A perilous journey: every year, thousands of migrants take great risks trying to get to the U.S. Here's how 205 from Ecuador began their odyssey.

• Author: Ochoa, Sandra
• Position: International - Educational literature

A red light, just barely visible on the horizon, made Hector Segura. the captain of the William, turn as mean as the devil. It was the fourth day of an illegal sea voyage, and Segura was at the helm of a creaky old fishing boat overloaded with 205 passengers, all migrants from Ecuador hoping to reach the U.S. The distant flicker. Segura thought, was the law on their tail.

He rushed his human contraband into the foul, cramped darkness below deck and warned them not to come out. From that night on, he cut food and water rations because he was worried that to avoid capture by patrol boats, he might need to stay at sea longer and he wanted to make the meager resources last.

But in the process of steering clear of the ominous red light on the horizon and trying to avoid detection by the authorities, Segura's ration-cutting plan began to take its toll on his passengers.

Their bellies aching, their tongues parched, some of the migrants began to call the captain "El Diablo" (the Devil). Most, however, accepted him as a necessary evil. To them, he was a coyote, or coyotero, an operative in a chain of smugglers who guides migrants from the highlands of Ecuador up the Pacific Coast to Guatemala, then across Mexico and through border deserts into the United States, with New York the ultimate destination for many of the travelers on this particular voyage.

SWATTING FLIES

Business is booming for people smugglers in Latin America. In the last four years, at least 250,000 people have left Ecuador on fishing boats, immigration officials say. They estimate that people smuggling in the Western Hemisphere generates $20 billion a year. second only to drugs. Officials say there is also an alarming increase in the number of Brazilians, Cubans. and even Eastern Europeans who find their way to the desolate desert stretches that mark the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

"We are basically swatting flies," says one high-level official in the Department of Homeland Security. "Essentially we are completely overwhelmed by the numbers."

The Ecuadorean sea voyage is one of the least-visible and fastest-growing smuggling routes--and one of the most dangerous. Hundreds of bodies, many believed to be those of Ecuadoreans, have washed ashore in northern Guatemala.

A $10,000 PASSAGE

Yet in the hope of reaching the U.S., Ecuadoreans pay between $10,000 and $12,000 for the passage north, often putting up their homes as collateral to loan sharks. The voyage of the William, for which 205 migrants paid an average fee of $10,000 each, was worth at least $2 million. Beginning their journey late on a...