Norberto is 26. He's from Oaxaca, in Southern Mexico, where his wife and 5 month old son are.
On Norberto's fifth day in the desert, he decided he couldn't continue. At a water station--the first they'd encountered their entire journey--he told his group to continue without him.
Norberto had tried crossing a month earlier, farther west, from Sonoita, Mexico, onto the Tohono O'odham Reservation, where he found no water for days. He was apprehended on his fifth day out and deported to Nogales.
He had clean water during this crossing, but his stomach was still upset. It was about 4 p.m. when I came across him, sitting on the side of the road near Grey Well in Chavez Siding, one hundred feet from where we met Hernan--suffering from heat exhaustion--the month before. He had put a white bag in the road, weighed down by rocks, and that was the first thing I saw and slowed for.
He ate fruit cups and granola bars and we talked, discussed where we were, different aspects of his health, the size of his group, what his options could be. Norberto was intending to walk to Phoenix. He didn't know it was 170 miles away. I told him I could call Border Patrol for him, and he thought about it for sometime.
Norberto has got four brothers. Three of them pick celery and romaine lettuce in Salinas, California. That was his destination. Another brother works in a restaurant in Hackensack, New Jersey. I told him I was from New Jersey, but my brother was in North Carolina. He said he has cousins in North Carolina and friends in South Carolina that pick tobacco. He said there's no work in Oaxaca, no money anywhere.
After some time he decided to go home, to have Border Patrol pick him up. He didn't want to cross again, but go home to Oaxaca.
We continued to talk while we waited, and waited, and waited for Border Patrol. We joked about how when you don't want Border Patrol around, there are too many of them, and when you want them, they never come.
He mentioned he had a friend in the group, Simone, who also fell behind earlier in the day, just after the water drop. He was younger, smaller than Norberto, wearing a white shirt, had a silver tooth, and Norberto had his backpack. Simone had cramps and was having trouble walking. The water drop he talked about was only 20 minutes from where we sat, so we at least had a starting point for a search.
It was nearly dark by this time. Two more calls and two transfers to Border Patrol didn't get them to us any quicker and Norberto just wanted to go. He wanted to drive with me. He said he would just get out of the car as soon as we saw Border Patrol, and stand and wait so I wouldn't get in trouble. If we got to the highway without seeing them, he would try to hitchhike. If he got a ride, great, if he didn't, well, he'd accept it. He made the plan seem so simple.
But now it was too dark to look for Simone.
Another call to the Nogales Station and finally a unit was on its way. They were still forty minutes out, and I told them we would meet them on the road. We started to drive and Norberto started feeling sick. Up and around the dirt roads, cresting out on hills with quick dips at the top that make your stomach jump. Coming around a sharp turn, just where another water drop is, our headlights cut across a person standing behind a mesquite tree, shielding their eyes. It was Simone, half an hour north from where Norberto stayed behind; he waited on the road after passing more water.
We told him we were going to meet Border Patrol. He said ok and got in the car. Then he got out and vomited. He had clean water his entire journey too. Said it was just his nerves. We sat on the road while he calmed down, ate applesauce and canned fruit, and drank Gatorade.
The first questions the agents, with M-16s strapped around their chests, asked were not if they were sick, or injured, but if they had papers to be there, and where the rest of their group was.
I shook hands with Norberto and Simone, and we told each other to take care before they were loaded into the back of the truck. It is possible that Norberto is still in jail now, and could be for weeks, having been deported once already.
In jail for weeks for trying to get to California to pick celery and lettuce.
Showing posts with label no more deaths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label no more deaths. Show all posts
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Hernan
Hernan had been out for five days.
A member of a group of 60 people, he said that they had kept mostly to the mountains. When Hernan was left behind, or split from the group, or became lost, they were close--another day, maybe two, from a pickup, and he told us of numerous people in the group having bloody feet.
Hernan hadn't eaten in two days. By the time we came across him, lying on the side of the road, he hadn't gone to the bathroom in over 24 hours. He'd been vomiting, but had nothing left in his stomach.
