As I was driving on Ruby Road yesterday, about 9 a.m., I came across a man stumbling in the opposite direction along the gravel shoulder.
Ruby Road cuts right through a primary crossing area for many folks—the road extends all the way from Arivaca, south south-east to Interstate 19 in Rio Rico, near the U.S./Mexico border. Save for about 10 of its 50 miles, the road is unpaved.
I came across this man just after he had gotten off of the dirt section.
Though it was sunny, it was still cold, and the night before had seen a thick layer of frost. He had been walking and sleeping in the desert for 7 days and had on only a long sleeve button down, a tshirt, jeans, boots and a tattered camouflage backpack. He wanted to know which way Mexico was.
As he rolled up his pant leg, I could see punctures from cactus spines and scrapes from the desert scarring his skin.
He asked for water, and drank from the gallon like it was the first liquid he had seen in days. I looked at his lips as he drank and they were pale, dotted red, wrinkled and peeling skin.
He kept rubbing his head and asking where Mexico was.
He said he had blisters, but that the pain was not too bad.
I asked him if he wanted to return to Mexico and he said yes and I asked him if he wanted me to call Border Patrol.
He looked down the road, the houses of Arivaca scattered over the hill, and asked if he would find Border Patrol if he kept walking on the road.
I told him I could call, but he just looked down the road and asked again if he would find them if he walked on.
A few hundred feet back up the road from where he came was a Homeland Security surveillance tower. He had walked right by it. This and many other towers like it are non-operational, though they were constructed over a year ago, and each tower is staffed by a security guard twenty-four hours a day, hired from the private security firm EODT.
The road is clearly visible from the raised position of the tower and this man walked right by it.
Nobody walks on these roads, stumbling, a backpack on, and is not in need of help.
Yet the tower guard didn’t move. He sat on the hill looking down from inside his truck, just watching as the man passed and just watching as we stopped.
We stood for a moment longer while this man drank more water. I gave him a clean pair of socks and a food pack, and he asked if he could take the water with him. He said he would walk the road. We shook hands and he continued on alone.
I don't know how long until he was picked up. But, I know that if he was picked up, he will most likely still be in detention even now, and, from the many first hand stories I have heard of short-term Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, will probably be dropped at the border at some undetermined point in the future, being given very little food or water in the meantime.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
Some Background
Why is humanitarian aid necessary you ask?
Well, in the early 1990s, Operation Hold the Line, in Texas, Operation Gatekeeper, in California, and Operation Safeguard, in Arizona, were initiated. Basically, they were policies that dramatically increased funding for border enforcement—the number of Border Patrol (BP) agents increased by the thousands, funding went into technological advances to monitor the border, and an 800 mile wall was to be built along the border. Aside from the physical manifestation of these operations—people, cameras, sensors, a wall—there was a major tactical shift in the way the border was enforced. The majority of resources went to urban areas—San Diego/Chula Vista, Yuma, El Paso, cities that sat right on the border. This served two main purposes.
One, with the extra enforcement around urbanized areas, it gave the general population in the US the sense that a lot was being done to enforce the border, and, more importantly that it was working. It’s willful blindness really—we don’t see it, and we’re not to blame.
Secondly, the expectation of those responsible for this enforcement strategy was that people would move into less urbanized areas to cross from Mexico--that means into desert and mountains—and this desert and these mountains would serve as a natural wall for people crossing and act as a deterrent. It was anticipated that deaths would occur, that the likelihood of injury would increase--which also played into the idea of deterrence.
Estimates range from 3,861 to 5,607 deaths as a result of this new enforcement strategy thus far. There is a link on the right side of this blog that will take you to a map and database of all discovered deaths of people crossing since 2003. I stress 'discovered' because many times, especially in summer, those who die in the desert are not found--the intense heat literally melts their body away, or they are eaten by desert carrion, or washed away in flash floods.
In addition to this--adding insult to death—the expanded border enforcement and this policy of deterrence by death have failed to reduce unauthorized immigration. Between the years 2000 and 2008 the population of undocumented immigrants in the USA increased from about 8.4 million people to almost 12 million. More and more money is put in to the program and all it seems to do is increase the death toll.
A main problem in understanding what’s happening down here, and more, having sympathy for what’s happening, is that many don’t see the people crossing face to face, they don’t understand them as people. Mexicans in general are portrayed as dirty and villainous, and those crossing as criminals. But they are people--no different from you, except that they were born on the other side of the line and their skin might be a little darker.
It's a ridiculous system. We criminalize our neighbors and make them risk--and often give--their lives to come here, to do jobs that would otherwise go unfilled, work that we need done. We force them into lives of fear and hiding, but need them here to keep our farms in business and the cost of our produce competitive, to keep our yards manicured and our offices and hotels clean.
