ARIZONA DESERT (By Susan Carroll, Arizona Republic) August 5, 2004 - Irene Ayon Velazquez lived her entire life on a ranch in Mexico with her parents, cooking homegrown food and watching soap operas, or telenovelas.

The churchgoing housewife with three young children had one wish: She wanted to see the United States. The desire grew each year that her husband, Arturo Dominguez Ocampo, a legal immigrant, spent working on a Pennsylvania farm.

"She just wanted to know what it was like," Dominguez said as he sat in a funeral home waiting room decorated with silk flowers.

It turned out to be a death wish.

On July 24, Ayon's body was found in a remote mountainous area southeast of Douglas. She was one of 50 known undocumented immigrant casualties in July, the deadliest month on record for border crossers crossings in Arizona.

Crossing illegally through the southeastern Arizona desert was not Ayon's first choice.

Dominguez, a legal permanent resident of the United States since 1986, filed for a visa on his wife's behalf five years ago. But year after year passed, and Ayon stayed in her village of 60 people, waiting.

"If I could have fixed her papers, I wouldn't have sent her walking through the desert," he said. "I filled out all the applications and paid all of the money. And nothing happened. Nothing. How much longer was I going to have to wait?"

About two years, according to government estimates.

Congress sets a cap on the number of immigrant visas doled out each year, giving each country in the world 7 percent of the total. Under the "country cap," each nation, including Mexico, is allocated about 25,620 visas. Then, the government uses a complex formula to determine who within the country is next in line for the green card.

Visa bottleneck

Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, such as a spouse or children, are exempt from the cap and make up the majority of the 219,380 Mexicans who legally immigrated in 2002, according to the most recent statistics available.

"The bottleneck is the availability of visas," said Virginia Kice, a Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman. "Once the country's allotment or allocation is used up, the person is put on a waiting list."

Worldwide, the average wait for the spouse of a permanent legal resident is about five years.

But Kice said that because of "heavy demand" in Mexico for the visas, Ayon probably would have waited an additional two years.

On the day Ayon died, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services was processing applications in her category that were filed in December 1995.

Where to cross

Ayon left her children, ages 11, 8 and 6, in the care of her parents and headed north for the border. On July 23, the 32-year-old stepped off a bus in Agua Prieta, the border city south of Douglas, and into a beehive of smugglers who stake out the bus station.

She and two cousins struck a deal with a "coyote," or people smuggler, who promised to take them north as part of a larger group.

Dominguez said he hadn't wanted her to cross through Laredo, Texas, even though that stretch of the 1,950-mile border was a straighter shot from their ranch on the outskirts of Mexico City.

"She would have had to cross the Rio Grande," he said. "I figured, better the walk through the desert."

Since Dominguez first came to work in the United States in 1986, the ranks of the Border Patrol have doubled and spending on border enforcement has topped $1 billion per year.

The government crackdown in the early 1990s put thousands of agents on the border, making it increasingly difficult to cross through cities in California and Texas. As immigrants poured into Arizona, the Douglas area became the most popular crossing spot in the nation. It was known for its easy passage because of access to highways leading north.

Walking to deaths but that reputation is changing

Increasing numbers of undocumented immigrants are walking to their deaths there. Authorities say smugglers are forcing immigrants to walk from areas deeper into Mexico to avoid detection by the Border Patrol. In July alone, at least 23 bodies were discovered in southeastern Arizona, according to the Mexican Consulate in Douglas. More than one-third of the deaths, including Ayon's, happened within three miles of the Mexican border.

The smuggler Ayon was with chose to cross east of the Douglas port of entry, in a remote, mountainous area where temperatures topped 100 degrees. As the group pushed through the desert that day, she started to fall behind and show symptoms of heat exposure.

Ayon, according to reports from her cousin, went down quickly.

"She started feeling ill, and fainted," said Miguel Escobar Valdez, the Mexican consul in Douglas. "They left her there like that. They abandoned her."

Husband found her

Dominguez was waiting for his wife's phone call, but instead got a call from the cousin. He was told that Ayon was left behind in the desert. The cousin had only an approximate location.

During the next 24 hours, the Border Patrol helped Dominguez search for his wife, even flying a helicopter over the area twice.

After dark the following day, Dominguez kept searching.

"I found her," he said, sitting in the funeral home, his eyes ringed with red. "I wanted to bring her home."

It was 9 p.m., about 12 miles east of Douglas in a mountainous area just north of Geronimo Trail, a popular hiking destination.

Dominguez walked back out to the highway and told authorities where to find his wife of 12 years.

Four days later, he was still trying to bring her home.

Dominguez had told the mortician he wanted an open coffin. Ayon's relatives in Mexico would want to see her, he said, to know for certain.

Wants his children

The mortician tried to be accommodating, suggesting a glass window over a portion of the coffin so her face would be visible. Then no one at home, besides Ayon's husband, would see what the desert had done to her body.

Dominguez rubbed his eyes beneath the rim of his red baseball cap. He planned to bury his wife, he said, then return to his job in Pennsylvania as a mushroom farmer.

Dominguez wanted to apply for green cards for his children, to bring them to the United States. They could take their dead mother's place on the waiting list for a visa, he suggested.

"I wish that they would transfer her application, so I could bring them here," he said.

If not, the wait likely will be about seven years.