It was just after dark, and he had a fire lit for himself, was laid out next to it, a warm gallon of water from a water drop and a makeshift walking stick next to him.
Muscle cramps are a significant sign of heat exhaustion, as well as hyponatremia--not enough salt in the system--and Hernan had cramps bad enough that it caused him pain just to sit up, let alone walk.
Confusion, decreased consciousness and hallucinations are also symptoms of hyponatremia. But Hernan seemed lucid. He preferred to speak in English rather than Spanish and talked about his wife in Louisiana, and his three kids, in Mexico, in a small town on the border with Belize. But he also said he saw six bears in the mountains, and bears are rare, if not non-existent, in the area we were in.
The area is called Chavez Siding. We take that route for water drops and patrols once or twice a week, but other than these trips it is rare for a vehicle to pass through--maybe a rancher, maybe an occasional Border Patrol truck, but they are few.
We'd been taking that road from camp, out to the highway recently--an extra hour or so back to Tucson--because the road is infrequently traveled, yet cuts right through a major corridor for people moving north.
Hernan laid down next to a place called Grey Well--the only potable water source in the area--and the site of a wind mill and water tank.
There had been a medical evacuation from this spot during the summer of 2009, so we already knew the only location for cell reception was the top of the windmill.
While one stayed with Hernan, another of us climbed the windmill to call 911.
It took six or seven tries to communicate everything we needed, having to be transferred between Sheriff's departments on each call back after losing reception.
Our location was about 40 minutes by dirt road from Interstate 19. An ambulance wasn't going to reach us, so we told the Sheriff's Office we'd drive Hernan out to the road, where an ambulance would be waiting.
As we drove out Hernan kept falling asleep--decreased consciousness maybe, or just exhaustion. At one point, he asked us to pull apart his chap stick container and remove the small amount of money that was rolled inside; then he fell asleep again. A Border Patrol helicopter began circling half way to the highway, spotlighting us as we drove. The road wasn't smooth--winding up over Red Spring Pass, around Upper Puerto Tank, dips and turns, all dirt and rock--yet Hernan was hardly awake for most of it.
About five minutes before we got to the highway we were stopped by two Border Patrol agents who insisted Hernan move from the car to the back of their truck--the type styled upon dog catchers. They cited the air conditioning as being beneficial for him. But there's no A.C. in the back of those trucks, only hard bench seats and a small 10"x16" caged window, and the only connection to the main cab is an intercom. I told them he'd been vomiting, asking if we could just keep him in the car, as we were almost there. The said something about their policies, and said that they could let him vomit all they wanted to in the back of their truck--it was used to it.
Hernan spent three days in St. Mary's hospital in Tucson. Through the work of a volunteer who is also a nurse there, he was able to make a phone call home just before being deported.
It's terrible but not uncommon for groups to start out large and decrease in size the farther they move. People become sick, too tired, subject to heat exhaustion, hypothermia, knee or ankle injuries, terrible blisters, are the victims of robberies and beatings, are 'dusted' by Border Patrol helicopters intentionally trying to split and disorient groups, they might sleep too long and wake up alone, walk too slowly and gradually become so far behind they are lost, or fall victim to countless other factors that occur daily in the desert.
The term 'human-smuggling' is often used instead of migration--it lends a certain urgency for enforcement to the situation. Some believe that because people coming north use guides, or 'coyotes' it is smuggling.
Though the benefits and pitfalls of the 'guiding industry' in migration deserves its own post here, it should be noted that the necessity of a guide, or being a part of a group for days on end in the middle of the desert in order to get into this country is a result of U.S. border enforcement strategies, not a human smuggling racket.
Of course people are going to need to know where to go when they are forced into more and more remote areas of the desert and forced to walk days through rougher and rougher terrain. The number of deaths and medical evacuations would be significantly higher each month if every person who crossed was by themselves, just wandering aimlessly north from the border, thinking they'd know when they got somewhere.
As it is, as of the end of July, the number of recovered human remains in the Tucson sector was 214. A fraction of the actual deaths.
