Cronkite News
December 6, 2013
Brittany Hargrave
For nine years, Steve Johnston has toted gallons of water, food packages, clothing and blankets up and down Arizona’s rugged border terrain, leaving the provisions on immigrant trails into the U.S. in the name of saving lives.
While bipartisan supporters say that the U.S. Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill, S 744, will solve the nation’s illegal immigration problems if passed by the House of Representatives, Johnston offers a stark, contrasting view.
“I’m convinced S 744 will kill more people,” he says.
Johnston, 68, is a volunteer for the Tucson-based humanitarian-aid group No More Deaths, which is among several humanitarian and immigrant-advocacy groups that oppose the immigration bill, in part, for what they call its lack of foresight.
Johnston says the bill will “stress (volunteer) capabilities” by increasing border-enforcement efforts in Arizona and further funneling migrants into the most dangerous routes in the mountainous terrain of the Sonoran Desert.
He bases his prediction on trends from the past. Border enforcement strategies have been linked to a migrant-death rate in Arizona that has dramatically increased since the state became the most common entry point for illegal immigration into the U.S. in 1998.
Johnston’s prediction is plausible but not inevitable, says Doris Meissner, director of the Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute and former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service under President Bill Clinton.
“A straight-line analysis is that deaths have remained high in Arizona and the bill is unlikely to lower those numbers and may even increase them,” she says. “However, the whole premise of comprehensive immigration reform is to create a system whereby people come into the U.S. to meet labor market demands and would be able to do so in a safe and orderly fashion. That should reduce reasons why people try to cross the southwest border illegally and thus decrease the number of deaths.”
There are several components of the bill that could impact migrant deaths and humanitarian work.
Primarily, S 744 calls for spending tens of billions of dollars on greater border-enforcement measures. This includes doubling the number of Border Patrol agents at the southern border to more than 38,000; constructing 700 additional miles of border fencing; deploying aircraft; building watch towers; and mandating area-specific technology such as camera systems, ground sensors and drones.
Much of those resources would be targeted toward high-risk zones like the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, which in the 2012 fiscal year made one- third of the arrests of undocumented immigrants and one-half of marijuana seizures nationwide. Arizona already has 318 miles of some kind of border fencing, according to the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson and Yuma sectors. The remaining 70 miles have environmental obstacles that act as natural barriers.
Arizona became the focal point for illegal immigration as the result of a concentrated border-enforcement strategy that began in 1993 when “Operation Hold the Line” beefed up security with manpower and technology in busy illegal immigrant corridors into Texas. The Clinton administration followed with “Operation Gatekeeper” in 1994, increasing enforcement in the busiest illegalimmigration entry point – San Diego, Calif.
The strategy was aimed at forcing those who hoped to cross into the U.S. illegally into mountainous terrain with weather that fluctuates from blistering hot in the summer to frigid cold and snow in the winter acting as a deterrent. But it didn’t.
Migrant crossings and apprehensions plummeted in California and Texas following those policy changes, but they dramatically increased in Arizona. In 1992, there were just more than 95,000 apprehensions in the Tucson and Yuma sectors combined. By 2000, that number jumped to more than 700,000.
The apprehension numbers have now dropped to pre-1994 levels, the product of increased enforcement, fewer jobs available in the U.S. and an improving economy in Mexico. Deaths have not.
According to the U.S. Border Patrol, death counts have fluctuated between 170 per year and 250 per year since 2005. During that same period, apprehensions in the Tucson sector have decreased by 73 percent. The bottom line: The death rate is rising compared to reported apprehensions.
Those numbers alarm people like Gene Lefebvre, who was active in the 1980s Sanctuary Movement and who co-founded No More Deaths.
“Whether enforcement is high or low, people will try to come across if they believe they have more opportunities here,” Lefebvre says. “Over the years, numbers (of apprehensions) have been driven by the U.S. economy and jobs, as well as poverty on the other side.”