But it's more than their 'work worth'; it's their human worth. They contribute to society, they have families, children to feed and send to school; there is food, music, language, dancing, literature, art, and countless other aspects of life have been exchanged over our southern border for thousands of years with people that we are now criminalizing for trying to work--for crossing over a line and walking for days through the desolation of the Sonoran Desert.
Without getting too off track, these are some of the basic reasons humanitarian aid is necessary in Southern Arizona, and until the U.S. government comes up with some type of immigration reform that does not use death as a deterrent and allows for enough visas as there are jobs to be filled, it will unfortunately, continue to be necessary.
Well, in the early 1990s, Operation Hold the Line, in Texas, Operation Gatekeeper, in California, and Operation Safeguard, in Arizona, were initiated. Basically, they were policies that dramatically increased funding for border enforcement—the number of Border Patrol (BP) agents increased by the thousands, funding went into technological advances to monitor the border, and an 800 mile wall was to be built along the border. Aside from the physical manifestation of these operations—people, cameras, sensors, a wall—there was a major tactical shift in the way the border was enforced. The majority of resources went to urban areas—San Diego/Chula Vista, Yuma, El Paso, cities that sat right on the border. This served two main purposes.
One, with the extra enforcement around urbanized areas, it gave the general population in the US the sense that a lot was being done to enforce the border, and, more importantly that it was working. It’s willful blindness really—we don’t see it, and we’re not to blame.
Secondly, the expectation of those responsible for this enforcement strategy was that people would move into less urbanized areas to cross from Mexico--that means into desert and mountains—and this desert and these mountains would serve as a natural wall for people crossing and act as a deterrent. It was anticipated that deaths would occur, that the likelihood of injury would increase--which also played into the idea of deterrence.
Estimates range from 3,861 to 5,607 deaths as a result of this new enforcement strategy thus far. There is a link on the right side of this blog that will take you to a map and database of all discovered deaths of people crossing since 2003. I stress 'discovered' because many times, especially in summer, those who die in the desert are not found--the intense heat literally melts their body away, or they are eaten by desert carrion, or washed away in flash floods.
In addition to this--adding insult to death—the expanded border enforcement and this policy of deterrence by death have failed to reduce unauthorized immigration. Between the years 2000 and 2008 the population of undocumented immigrants in the USA increased from about 8.4 million people to almost 12 million. More and more money is put in to the program and all it seems to do is increase the death toll.
A main problem in understanding what’s happening down here, and more, having sympathy for what’s happening, is that many don’t see the people crossing face to face, they don’t understand them as people. Mexicans in general are portrayed as dirty and villainous, and those crossing as criminals. But they are people--no different from you, except that they were born on the other side of the line and their skin might be a little darker.
It's a ridiculous system. We criminalize our neighbors and make them risk--and often give--their lives to come here, to do jobs that would otherwise go unfilled, work that we need done. We force them into lives of fear and hiding, but need them here to keep our farms in business and the cost of our produce competitive, to keep our yards manicured and our offices and hotels clean.
But it's more than their 'work worth'; it's their human worth. They contribute to society, they have families, children to feed and send to school; there is food, music, language, dancing, literature, art, and countless other aspects of life have been exchanged over our southern border for thousands of years with people that we are now criminalizing for trying to work--for crossing over a line and walking for days through the desolation of the Sonoran Desert.
Without getting too off track, these are some of the basic reasons humanitarian aid is necessary in Southern Arizona, and until the U.S. government comes up with some type of immigration reform that does not use death as a deterrent and allows for enough visas as there are jobs to be filled, it will unfortunately, continue to be necessary.
Monday, December 7, 2009
10 Days in the Desert
It was 10 o'clock or so on a Friday night when we came across Gustavo and his friend on Arivaca Road. The temperature was in the mid-thirties. The two men had been left by their group--a very common occurrence out in the desert--left for being too slow, too sick, injured, what have you--and had been walking for ten days, unsure of where they were, where they were going and how long it would take for them to get there.
Ten days in the desert with nothing more than a small backpack and empty water jugs they had bought in Mexico. They had no blankets, no food, and clothing inappropriate for the freezing temperatures that were occurring nightly that week.
Folks crossing from Mexico, just as these men, don't bring camping supplies. They don't bring tents and sleeping bags and stoves. They bring some water, they are often given energy drinks by their guides to keep their pace up. They might bring a change of clothes, small amounts of food. They bring pictures of their family members, of their children and of their spouses and of their parents--family members back in their home country, or family members here in the United States, waiting for them. We find toothpaste and toothbrushes along the trails, deodorant, pain relievers, even perfume and cologne bottles.