The next day, patrols went out from camp to Chavez, on the report of the group of 60. They found tracks, a water drop of 40 gallons completely used up, but at least in that one area, no one else left behind.
A member of a group of 60 people, he said that they had kept mostly to the mountains. When Hernan was left behind, or split from the group, or became lost, they were close--another day, maybe two, from a pickup, and he told us of numerous people in the group having bloody feet.
Hernan hadn't eaten in two days. By the time we came across him, lying on the side of the road, he hadn't gone to the bathroom in over 24 hours. He'd been vomiting, but had nothing left in his stomach.
It was just after dark, and he had a fire lit for himself, was laid out next to it, a warm gallon of water from a water drop and a makeshift walking stick next to him.
Muscle cramps are a significant sign of heat exhaustion, as well as hyponatremia--not enough salt in the system--and Hernan had cramps bad enough that it caused him pain just to sit up, let alone walk.
Confusion, decreased consciousness and hallucinations are also symptoms of hyponatremia. But Hernan seemed lucid. He preferred to speak in English rather than Spanish and talked about his wife in Louisiana, and his three kids, in Mexico, in a small town on the border with Belize. But he also said he saw six bears in the mountains, and bears are rare, if not non-existent, in the area we were in.
The area is called Chavez Siding. We take that route for water drops and patrols once or twice a week, but other than these trips it is rare for a vehicle to pass through--maybe a rancher, maybe an occasional Border Patrol truck, but they are few.
We'd been taking that road from camp, out to the highway recently--an extra hour or so back to Tucson--because the road is infrequently traveled, yet cuts right through a major corridor for people moving north.
Hernan laid down next to a place called Grey Well--the only potable water source in the area--and the site of a wind mill and water tank.
There had been a medical evacuation from this spot during the summer of 2009, so we already knew the only location for cell reception was the top of the windmill.
While one stayed with Hernan, another of us climbed the windmill to call 911.
It took six or seven tries to communicate everything we needed, having to be transferred between Sheriff's departments on each call back after losing reception.
Our location was about 40 minutes by dirt road from Interstate 19. An ambulance wasn't going to reach us, so we told the Sheriff's Office we'd drive Hernan out to the road, where an ambulance would be waiting.
As we drove out Hernan kept falling asleep--decreased consciousness maybe, or just exhaustion. At one point, he asked us to pull apart his chap stick container and remove the small amount of money that was rolled inside; then he fell asleep again. A Border Patrol helicopter began circling half way to the highway, spotlighting us as we drove. The road wasn't smooth--winding up over Red Spring Pass, around Upper Puerto Tank, dips and turns, all dirt and rock--yet Hernan was hardly awake for most of it.
About five minutes before we got to the highway we were stopped by two Border Patrol agents who insisted Hernan move from the car to the back of their truck--the type styled upon dog catchers. They cited the air conditioning as being beneficial for him. But there's no A.C. in the back of those trucks, only hard bench seats and a small 10"x16" caged window, and the only connection to the main cab is an intercom. I told them he'd been vomiting, asking if we could just keep him in the car, as we were almost there. The said something about their policies, and said that they could let him vomit all they wanted to in the back of their truck--it was used to it.
Hernan spent three days in St. Mary's hospital in Tucson. Through the work of a volunteer who is also a nurse there, he was able to make a phone call home just before being deported.
It's terrible but not uncommon for groups to start out large and decrease in size the farther they move. People become sick, too tired, subject to heat exhaustion, hypothermia, knee or ankle injuries, terrible blisters, are the victims of robberies and beatings, are 'dusted' by Border Patrol helicopters intentionally trying to split and disorient groups, they might sleep too long and wake up alone, walk too slowly and gradually become so far behind they are lost, or fall victim to countless other factors that occur daily in the desert.
The term 'human-smuggling' is often used instead of migration--it lends a certain urgency for enforcement to the situation. Some believe that because people coming north use guides, or 'coyotes' it is smuggling.