He says an improving U.S. economy will lead to more illegal immigration and more deaths in the desert.
“(The government) projected that people would die, but what they didn’t project, what they didn’t count on, was the desperation of people,” he says. “People came anyway.”
Data indicate fewer people are trying to cross illegally through Arizona, but the desperation of the people who do come over explains why the death count remains high, says Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith, a professor at the University of Arizona and program coordinator for the Binational Migration Institute. Those who make the trip take more dangerous routes as enforcement blocks easier access points, she says.
“We’re talking about people who are looking at the risk in a very different way than you or I would,” she says. “You and I wouldn’t want to go through the desert. Being with family is an incredible push factor for people. Overriding the deterrents of going through the desert are factors people face in their hometowns – they can’t make enough money to buy food or medicine for their family. They’re willing to take that chance.”
The Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner has found more than 2,000 bodies of suspected migrants in its jurisdiction since January 2001. It handles more unidentified remains than any other medical-examiner office in the country.
Humane Borders, another humanitarian-aid group based in Tucson, has worked with the Pima medical examiner office to put together a map plotting coordinates of migrant remains using geographic information system (GIS) software. The map also provides information concerning common demographics of migrants who die while crossing the border.
Because of advanced levels of decomposition, not all bodies can be identified when found. Still, the bodies that are identifiable by age, gender and cause of death offer a picture of who the migrants are: Eighty percent are male. Exposure is the cause of death in nearly 75 percent of cases. More than 40 percent of bodies are found on the Tohono O’odham Nation reservation. Most of the dead were between the ages of 20 and 49.
According to Gregory Hess, the office’s chief medical examiner, the biggest problem working with hundreds of unidentified bodies per year is storage.
“The unidentified bodies don’t go anywhere fast,” he says.
After the investigation is complete and there is no positive identification, the office generally calls to have the bodies buried in the Pima County plot or cremated, Hess says. That can add up to thousands of dollars in costs per year to the county.
It’s tragedies like those that another component of S. 744 hopes to cut down. In addition to its focus on enforcement, the bill calls for construction of 1,000 distress beacons along nearly 2,000 mile-long U.S. – Mexico border.
Currently, there are 22 distress beacons in the Tucson sector and 24 distress beacons in the Yuma sector. Factors on where the distress beacons are placed include how remote an area is, how many agents are deployed in the area, number of immigrant deaths in the area and what technology is available to help patrol, says Nicole Ballistrea, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson sector.
Distress beacons were first installed in Arizona in 2002 and consist of tall red posts equipped with buttons that can be pushed in emergencies to call for help. The towers are solar powered and lighted at night. Instructions for pressing the button and sending a distress signal appear in multiple languages. The instructions do not say the beacon is connected to Border Patrol. After being treated medically, border crossers without appropriate documentation are deported.
The Tucson sector beacons have been activated about 180 times “over the last few years,” Ballistrea says. Other than that estimate, there is little information on how effective distress beacons are.
Johnston, of No More Deaths, approves of the distress-beacon component of S 744, but says he believes it could be improved if the beacons were equipped with cell-phone towers, so migrants in distress could use their cell phones in areas with poor reception.
“That’s the thing that will save the most lives,” he says. “Right now, migrants have to climb to the top of the highest mountain to get reception, and that’s very difficult. If the beacons have a cell-phone tower and use that ability, I’ll be in favor. Otherwise, it’s just a PR thing.”
The U.S. Border Patrol and local Arizona humanitarian groups have a checkered history. In the past, Border Patrol agents have ticketed humanitarian volunteers for littering after volunteers left water bottles and food out for migrants. Videos also exist of Border Patrol agents destroying the water and other provisions left out by the humanitarian groups.
Right now, relationships between the aid groups and the Border Patrol seem better, Johnston says. He attributes the improvement to Manuel Padilla Jr., who became the Tucson sector Border Patrol chief earlier this year.
“At the moment, the sector chief is sympathetic to our cause,” Johnston says. “Still, water is being destroyed. Blankets are still being taken away.”
