleet of carriers, mostly oil and chemical tankers. That year the ship was renamed the Rahmeh and retrofitted with 475 pens on four levels totaling almost 70,000 square feet. Images taken throughout its history suggest the ship’s condition declined in the years after that retrofit. Its hull and superstructure, previously maintained with sharp coats of navy and white paint, were covered over by a drab gunmetal gray. A once-clean waterline became blackened by scum and riddled with rust. By the end of 2014 the Gulf was technically owned by a Gulf Navigation subsidiary called Gulf Navigation Livestock Carrier 1 Ltd., a limited liability company registered in Panama whose only recorded asset was the ship. Various staffing agencies oversaw crewing contracts. MarConsult Schiffahrt was the ship’s general manager, a responsibility that involved enforcing the International Safety Management Code. Like Gulf Navigation, MarConsult Schiffahrt didn’t respond to inquiries for this story. In 2019 the Gulf began to experience a slew of mechanical issues, according to port records. That May it was held for three days in Broome, Australia, after port officials identified “serious deficiencies” in its maintenance, navigation and safety training, according to the AMSA. Inspectors also identified “issues related to the calculation of stability on board” and halted loading until the proper numbers were crunched. “I learned not to trust these people early on. It’s big money, shipping. If they can cut 1% off their expenses, that’s a big margin, and the people in the suits on land, who are making the decisions, they don’t care.”Lynn Simpson, former live-export veterinarian Records show that authorities at the Indonesian port of Panjang noted seven more deficiencies with the Gulf, including problems with the ship’s working conditions, pollution control systems and logbooks. Another issue involved the Gulf ’s “main engine propulsion,” which its official accident report later said was “marked as out of order” because of “defective” parts in a combustion cylinder. A mechanical problem of this severity meant the Gulf ’s engine was struggling or completely unable to power the vessel under normal sea conditions. More problems involved faulty engine room gauges and thermometers, as well as an insufficient emergency safety plan, a required document under international maritime law that outlines procedures for crew response in the event of a collision, grounding or sinking. It’s up to individual port officials to determine whether a ship should be detained following an inspection failure such as this. According to Tokyo MOU, an international organization that oversees ports in the Asia-Pacific region, Panjang officials didn’t detain the Gulf. And though the extent of repairs and updates made to the Gulf following the inspection is unknown, the ship was soon back at sea on a journey of some 3,000 nautical miles, to Townsville, Australia, where it arrived on May 23. “I learned not to trust these people early on,” Simpson, who spent a decade working on live-export ships, says of the industry’s upper management. “It’s big money, shipping. If they can cut 1% off their expenses, that’s a big margin, and the people in the suits on land, who are making the decisions, they don’t care.” The job of the Gulf Livestock 1’s stockmen—Mainprize, Harris and Lochie Bellerby, a New Zealander—and Orda, the veterinarian, entailed walking the long corridors between hundreds of pens holding anywhere from 6 to 21 cows each. The men ensured the animals had enough water, feed pellets and hay, and monitored to see if any had become injured or ill. The rest of the crew were Filipino able seamen—skilled, certified deckhands—who maintained the ship, cleaned pens and disposed of any animals that died. Emily Hastings, one of Mainprize’s sisters, says her brother wasn’t planning to make live export his career. “Will had a connection with the animals and loved learning new ways to care for them with what was available,” she says. “He found purpose in that.” A stockman could also make $200 to $300 a day, depending on experience, for a typical 26-day delivery. After deliveries, Mainprize often embarked on epic solo journeys. He’d cycled Pakistan’s Swat Valley and Jordan’s Wadi Rum, and trekked into Mongolia’s Altai Mountains to stay a few days with the region’s famed eagle hunters. “He’d found a way of getting paid to see the world,” says his brother, Tom. In the swirl of swell and sinking ship, [Jay-Nel] Rosales found himself near the body of a cow and held on. Somewhere in the distance, [Eduardo] Sareno was floating beneath a full moon. Each time Sareno was buoyed to the crest of a wave, he saw a little less of the ship, until finally it was gone. Harris, Bellerby and Orda were doing their first live-export trip. Bellerby was looking forward to spending more time at home in southern New Zealand, managing his family’s farm. Harris, known as Scotty, was saving for a house. So was Orda, who’d just had his first child in February and was scheduled to begin a job at a veterinary clinic in Townsville, on Australia’s northeast coast, after his contract on the ship ended in October. Orda came aboard on June 24 for several legs between Australia and Southeast Asia. A month later, the Gulf broke down off the Philippines’ southern coast, according to the industry publication Baird Maritime. Engineers had to board the ship to help with repairs. Orda texted his family during the ordeal. “In the last 24 hours it has broken down. It has failed 3 times for about 18 hours in total,” he wrote. On Aug. 14 the ship pushed off from Napier, New Zealand. Less than 24 hours later, Addug sent an email to MarConsult Schiffahrt, later viewed by Bloomberg Businessweek, reporting that the main engine head gaskets were leaking and that there were problems with the freshwater cooling system. The problems prompted Mainprize to text his friend and fellow live-export stockman Harry Morrison, who was back on land in Australia. “Oh God,” Mainprize wrote. “This could be a long journey.” Repairs took around eight hours to complete as the Gulf floated listlessly on the South Pacific currents. Addug reported no other mechanical issues to MarConsult Schiffahrt in the time between the breakdown and the sinking in the early morning hours of Sept. 2. But messages sent by Mainprize and other crew to family and friends make it clear that the ship’s problems continued. One video Mainprize sent to his siblings showed the faucet in his cabin spewing brown sludge. “It’s definitely a mixed bag with these ships,” Morrison says. But on the Gulf, “the conditions seemed horrific.” Around dinnertime on Aug. 28, Addug received the first notification of a developing low-pressure system from MarConsult Schiffahrt. The storm and the ship were now in the Philippine Sea, about 350 nautical miles apart, and both were heading northwest. MarConsult Schiffahrt’s staff in Hamburg advised Addug to take “stringent adverse weather precautions,” according to the official accident report. Addug confirmed receipt of the email and said he would heed it. As the ship’s captain, he knew the final decision on when and how to navigate the impending storm was his. Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. CompanyThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ By dawn on Sept. 1, the paths of the Gulf and Maysak had converged. On the bridge, Addug sent a message to MarConsult Schiffahrt at 1:28 p.m. to say all was in order. At 4:21 p.m. he sent along routine information about the ship’s planned arrival at Tangshan. These benign communications betrayed the chaos unfolding on board. It was now too rough to do anything other than buckle down. Addug ordered everyone to put their mattresses on the floor to avoid being thrown out of bed. Group meals were canceled. In a text thread with his mother, Harris said the crew hadn’t been “allowed outside for 12 hours.” The ship, he said, was running at a 20-degree list. “Fucked,” he wrote. When the Gulf ’s engines failed around 6 p.m., swinging the ship broadside into the 40-foot swell, the vessel’s chief officer, Eduardo Sareno, received a radio call to report to the engine room. For the next hour, according to his later account, he and the ship’s other engineers fought against the roll of the sea. Without the drone of the engine, the men worked in an eerie silence. The lights flickered. Around 7:30 p.m. the Gulf ’s pistons began firing again. Sareno retreated to his cabin, where he lay sleepless on the floor with his radio in case of another emergency. He didn’t have to wait long. Shortly after midnight he felt the floor tilting steeply to starboard. The lights went out. The ship leaned hard in the darkness, then harder. When the lights came back on, Sareno rang the bridge from his cabin telephone and asked the third officer what the angle of the list was—he was told 30 degrees, more than enough for the ship to capsize. Sareno called another officer and ordered him to pump out the huge starboard ballast-water tanks to try to ease the list. Then he left his cabin to join that officer in the engine room, but he was forced back by waves breaching the decks and the severe angle of the ship. Fifteen minutes later the engines failed again. Addug came on the radio to tell everyone to don life jackets and come up to the bridge, the highest point on the ship’s main structure. When Sareno reached the stairs leading to the bridge, he saw that one of the Gulf ’s huge generators and two of its five lifeboats had already been washed off. Somehow he managed to make it up three stair levels against the list and the slam of the waves, but when the sea churned once more, he knew he wasn’t going to reach Addug. He saw a lifeboat bucking on the water nearby and decided to jump. Just before he did so, “the big wave,” as he later called it, smashed into the Gulf and swept him away. At the same time, on a lower deck, able seaman Jay-Nel Rosales found himself alongside Mainprize and one of the ship’s engineers, who radioed Addug. “Where are you?” Rosales later remembered Addug responding. “Come up here at the bridge. All of us are here.” But the ship’s list was too great to climb the stairs. Rosales radioed Addug and told him they couldn’t make it. “OK then,” Rosales recalled Addug saying. “You take care there.” A moment later a wave—presumably the big wave—swept the three overboard. In the swirl of swell and sinking ship, Rosales found himself near the body of a cow and held on. Somewhere in the distance, Sareno was floating beneath a full moon. Each time Sareno was buoyed to the crest of a wave, he saw a little less of the ship, until finally it was gone. At 1:10 a.m. the Japanese coast guard received the first of two pings from the Gulf ’s emergency beacon. It wasn’t until the afternoon of Sept. 2 that coast guard boats reached the ship’s last recorded position. That evening the crew spotted an orange life vest and a pair of waving arms. As he sat on the deck of a coast guard vessel minutes later, a heavy blanket wrapped around him, Sareno stared blankly at his rescuers and asked, “I’m the only one? No other one?” For two days, he was. On the night of Sept. 4 the Japanese coast guard spotted a half-submerged life raft. Clinging to one side was a single man: Jay-Nel Rosales. They also found Joe Canete Linao, the crewman who died soon after. Then the coast guard had to call off the search—another typhoon was barreling in. When the operation resumed on Sept. 7, the sea seemed swept clean. Forty-eight hours later, the operation ended. Four life rafts, one lifeboat and 40 crew remained unaccounted for. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Gulf Navigation said, “Everyone in the company is devastated by the enormity of this tragic accident” and was “committed to a full investigation.” MarConsult said that “our thoughts are with our crew and their families.” In 2022, Panama released the official accident report, its responsibility as the country whose flag the ship had been flying. It revealed little beyond what had come out in the press and what Sareno and Rosales had said in their only public comments to date—the only ones they’ve offered. (They were publicly interviewed by a panel of Philippine officials that included Maya Addug-Sanchez, a judge and the sister of Captain Addug.) What the report does makes clear is that Gulf Navigation, which had the principal responsibility as the ship’s owner, did little to help Panama’s investigators. The investigators reported that the information Gulf Navigation supplied was either “poor” or “not collected” at all. Particularly, they noted, the company offered little detail regarding MarConsult Schiffahrt’s communications with Addug about “the state of the main engine during passage from New Zealand to China” or how much the management company was communicating about the storm with the captain. Indeed, the report doesn’t mention the ship’s breakdown off the Philippines in July, nor does it include any communications between Addug and MarConsult Schiffahrt on Aug. 29, when Addug knew the storm was growing stronger. Australian cattle loaded on the Girolando Express at Darwin Port. The pens have feed troughs, water bowls, and automated water systems, and space is ventilated to ensure fresh air. Also left out was a portentous email viewed by Businessweek that Addug had sent Gulf Navigation’s then director of technical operations, Aniello Esposito, prior to the Gulf Livestock 1’s arrival in Napier, New Zealand. Addug asked Esposito if he should divulge to port authorities there that the ship’s emergency power generator was “inoperable.” He urged Esposito to get back to him. Addug said MarConsult Schiffahrt hadn’t responded to his message about the mechanical issue. It’s unknown whether Esposito responded; like MarConsult Schiffahrt and his bosses at Gulf Navigation, he didn’t respond to requests for comment. According to the Panama report, Gulf Navigation also never turned over the ship’s loading papers from the Napier stop, which would have outlined the weights of the livestock, feed, water and other cargo—critical measures of a ship’s threshold for stability in rough seas. The investigators were forced instead to base their analysis on a stability report, a document that breaks down the weights of individual aspects of the ship, from diesel oil to ballast water to cattle manure. That report had a print date of Aug. 12, two days before the cattle were loaded in Napier. In New Zealand, cattle are weighed in kilograms when they arrive at a quarantine station in the hours or days prior to their loading onto a vessel. To ship more animals at once, a cattle exporter wants each one as light as possible. New Zealand law allows exporters to “curfew” the animals for as long as 12 hours—that is, to stop feeding them. (Curfewing also reduces effluent spillage onto roads when cattle are transported from stockyard to port.) But, according to Simpson, the former live-export veterinarian, curfewing can last much longer because of logistical delays in the drive to port, the loading process and so on. Often, she says, the difficult nature of the transport means the animals also don’t drink any water during that time, which can stretch on long enough for them to suffer early stages of dehydration. The average weight of a dairy cow is about 270kg, or a little more than 595 pounds, but during the curfewing process an animal can shed a striking amount of weight. Businessweek and the Food & Environment Reporting Network were able to obtain the Gulf ’s loading papers from Aug. 14, the official record of the weights, which note only an “average weight” of the 5,867 dairy cattle on board: 250kg, or just over 551 lbs. Sareno, whose job it was to ensure the ship wasn’t carrying more weight than it could bear, recorded the