I don't doubt it. Even back when I was stationed at Fort Huachuca, AZ the traffic was unbelievable. We would go on hikes along the border on the AZ side on weekends (beautiful area) and all of the illegal immigrants would just walk right by us. We started bringing food and water with us to share and then we realized that if word spread it would only increase the traffic and they may have the mistaken impression that we would always be there with food and water for them. Many of the landowners do that very thing though - just to save lives since they figure it won't stop regardless. There are food caches all along the border and doctors and nursers who volunteer their time providing medical assistance under the auspices of 'hiking.' Never seen it on the news but it still goes on. I have a friend in Sierra Vista who still does this. It is actually amazing because there is a border patrol (if somewhat sketchy) but it is so spread out that the humanitarian efforts still work. Most figure once they are over the border than deal with it rather than make them suffer even more. After reading Ryan's posts though I am considering hopping on a flight to New Zealand, tearing up my paperwork, and staying! :o)

Something alittle surprising:

COCHISE COUNTY, Ariz. -- The U.S.-Mexican border here is the most heavily used corridor for illegal alien traffic on America's southern boundary. With its difficult topography that is folded, creased and convoluted, it is a land that yields well to smuggling. The Huachuca, Chiricahua, Dragoon and Whetstone Mountains are riddled with hundreds of deep canyons, caves and arroyos that offer superb concealment for the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens that annually cross here.

The numbers of unauthorized immigrants smuggled across this porous border dumbfound the imagination. To date, the U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended 158,782 illegals in 2001. By the Border Patrol's own admission, it catches one alien in five, and admits that around 800,000 have slipped across the U.S. line this year. The local ranchers, who have been watching the border for several generations, strongly disagree. They contend the agency only nets one in 10, and estimate that in 2001 over 1.5 million unlawful immigrants have crossed into America in what the Border Patrol calls the Tucson Sector.

Many border ranch-owners are validly apprehensive of speaking about their desperate situations because of likely retribution by narco-militarists (drug runners) and coyotes (smugglers of humans). Unsolved murders and arsons are alarmingly ordinary in Cochise County, so pure fear keeps locals from speaking on the record.


and:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/15/wmex15.xml
http://www.davidstuff.com/incorrect/jeffrey3.htm
http://mexico.usembassy.gov/mexico/eA031113BNCbriefing.html




>>All you have to do is fly to Mexico and walk across the border!
>
>I've read a nice story by Greg Egan (I think - I tend to forget who wrote what) about a young couple who met against the odds, stayed together against even worse odds, and then were hunted by several parties.
>
>Their way to vanish from the States was to get mixed with a bunch of illegals being deported. Nobody was able to track them then.