Rubio-Goldsmith, who has studied the interaction between U.S. Border Patrol agents and border communities, says the Border Patrol has the difficult task of balancing justice and mercy.
“Border Patrol doesn’t like people going through their land, yet Border Patrol is there and they are supposed to help,” she says. “How they respond is kind of a mixed bag.”
Ballistrea says the Tucson sector Border Patrol maintains an “ongoing dialogue with multiple humanitarian groups.”
In instances where migrants coming into the country illegally become distressed, Border Patrol agents must “first and foremost act as humanitarians,” she says.
“Employees who disregard (their oath) and instead choose to violate the trust of the citizens they swore to protect will be held accountable,” she says. “Although (Border Patrol and humanitarian groups) may originate from different backgrounds, we share a common goal in saving lives. Agents are often called upon to shift from law enforcement to rescue mode in a moment’s notice.”
The best way to reform immigration policy is to work on economic policies affecting migrant workers and focus on the root motivator for why so many Mexican immigrants come to the U.S., Lefebvre says.
“There has always been a flow between the U.S. and Mexico,” he says. “People accepted that as a fact of life. Until 1994, (policies) were loose most of the time. When there was a tough economy, there were restrictions. When we needed workers, we encouraged them to come.”
In the past, workers would come from Mexico to work in the agriculture, construction or hotel industries. They would work for six months to a year, send money home and then go home themselves, Lefebvre says. Some came back and some didn’t.
“They preferred to live in Mexico, but came to the U.S. to save money for their families and for farmland,” he says.
S 744 would reform worker visas, and that change in system could stem the flow of illegal immigration, says Meissner, of the Migration Policy Institute. The bill, if passed, could also lead to more migrant rescues by increasing air surveillance, she says. It could lead to more humanitarian efforts from BorStar. If enforcement continues to increase in Arizona, the bill could shift primary migration patterns to Texas. And yes, she says, it could lead to more migrant deaths in the Arizona desert.
“It’s probably some of all of the above,” she says. “But, Border Patrol is quite successful at this point. Adding more policy on border enforcement doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, because border enforcement alone is not a viable enough strategy.”
http://cronkitenewsonline.com/2013/12/deaths-will-continue-with-or-without-immigration-reform/
Showing posts with label No More Deaths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label No More Deaths. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Mock border wall blocks Mall
Arizona Daily Wildcat
March 22, 2011
by Brenna Goth
UA clubs are trying to raise awareness about border issues by disturbing students' daily routines.
The club No Más Muertes/No More Deaths erected a barbed-wire fence running nearly 1,000 feet along the south side of the UA Mall on Monday. The project, titled "Wall to Wall — Concrete Connections/Conexiones Concretas," will remain in place until March 31.
The wall represents the border between the United States and Mexico as well as the wall between Israel and Palestine on the Palestinian West Bank, according to Gabriel Schivone, coordinator of No Más Muertes/No More Deaths and former Daily Wildcat columnist. The focus is on these two areas because they are funded by the United States, he said.
The wall is decorated with informational posters, signs with phrases such as "One World Unbordered," and items including backpacks and gloves. Some students may be inconvenienced by the wall when trying to cross the Mall and walk to class.
"(We are) wanting to create a crisis on campus to force the community to confront the issues that are so easily ignored and create a space to discuss these issues," said Schivone, a UA student studying English.
No Más Muertes/No More Deaths raised money through grants, departmental donations and private donations to pay for the project. Campus organizations including the Women's Resource Center, Students for Justice in Palestine and the Social Justice League also sponsored sections of the wall.
"(The funds) actually came from our poor pockets," said Daniel Curiel, vice president of No Más Muertes/No More Deaths. "It's something we're passionate about and think it's an educational thing."
Planning for the wall began about eight months ago, according to Schivone. The idea came from the 300-foot wall erected by Chicano/Hispano Student Affairs a few years ago, he said.