ship’s weight as 3,233,630 lbs, or about 1.5 million kg. But Mainprize, Bellerby and Harris would have had the feed and water troughs filled in anticipation of the cows’ arrival. “Once filled up again, they are no longer 250-kilogram cattle but 270-kilogram cattle,” Simpson says. The difference would have been more than 250,000 pounds—equivalent to at least an additional 430 cows. At this point, Simpson says, the weights were far off enough that the ship’s stability should have been recalculated. But, she says, this often doesn’t happen. It’s unclear whether any officers did the math again. Read more International Reporting Read more Oceans and Freshwater Around the time the Gulf broke down outside Napier, Mainprize had told Morrison in his messages that the ship’s pace left him concerned that it would run out of cattle fodder. The holds where the feed was located in the Gulf were deep in the hull; if they were low or empty, the ship’s center of gravity would have been much different than it had been in Napier, when the original verification was done. The emptying of the ballast tanks that Sareno ordered done in the midst of the storm would have shifted the ship’s stability even further. When a vessel’s center of gravity shifts upward, it starts to roll slower and slower with each swell. In their report, Panama’s investigators concluded that the Gulf ’s rolling got so extreme that it “caused a sudden capsizing and sinking.” Lennart Ephraim, the managing director of chartering and operations at Dutch shipping company Vroon BV, says balancing animals’ weight throughout the export process is complex and challenging. “Of course, weather has an impact, but then ship design and how you manage and route your voyages makes a difference,” he says. He also acknowledges that curfewing is a common tactic to squeeze more animals aboard: “There’s always going to be people that try to trick the system.” Cattle trucks set to unload livestock onto the Girolando Express Livestock Carrier, at Darwin Port in Australia. Gulf Navigation and MarConsult Schiffahrt had already learned the limits of a ship like the Gulf. Back in 2018, the Jawan, a converted livestock carrier of roughly the same vintage with the same hull dimensions and weights, had almost capsized while setting off from Australia with thousands of cattle aboard. Filmed rolling uncontrollably at severe angles, the ship was immediately turned back to port and its livestock offloaded. It was carrying 4,327 cattle on board, one-quarter fewer than the Gulf did on its ill-fated voyage. “If the same group had been managing the two ships, and she was such a doppelgänger to the Gulf Livestock 1, were the same modifications made to the Gulf to ensure she was safe as possible?” Simpson asks. “Two such similar ships, getting similar conversions, trading from the same country on similar routes? There is no way they didn’t see the potential for risk.” In the months leading up to the sinking, Gulf Navigation was in financial crisis. A public audit conducted by Deloitte found that, in the first nine months of 2020, the company had incurred a loss of more than $17 million, after losing about $13 million the year before. According to a person familiar with the company’s internal operations at the time, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, Gulf Navigation had breached several covenants in some of its loans and was forced to repay them by refinancing with a private equity firm at high interest rates and with tight stipulations. Lynn Simpson, a former live-export veterinarian, with her dog at her friend’s farm in Australia where she boards. On Aug. 31, just hours before the Gulf disappeared, Gulf Navigation fired its entire board of directors and appointed a new one. Publicly it said this was “to support the company’s relentless efforts for a new start in the maritime sector after the peak of the impact of Covid-19.” Days later, Gulf Navigation filed an insurance claim for the lost ship; the insurer eventually paid $22.4 million. The person familiar with Gulf Navigation’s operations says the money was used to repay part of an outstanding loan. The company appeared to have more incentive to keep the creaky vessel at sea than to scrap it, but wasn’t exactly awash in funds for maintenance and repairs. Within the industry, the response to the live-export bans in New Zealand and elsewhere has been muted. Shipping companies have long been able to adapt to political currents and consumer demand. According to a report by the Dutch agribusiness financial company Rabobank, by mid-2024 the flow of dairy cattle from Australia and New Zealand to China had slowed “to barely a trickle.” The reduction, the report said, was because of both the New Zealand ban and the slowdown in Chinese demand. But Southeast Asian markets, where “there has been a renewed focus on local herd expansion and milk supply growth,” are poised to pick up some of China’s slack. Meanwhile in South America, where there’s less regulation on live export, the trade is growing. The government of Australia, which has continued to permit the shipping of live cattle overseas, said in a statement that the industry is “strongly regulated” and that it’s “committed to ensuring high welfare standards are maintained in this trade.” “At the moment, the global trade for livestock is quite strong, and all the ships are utilized,” Vroon’s Ephraim says. He acknowledges the headwinds his company and the industry writ large are facing. The industry’s response has been to phase out converted live-export ships in favor of vessels that have been purpose-built for the trade. “If you purpose-build, you can center your design around what the animal needs,” says Ephraim. “That’s the blueprint.” Over the course of three years and through lawyers, sources, emails and social media messages, Eduardo Sareno, Jay-Nel Rosales, Maya Addug-Sanchez and the family members of the remaining 36 Filipino seamen have declined to comment. The Australian and Kiwi family members who spoke to Businessweek still want to know more about what happened out there. For Ulrich and Sabine Orda, Lukas’ parents, palpable anger remains, not only toward Gulf Navigation, MarConsult Schiffahrt and the other companies associated with the ship for leaving its black boxes at the bottom of the sea, but also toward the Australian, New Zealand and Philippine governments, for not doing more to bolster search-and-rescue efforts. “We don’t have a word in English to capture the deepness of grief at this level.”Karen Adrian, whose son Scott Harris died when the Gulf Livestock 1 sank Lochie Bellerby’s kin built a memorial for him on the family farm. “It’s got this gorgeous view, looking at his favorite mountains,” says his mother, Lucy. “We’ve built a little hut there, so we can have sleepovers with him.” The Mainprizes haven’t had a funeral. For a while they wanted to throw a party, a celebration of Will’s life, but the thought of it has been overwhelming. It’s all “a strange limbo,” says Mainprize’s eldest sister, Sarah. Although they knew it seemed crazy, for years they held on to a shred of hope that Will might be out there on one of the countless uninhabited islands in the western Pacific that the families desperately wanted searched. “We joke,” his sister Emily says. “ ‘Will, stop. Come back. Come back to normal life.’ ” Karen Adrian, Scotty Harris’ mother, has found some comfort in being “a pain in the ass to a lot of people,” by calling officials in the New Zealand government’s Ministry for Primary Industries and the live-export industry and digging for more information. The distraction is hardly enough. “We don’t have a word in English to capture the deepness of grief at this level,” she says. “It doesn’t exist.” Last year she wrote a note to her son and gave it to a stockwoman who was heading out on a ship that would pass over the place where the Gulf Livestock 1 was lost. The note read, in part: I am so honoured to have such a beautiful kind and generous soul call me Mum. Thank you for choosing me. I have loved every minute of our journey together. This cannot be the end. The stockwoman read the note to the crew, slipped it in a bottle and threw it overboard. Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 What good is beef? Siddhartha Deb,  December 11, 2023 2 Alone on the Range Teresa Cotsirilos,  October 3, 2023 3 The ranching industry’s toxic grass problem Robert Langellier,  March 27, 2024 4 The strange future of lab-grown meat Joe Fassler,  December 17, 2024 5 Time to bust the meat trust Ted Genoways,  October 23, 2024 6 Brazil’s Amazon beef plan will ‘legalize deforestation’ say critics Brian Barth and Flávia Milhorance,  November 17, 2021

This article may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. Today we’re releasing a podcast and a documentary short as the final two pieces of Food and Power in the West, our special issue with High Country News. FERN Editor-in-Chief Theodore Ross interviews three writers about the forces that shape and control our food system: Ted Genoways on the exploitation of refugees at a JBS meatpacking plant in Colorado; Jeremy Miller on how large pecan growers are strangling a declining Rio Grande in New Mexico; and Paisley Rekdal on the history of the oppression of Chinese immigrants in the United States, and their resistance, through the lens of food. Be sure to check them out on our YouTube channel @FERNnews, and on REAP/SOW, our platform for all FERN audio. Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. CommentsThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 Podcast: FERN’s special issue on food and power in the west FERN Editorial,  September 30, 2025 2 Podcast: FERN’s special issue on food and power in the west FERN Editorial,  September 30, 2025

This article may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. Today we’re releasing a podcast and a documentary short as the final two pieces of Food and Power in the West, our special issue with High Country News. FERN Editor-in-Chief Theodore Ross interviews three writers about the forces that shape and control our food system: Ted Genoways on the exploitation of refugees at a JBS meatpacking plant in Colorado; Jeremy Miller on how large pecan growers are strangling a declining Rio Grande in New Mexico; and Paisley Rekdal on the history of the oppression of Chinese immigrants in the United States, and their resistance, through the lens of food. Be sure to check them out on our YouTube channel @FERNnews, and on REAP/SOW, our platform for all FERN audio. Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. CompanyThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 Documentary short: FERN’s special issue on food and power FERN Editorial,  September 30, 2025 2 Documentary short: FERN’s special issue on food and power FERN Editorial,  September 30, 2025

Share this This Story’s Impact 500m downloads 99% Invisible This article was produced in collaboration with 99% Invisible. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. The scale of meatpacking in this country is staggering. Half a million people work in the industry, producing tens of billions of pounds of meat every year and generating billions of dollars in profits. Companies like JBS are among the largest employers in rural America. But the industry doesn’t just process animals, it churns through people, too. The work is so physically punishing that many don’t last long. Which means the industry is always searching for new bodies to run the line. As Esther Honig reports in our latest podcast, produced with 99% Invisible, in the last 20 years, meatpacking companies have come to rely on a new source of labor — refugees, arriving through humanitarian programs that are supposed to offer safety and a shot at the American dream. And it’s through this unlikely arrangement that rural, midwestern towns like Greeley, Colorado, where JBS has its U.S. headquarters, have become home to thousands of people like Mohamed (not his real name), a rice farmer from Burma — men and women who fled violence and persecution, only to find themselves doing what has long been one of the most dangerous jobs in America. So click on the audio player above to check out Esther’s powerful storytelling. And thanks to the folks at 99pi for their excellent production on this piece. Reporting for this story was supported by the 11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. PhoneThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 Trouble on the line Ted Genoways,  February 3, 2025 2 At Colorado meatpacking plant, a vulnerable workforce braces for Trump 2.0 Ted Genoways and Mary Anne Andrei,  January 13, 2025 3 Immigrants on the line Ted Genoways,  March 20, 2025 4 ‘The workers are being sacrificed’: As cases mounted, meatpacker JBS kept people on crowded factory floors Esther Honig and Ted Genoways,  May 1, 2020 5 How did Europe avoid the Covid-19 catastrophe ravaging U.S. meatpacking plants? Bridget Huber,  June 10, 2020

Share this This Story’s Impact reaches 360,000 farmers and ranchers Successful Farming This article was produced in collaboration with Successful Farming Magazine. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. American farms hire roughly 2.5 million people annually to pick crops, milk cows, manage nurseries, tend livestock, and otherwise keep farms running, according to an analysis of federal data by UC Davis economics professor Philip Martin. Most farmworkers in the U.S. are immigrants, particularly from Mexico. Some foreign workers come to the U.S. just for seasonal work through the H-2A guest worker visa program. Many more, approximately 1.7 million Mexico-born farmworkers, according to Rural Migration News, are settled in the U.S. and have worked on U.S. farms for decades. Of these settled workers, roughly half have some sort of legal residency status or U.S. citizenship, while the other half, an estimated 850,000, are unauthorized to live in the U.S. Another 1.7 million people work in food processing plants, per the USDA. Many are refugees, and approximately 19% are in the country without authorization, according to the New American Economy research group. In the largest food processing segment, meatpacking, the American Immigration Council estimates that 45% of all workers are immigrants and around 23% are unauthorized. Food workers and farmers are worried about what President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown will mean for their livelihoods, their families, and the nation’s food supply. “The anticipation of not knowing what’s coming down the pike is creating a lot of sleepless nights for agricultural employers,” said Michael Marsh, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers (NCAE). The administration’s change in enforcement tactics and violations of due process have heightened fear among farm and food workers. The president has suggested that farmers may be able to offer workers a path to leave the U.S. and return legally, but the administration has not presented specifics. After Initial Pause, Raids Hit Farms In his first 100 days, President Trump issued several executive orders directing federal agencies to prevent illegal border crossings, deport unauthorized immigrants, and constrict immigration overall, particularly for refugees and those seeking asylum. As a result, border crossings declined to historically low levels, and immigration arrests are up. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claimed to arrest more unauthorized immigrants in the first 50 days of the Trump administration than in all of the 2024 fiscal year. However, some immigration data experts believe this figure is inflated and that arrests have increased, but not by as much as the administration claims. Nonetheless, Richard Stup, director of Cornell University’s Agricultural Workforce Development program, said farmers and workers have noticed changes in enforcement. “We have much more active enforcement from both ICE and border patrol in rural communities,” Stup said.Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said in January that ICE will target people with criminal records rather than conduct mass workplace raids. This largely held true for about six months, until ICE started conducting more food work site immigration raids. On June 10, ICE arrested 76 workers at the Glenn Valley Foods meatpacking plant in Omaha, Nebraska, roughly half the plant’s staff. That same day, immigration enforcers arrested 11 workers on a dairy farm in New Mexico. Throughout June, ICE also raided several produce farms in southern California, particularly Ventura County, just north of Los Angeles. The impact of those raids extends beyond the arrests. Farmers and plant owners reported that some workers stayed home out of fear following a raid. The Trump administration continues to give mixed signals about its immigration enforcement priorities, at times reiterating that farms and food plants are not targets, only to change its position. The inconsistencies represent internal conflict in the administration between pleasing business owners, such as farmers, and meeting aggressive deportation targets. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller reportedly pressured ICE leadership to increase arrests to meet a goal of deporting 1 million people by the end of the year. The Trump administration has struggled to legally increase deportation rates. The Transactional Records Clearinghouse at Syracuse University and The New York Times found that daily deportation rates during the first six months of the Trump administration were similar or slightly lower than during the Biden administration and started increasing only in May. This largely reflects the fact that many Biden-era deportations happened at the border and border crossings have declined under Trump. National Public Radio reported a 20% increase in immigrants in detention centers from January to June, reflecting the increase in arrests but not deportations. This may explain why the Trump administration has created systems and offered incentives for unauthorized immigrants to voluntarily leave, or “self-deport.” The administration also has been criticized by legal experts for denying immigrants their constitutional right to a fair hearing, and otherwise violating due process to expedite deportations. New Restrictions In addition to new enforcement tactics, the Trump administration has largely eliminated some legal forms of migration, particularly for people fleeing danger and prosecution as refugees, asylum seekers, or migrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). On his second day in office, President Trump suspended all refugee resettlement programs via executive order. The administration has since accepted white South Africans as refugees, but all other refugee resettlement remains on pause despite a court order to resume it. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, the meatpacking industry has the fifth-highest concentration of refugee workers. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also narrowed the TPS program, which permits migrants from 17 countries experiencing war, famine, or other disasters to live in the U.S. without threat of deportation for a limited time. DHS removed Afghanistan and Venezuela from the TPS list and seeks to remove Haiti as well, which would make over 9,000 Afghan, 300,000 Venezuelan, and 200,000 Haitian migrants in the U.S. liable for deportation. In 2020, approximately 15,600 people with TPS worked on farms or in food processing, especially meatpacking. The United Food & Commercial Workers union told Bloomberg that TPS deportations could lead to meat shortages and price increases. The world’s largest meatpacking company, JBS, disagreed, telling Bloomberg that less than 2% of its workers have TPS status. In July, visas were revoked for 200 JBS employees at the company’s plant in Ottumwa, Iowa. Homeland Security also shut down the CPB One app, which allowed migrants who apply for asylum at U.S. points of entry to legally enter and work in the U.S. while their asylum cases are pending. Asylum applicants generally seek year-round work, including in some corners of the food industry, though not so much seasonal farm work. (Farms increasingly rely on the H-2A guest worker visa for seasonal labor.) Immigrant rights organizations say the suspension of the CPB One app, TPS, and refugee resettlement are illegal and have sued to reinstate them. Impact on Farmers and Workers By far, the biggest impact of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is the widespread fear it instills among food and farmworker communities. Most immigrant workers continue to come to work, then seek safety by retreating from public life. Some farms and business owners report workers staying home briefly following news of immigration raids. Most of the 850,000 unauthorized farmworkers in the U.S. arrived 20–30 years ago, have worked on farms for decades, and built lives and families in the U.S. “Obviously, that is terrifying, to have a family at home and possibly get arrested and sent back,” said Stup. “It is affecting peoples’ mental health and well-being. People who used to go out on the weekend, go to Walmart, do shopping about town — none of those things are happening now. They stay home.” Stup and Marsh encouraged farmers and workers to know their rights and create contingency plans in the event of an immigration raid. This includes having up-to-date emergency contacts for all employees, and a plan for dependents who could be left behind. Marsh also recommended that H-2A workers keep their I-94 forms on them at all times. For some farms, especially larger operations in remote areas, there is no Plan B to harvest crops or care for livestock if many of their workers get deported. “The system is not prepared for that; it doesn’t have the capacity to handle things like that,” Stup said. “A remote, large dairy farm that loses a significant part of its workforce — that’s an animal welfare issue waiting to happen.” Agricultural trade organizations have expressed concern about the impact of mass deportations on the food supply, particularly on labor-intensive fruit, vegetable, and dairy farms. In April, President Trump suggested at a Cabinet meeting that unauthorized farmworkers could be granted legal residency if employers vouch for them. “So a farmer will come in with a letter concerning certain people, saying they’re great, they’re working hard. We’re going to slow it down a little bit for them, and then we’re going to ultimately bring them back. They’ll go out. They’re going to come back as legal workers,” Trump said. The president reiterated that idea in June. “We’re looking at doing something where, in the case of good, reputable farmers, they can take responsibility for the people that they hire and let them have responsibility, because we can’t put the farms out of business,” Trump said at a press conference. “And at the same time, we don’t want to hurt people that aren’t criminals.” The administration has not provided details or clarifications about what exactly it would “slow down” for farmworkers facing deportation, how farmers would “take responsibility” for workers, why workers would need to leave the country to receive legal residency, or how it would be granted or on what terms. A White House official reportedly told NBC News that President Trump wants to expand the H-2A and H-2B visa programs that allow employers to hire immigrant workers for temporary or seasonal jobs. Employers can only hire migrant workers through these programs after demonstrating they were unable to hire U.S.- born workers at a local prevailing wage. The Biden administration changed the methodology for calculating the rate for H-2A workers, which resulted in a larger pay increase for some of them this year. Some farm organizations, including the NCAE and the Farm Bureau, want the Trump administration to roll back that change and expand the H-2A program to cover year-round workers, especially for dairy and livestock farms. The number of farmworkers hired on H-2A visas has quadrupled over the past decade, and the number of meatpacking plants granted H-2B visas increased sixfold from 2015–2023, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. H-2 visa programs could grow even more if immigration enforcement ramps up and more unauthorized food workers are deported. Brownfield Ag News reported that the Department of Labor received nearly 20% more H-2A applications in the first quarter of 2025, which Marsh of the NCAE attributed to farmer anticipation of worker deportations. Farms incur extra costs to hire H-2A workers because they must provide them with housing, meals, and transportation. At the same time, H-2 visa holders have suffered from serious labor abuses, including human trafficking and wage theft, and the programs’ insufficient oversight has been well documented. Critics on the right, such as the authors of the document to reshape government, known as Project 2025, want to limit legal immigration and phase out the H-2 visas. Critics on the left want to strengthen H-2 workers’ labor protections, as well as their enforcement, and provide guest workers a path to citizenship. Neither group seems likely to get its way if the Trump administration follows through on its comments about expanding or changing the visa programs. Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. LinkedInThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ Read more Farms and Labor Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 When must-pass meets mega-partisan Lee Drutman and Dustin Wahl,  January 31, 2024 2 The essential workers missing from the farm bill Teresa Cotsirilos,  February 14, 2024 3 The farm bill hall of shame Claire Kelloway,  February 7, 2024 4 Immigrants on the line Ted Genoways,  March 20, 2025 5 How Trump’s deportation plan could actually increase migrant labor Teresa Cotsirilos and Ted Genoways,  January 23, 2025 6 Farmworkers face a life-and-death commute to Arizona’s lettuce fields Esther Honig,  April 29, 2021 7 As heat rises, who will protect farmworkers? Bridget Huber and Nancy Averett and Teresa Cotsirilos,  June 29, 2022

Share this This Story’s Impact 200,000 monthly unique users High Country News This article was produced in collaboration with High Country News. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. Assume for a moment that our Earth is a bubble, containing finite physical material, moisture and the solar energy that’s delivered to us each day. Anything organic is ultimately food for something else. Our own species’ relatively narrow food requirements are what we’re usually most concerned about, and the solution to meeting our needs is not complicated. To provide food for all, rather than having billions among us go hungry, we need more efficient food production and better foods and/or fewer people: Impossible Burgers rather than Wagyu beef. Backyard tomatoes rather than mass agriculture that’s produced far away and flown, then driven, vast distances to our dinner tables, etc.   At scale, this requires policy change, but also cultural change. Hence swapping out light bulbs does play a part in these matters. As we run out of food and water there is the excellent and well-timed opportunity to recalibrate our relationship with nature. But what stories — what seeds — can help encourage that change? I work to get the bulk of my protein from wild game — a deer, an elk, a couple of ducks and pheasants, some grouse — but that’s because I’m incredibly fortunate to live in the heart of the 2.2 million-acre Kootenai National Forest in northwest Montana, in an unincorporated community composed of a few homesteads and “town”— two bars and a mercantile. The northernmost half of the Kootenai is called “the Yaak,” with Canada’s wilderness at our back. I’m incredibly fortunate to live in the only ecosystem in Montana I’m aware of where stream temperatures have not yet begun to rise, sheltered as the Yaak is by a diverse mosaic of microsites — twists and turns of geomorphology that create a bewildering landscape of rumpled north slopes and frost pockets.  I live off the grid and heat partly with firewood, but my chainsaw runs on the magic elixir of the Paleozoic, summoned from 3,000 feet beneath the Earth, thousands of miles away. Even when I walk a hundred yards from my cabin in the autumn and sit quietly waiting for a deer to walk past, I will have had a cup of 4 a.m. coffee prepared on a stovetop and poured into a metal cup.  Hemlock shadows play across a barkless silver snag in the proposed Black Ram logging area of the Yaak. I do not hunt with a cedar bow and deer ligament bowstring and flint or obsidian arrowheads. I use copper bullets instead of lead to avoid contaminating the meat, but the copper, rest assured, does not come easily from the Earth’s embrace. My meat is stored in a propane freezer. The word “sustainable” is a good word to bear in mind in all matters, but I think it is important to remember with humility that humanity’s current position on the tree of life precludes sustainability. For us to be here in any significant number, much has already had to step off — or been pushed off — into oblivion, and the accounting is not yet finished. Our needs and our population numbers long ago evolved beyond sustainability.  Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. PhoneThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ Everything exists because of everything else, and sometimes in direct opposition to it, despite our best intentions. It is our lonely birthright to forever take more calorically and thermodynamically than we give. We cannot ever be sustainable — not in life. But we can pump the brakes on the mad adventure of our brief existence — our voracious passion and profligate appetite for the world’s finely wrought treasures. Wild nature is not a crop but a cathedral, and a single old-growth forest is a databank containing more info than any legions of supercomputers could hold. Forests belong in a Department of Climate Defense, a Department of Homeland or of Global Security, a physical and spiritual Department of the Interior. So why is the U.S. Forest Service housed within the Department of Agriculture? It’s a relic of an earlier era of convenient ignorance, when we were told that animals do not feel pain, and that forests were just crops of fiber that could be farmed like corn. How did DOGE’s whiz kids overlook this fiscal and silvicultural mismanagement?  Forests absorb about a third of the world’s annual carbon emissions globally — but older trees absorb far and away the most. Our old and mature forests are an enormous asset in this planet’s climate portfolio. And yet the Forest Service is still working to clear-cut old growth. In the West, 75% of the agency’s current proposed timber sales are at least a mile or farther from the “wildland-urban interface” — the small towns and villages in harm’s way from the dragon breath of global warming.  