Coyote Inc.

Smugglers with mobile phones dangling from their belts wander through the terminal. Fernando, who makes $50 for every migrant he recruits, hears the growl of an incoming bus and rushes to position himself at the door. "Phoenix? Phoenix?" he asks passengers as they descend the steps. A competitor is trying to beat him by knocking on the bus windows to make deals even before the passengers disembark. Fernando gets no takers immediately; some passengers have already made arrangements from their hometowns. But across the street at a taco stand, he signs up a group of nine young men who have just arrived from Chihuahua and are trying to get to Los Angeles. They agree to pay $1,200 each. They will head out that day at 4:30 p.m. Fernando gives them his mobile-phone number so they can reach him to receive further instructions.

Fernando is well aware that his business is illegal. Many smugglers have been prosecuted and jailed in Mexico--but U.S. investigators say the surest way to get caught is by not giving the local officials a share of the profits. When a policeman pulls up, Fernando walks over, chats for a minute and hands the cop $50--the daily price of doing business and just one of many bribes he says he has to pay to various officials. With his own earnings over the last several years, he has built a $30,000 house. This year he hopes to graduate to bigger money as a coyote. "If you make contact with a group of 20 from Mexico City and move them to Phoenix, that's $12,000 profit," he says. "Double if you get them to California."

Like some Mexican drug lords, the people smugglers enjoy a quiet respect in Agua Prieta for making it a boom town. Three years ago there were nine hotels. Today there are 16, along with dozens of new "guest houses"--private residences converted into dormitories. Often more than a dozen migrants cram into one room. Even three doctors have made their offices into boarding space. "There is a market for it," says 28-year-old Jose Ramon Prieta, who recently opened one boardinghouse, where rooms with two bunk beds cost $30 a night, and is expanding another. "A lot of people were sleeping in the parks, in empty lots." He laments that the coyotes have gained so much power and says he has turned down their offers to rent his properties. But, he adds, "without them, I wouldn't exist." Outside his hotel, migrants crowd around a pay phone that advertises collect calls to the United States, and taxis are starting to fill the streets. Every afternoon they begin their trips to the pull-offs on the highway outside town, where migrants dash past the signs warning of poisonous snakes, over the barbed wire and into the scrubland that leads to the border.

In Arizona, the border patrol is no longer the only obstacle. Now there is Roger Barnett, a 56-year-old rancher and former deputy sheriff who has discovered a new sport. Every Sunday he heads out onto his land with an assault rifle, a 9-mm handgun, high-powered binoculars, a two-way radio and his dog Mikey to capture immigrants crossing his 22,000-acre property, which sits between the border and the highway. He says he is tired of the plastic water bottles and bags illegals scatter over his land. Migrants trying to quench their thirst have also broken the hoses on his water-storage tanks, draining thousands of gallons meant for his cows. In the last year, Barnett estimates, he has captured more than 1,000 illegals--once 86 in a single day--and turned them over to the Border Patrol. (He has also intercepted a shipment of marijuana.) "This is an M-16 fully automatic," he says, looking out over the desert landscape of sagebrush and mesquite on a recent morning. "It's a war out here."

His war is intensely political, the us-versus-them battle heard throughout the debate over illegal immigration. "They've got no right to be in the U.S.," he says. "If the U.S. doesn't control this before too long we're going to have so many illegal aliens that we'll be no better off than Mexico." Barnett, who has been accused of vigilantism by immigrants-rights groups, says he's simply doing what the government is not. He also admits that the hunter in him enjoys tracking migrants. Earlier this year, friends from Ohio carved a free day into a business trip so they could join Barnett and his brother looking for illegals. They caught several dozen. "Humans," Barnett says. "That's the greatest prey there is on earth. They're your equal."

He pulls his pickup off the highway to a spot where he says migrants often hide while they wait for rides. The dog jumps the guardrail and starts barking. Barnett follows, his rifle slung over his shoulder. People are running away. "Hombre! Hombre!" he shouts. The dog corners them in a clearing, seven men and a woman. Barnett marches them out to the road and radios his wife to call the Border Patrol. The agent who arrives seems grateful for the help. "If I lived out here," he says, loading the migrants into his truck, "I'd pretty much do the same thing."