Schivone said No Más Muertes/No More Deaths created the mock border with the idea that these walls dehumanize people and separate communities.
"We don't have to (represent both sides of the issue) and we didn't," Schivone said. "All of the allies are opposing the wall in general and barriers of all sorts."
Schivone said he thinks awareness of border issues is low on the UA campus.
"Nonetheless, I think people would care and are compassionate," he said. "If presented with this information, I think they would act."
The disruption created by the wall will help inform students, said Curiel, a junior studying history and political science.
"It's right smack-dab in the middle," he said. "Some people will be upset and bothered by it because they have to walk around. But (the border is) a reality people live with."
Avoiding the wall when walking to class will be irritating after 10 days, said Kaitlin Morris, a pre-physiology freshman.
"I have to walk around," she said. "I always cut through the grass. I'm lazy."
Morris said she read the posters after seeing the wall and thinks it is important to raise issues surrounding the border.
"People can say whatever they want," she said. "They always have stuff out here (on the Mall)."
Biosystems engineering junior Maria Guzman said she has visited the border between the United States and Mexico and thinks students already know about the issues.
"Everybody's aware in Arizona," Guzman said. "We're close to the border. If you're not aware, you're living under a rock."
The wall will continue to be decorated with items and information throughout the next 10 days. Schivone said he hopes students' frustration will cause them to take notice.
"It may be irritating, inconvenient and disruptive to daily life, but that's what walls do," he said.
http://wildcat.arizona.edu/news/mock-border-wall-blocks-mall-1.2118450
March 22, 2011
by Brenna Goth
UA clubs are trying to raise awareness about border issues by disturbing students' daily routines.
The club No Más Muertes/No More Deaths erected a barbed-wire fence running nearly 1,000 feet along the south side of the UA Mall on Monday. The project, titled "Wall to Wall — Concrete Connections/Conexiones Concretas," will remain in place until March 31.
The wall represents the border between the United States and Mexico as well as the wall between Israel and Palestine on the Palestinian West Bank, according to Gabriel Schivone, coordinator of No Más Muertes/No More Deaths and former Daily Wildcat columnist. The focus is on these two areas because they are funded by the United States, he said.
The wall is decorated with informational posters, signs with phrases such as "One World Unbordered," and items including backpacks and gloves. Some students may be inconvenienced by the wall when trying to cross the Mall and walk to class.
"(We are) wanting to create a crisis on campus to force the community to confront the issues that are so easily ignored and create a space to discuss these issues," said Schivone, a UA student studying English.
No Más Muertes/No More Deaths raised money through grants, departmental donations and private donations to pay for the project. Campus organizations including the Women's Resource Center, Students for Justice in Palestine and the Social Justice League also sponsored sections of the wall.
"(The funds) actually came from our poor pockets," said Daniel Curiel, vice president of No Más Muertes/No More Deaths. "It's something we're passionate about and think it's an educational thing."
Planning for the wall began about eight months ago, according to Schivone. The idea came from the 300-foot wall erected by Chicano/Hispano Student Affairs a few years ago, he said.
Schivone said No Más Muertes/No More Deaths created the mock border with the idea that these walls dehumanize people and separate communities.
"We don't have to (represent both sides of the issue) and we didn't," Schivone said. "All of the allies are opposing the wall in general and barriers of all sorts."
Schivone said he thinks awareness of border issues is low on the UA campus.
"Nonetheless, I think people would care and are compassionate," he said. "If presented with this information, I think they would act."
The disruption created by the wall will help inform students, said Curiel, a junior studying history and political science.
"It's right smack-dab in the middle," he said. "Some people will be upset and bothered by it because they have to walk around. But (the border is) a reality people live with."
Avoiding the wall when walking to class will be irritating after 10 days, said Kaitlin Morris, a pre-physiology freshman.
"I have to walk around," she said. "I always cut through the grass. I'm lazy."
Morris said she read the posters after seeing the wall and thinks it is important to raise issues surrounding the border.