Protecting the cool shade and wet groves of old and mature forests worldwide is the single best thing we can do to slow the meteoric rate of climate change, but the agency is racing to clear-cut these old forests before their true ecologic and economic worth can be accounted, claiming that it needs to log these giants so far in the backcountry in order to protect communities against wildfire. Read more Climate Change Read more Nutrition and Food Access In the Kootenai National Forest, there’s a region called Black Ram that is an inland rainforest, and a primary forest: one that’s never been logged. Much of it shows no evidence of fire scarring. Fire has passed over and will continue to pass over the West like the meteorological phenomenon it is, but the Yaak ecosystem is projected to be the least vulnerable to wildfire in the Northern Rockies all the way through the rest of this burning century. And, ironically, the greatest lesson the old forest has for us at this particular point in the burning is not how to achieve more fiber product per acre, but, instead, how to keep from further aridifying our food system, and everything else. This issue of High Country News explores the theme of food and power, and at the risk of hitting the nail on the head too squarely, the old forest does not offer us food directly. Instead, it stands guard over our food, for a while longer. The old forest stands guard over our water, cools and stabilizes the one thing — weather — that determines the food supply, not just for Montana and the West, but for the world. The old forest at the center of the Black Ram country, which has almost never been in a hurry, buys all of us — farmers and ranchers, musicians and hunters, teachers and students, saints and sinners — the rarest and most precious of commodities: time; time, here among the living to figure out how to take less and share more. That is why my neighbors and I are hell-bent on saving it, through an organization we founded a few decades ago called the Yaak Valley Forest Council. We have proposed that the Black Ram country be designated the nation’s first Climate Refuge — a 265,000-acre mass of public land dedicated to storing the maximum amount of carbon possible. I know of no scientist willing to say our current agricultural system can survive peak global warming. Old forests like the one at Black Ram are a lifeboat, and we are its passengers.   In addition to our climate justice campaign to save all old and mature forests in the Yaak — the seed of that action then gaining momentum and support to transform into a campaign to create a global Curtain of Green — our group advocates for the recovery of grizzly bears: Ours is the most threatened population in the United States. But it is, of course, not just the grizzlies in our community whose existence is stressed as never before. Our county, Lincoln County, has one of the highest poverty rates in Montana, and each village’s food bank — Troy, population 900; Libby, population 3,200; Eureka, 1,600 — exists chronically at the edge of collapse, but none more so than the utterly unincorporated remote Yaak (population unknown), where a volunteer food pantry that’s only open two hours a month serves half the valley. Even while we’re advocating for grizzlies and old forests and restoring riverbanks degraded by clear-cuts and literally taking the temperature of our ecosystem daily with stream and lake thermographs, we spend more and more of our time rallying donations for the Yaak pantry.  This wasn’t something we ever thought we’d be doing when we formed nearly 30 years ago. But in this ecosystem — one of the very few in the U.S., and perhaps the only one, where nothing has gone extinct since the last Ice Age — it is not a cliché to say that all things are connected. It is instead a hyper-specific reality.  In these burning days, we all find ourselves making adjustments, inhabiting a world few imagined or foretold, and, increasingly, we look to the mysteries of the ancient forest for instruction, leadership and the best kind of hope: hope that leads to action.   One does not commonly think of a female grizzly up above treeline in the wildflowers of summer, breeze ruffling her fur, as having much sway one way or the other over the cost of a loaf of bread, or even the existence of a loaf of bread. But the grizzly bear is far and away the major cornerstone of the ecosystem — tenuous though her hold is now — and the Endangered Species Act, which requires protection of her habitat, is all that stands between the liquidation of these shady, unroaded forests, where she spends an increasing amount of time. Where would you go on a broiling summer day if you were wearing a 70-pound fur coat? With the complex and crafted integrity of her species, she protects the old forest, which cools our planet. In that forest is a dream of a Climate Refuge, first here and then in green belts encircling the world at northern latitudes — a fringed, breathing, semi-permeable Curtain of Green that allows us to continue dreaming our dreams — not sustainable, mind you, but beautiful — of feeding and caring for ourselves, and our kind and kin. The old and mature forests do not grow our food. But their cooling breath makes possible the food for all.  Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 The controversial biofuel threatening British Columbia’s forests Brian Barth,  March 28, 2022 2 The Loophole: How American forests fuel the EU’s appetite for ‘green’ energy Carson Vaughan,  April 29, 2019 3 The changing face of woods work Hal Herring,  October 30, 2017

Share this This Story’s Impact 200,000 monthly unique users High Country News This article was produced in collaboration with High Country News. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. Everyone had a job. The men and boys drove the boats upriver to dip the nets in the river and seine. The women waited. Never wondering. There were always enough. The salmon that filled the boats when they returned weren’t huge — humpies aren’t — maybe a foot long. But they were plentiful and made for good drying.  My cousins and I played in the water. Swimming. Doing somersaults or handstands, holding our breath, eyes closed tight, our hands squishing in the mud on the slough side of the sandbar island our family called Eaton Station, in the Unalakleet River. Eaton Station: The best resort. We played badminton in the sand. Tanned on hand-sewn calico blankets laid on the beach. We ate Norton Sound red king crab, fatty grilled king salmon, and, if we were lucky, akutaq made by Mom or an auntie.  It seemed like the sun was always shining. And it probably was. Climate change wasn’t a part of our daily vocabulary, and persistent summer rains and winds weren’t a thing back then. July was for sun and salmon. Once the boats returned, slow and heavy, the women gathered at the fish-cutting tables. My favorite part. They said funny things when they were working. They always knew the answer to everything. They always seemed to be smiling and laughing. The cumulus clouds above us, like whipped cream on grandma’s white cake with a sprinkle of fresh tart blueberries, laughed with them. My belly, my cheeks, my jaw, the oil and juice making up my eyeballs relaxed. Safe. So safe.  Life flowed easy.   One day, Mom handed me her ulu at the fish-cutting table. It was a graduation. A commencement. I was on to bigger things, the handover said. My first job at the cutting table, when I was maybe 7 or 8, was to clean the slime and blood off the fish my aunties and Mom cut for drying. Three fish in each hand, I’d wade out on the river side of the island, the sun so hot it didn’t matter that the water was cold. I’d go past my knees, far enough to ensure that the fillets, attached by the tail, wouldn’t touch the river bottom and stayed free of any sand. I swished the orange flesh in the sparkling, fresh, clear water. The gulls, those greedy cousins, flying and squawking for any piece of flesh or eggs. Or milt — now and then I’d toss a piece of the white sac from a male, just to see it disappear whole, the gull’s head tilted to the sky. One day, Mom handed me her ulu at the fish-cutting table. It was a graduation. A commencement. I was on to bigger things, the handover said. I was ready to learn the real craft. With real technique. With her favorite tool. I didn’t realize that from that point on, I’d stand at the table with Mom and my aunties and learn the secrets of the world when the boats came back.  With guidance from Mom, I cut my first humpie, a small female. I sliced down the belly, pushing harder than I anticipated. Then down the back. A few other cuts, and the fillets were attached at the tail, ready for the tirraqs, or angled slices, that ensure bite-sized bits in winter. When I was done, the heart was still attached. The purple morsel hung from the collar at the bottom of the fillet. I didn’t know that leaving the heart attached to dry was considered a skill. I hadn’t meant for that to happen. “Wow, Paniuq!” Papa Ralph said, his voice ebullient, like cold Tang. “The heart still on there! The best way!”  Read more Nutrition and Food Access Papa handed me my diploma with those words. Words warmed by the love and pride in his inflection, feelings that also flowed from his eyes and heart that day at Eaton Station. Words I can return to any time, to feel grounded in love. I am important, he said to me. I will do important work, he said to me. I am doing good, he said to me.  The pride seeped through my marrow. I waded out into the clean water of the river and swished the humpie, the cottonwoods and birches on the other side of the river practically clapping for me. I hung the cut fish on the drying rack made of cottonwood poles that my dad, brother and uncles put up every year.  We no doubt ate uuraq that night for supper. Boiled pink salmon steaks and fish eggs with onions, potatoes, salt and pepper in a broth like no other. Mom would have put either kimchi or ketchup in hers. Dad, seal oil. If there was leftover uuraq in Mom’s stainless steel pot, blackened on the bottom from the fire, she tossed it into the river. White fish and grayling ate the pink meat and boiled eggs. We washed out our bowls at the river, using sand as dish soap for scrubbing.  My job of cutting fish returns, year after year. My favorite job. My favorite job because, thanks to my teachers, it is done with love and was born from love. Because we all work together, and together is the cornerstone of everything that gives meaning in life. My favorite job because cutting fish means I belong. To a family, to a community that shares, and in the process of doing, I remember I belong to a long line of ancestors who made cuts just like the ones my mom showed me. It’s more than just food for the winter. Salmon remind me that I am important and loved. Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 The strange, uncertain fate of Alaska’s biggest wild salmon habitat Julia O’Malley,  October 1, 2019 2 A burst of home-grown food, farming, in Alaska Miranda Weiss,  May 7, 2020 3 As halibut decline, Alaska Native fishers square off against industrial fleets Miranda Weiss,  April 8, 2021 4 Alaska’s herring row Brett Simpson,  August 29, 2022

Share this This Story’s Impact 1.3m monthly web readers2m social users The Nation This article was produced in collaboration with The Nation. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. The landscape along the road approaching Konongo, in Ghana’s central Ashanti Region, had the feel of a sprawling construction site. On either side of the potholed thoroughfare, mounds of cinnamon-­colored dirt lurked just beyond the sparse greenery. Hulking excavators dotted the area, both at the roadside and off in the distance, straddling fields punctuated by turbid, muddy ponds. It hadn’t always looked this way. “That’s the river we used to swim in as kids,” said Bobby Bright, gesturing out the window of our Mitsubishi Mirage. “We used the water for drinking and for irrigating our cocoa farms.” The river in question was the color of coffee with heavy cream. It didn’t appear to flow at all. Bright, a 50-year-old IT specialist turned environmental activist, grew up in Konongo, on a farm that was owned by his grandfather. In 2017, having completed his university degree, Bright returned to Konongo with a plan to take up the cocoa and oil palm farming of his ancestors. But the hamlet’s trees had all been cut down. Bright’s uncle, like many in the region, had sold the family land to gold miners and promptly disappeared with the cash. Today, the cocoa and oil palm trees—like the fields of cassava, corn, and plantain that were also cultivated throughout Ashanti—are gone. They’ve been replaced by a jumble of cement-block homes interspersed with those ugly mounds of soil and murky ponds—the visible signs of a ferocious gold rush that has, not for the first time, upended life across Ghana. For centuries, gold has been both a boon and a curse for this region. It was the area’s gold reserves that enabled the Ashanti Kingdom to emerge as one of West Africa’s most powerful in the late 1600s—just as it was gold that led to its undoing when the British, lured by the precious metal, descended on the land and, in the 19th century, ultimately colonized it. Ghanaians would not win independence until 1957. As the country’s gold exports have ballooned, cocoa production has tanked. Observers of this latest gold rush trace its origins to the global instability of the past few years, beginning with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That jolt, in 2022, sent investors worldwide flocking to gold—known as a “safe-haven asset” for its enduring value—causing its price to soar. A year and a half later, the uncertainty ushered in by the war in Gaza drove the price of gold even higher. And then, earlier this year, came Donald Trump: His tariff threats turbocharged the phenomenon, with the price of gold hitting an all-time high in April. As these events unfolded, they rippled across the world to Ghana, more than doubling the value of the country’s gold exports—and stoking an epidemic of illegal mining. This illegal version—a corruption of an old artisanal form of mining known as galamsey (a contraction of “gather them and sell”)—has exploded, as foreign nationals, mostly from China, have exploited the trade, and young locals, desperate for work, have jumped at the opportunity. Today, galamsey accounts for more than a third of Ghana’s annual gold output. The result of this bonanza has been a fast-moving disaster, one that’s fueled multiple converging crises. The environmental impact has been particularly profound. As galamsey has spread, forests have been felled, earth torn up, and the once pristine countryside contaminated by heavy metals. Lead, cyanide, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury—especially mercury—have poisoned both land and water. “The devastation we are seeing in our forests and water bodies is beyond alarming,” said Muhammad Malik, of the Accra-based Climate Change Africa Initiative. “Illegal mining is stripping the land bare, polluting rivers, and killing ecosystems. If we don’t stop this, Ghana will face an environmental collapse [from which] we may never recover.” An an active illegal mining site in the Ashanti Region, Ghana. July 10, 2025. Photo by Francis Kokoroko. But the fallout goes beyond decimated forests and toxic waterways. Among galamsey’s other obvious casualties is Ghana’s all-important cocoa industry. The world’s second-largest cocoa producer (after the Ivory Coast), Ghana is home to more than 1 million cocoa farmers, most of whom tend small plots of just a few hectares that have been in their families for generations. The sector remains central to the Ghanaian economy, responsible for more than 20 percent of export revenue. But as the country’s gold exports have ballooned, cocoa production has tanked: Whereas gold receipts soared from $5 billion in 2021 to $11.6 billion last year, cocoa earnings shrank by more than a third—from $2.8 billion to $1.7 billion—over the same period. Many cocoa farmers, already struggling with climate-change-driven weather instability and a rampaging tree virus, are selling their land for the ready cash offered by miners. Others, like Bright, are being forced off their land. In May, Ransford Abbey, the CEO of Ghana’s government-controlled Cocoa Board, reported that 50,000 hectares of cocoa farms were at risk from illegal gold