Finding the Lost: New Jersey family searches for lost relative

McALLEN — He is one of the lost.

The family of Eswin Geovanni Garcia Herrera has not heard from him in more than a month. The last time the 23-year-old called his family in New Jersey he told them a Guatemalan coyote had smuggled him through Mexico. But his biggest challenge still lay ahead.

The Guatemalan native set off July 1 from his hometown in the mountainous city of Jalapa in hopes of sneaking across two international borders to arrive in New Jersey before the end of the month — in time for the birth of his son.

“He was coming with much enthusiasm to meet his baby and to cut his umbilical cord,” his stepfather, Antonio Gonzalez, said in Spanish.

But Geovanni never made it.

Instead, the family got word from other illegal immigrants traveling with him that the young man stayed behind in what they called the desert of McAllen.

“We were in a car until we got to the desert,” Juan, an immigrant who travelled with Geovanni, explained to Gonzalez in a phone call almost three weeks after he managed to cross into the U.S. illegally. “We walked for a whole day and the next day he couldn’t walk anymore.”

“But where did you leave him?” Gonzalez asked in desperation. “Don’t worry, we just want to find him.”

“In the desert under a tree,” Juan replied in Spanish. “There was nothing. It was all desert. There were ranches, but there weren’t any people.”

The desert Juan referred to is actually nowhere near McAllen. It is comprises the ranchlands of Brooks County, about 60 miles from the border city. Smugglers force immigrants to trek through the sandy, harsh terrain that dominates the area to bypass the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in Falfurrias.

The three-day hike is seen as one of the last obstacles for illegal immigrants trying to get to more northerly destinations across the United States.

GEOVANNI’S JOURNEY

The Guatemalan coyote leading Geovanni through Mexico was a drunkard, the 23-year-old told his girlfriend during one of the last phone calls he made. The smuggler kept running off, and Geovanni would call the man’s wife in Guatemala, seeking clues to his whereabouts, eventually finding him wasted in some hotel.

No one can say where and when Geovanni crossed the Rio Grande, but he and four others from Guatemala were taken to a warehouse near the border. They waited there for a day before being picked up and driven to Brooks County, where their hike began.

Once there, a smuggler gave Geovanni a pill that was supposed to energize him and help him reach the designated rendezvous. From there, they were to be shuttled to Houston.

Geovanni, however, began to vomit sometime after he took the pill, Juan said. Several of the other 18 immigrants encouraged the visibly fatigued man and dragged him along for a few hours.

“They told me his stomach would jump and that he barely had a pulse,” his mother, Maria Gonzalez, said in Spanish.

The group eventually left him behind. They propped him up next to a tree and planted a stick in the ground with a red shirt attached to it, hoping to make it easier for a passerby to see him.

But the chance of encountering another traveler in such a remote area can be slim at best.

THE SEARCH

As soon as Geovanni’s family received word that he had been left behind, they began calling smugglers, immigration authorities and consulates to see if anyone had come across him or had any information. No one had.

They reported him missing to the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office, where administrative assistant Nora Salinas jotted down important details needed to begin an inquiry. The family gave as accurate a timeline as they could and described Geovanni’s clothing and physical marks in case his body was found. They didn’t know if he lived or died.

“He has a tattoo of a rosary on his neck and is missing two front teeth,” his stepfather said. “But he wears a bridge.”

The rosary tattoo wouldn’t be of much help if he had died, investigators at the sheriff’s office explained. Bodies decompose rapidly in the sun and they begin to darken within several days. The missing teeth, however, provided a significant clue. But the two deputies assigned to patrol the brushland hadn’t found any bodies fitting that description.

“Would it be wise to go and search for him myself?” Gonzalez asked a Monitor reporter who previously hiked that area with U.S Border Patrol agents.

The question alone bespoke the desperate stepfather’s unfamiliarity with the forbidding landscape. Trees stretch as far as the eye can see, and driving across the rugged terrain requires a heavy-duty vehicle. The region also includes privately owned ranches with fences and other physical barriers that make it difficult to cross the expanse.

The only people aside from ranch hands who travel the area are law enforcement officials, smugglers and the coyotes’ human contraband, investigators said. Venturing into the brush unarmed is risky.

Geovanni’s family hasn’t given up all hope. But the reality is that most who are left behind as he was never catch up — and death is all that awaits.

“I’ve been more than a month without knowing anything,” said his anguished mother. “I don’t feel like he’s dead. I always feel a warmth next to me. … Maybe somebody will recognize his picture.”

She won’t accept his death without seeing his remains, she said. Until then, he is her lost boy and she won’t rest until he is found.

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Naxiely Lopez covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4434.