"People can say whatever they want," she said. "They always have stuff out here (on the Mall)."
Biosystems engineering junior Maria Guzman said she has visited the border between the United States and Mexico and thinks students already know about the issues.
"Everybody's aware in Arizona," Guzman said. "We're close to the border. If you're not aware, you're living under a rock."
The wall will continue to be decorated with items and information throughout the next 10 days. Schivone said he hopes students' frustration will cause them to take notice.
"It may be irritating, inconvenient and disruptive to daily life, but that's what walls do," he said.
http://wildcat.arizona.edu/news/mock-border-wall-blocks-mall-1.2118450
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
July proved deadly month for migrants
Arizona Daily Star
August 3, 2010
by Brady McCombs
July was the second-deadliest month on record for illegal immigrants crossing in Southern Arizona, with 59 bodies ending up at the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office.
The month's total ranks second only to the 69 deaths recorded by the office in July 2005.
The death toll began early in the month and continued at such a fast pace the office had to bring in additional storage space to house the bodies.
• On July 2, the office handled the bodies of five illegal immigrants who died in Arizona's desert.
• Thirteen more bodies came in over the next eight days. Then, six July 11 and four more bodies a day later.
• July 15 was the worst day, with seven bodies: five men and two women.
The deadly month brings the calendar year-to-date total through July for the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office to 153, ahead of the past two years at the same time and only slightly behind the 159 handled through the same date in the 2007, a record-breaking year.
"I hope that people - no matter which side of the immigration debate they are on - agree that individuals dying in our community is an absolute tragedy and that something needs to be done about," said Kat Rodriguez of Coalición de Derechos Humanos.
The Medical Examiner's Office has handled the bodies of more than 1,650 illegal border crossers found since 2001 on the Tohono O'odham Nation, and in Pima, Santa Cruz and Pinal counties.
The Cochise County Medical Examiner's Office reported two bodies in July, bringing its yearly total to 19, compared with 21 at the same time last year.
More than two-thirds of the dead illegal immigrants who ended up at the Pima County office this past month had died recently, said Dr. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner. All but nine were men, and 46 of the 59 remained unidentified.
The busy month filled the medical examiner's two refrigerated storage spaces, prompting officials to put a 55-foot refrigerated trailer in service to house additional bodies, Parks said.
It's difficult to track exactly how much taxpayer money is spent handling the illegal border crossers because the 27 employees fit the recoveries, autopsies and investigations in with the rest of their work. One way to estimate is by multiplying the average cost of an autopsy, about $2,000, times the number of bodies, which this year would total $306,000.
It's unclear exactly why this July was so deadly, but heat obviously was a factor: At least 32 of the 59 people died from hyperthermia or exposure to the heat, medical examiner records show. Most of the other causes of death are pending or undetermined.
In terms of the average temperature recorded at Tucson International Airport, July was the seventh-warmest on record for the metro area, said meteorologist John Glueck of the National Weather Service. The month also had 18 days of 100 degrees or higher temperatures in Tucson, with the highs in the desert usually much hotter than the recorded highs in Tucson.
The increase in deaths doesn't track with the Border Patrol's apprehensions, which are down for the sixth straight year. Agents in the Tucson Sector made 184,000 apprehensions from Oct. 1 through June 30, compared with 185,500 at the same time last fiscal year, said Border Patrol spokesman Omar Candelaria. The agency didn't have figures through July available yet.
The Border Patrol believes these numbers show fewer people are crossing, Candelaria said. With 3,200 permanent agents and 400 more here temporarily from other sectors, the agency has more areas under control than before, he said.
Many experts believe the massive buildup of agents, fences and technology along Arizona's stretch of U.S.-Mexico border has forced illegal immigrants into walking longer distances in more treacherous terrain.
"People are being pushed into more and more isolated areas," Rodriguez said.
Candelaria agrees that illegal immigrants are crossing in more remote areas because of the increased presence. "The smugglers are trying to find the places where we are not at," he said.