mining, among other threats. “We’re facing the most serious crisis in the sector’s history,” Abbey said. Bright and I had set out from Accra, Ghana’s capital, before the sun was up, heading north toward Kumasi. Even before we’d reached the despoiled river in Konongo, he’d been directing my attention to the young men in knee-high rubber boots manning noisy sluicing machines set on metal scaffolds. Red and blue hoses snaked over mounds of dirt and into muddy pools. “The entire country is under siege,” Bright said. Around 2018, as Bright observed this new phenomenon unfolding—and absorbed the loss of his ancestral land to it—he began working with a handful of friends to inform the police about the illegal mining underway in the region. He knew that their efforts came with risk, but he couldn’t simply stand by as the destruction despoiled more and more of Ashanti. He was in Accra when he got word that three of these friends had been ambushed while they were en route to an illicit mining site: Two were killed with machetes and had their bodies dumped at the site, he said, while the third managed to get away. Locals reported that the police had blown the men’s cover in exchange for a payment from the miners. No one was ever prosecuted. In the years since, Bright’s activism has expanded well beyond Ashanti. He blames a succession of Ghanaian governments that he says have failed to effectively regulate illegal mining or protect the country’s natural resources. Until three years ago, for instance, Ghanaian law largely prohibited mining in forest reserves, but in 2022 the administration of then-President Akufo-Addo passed legislation legalizing it—a move widely believed to have been a reward for campaign contributions. A few months ago, Ghana’s minister of lands and natural resources told the Parliament that 44 of the country’s 288 forest reserves, spanning six of its 16 regions, have been lost to unlawful mining. At this point, it seems that no corner of Ghana is safe. Bobby Bright became an environmental activist after returning Ghana and seeing how illegal mining had destroyed his family’s cocoa farm. Photo by Francis Kokoroko. Three years ago, Bright and some fellow environmentalists planted themselves in the driveway of Accra’s upscale Kempinski Hotel to protest a conference being held there by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, which oversees the mining sector. When police arrived to chase them away, Bright stood his ground. “I was there alone with my placard,” he said, “a one-man demonstration.” The scuffle that ensued landed him on local TV news, where he caught the attention of Awula Serwah, the formidable founder of the organization Eco-Conscious Citizens. Serwah, whose father served as an envoy to Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, began organizing against galamsey from England after learning about the deteriorated state of her beloved country. She moved back during the Covid pandemic and has been based in Accra ever since, working with Bright to help farming communities battling the onslaught of illegal mining. Driving by another muddy river, we could hear the ticking sound of a machine known as the changfan. Though Ghanaian law prohibits mining within 100 meters of major water bodies, these Chinese-made contraptions—basically rafts mounted with motorized pumps and sluicing machines—enable workers to operate directly on the rivers, pumping the water and dredged-up soil over the sluices to separate the potentially gold-bearing solids. The miners we could see from the car, Bright said, were likely being paid by wealthy Ghanaians who are in business with Chinese nationals. The politically plugged-in locals know how to navigate Ghana’s laws and obtain licenses—80 percent of the country’s land is held under “customary governance,” meaning that tribal chiefs decide what gets allocated for what purpose—while the Chinese partners provide the excavators and changfans. Enlisting miners from among the million-plus young Ghanaians who are desperate for work presents little challenge. The impromptu mines built by unregulated operations routinely collapse on the miners, while the artificial lakes and pits they leave behind have swallowed up multiple people, among them children. In Konongo, Bright said, miners have dug up so much land, including under homes and shops, that “the town itself is now just hanging.” In 2022, a young pregnant woman was buried alive in the nearby village of Odumase when the outhouse she’d entered collapsed on top of her. Illegal gold miners use a motorized pump to scrap the river bed for specks of gold in southern Ghana. Photo by Cristina Aldehuela/AFP via Getty Images, When we arrived in the village of Atronsu, a small cocoa-farming community of mud-block homes in the country’s Western Region, a 63-year-old farmer named Tomas Badu told us that a small group of Ghanaians whom nobody in the village knew had shown up a year earlier looking for land to mine. “The whole town was against it,” Badu said, emphasizing the importance of the nearby stream to the community for drinking and for watering their cocoa trees. (A Cocoa Board official told a reporter in 2022 that when farmers used polluted water on their cocoa crops, “every flower, as well as the pod on the tree, dropped.”) Before the residents knew it, though, an excavator was making its way over the hill that leads to the town. Two households had apparently agreed to sign over a total of six acres to the miners. The land happened to abut the plot that Badu’s family has been tending for five generations. He led us along a path that wound through a stand of banana trees and past a clutch of teenage girls pounding cassava with long wooden poles. Cocoa beans lay spread out on a mat, drying in the sun. We walked under an imperious frankincense tree and into a cocoa forest, crunching through fallen leaves until we emerged from the cool to confront a vast, treeless expanse of churned-up dirt, some of which rose in little spindles, a sort of dwarf Arches National Park. Badu pointed toward a rectangular gully of stagnant brown water the size of a soccer field. The miners had dug the giant trench and diverted the local stream into it, he said, pumping the water over the sluice and leaving the toxic tailings behind. It was at least 20 feet deep, Badu said, and “anybody who falls in will die.” As soon as the miners arrived in Atronsu, the community reached out to Eco-Conscious Citizens, which launched a campaign that eventually helped to land the intruders in jail. But they were released soon after, and they’ve long since moved on, leaving Badu and his neighbors to contend with the poisoned pool. In February 2021, Paul Poku Sampene Ossei, a forensic pathologist at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, got a call from a coroner at the Bibiani Government Hospital, in the country’s Western North Region. A 20-year-old woman from a nearby mining area had died during childbirth, and the official overseeing the case was hoping that Sampene could remove the infant from the mother’s uterus in preparation for separate burials. Though the infant he removed had reached 40 weeks of gestation, Sampene was disturbed to discover that its head was badly misshapen and its eyes had hardly developed at all. Both of the infant’s hands had six fingers; both of its feet, six toes. The genitalia were so undeveloped that the doctor couldn’t determine the baby’s sex. A month later, Sampene was called in to examine another young woman who had died mysteriously in childbirth. When he saw that the twins she was carrying bore similar deformities to the first baby, the doctor took samples from the infants’ brains, livers, kidneys, and bone marrow, as well as from the placenta and the cord blood. They all showed high concentrations of lead, mercury, cyanide, cadmium, and arsenic—and that pointed back to the mines. These elements all occur naturally in the earth, buried deep within its crust, and get pulled to the surface during mineral extraction. What’s worse, gold miners and processors around the world use mercury to isolate the precious metal from its surrounding rubble—mercury and gold bind and can then be separated by fire—and the element eventually settles in the air, water, and soil. Today, artisanal gold mining is responsible for an astounding 38 percent of all mercury emitted worldwide—more than any other human activity, including the combustion of coal. Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. PhoneThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ In the years since those first cases, the 59-year-old Sampene has performed autopsies on 13 additional infants and examined the placentas from more than 1,450 women residing in areas plagued by illegal mining. Among the specimens preserved in tall jars on a shelf in his Kumasi lab are a baby with an exaggerated cleft palate and another with four legs growing horizontally from its lower abdomen. “All the three components of life—the water, the soil, and the air—have been compromised,” Sampene told me. “This is no secret.” A 2025 study published in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment found that the soil in gold-mining areas of the Ashanti Region had levels of mercury and cadmium that were significantly higher than the permissible limits set by the World Health Organization. The mercury measured 9.33 mg/kg, well above the WHO’s limit of 2 mg/kg, while the cadmium came in at 17.02 mg/kg, far exceeding the WHO’s 3 mg/kg limit. In 2021, the WHO reported that exposure to mercury, a potent neurotoxin, posed “a particular threat to the development of the child in utero and early in life” and could lead to spontaneous abortions and all manner of congenital abnormalities. Sampene told me about a young gold buyer who woke up one morning in 2023 to find his entire body shaking. His hands were so out of control that he couldn’t hold a pen to write. Given that the twentysomething had spent the previous eight years wielding a blowtorch beneath amalgams of gold and mercury, the doctor wasn’t surprised to find him suffering from ataxia, a disorder that has been directly linked to damage in the cerebellum caused by exposure to mercury. In the months since, other gold buyers have turned up at Sampene’s lab seeking relief for their mercury-poisoned bodies. “The alarming thing is that, as a developing country, we don’t have what it takes to solve these things,” he told me, “and the medications are not readily available.” Ghana’s Water Resources Commission recently declared that more than 60 percent of the nation’s rivers are now polluted with heavy metals. At some of its treatment plants, the turbidity is so extreme that the pumps have broken down. Experts now warn that the country may need to begin importing water as soon as 2030. In the meantime, some of the 7 million Ghanaians living in extreme poverty and unable to buy bottled or “sachet” water—filtered or sanitized water sealed in small plastic bags—are stuck with the polluted stuff. (Even the water bought in stores here is considered unreliable; the country’s gold bosses are said to import theirs from Europe or South Africa.) More recently, Ernest Yoke, the vice president of the Ghana Medical Association, reported that heavy metals have made their way into the nation’s food supply. “Rice, fish, and even livestock are showing traces of mercury and cyanide,” he said, “and this is extremely dangerous for consumers.” A 2023 study found that tomatoes, spring onions, and lettuces grown in the Western Region had levels of arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury above the limits stipulated by the WHO and that the dietary intake of vegetables grown at the site “poses severe health and environmental threats.” It’s not just people in the mining communities who have to worry; shoppers in Accra and Kumasi now warily pile their baskets with fruits, vegetables, and legumes sourced from rural areas. The same day we spoke with Sampene, Bright and I made our way through the dense Kumasi traffic to the sprawling campus of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital. There we met a bespectacled pediatrician named Anthony Enimil, who told us about the kids turning up at his practice with swollen feet and the poisoned grade-schoolers that he’d had to put on dialysis. In 2023, the Pediatric Society of Ghana determined that the heavy metals involved in unlicensed gold mining were “significantly contributing” to the deaths of exposed children. Over the past few years, Enimil said, he and his colleagues have noted a marked uptick in chronic kidney diseases among juvenile patients from these areas, echoing a 2024 report from Yoke of “a spike in kidney-related diseases in mining communities” and warning of “a major public-health crisis.” “The truth is, we are destroying ourselves,” Enimil said. At 7:30 on a Wednesday morning, Asan­kragua, a town in the Western Region that’s known as a ga­lamsey hot spot, was buzzing. Young miners streamed along the main thoroughfare toting drills and canteens, while others zipped by, two to a moped, balancing long metal detectors in their laps. On the buildings, signs in Chinese advertised foot massages, gold-trading shops, changfans, and excavators. (The latter now represent the country’s third-largest import.) “Ah!” Bright cried as two teens zoomed past us on a motorbike. “They are high on drugs, acting crazy. Anywhere there is galamsey,” he added, “there is crime—weapons, drugs, prostitution.” We spent the next several hours bumping over a deeply rutted road that took us far into Ghana’s hinterland. (Successive governments appear to have had little interest in upgrading the country’s infrastructure, a situation made worse by the fact that illegally mined gold—much of which gets smuggled out of the country—costs the state an estimated $2 billion annually in uncollected taxes.) At one point, we could make out in the distance a handful of Chinese miners puttering around in a camp they’d constructed from shipping containers and tarps. We passed mud huts, as well as more dug-up fields and stagnant ponds. “Animals would not do this to their kingdom,” Bright said. “But humans? Oh, God—look at these people. They’re all going to die. You think they can afford bottled water?” The next day, driving into the coastal town of Takoradi, we passed young bushmeat vendors dangling greater cane rats (“grass cutters”) by their tails and women hawking cassava mash in bright-blue plastic bags. Conspicuously absent from this seaside tableau was anyone selling fish. Out the car window, we could see why: The pollution from the river was rippling into the sea in pale yellow waves. Fishermen living by this estuary can no longer catch anything close to shore, we learned, and because their canoes can’t reach beyond the polluted water, their livelihoods have collapsed. (We were warned not even to wade near the beach hotel where we spent the night.) We did manage to find one bright spot amid the gloom. In the town of Jema, a leafy enclave in the Bono East Region, we met some of the cocoa farmers in the community who are taking a defiant stand. A Ghanaian farmer stirs cocoa beans in banana leaves before covering them and leaving them to ferment. Photo by Cristina Aldehuela/AFP via Getty Images. “We prefer to die than to mine,” a 60-year-old named Patrick Fome told us. This despite the fact that Ghana’s cocoa farmers earn less than $100 a month and that selling their land, or turning to mining themselves, would undoubtedly mean more cash in the short run. (Badu and his brother had laughed when I asked their opinion of chocolate; they’d never tasted it.) In 2019, led by their chief, a lifelong cocoa farmer named Nana Enuku Ano II, the nearly 8,000 residents of Jema made their feelings official, signing a petition that they would