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Film maker who lived in illegal migrant camp recounts life with laborers

By Larry Knowles

September 26, 2006

San Diego--John Carlos Frey remembers the helicopters circling overhead and dozens of strangers running through his family’s yard every night. He remembers the people hiding in the bushes and sleeping under cars every morning.

This was Imperial Beach in Frey’s youth, and his childhood memories led him, in part, to make the documentary “The Invisible Mexicans of Deer Canyon,” a film about three Mexican laborers living in McGonigle Canyon, a rugged swath of land fifteen miles northeast of the City of San Diego.

Frey, himself half Mexican and fluent in Spanish, relied on his background and language ability to coax a few of the men into speaking. Even when they did speak, however, he found that they would gave him pat answers and deflect questions about their personal lives.

“I didn’t have their souls, their hearts, why these guys were really here,” Frey explained. “So, I decided to stay down there.”

Frey left his recording equipment at home and pitched a tent in McGonigle Canyon for ten days. He lived among the workers, and for the most part as they did, in the elements, amid the squalor. During his stint in the canyon, he found common ground with the migrants, literally and figuratively, and began to sense a trust building around him.

He made a few acquaintances and was able to gather more substantial information from the men. The following week, Frey returned with recording equipment and was allowed to conduct more in-depth interviews.

Frey always went into the camps alone and says that filming as he was interviewing people required great coordination. “It was like being a one-man band,” he said, “where a musician is playing the guitar, the drums, the harmonica, and trying to sing.”

Despite being alone in the canyon, Frey says that he never felt in danger. He never saw any vice, such as drug use or prostitution, and adds that he often left recording equipment worth upwards of $20,000 in his tent in order to follow workers in their daily routine.

He adds that another film maker recording in the canyon at the time showed him footage of a section of camp that was littered with used condoms and condom wrappers. Frey, who had been to the area on several occasions, said of the footage, “I don’t know if the condoms were planted there, but I never saw any prostitution.”

He did see drunkenness, but notes that it never led fisticuffs or arguments. “There’s no such thing as ego there,” he explained. “They are devoid of ego.”

Frey says his film follows the hopes and fears of three laborers in the camp. The men’s hopes, he explains, are for them to one day find regular work. “I talked to a hundred men in the canyon, and for every one, that was their goal.”

Their fears are that they will be deported shortly after arriving in the United States. Some of the men pay $1000 to be smuggled across the border, and for them to be deported quickly would be economically devastating.

Frey, a film maker and actor, financed “The Invisible Mexicans of Deer Canyon” himself. Much of the money coming from the proceeds of his previous project, “The Gatekeeper,” a film in which he plays a corrupt border patrol agent who, out of self preservation, must live incognito as an illegal immigrant in the United States.

Frey was in talks to air the documentary on HBO, but the deal fell through. He is now talking with PBS, and remains guardedly optimistic.

“The story of illegal immigrant guys living in poverty isn’t sexy,” he said.

More information about “The Invisible Mexicans of Deer Canyon” can be found at www.invisiblemexicans.com.

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