Often, people crossing the U.S./Mexico border are told that the journey is only a day or two long.
It is rarely, if ever, that short to a pick-up point.
Gustavo's friend has family in Phoenix. By car, that's four hours north from where we met them.
All they asked for was water. We tried to give them food as well but they would only take one food pack for the two of them--a small packet of tuna, a granola bar, a fruit cup, a package of crackers, a silver juice pack.
They thanked us over and over again and apologized for the inconvenience they were causing. After ten days in the middle of nowhere they were worried about inconveniencing us as we stopped for a few minutes with full stomachs and beds waiting for us and stood outside of our warm car to do what little we could.
We tried to give them more food, but they declined, saying they didn't want to impose anymore.
We explained where we were--60 miles north to Tucson, 16 miles south to Arivaca, 170 miles to Phoenix--but that we couldn't give them a ride--that there was a Border Patrol checkpoint a few miles north and we would be stopped there, that they would be put in detention and deported and that we would go to jail.
We stood there shivering and offered to call Border Patrol, but only if they wanted us too.
They declined, said they didn't want to bother us anymore. They were going to sit where they were and wait. After ten days in the desert they said they didn't care anymore what happened--didn't care if their ride came and didn't care if Border Patrol picked them up.
We gave them each a blanket, which each man accepted after declining it numerous times, and they thanked us effusively.
As we drove away the two of them were standing on the side of the dark, empty road, looking up and down, waiting to cross.
The only solace in leaving these two men was that they were on a road and therefore would probably not die out in the desert.
For many people crossing, though, this bit of solace does not exist, and the death toll in the desert mounts.
I found the gallon jug a few days later on the side of the road where we had met Gustavo and his friend, along with Gustavo's backpack. The gallon jug was 3/4 full, and the backpack was mostly empty save for an empty water container and some water worn papers, ink smeared and wadded together.
I don't know what happened to these two men--how long they sat for, who picked them up, where they are now, and, if they were picked up by Border Patrol, if they will try to cross again.
Ten days in the desert with nothing more than a small backpack and empty water jugs they had bought in Mexico. They had no blankets, no food, and clothing inappropriate for the freezing temperatures that were occurring nightly that week.
Folks crossing from Mexico, just as these men, don't bring camping supplies. They don't bring tents and sleeping bags and stoves. They bring some water, they are often given energy drinks by their guides to keep their pace up. They might bring a change of clothes, small amounts of food. They bring pictures of their family members, of their children and of their spouses and of their parents--family members back in their home country, or family members here in the United States, waiting for them. We find toothpaste and toothbrushes along the trails, deodorant, pain relievers, even perfume and cologne bottles.
Often, people crossing the U.S./Mexico border are told that the journey is only a day or two long.
It is rarely, if ever, that short to a pick-up point.
Gustavo's friend has family in Phoenix. By car, that's four hours north from where we met them.
All they asked for was water. We tried to give them food as well but they would only take one food pack for the two of them--a small packet of tuna, a granola bar, a fruit cup, a package of crackers, a silver juice pack.
They thanked us over and over again and apologized for the inconvenience they were causing. After ten days in the middle of nowhere they were worried about inconveniencing us as we stopped for a few minutes with full stomachs and beds waiting for us and stood outside of our warm car to do what little we could.
We tried to give them more food, but they declined, saying they didn't want to impose anymore.
We explained where we were--60 miles north to Tucson, 16 miles south to Arivaca, 170 miles to Phoenix--but that we couldn't give them a ride--that there was a Border Patrol checkpoint a few miles north and we would be stopped there, that they would be put in detention and deported and that we would go to jail.
We stood there shivering and offered to call Border Patrol, but only if they wanted us too.
They declined, said they didn't want to bother us anymore. They were going to sit where they were and wait. After ten days in the desert they said they didn't care anymore what happened--didn't care if their ride came and didn't care if Border Patrol picked them up.
We gave them each a blanket, which each man accepted after declining it numerous times, and they thanked us effusively.
As we drove away the two of them were standing on the side of the dark, empty road, looking up and down, waiting to cross.
The only solace in leaving these two men was that they were on a road and therefore would probably not die out in the desert.
For many people crossing, though, this bit of solace does not exist, and the death toll in the desert mounts.
I found the gallon jug a few days later on the side of the road where we had met Gustavo and his friend, along with Gustavo's backpack. The gallon jug was 3/4 full, and the backpack was mostly empty save for an empty water container and some water worn papers, ink smeared and wadded together.
I don't know what happened to these two men--how long they sat for, who picked them up, where they are now, and, if they were picked up by Border Patrol, if they will try to cross again.
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