eventually deliver to the Ghanaian president. Last year, with the help of a charismatic Franciscan friar named Joseph Kwame Blay, the town formed a vigilante watchdog group, the Jema Anti-Galamsey Advocates, or JAGA, to ensure that the miners stay away. “We do missions, day in and day out, at the edges of our land,” Fome said. “We don’t want them to even penetrate.” Read more International Reporting Read more Toxins and Pollution He led us down a path through the cocoa trees to a burbling stream, the first clear water we’d seen in a week. The plan is for Jema’s pristine rivers—approximately 50 run through this territory—to anchor an eco­tourism project that the town is in the process of developing, said Blay, a local celebrity with close-cropped gray hair and a saintly aura. The project is set to include a 10-acre biodiversity forest and a few fish farms, and the hope is to eventually get some sort of “galamsey-­free” certification for the food it grows. We traversed the mud-block village to arrive at the home of Chief Nana, where his wife led us into a room with electric-­blue walls. Having suffered a stroke about 10 years ago, the chief sat slumped but alert at the edge of a double bed. I’d heard that he had vowed never to betray his ancestors by letting outsiders despoil their land, and speaking in a strained whisper, he reiterated that commitment to me. The miners had apparently dangled as much as 700,000 cedis (over $65,000) in front of him, even offering to send him to South Africa for medical treatment. “He told them to keep it,” Fome said. When it comes to galamsey, Chief Nana “doesn’t even want to talk about that word.” Over the years, Ghana’s leaders have introduced various initiatives to try to deal with the galamsey menace. During his first term, from 2012 to 2017, the recently reelected president, John Mahama, expelled 4,500 Chinese nationals after raiding illegal mining sites. In 2017, Akufo-Addo established an Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining and a task force comprising 400 members of the military. From 2017 to 2019, the team arrested more than 2,200 illegal miners, including foreign nationals. But corruption is rampant, from the cops, who flagged us down every 10 miles expecting a bribe, to the politicians, who are happy to look the other way in exchange for a campaign contribution. (A 2019 documentary by the award-­winning filmmaker Anas Aremeyaw Anas features senior officers from the Inter-­Ministerial Committee receiving bribes and encouraging illegal mining.) A 2023 report commissioned by the president’s chief of staff found significant lapses in the functions of the country’s regulatory agencies, including its Minerals and Forestry commissions. In particular, the report found a lack of consistency when it came to issuing mining licenses. It also found that people accused of illegal mining or of financing illegal mines, including a member of Parliament, had received light or no punishments. The quick release of many Chinese miners from detention over the years has also led to allegations of police corruption. The Berlin-based watchdog Transparency International found that the Ghanaian government had discontinued a major trial and deported an accused Chinese miner rather than imposing the stiff sanctions provided by national law. Not incidentally, China is Ghana’s largest trading partner and a major source of foreign investment. The EU and Japan announced that they would begin inspecting cocoa imports from Ghana out of a concern over their possible contamination with heavy metals. “The firefighters are the arsonists,” said Ken Ashigbey, who heads an organization called the Media Coalition Against Galamsey. In addition, the mining operations have become increasingly militarized, with armed soldiers—many of them hopped up on energy drinks spiked with tramadol or cocaine—standing sentinel at sites deep within the forest reserves. In the past few months, a member of a commission that controls mining in forest reserves was attacked by armed men, and three journalists reporting on galamsey were assaulted—despite being accompanied by Ghanaian police. (Bright and I were chased down the highway by illegal miners and forced to the side of the road by a wild-eyed security guard who demanded, “Your phone or your life.”) Many Ghanaians compared their predicament to that of Latin Americans caught in the grip of violent drug cartels. In February, the United Nations said as much, reporting that organized crime groups have now embedded themselves in gold supply chains to such an extent that they pose a serious global threat. While Ghana has stood for decades as a peaceful oasis in a region increasingly plagued by terror attacks, military coups, and insurrectionist movements, its slide toward lawlessness is now threatening to draw those troubles south. In Kumasi, we saw young girls in headscarves begging by the side of the road. Trafficked in from Burkina Faso and Mali, they are a growing presence in the country, particularly at galamsey sites. Protesters demand government action on illegal gold mining in Accra, Ghana, on October 3, 2024. Photo by Nipah Dennis/AFP via Getty Images. The situation could soon become much worse. In May, the European Union and Japan announced that they would begin inspecting cocoa imports from Ghana this September, out of a concern over their possible contamination with heavy metals. The Dutch ambassador to Ghana warned that the country’s cocoa—20 percent of the global supply—risks being rejected wholesale by the EU. One of the largest markets for Ghanaian cocoa beans is the United States, which imports some $154 million worth every year. The US Food and Drug Administration hasn’t made any statements about the heavy metals situation in Ghana, but that may not be as reassuring as it sounds: In April, the Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, laid off nearly 1,900 of the FDA’s employees, among them experts in charge of compliance policy and the staff who coordinated their travel. The cuts have also led to the closing of many of the FDA labs where products are tested for contaminants and the shuttering of the press office. A longtime FDA official told me that he couldn’t be sure whether anyone was updating the agency’s inspection dashboard—the exact place a consumer would go to check up on companies buying cocoa from Ghana, such as Nestlé, Hershey, Mars, and Cargill. Ghanaians are tired of it all. In the past several months, the Catholic Bishops Conference embarked on a national anti-­galamsey prayer walk, the country’s labor unions threatened a national strike, and the pop star Black Sherif paused his concert midway to air footage of the nation’s polluted rivers. Crowds now routinely take to the streets of Accra wielding signs that read “Greed Is Killing Ghana” and “Stop Ecocide” and brandishing bottles of murky brown water. Illegal gold mining was among the top issues for voters during last year’s presidential election. The new administration is at least talking a good game. This year it created a Ghana Gold Board and opened the nation’s first commercial refinery, both intended to rein in the criminality and smuggling. Stories about its numerous anti-galamsey stings, meanwhile—complete with the number of Ghanaians and Chinese arrested, and of excavators, bulldozers, changfans, pump-action guns, and motorbikes confiscated—have become a regular feature of the news. But while the legislators make a show of their attempts to tackle galamsey, Eco-­Conscious Citizens and others are demanding that they do more—in particular by rescinding the law that allows for mining in forest reserves and by stationing military personnel inside each one. Bright believes that the situation is so dire that the world should boycott Ghana’s gold and cocoa, in the same way that it did Charles Taylor’s conflict timber and blood diamonds from Sierra Leone. “If the cocoa sector collapses,” Ransford Abbey, the Cocoa Board CEO, has admitted, “Ghana’s economy will collapse. But it’s not just about cocoa, it’s about national economic security.” Ghanaians will tell you that galamsey is about something even more existential. Over the course of my time there, I heard repeated references to the country’s glorious past, to the heady days just after independence and the decades of peace and prosperity that followed. “Ghana used to be so good,” Father Blay said. “Now you can’t even travel alone.” Erastus Asare Donkor, a journalist known nationwide for his galamsey exposés, recalled an idyllic childhood in his grandmother’s village, where he would swim in the stream and sometimes see chimpanzees wander out from the forest. “To know that those things are gone?” he said. “It hurts me, deep down.” Anthony Enimil was focused on the kids. “I know the implications for their future. We’re not leaving anything for them,” he said. “I really wish things would change,” he added, “because it is not too late. But it’s getting there.” Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 India is awash in palm oil, and health takes a hit Jocelyn C. Zuckerman,  September 17, 2018 2 A palm oil company, a group of U.S. venture capitalists, and the destruction of Peru’s rainforest Brendan Borrell,  December 31, 2024 3 In the jungles of Borneo a novel approach to end deforestation — and the spread of disease Brian Barth,  December 2, 2020 4 Murdered in the name of palm oil: a Q&A with Jocelyn Zuckerman Kristina Johnson,  December 10, 2016 5 The violent costs of the global palm oil boom Jocelyn C. Zuckerman,  December 10, 2016 6 Children Left Vulnerable By World Bank Amid Push For Development Jocelyn C. Zuckerman and Michael Hudson,  October 9, 2015

Share this This Story’s Impact 200,000 monthly unique users High Country News This article was produced in collaboration with High Country News. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. A mug of nettle tea steams by a fresh slice of huckleberry pie. The oven stands dormant, sinks quiet and clean. Baskets, jars of herbs and bulk ingredients like dried plums, tricolor popcorn and several varieties of seaweed adorn the shelves alongside gleaming pots and hanging garlic braids. It’s not an auntie’s kitchen on the rez, or a new Bay Area restaurant. It’s a university research lab — the Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab and Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute. “We want people to feel invited into the space, to encourage them to learn with and from Indigenous knowledges and sciences,” said Cutcha Risling Baldy, who speaks and moves as though unafraid to take up space as she serves up pie and tea.  At Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, California, Risling Baldy (Hoopa) is associate professor and former chair of the Native American Studies Department, which founded the Food Sovereignty Lab. It’s the first lab in a California State University dedicated to researching Indigenous food systems — the acorns, salmon and seaweed of the Wiyot, Karuk, Yurok, Hoopa and Tolowa people along with Native foods from other regions, like maize. But it’s also for sharing Indigenous foods with the public and serves as a refuge where students can hang out, prep meals and learn about personal health. Over pie and tea, Risling Baldy told the story of how the lab came to be. It started with a former convenience store, which in 2019 stood empty on campus. “It was a store that primarily served, like, donuts and Red Bull,” Risling Baldy said. She had been teaching a class on Indigenous natural resource management, and instead of assigning term papers, she asked students what they wanted to work on. They decided to research how other California campuses had Indigenized and to compare their findings with Cal Poly Humboldt. They saw a need for a centralized space for the Native American Studies department. The empty convenience store seemed perfect. Students then canvassed local Native communities to find out what they wanted. “Out of that came that the community wanted a food sovereignty lab,” Risling Baldy said. “But we didn’t know what that was.” Hampered by the pandemic lockdown, students nevertheless moved plans forward. They held additional interviews with community members who said they wanted a space for cooking, workshops and Indigenous art. The Native American Studies Department designed a lab to meet those needs. Risling Baldy says their food sovereignty lab proposal did not initially get an enthusiastic response from university administration. The Facilities Advisory Committee denied the proposal, later indicating that they wanted the space to serve the general student population.  “They didn’t want us to take the space, and they kept getting us excuse after excuse,” said alumnus Carrie Tully, a steering committee member who, as a student, had helped plan the lab. “We really had to fight and be really organized at a time when the world was on fire, essentially.” Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. X/TwitterThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ Cal Poly Humboldt said the reason they initially denied the application was because it did not identify funding sources. “We recognize that the process of establishing the (lab) was long and, at times, difficult for those most deeply involved,” said university representative Aileen Yoo in an email to HCN. “As with many first-of-their-kind initiatives, there were complex logistical, budgetary, and space-planning considerations that had to be worked through — especially during a time when University resources were limited.” But at the time, the administration emailed Risling Baldy, saying that “the committee has considered (the space) for a function that will serve as a general student space that may be accessed by all.” Instead, the committee proposed creating a student lounge that the Native American Studies Department could reserve for events. “I wasn’t used to how earnest and how invested emotionally these kids are in traditional foods.”Calvosa Olson The Native American Studies Department replied that “dismissing Native knowledges as being too specialized or not for the ‘general student population’ effectively stereotypes and propagates attitudes that have always functioned to marginalize and dismiss Indigenous ways of knowing, our philosophies, and our place in higher education.” For Tully, who is non-Native, the denial was eye-opening. “How could the university tell us no,” she said, “for this incredible project that we had worked so hard on, that was student- and community-driven, and was going to serve the community and the university and students and everybody?” So, Risling Baldy said, the class’s community engagement project became about navigating bureaucracy. Students documented support from 71 other students representing 33 different majors, plus alumni, faculty, two tribal nations, community members and even a professor from another university. It worked: In May of 2020, Cal Poly Humboldt greenlit the food sovereignty lab. But it still wouldn’t fund it. The Native American Studies Department had to raise a quarter million dollars. “The students were like ‘Well, what do we do now?’” said Risling Baldy. “And I said, ‘Now I’m going to teach you guys how to fundraise.’” So the learn-by-doing odyssey adapted again, and students shapeshifted into fundraisers. They wrote grants and held a “Zoom-a-Thon” with skits, music and art donated by volunteers. University foundations helped with grant writing and fundraising. Within a few months, the students hit their $250,000 target. “That was enough to cover the initial construction estimate, and then that construction estimate nearly doubled by the time of completion,” said associate professor of Native American Studies Kaitlin Reed (Yurok, Hupa and Oneida), who co-directs the lab with Risling Baldy. Much of