THE BORDER REPORT

A crotchety, 75-year-old general manager of an Austin, Texas, water supply company is facing calls for his resignation after he referred to a proposed detention facility south of the city as a “holding pen for wetbacks” in a public notice, the Austin American-Statesman reports this morning.

While Charles Laws has his Don Imus moment, let’s look at what other people who encounter the diaspora call them when the cameras aren’t on them. From “wets” to “little dead ones” to “tonks,” most of the time, it isn’t pretty, but has become so ingrained in the daily vernacular of the border that I doubt people even notice when they use their favorite terms.

Frankly, I thought Laws was pointing out the ironies of the detention facility and the ridiculous state of the nation’s immigration laws than trouncing on migrants, but that’s just me. He reportedly told a complaining Austin councilmember, “That’s what it is, and that’s what they are.”

He’s definitely right on one count and partially correct on the second; it really is a holding pen and most of the illegal immigration through that half of Texas would have to cross the Rio Bravo at Miguel Aleman or Nuevo Laredo to get there.

This happened in Texas; not San Francisco. The vernacular for illegal migrants along this border is noticeably rougher and earthier than inside the country, mostly because Texas has been dealing with Mexican cross-border travel (both legal and illegal) for a hell of a lot longer.

I know newspaper editors working on both sides of the Texas border who refer to illegal migrants as ilegales, illegals, and, most popularly, mojados. Most, though not all, Arizona newspaper editors aren’t even from Arizona and rarely venture further south than Nogales, Sonora, so they are exempt.

Out in the desert, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents refer to them as “wets,” because, an agent once quickly explained to me after he dropped the term out on the airwaves, “it’s an easier word to use over the radio. It’s not meant to be derogatory.” I mostly believe him.

Border Patrol agents call them “tonks,” for the sound their aluminum-cased flashlights make when they tonk them over the head.

Both, along with State Department consular officials, also use “aliens.”

Grupo Beta agents, the Mexican migrant protection agency, and Mexican cops call them “indocumentados” in polite company and “mojados,” the rest of the time.

Big-city media and non-profit organizations alike perform the literary version of Twister to avoid offending anyone. It’s as if, by adding syllables, somehow you’re treating them better. From vigilantes to good samaritans, The New York Times to the Washington Post to the Arizona Republic, the terms are “undocumented immigrants,” or “illegal immigrants,” or some such. Myself, if I’m going to get carpal tunnel syndrome from typing, it’s not going to be from cracking out eight-syllable phrases. Illegal migrants suffices for me.

The Mexican Consulate, the foreign ministry designated to care for Mexican nationals in the U.S., calls those who’ve died, “muertitos,” or little dead ones. I guess after you deal with 250-300 cadavers a year, you lose a little luster for them.

Myself, I’ve argued for the use of “secos,” “dries,” since nowadays more cross the Arizona desert than the Rio Grande, but it’s never caught on.

Laws ain’t polite, but then again, he’s a Tejano; what’d you expect?

– Michel Marizco