Though the benefits and pitfalls of the 'guiding industry' in migration deserves its own post here, it should be noted that the necessity of a guide, or being a part of a group for days on end in the middle of the desert in order to get into this country is a result of U.S. border enforcement strategies, not a human smuggling racket.
Of course people are going to need to know where to go when they are forced into more and more remote areas of the desert and forced to walk days through rougher and rougher terrain. The number of deaths and medical evacuations would be significantly higher each month if every person who crossed was by themselves, just wandering aimlessly north from the border, thinking they'd know when they got somewhere.
As it is, as of the end of July, the number of recovered human remains in the Tucson sector was 214. A fraction of the actual deaths.
The next day, patrols went out from camp to Chavez, on the report of the group of 60. They found tracks, a water drop of 40 gallons completely used up, but at least in that one area, no one else left behind.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Robbed
There was a steady breeze at camp last Saturday, no clouds, only sun, raising temperatures up towards 95 degrees.
In the early afternoon a group of six men walked in. They had been in the desert for eight or nine days and were now on their way south. They had turned around the day before, thinking they couldn't make it.
Two days before they arrived in camp they had been robbed by bandits, south, in the mountains. Some members of the groups still had a few possessions on them, but most were without their bags, without any water or food for two days.
Of the six, one man, Joseph, had been beaten by the group of bandits. He had a golf ball sized welt on his forehead, pale purple, and a bruised rib, tender to the touch. He claimed to have no trouble breathing, so we wrapped it together, iced his head and he took some pain medication. He repeatedly made hand gestures that he had been beaten with the butt of a gun.
The morning before, Friday, a man stumbled into camp just after sunrise. He had been shot in the foot two days before while being robbed and now had his t-shirt wrapped around the wound, soaked in blood. After having the wound cleaned and wrapped the man was evacuated in an ambulance to Tucson.
It isn't only the environment that people must face to come here. It is not uncommon to hear stories and signs of groups being robbed on their way north, of women being raped, of complete lawlessness, despite increasing numbers of Border Patrol agents, mobile surveillance units, sheriffs operating under the authority of the federally funded Operation Stone Garden--giving them immigration enforcement powers (even before SB1070 was on the Senate floor)--and soon, another shot by the National Guard.
Conditions don't relent: temperatures will be above one-hundred degrees for much of this week. The number of recovered human remains in the Tucson sector is up 18% from this time last year--from 92 bodies in 2009 to 108 so far this year, and this is only the beginning of the summer crossing season.
In the early afternoon a group of six men walked in. They had been in the desert for eight or nine days and were now on their way south. They had turned around the day before, thinking they couldn't make it.
Two days before they arrived in camp they had been robbed by bandits, south, in the mountains. Some members of the groups still had a few possessions on them, but most were without their bags, without any water or food for two days.
Of the six, one man, Joseph, had been beaten by the group of bandits. He had a golf ball sized welt on his forehead, pale purple, and a bruised rib, tender to the touch. He claimed to have no trouble breathing, so we wrapped it together, iced his head and he took some pain medication. He repeatedly made hand gestures that he had been beaten with the butt of a gun.
The morning before, Friday, a man stumbled into camp just after sunrise. He had been shot in the foot two days before while being robbed and now had his t-shirt wrapped around the wound, soaked in blood. After having the wound cleaned and wrapped the man was evacuated in an ambulance to Tucson.
It isn't only the environment that people must face to come here. It is not uncommon to hear stories and signs of groups being robbed on their way north, of women being raped, of complete lawlessness, despite increasing numbers of Border Patrol agents, mobile surveillance units, sheriffs operating under the authority of the federally funded Operation Stone Garden--giving them immigration enforcement powers (even before SB1070 was on the Senate floor)--and soon, another shot by the National Guard.
Conditions don't relent: temperatures will be above one-hundred degrees for much of this week. The number of recovered human remains in the Tucson sector is up 18% from this time last year--from 92 bodies in 2009 to 108 so far this year, and this is only the beginning of the summer crossing season.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