the funds, she added, were small donations from individual community members, students and alumni, which “kind of speaks to the community support of this space.” Over the years, Reed and Risling Baldy have submitted 29 grant proposals through university foundations, raising upward of $2 million. The university acknowledged that it didn’t front the money for initial construction, but Yoo said the university eventually contributed $239,088 for things like construction, IT, equipment and supplies, and positions for interns and research assistants. In the spring of 2024, the Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab and Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute opened its doors. Rou dalagurr is Wiyot for “all are working/making,” according to Wiyot Tribal Administrator Michelle Vassel. Opening the lab had taken years of uphill work — literally; it sits at the top of a steep campus hill. A class project about collective decision-making, bureaucracy and fundraising took its final form: a research lab for traditional ecological knowledge, food systems and Indigenous cuisine. “We’re incredibly proud of the Native American Studies department faculty, students, staff and all NAS partners,” said Yoo. “Their leadership and their dedication to honoring Native culture made the Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab and Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute a reality.” Tully said the experience shifted her worldview from one that prioritized the input of formally trained experts to one that sees value and expertise in community perspectives. “That’s having a community-driven project,” she said, “to be able to understand and share and learn and grow from everybody — not that it’s just the experts that can drive a project.” On the steering committee with Tully was then-undergrad Cody Henrikson (Denaʼina Athabaskan and Sugpiaq). When Henrikson came to Cal Poly Humboldt as a marine biology major, they were going through a tough time, missing their community back home. Getting involved with the Native American Studies department helped, they said. “When I’m in a bad mood, salmon and blueberries always make me feel better,” Henrikson said. “Not having access to those foods really impacted me in ways that I didn’t fully understand until I started taking these courses.” Henrikson said they want the lab to serve future struggling students. “The idea that on campus you could smoke salmon. The idea that on campus you could process berries,” they mused. “A space like this would have given me so much.” With the lab open, Reed and Risling Baldy enlisted a chef-in-residence, Sara Calvosa Olson (Karuk), to give cooking demonstrations, hold workshops and plan projects with students for two semesters. “They have created this really interesting base where the Native students can come and go, and they feel taken care of, they feel heard,” said Calvosa Olson. Some mornings, students came in to make breakfast, or work on homework. Calvosa Olson realized some didn’t know how much daily protein they needed. She showed them how to prep healthy, inexpensive foods. “I wasn’t used to how earnest and how invested emotionally these kids are in traditional foods.” One day she sat around a table cracking acorns with pre-med students, who’d grown up seeing their aunties and uncles struggle with diet-related diseases like diabetes. “They go to doctor’s appointments with their mothers and aunties, and they are treated so poorly,” Calvosa Olson said. “And they are fired up about bringing in some equity to public health and treating people with dignity and respect.” Read more Nutrition and Food Access Some projects were more playful. Calvosa Olson taught students to make windowpane pasta with dulse, a red Pacific seaweed. One experiment recalled the building’s previous incarnation: Students made Takis from traditional ingredients like blue corn, acorn, mesquite and cedar powder. Starting this fall, Oakland restaurateur Crystal Wahpepah (Kickapoo) will be the lab’s second chef-in-residence. She said she hopes to show students, for example, how her restaurant returns buffalo squash seeds to farmers to support heritage food propagation, or how she makes acorns palatable to the general public by putting them in something familiar like crepes. “I love feeding the community,” Wahpepah said. “That’s what sovereignty is, is giving back to your community and feeding your community medicine — and that is food from this land.” According to Reed, food sovereignty means people having a say in the production and distribution of their food. “But when we talk about Indigenous food sovereignty, we are also thinking about relationships to homelands and traditional foods,” she added. “Do people have access to foods that are culturally and spiritually significant to them as a people?” Grocery stores, she said, require a specific type of relationship to the land and other species. “In the process of creating the commodities that we find at grocery stores, we have to violently transform more-than-human relatives into natural resources.” “This was a deliberate act to separate us from our traditional foods and to remove us and our connection from the land,” Calvosa Olson said. “How do we reestablish these connections when we’re still facing the same challenges?” Today, the lab extends into an outdoor learning space, Wiyot Plaza, with an Indigenous garden and a stand of redwoods for traditional ecological knowledge demonstrations, and plans for a salmon cooking pit, an acorn-processing station and other learning centers. The second Saturday of October, Wiyot Plaza will be dotted with booths and smoldering with fragrances as the lab hosts an Indigenous foods festival. The lineup includes speakers, vendors, dancers, singers, “and lots of food to eat,” said Reed. “So that’s just like a fun day to hang out.” It’s a way to engage the general public, but Risling Baldy said the festival is also for “inspiring Indigenous peoples to feel really welcome to a college campus,” where Indigenous knowledge has not always found acceptance or support. “I want them to see that their knowledges have a place in higher education.” Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 Tribal nations want more control over their food supply Bridget Huber,  February 21, 2024 2 We need more Native American restaurants Sean Sherman and Mecca Bos,  October 1, 2024 3 Brazil’s Amazon beef plan will ‘legalize deforestation’ say critics Brian Barth and Flávia Milhorance,  November 17, 2021 4 The return of ‘good fire’ to eastern U.S. forests and grasslands Gabriel Popkin,  April 7, 2022 5 Alaska’s herring row Brett Simpson,  August 29, 2022

Share this This Story’s Impact 200,000 monthly unique users High Country News This article was produced in collaboration with High Country News. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact [email protected]. Against a vast wash of sagebrush and volcanic rock in Utah’s West Desert, Chris Merritt, an archaeologist with the State Historic Preservation Office, took me on a tour of the old Transcontinental Railroad’s route through Promontory Summit, from Corinne to Umbria Junction. The line was replaced during World War II by the Lucin Cutoff, which now runs straight through the Great Salt Lake, shearing off some of the original line’s distance and allowing its iron tracks to be recycled for war munitions. That change turned all of the Promontory Summit settlements into ghost towns. I was visiting those sites throughout 2018 and 2019 as research for a poem commissioned by The Spike 150 committee to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Transcontinental’s completion in 1869. At the time, I was Utah’s poet laureate — the first person of Asian descent to hold the role. I wanted to write a poem based on the letters and diaries of the Central Pacific Railroad’s Chinese workers, which, I thought, were surely somewhere in the company’s archive. But the CPR’s records — absorbed long ago into the Union Pacific’s, after the CPR’s purchase — had no such materials. To date, not a single written document by a Chinese Transcontinental worker has been found. Absent any record, then, I turned to the landscape. And the landscape offered much. As we walked the ghost town of Terrace, the era’s rigid racial segregation was still apparent: All the Chinese artifacts, the buried remnants of its Chinatown, were found near the town’s dump. Merritt pointed out fragments of broken opium pipes and dishes ground down in the sand. I dug up buttons and bits of glass. Some rice bowl shards were decorated with the Four Seasons or Bamboo patterns popular on Chinese dishware in the late 19th century. Merritt said you might find similar bowls in any of the Western ghost towns where Chinese miners and railroad workers lived. It suggests the paucity of material choice for them, yes, but also the close ties they developed with the same trading partners — likely other Chinese migrants eager to make money in the U.S. by supplying plum wine, rice, soy sauce and dishes to the Chinese workers that white merchants wouldn’t sell to. As I thumbed a rice bowl shard, a phrase returned to me, one common to Chinese and Chinese Americans households: Chi ku — “to eat bitterness” — a stark reminder that we all must suffer life’s injuries without complaint. It was my mother’s master philosophy for succeeding in America: Keep your head down and chin up, blind to setbacks and deaf to racist remarks. During the first months of a teaching job where an older colleague told me, in a hissed hallway conversation, that I was just another in a long string of “diversity hires,” I considered bringing a complaint to the department chair. But my mother batted it down. “You’ll never get promoted,” she warned. “Just work hard and ignore him.” Eating bitterness is a concept familiar to many immigrant families. The philosophy itself is not that original. What is unique is its subtle glorification of pain, the use of the verb “to eat” rather than “to endure.” To eat is to feed, to sustain: It is to grow the soul itself. Suffering represents, in this sense, a kind of power — one that nourishes what it threatens to destroy. If the promised power of chi ku is success, then eating bitterness demands that you live at the margin of politics and power to achieve it. But these rice bowl shards also reminded me how much these Chinese workers desired to preserve their culture, to stay Chinese. It’s a myth of American exceptionalism that the Chinese Transcontinental workers wanted to become American themselves. Most ate bitterness for money, not citizenship. Like the Chinese workers, the merchants who supplied them probably had little interest in staying in the U.S. Instead, they saw themselves as “sojourners” — travelers eager to milk America for money, just as America was eager to milk a war-torn, famine-stricken southern China for cheap labor. We know this from more archaeological evidence. Many 19th century Chinese graves across the West are empty, part of an elaborate death ritual. Chinese men in the U.S. paid a huiguan, a district association, to bury their bodies and then have a bone collector exhume them months later, scraping away the flesh and breaking the bones to fit into earthen jars or metal boxes. These were shipped to the Tung Wah Hospital in Hong Kong, which distributed the remains to the workers’ families. The Shasta Courier in 1897 cited the boxes as evidence of Chinese workers’ unsanitary, disease-spreading habits. Not every body that arrived in Hong Kong, however, was collected. The hospital still hosts many unclaimed boxes from the last two centuries — stacks of men left to languish at the border of home. If we can imagine how the Chinese felt about America from their death rituals, we might also intuit something about their lives from what they ate. Layers of trash and coprolites from sites like Terrace can be read as an archive. Besides plum wine and opium, the Chinese appeared to stick to grains and vegetables familiar from home. But there are some interesting discrepancies: The trash is littered with bones from subsistence meat like jackrabbit and with pine nuts. Pine nuts are used in southern Chinese dishes and are also a staple of the Paiutes, one of the Great Basin’s Indigenous nations. The seedpods are shiny and tough: You have to split them with your teeth to reach the nut — sweet and oily, not bitter like its Asian cousin. You have to pick and pick to keep yourself fed; it is a subsistence diet, and the railroad workers wouldn’t have had the time. Did they trade with traveling Paiutes or buy from Cantonese merchants? Without written records, it’s hard to say whether the nuts suggest cross-cultural exchange or insularity. Likely the latter: Contemporary reports suggest the Chinese were as afraid of Indigenous people as white railroaders were. Like their Anglo counterparts, they were prejudiced against anyone they saw as “other.” In 1852, Norman Asing, a Chinese restaurant owner in San Francisco, wrote to California Gov. John Bigler after the state enacted policies to prevent Chinese from entering. Asing chides that immigration “transferred (your nation) … from childhood to manhood and made you great and respectable throughout the nations of the earth.” And he reminds Bigler that he, too, is the descendant of immigrants, since he would surely “not boast of being a descendant of the red man.” Asing brags that the Chinese “exercised most of the arts and virtues of civilized life; that we are possessed of a language and a literature, and that men skilled in science and the arts are numerous among us.” Their cultural achievements, he argues, make it impossible to compare the Chinese to Black people. “We are not,” he declares, “the degraded race you would make us.” Not much is known about Asing, but his letter shows how profoundly the Chinese understood that their identity was triangulated against Black and white, and that their own bid to be treated as equals relied on presenting themselves as ethnically and racially superior. This is the dark underbelly of eating bitterness: the suggestion that anyone who presents himself as a model sufferer becomes, too, a model citizen. If the promised power of chi ku is success, then eating bitterness demands that you live at the margin of politics and power to achieve it. You become, at best, a shadow of the powerful, replicating their arbitrary hierarchies and rules. It is subsistence nourishment, just as railroading is subsistence labor. Pain is the final result of both. After our visit to Terrace, Merritt drove me to see a famous 10-mile section of track that was laid down in a single day, mostly by Chinese workers — the longest section completed in the shortest amount of time — and I both marveled and winced at the achievement. For an instant, on that shelterless plain, buffeted by an endless wind, I understood what it meant to say that every foot of the Transcontinental’s trestle and inch of grade was built by humans. Suffering is the definition of such work, and it’s even more bitterly astonishing to know the Chinese weren’t even the CPR’s first choice to do it. Charles Crocker, one of the railroad’s partners, urged his co-owners to hire young men from Guangzhou because they would be cheaper than whites. Most Americans at the time viewed the Chinese either as direct competitors, or as “less” than men. Chinese men wore robes that resembled women’s dresses, their black hair tied in long braids called queues. Because many — especially after the Gold Rush petered out — worked as domestics, washers in laundries or cooks in restaurants, they garnered the stereotype of being like women: weak, homebound, small. Stay in the Loop! Don’t miss FERN’s latest revelations, developments, and initiatives. Sign up for our newsletter and we guarantee