Excellent, in-depth article written by someone who sounds like he actually went there and talked to folks before he wrote the article. Most NM newspapers just do AP reprints. Or press releases from the Governor’s office.

The abandoned houses here are fast becoming a favorite rest stop for thousands who come from all over the world to sneak across the porous Mexico-New Mexico border. From Las Chepas, the migrants circle into the mountains next to town and follow them north into Luna County, N.M.

The widening flood of arrivals is a main reason that Bill Richardson, New Mexico’s governor, has declared a state of emergency along the border and has called for the razing of Las Chepas.

“It’s a smuggler’s paradise,” said Luna County sheriff’s Lt. Allen Carter.

It’s a long article. Worth reading all the way through.

It used to be, they say, that illegal border crossers were neighbors. The crossers lived in Las Chepas or Palomas, the larger town that sits on the Mexican side of the main border entry, and they came to the U.S. to work on the ranches and in the onion fields. When their shift was done, they’d walk home.

Now the migrants come from Central America, Poland and China, as well as deeply impoverished southern Mexico. They have few local ties and don’t plan to stay in southern New Mexico, where there are few jobs but many Border Patrol agents.

Instead, the migrants trek 40 miles through the desert to reach the interstate, where smugglers pick them up and take them to Phoenix, from which they’re sent all over the country.

A few yards away, across the border, sits Bill Johnson’s house. The 56-year-old rancher has watched the evolution of Las Chepas. Now his ranch, which has been in the family for almost a century, has been trashed by illegal immigrants who break into his property, steal cars and take water from cattle tanks.

“It used to be that I knew every family over there” in Las Chepas, he said, “because they worked for me or I just knew them.”

The last time Johnson was in Las Chepas was three years ago, when one of his dogs wandered into Mexico. Johnson strolled a few paces over the border looking for him and stumbled into a drug deal. He says he barely escaped with his life and will not return.