you’ll never miss one of our stories. PhoneThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Email* CAPTCHA Δ The 1875 Page Act effectively banned immigration by Chinese women by assuming they were all coming to work in prostitution, but it also implicitly aimed to prevent Chinese men from marrying and raising Chinese families on American shores. The men had to live in close-quartered, segregated “bachelor societies,” further convincing their Anglo detractors that they were sexually perverse — effete homosexuals or opium-addicted rapists. CPR co-owner Leland Stanford didn’t think Chinese men were fit for the dangerous work of railroading. But they were seemingly less volatile than white workers as they didn’t drink, weren’t known to frequent the prostitutes that trailed the railroad, and kept to themselves. Only the Mormons, hired by the Union Pacific, were as hard-working and dependable. Most importantly, Chinese workers were cheap. The CPR only paid them about $26 a month for 12-hour workdays, and they had to buy their own supplies and food. The Irish, by contrast, were paid $35 and had their expenses covered. The Chinese protested this injustice during an 1867 strike. They had struggled that summer to complete the hardest work on the western half of the line, working from dawn till dusk, blasting through the Sierras. The Chinese demanded 10-hour workdays and a pay increase to $35 a month. “The truth is, they are getting smart,” wrote E. B. Crocker, Charles’s brother and CPR’s legal counsel. The real truth was that they weren’t smart enough: The Chinese never allied with the Irish or Black railroaders because of the groups’ mutual prejudice and racism. When Charles Crocker cut off food for the Chinese, it broke the strike. Perhaps the inevitable result of chi ku is debilitating rage. It’s uncanny how often food and its metaphors for power and violence intertwine in the story of the Chinese in America. Hunger starts a strike, starvation stops it. Famine sends men fleeing from Hong Kong; American mines and railroads devour their labor. Hunger is the thread that binds us. After the Transcontinental was completed, some Chinese workers stayed in Salt Lake, growing gardens and selling produce to the Mormons, who regarded the gardeners with suspicion even as they became dependent on their business. In 1893, a white 17-year-old crushed a Chinese vegetable peddler’s head with a stone, killing him. In 1900, another vegetable seller named Tom Loung was shot and robbed. When Merritt and I walked along the track to the sign commemorating that famous 10-mile section, I felt both pride and dismay at the Chinese workers’ achievement. It was undeniably astonishing to see their legacy physically carved into the landscape. But later, listening to the staticky voice of the president shouting about Chinese viruses, Wuhan and travel bans over my car radio, I thought about that section of track. What was the purpose, I wondered as I drove home, of working so hard for people who refused to work hard for us? What was the purpose of pain, if the only people who remembered it continued to suffer? If food and pain are the entwining metaphor for Chinese American resilience, how to interpret the fact that so much of Chinese political resistance has revolved around food production and restaurants? Asing was a restaurateur. So was Wong Kim Ark, born in 1873 in San Francisco, who worked as a cook in a Chinese restaurant before suing the U.S. for the right to re-enter as a citizen after visiting China — the case that established what, until the last election, we understood as the principle of birthright citizenship. Or perhaps it makes sense that Chinese agitators sprang from the restaurant industry, since restaurants, like laundromats (in which my grandfather worked), are common in Chinese American families. The tongs, the backbone of Cantonese labor culture in America, supplied them with workers. Tongs are benevolent societies that help young men find work, with membership based on the man’s home district, family name or dialect. In late 19th and early 20th century America, almost all male Chinese migrants joined tongs for physical protection, from the police as well as from white mobs. But as the tongs gained power, some turned to organized crime.  Because of the Page Act, tongs understood that women had become a commodity that, like opium, could be sold throughout the West. An exceptionally attractive woman bought for a few hundred dollars in Canton could bring as much as $3,000 in San Francisco. The tongs trafficked Chinese girls who thought they were coming to the States to marry eligible men. Many believed they’d entered an indentured servant system that required them to serve as prostitutes for a period of time. Women couldn’t read, so they signed contracts they didn’t understand. Girls who didn’t end up in fancier parlor houses were locked into barred, street-facing cells called “cribs.” Just 25 cents could purchase a girl for a few minutes; prostitutes were pushed to service as many men as they could in an hour. Read more Nutrition and Food Access Who eats bitterness, and who forces others to? Who does not eat bitterness at all?  The more I try to understand the cultural resonances of chi ku, the more history itself complicates the boundaries of suffering and success. The novelist Tom Lin, whose The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu recasts the classic Western with a Chinese outlaw protagonist, has argued that pain was itself the subject of the Western and that suffering is glorified because it was required to settle the land. That’s why the West’s fictionalized landscapes are depicted as bleak, he says, its violence random and relentless. For Lin, “eating bitterness” is the subject of the genre itself. Why not see these novels, then, as part of a Chinese American literary tradition, just as I might argue that the Transcontinental was Chinese infrastructure, and the Chinese the people that finally colonized the West? The regulation of power and race in America has long been achieved through violence or its threat. It’s a story as old as the Western itself, and with the same sad message behind it: Groups that might see each other as allies vilify each other as enemies, jealously guarding an ever-shrinking territory bordered on one hand by racist laws and on the other by growing class divisions between generations of immigrants. That’s what happened to my family, at least. I am not the same kind of Chinese American that my mother and my grandmother were, nor are we like my grandfather, who was born and raised in Guangzhou. Even as I am distinctly a result of them all, I am, I recognize, no longer Chinese at all. Still, I am evidently what my grandparents wanted, because my mother and uncles speak no Chinese, and so their children speak no Chinese. We left our Chinese enclaves and were encouraged to toughen up when bullied. Today, we eat sticky rice with roast beef at birthday parties; our Christmas tables groan with platters of ham and Peking duck and Santa-shaped sugar cookies. We eat Dungeness crab smothered in five-spice gravy. We intermarry and force our white spouses to eat steamed egg custards laced with stinky black beans. We buy but no longer make dong tay. We eat the culture that’s been constructed for us, losing more and more of our heritage in order to become what our parents hungered for us to be: citizens with passports and memories unshaped by grief. Perhaps the inevitable result of chi ku is debilitating rage. If we cannot let ourselves protest what constrains us, we turn to the vocabulary of cruelty. We lash out at those we do have power over, and our anger becomes the bitterness they swallow in turn. My mother had a contentious relationship with her mother, my Po Po, who treated my mother with the imperiousness of any Chinese matriarch overseeing her daughter’s training. It was something my mother, an ambitious woman who wanted to become a doctor, couldn’t stand. While my mother went to college (to become a teacher) and also graduate school, she was raised with the belief that she should be a servant in her own house, caring for her brothers and father, putting aside her ambitions at times to be an obedient and docile helpmeet. But outside the house, my mother encountered an America convulsed by feminism. Her intelligence and drive opened up a world of travel and work possibilities unavailable to women like my Po Po. The cognitive dissonance of living between worlds, caught between my grandmother’s desires and her own, was, I believe, deeply painful to my mother. Struggling to attain her own ingrained sense of Chineseness while also pleasing herself, and struggling, too, to act like the perfectly competent housewife at home, sent my mother into near-frenzied rages. At times of stress, she alternated between screaming tantrums and ice-cold silence — fits of rage my father and I could neither anticipate nor interpret. Even as a child, I sensed this anger had little to do with me and more to do with something my mother privately endured. In public, she appeared perfect: polished and intelligent, affable and hard-working. Only at home could she let herself express the rage that was denied her. I remember once being in a grocery store with my mother when I was a child, watching the checkout cashier speak to her in pidgin. My mother, a woman who was not only fluent in English, but who had been born in this country, who had a Ph.D., was being talked to like an illiterate child. She smiled tightly at the cashier, picked up our sack of groceries, and walked me to the car. She said nothing all the way home, but later — while I was practicing piano — she kicked in a small glass panel of our kitchen door. Perhaps rage is an attempt to reclaim power, a rejection finally of chi ku’s “feminine” endurance of pain in favor of the assumed masculine ability to inflict it. Of course, this history is itself rapidly changing. When the New York Times assigned me to write about Bing Kong Tong, a Transcontinental holdover in Salt Lake City, Willy Chun, its 92-year-old leader, told me that tongs like his were dying out. Bing Kong Tong was no longer linked to organized crime; it’s a social club that helps with scholarships and offers prayers for the dead Transcontinental workers. At the tong’s meeting hall on State Street, Willy pulled out a battered briefcase to show me the documents the tong had collected for the past century. The papers were a messy stack, photos and enrollments and charter documents tossed together. The tong’s remaining members, restaurant cooks and construction workers, sat in a corner, smoking and playing mah jong on the new mechanized table Willy had bought them. They looked embarrassed when I approached, because they didn’t speak much English, and I can’t speak Cantonese. These men were stuck in historical limbo: neither fully integrated into America nor interested in returning to China. Willy emigrated from Guangzhou, the same place the railroaders were recruited, working as a busboy for another tong member in his restaurant until he was promoted to cook and eventually opened his own café. Ten restaurants later, Willy is a prosperous man, the leader of the tong that once supported him. Talking to Willy reminded me of a conversation I had with a Chinese American friend while researching the Transcontinental. He was complaining about Andrew J. Russell’s iconic photo, East and West Shaking Hands at the Laying of the Last Rail. It was not the absence of Chinese workers from this photo that enraged him, though, but the fact that today’s Chinese Americans were so outraged by it. He is a wealthy and successful entrepreneur in San Francisco, and to him, the Chinese railroad workers were a source not of pride but embarrassment, the pain their bodies endured merely proof they’d been mindless cogs in the machine of someone else’s industry. “Who cares if the Chinese weren’t photographed?” he said. “Those men invented nothing, they owned nothing. Their labor was for others with more imagination than them.” His argument echoed Asing’s letter, with its insistence that only those who could claim their cultural superiority over others should be offered the opportunities America promised. I began to see chi ku as a ladder on which we each claw and fight to ascend, rung by rung, all the while demanding those lower down suffer more, suffer harder, suffer in greater silence. When Willy dies, will he be buried in America or shipped back to Guangzhou? And what about his wife? In the 19th century, only men received elaborate death rituals. Women, children, suicides, even murder victims were buried where they fell. Even in death, some lives matter more than others. It’s a lesson I don’t want to believe, though I have been taught some version of it all my life: I am commendable because I work harder than others, I am smarter about weaponizing my talents, I am uncomplaining and biddable. For all these reasons, and because I can endure the worst insults and accidents, I deserve to be respected. My father, who is white, admires this philosophy. He says eating bitterness is part of what has made the Chinese, including my mother, successful in America. And it has — just as it has made me successful, too. Throughout my life, I have been promoted, given opportunities and praise, partly based on my persistence and uncomplaining attitude. But while chi ku has benefited me, I wonder what it has cost others like me, what my conditioned acceptance of it has meant to people studying my behavior? What lessons, I wonder, am I demonstrating to my female and Asian students through my reputation for being an unflappable workhorse? In the end, eating bitterness does not only mean we endure hardship without complaint, but that our endurance makes it impossible for others in worse conditions to complain. It limits the vocabulary of care we have for each other, which limits, too, our connection and responsibility. In that, paradoxically, eating bitterness atomizes culture even as it suggests a shared temperament. The last time I saw Willy, I was invited to eat with him and the senior tong members at a Chinese restaurant. The dinner was meant to celebrate Willy and to thank me and the photographer sent by the Times to document the tong. The food was comforting and familiar: bird’s nest soup, a platter of squid and char siu, shrimp with lobster sauce, boiled chicken and duck, a few vegetable dishes. I scooped rice into my bowl after I finished my soup, piling meat and vegetables on top. The photographer sat back and picked at his food. “I’m eating with my girlfriend later,” he said. I urged him to eat, whispering it would be rude if he didn’t. “My girlfriend will be angry,” he replied. I shrugged. One of the tong members, Richard, leaned over and grinned. “I don’t think you’ve seen food like this before,” he told the photographer. Then he turned to me. “But you have,” he said. “You know how to eat it.”  I felt a sharp prick of pride. It faded as I looked around the table. Willy looked tired, the senior members contemplative. The restaurant was one of Willy’s. Servers came and went, solicitous, smiling at him. The food, frankly, was not very good. Willy had never been interested in cooking as art, he’d told me, just in making a living. The restaurant, I sensed, wouldn’t last. Even as we ate and ate this feast he offered, ours was the only populated table. The rest of the restaurant, I saw, was empty.   Help us keep digging! FERN is a nonprofit and relies on the generosity of our readers. Please consider making a donation to support our work.Cancel monthly donations anytime. Make a Donation Read Next 1 How the railroad shaped agriculture and civil rights in California Lisa Morehouse,  December 23, 2024 2 The U.S.-Mexico tortilla war Alexander Zaitchik,  May 28, 2024