But the blame should be on the smugglers, not the Border Patrol, he said.
"To lay the blame on the Border Patrol for this is just not right," Candelaria said. "What we are doing is to protect the nation. The smugglers are the ones taking them to these far-out areas and not preparing them."
The Border Patrol - with 48 agents assigned to its search, trauma and rescue team and 200 others who are trained EMTs - has rescued 390 illegal border crossers in the Tucson Sector from Oct. 1 to June 30. That's up from the 300 rescued through the same time period the year before.
With one of the hottest months over and rain more frequent, the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office hopes the death toll will slow, although there have already been two bodies brought in during the first two days of August.
"It will slow down," Parks said. "I can't imagine it getting any worse."
On StarNet: Search an online database of people who have died attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, at go.azstarnet.com/borderdeaths
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/article_e2da2bc8-9e08-55a5-bce6-bd16db7f3599.html
August 3, 2010
by Brady McCombs
July was the second-deadliest month on record for illegal immigrants crossing in Southern Arizona, with 59 bodies ending up at the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office.
The month's total ranks second only to the 69 deaths recorded by the office in July 2005.
The death toll began early in the month and continued at such a fast pace the office had to bring in additional storage space to house the bodies.
• On July 2, the office handled the bodies of five illegal immigrants who died in Arizona's desert.
• Thirteen more bodies came in over the next eight days. Then, six July 11 and four more bodies a day later.
• July 15 was the worst day, with seven bodies: five men and two women.
The deadly month brings the calendar year-to-date total through July for the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office to 153, ahead of the past two years at the same time and only slightly behind the 159 handled through the same date in the 2007, a record-breaking year.
"I hope that people - no matter which side of the immigration debate they are on - agree that individuals dying in our community is an absolute tragedy and that something needs to be done about," said Kat Rodriguez of Coalición de Derechos Humanos.
The Medical Examiner's Office has handled the bodies of more than 1,650 illegal border crossers found since 2001 on the Tohono O'odham Nation, and in Pima, Santa Cruz and Pinal counties.
The Cochise County Medical Examiner's Office reported two bodies in July, bringing its yearly total to 19, compared with 21 at the same time last year.
More than two-thirds of the dead illegal immigrants who ended up at the Pima County office this past month had died recently, said Dr. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner. All but nine were men, and 46 of the 59 remained unidentified.
The busy month filled the medical examiner's two refrigerated storage spaces, prompting officials to put a 55-foot refrigerated trailer in service to house additional bodies, Parks said.
It's difficult to track exactly how much taxpayer money is spent handling the illegal border crossers because the 27 employees fit the recoveries, autopsies and investigations in with the rest of their work. One way to estimate is by multiplying the average cost of an autopsy, about $2,000, times the number of bodies, which this year would total $306,000.
It's unclear exactly why this July was so deadly, but heat obviously was a factor: At least 32 of the 59 people died from hyperthermia or exposure to the heat, medical examiner records show. Most of the other causes of death are pending or undetermined.
In terms of the average temperature recorded at Tucson International Airport, July was the seventh-warmest on record for the metro area, said meteorologist John Glueck of the National Weather Service. The month also had 18 days of 100 degrees or higher temperatures in Tucson, with the highs in the desert usually much hotter than the recorded highs in Tucson.
The increase in deaths doesn't track with the Border Patrol's apprehensions, which are down for the sixth straight year. Agents in the Tucson Sector made 184,000 apprehensions from Oct. 1 through June 30, compared with 185,500 at the same time last fiscal year, said Border Patrol spokesman Omar Candelaria. The agency didn't have figures through July available yet.
The Border Patrol believes these numbers show fewer people are crossing, Candelaria said. With 3,200 permanent agents and 400 more here temporarily from other sectors, the agency has more areas under control than before, he said.
Many experts believe the massive buildup of agents, fences and technology along Arizona's stretch of U.S.-Mexico border has forced illegal immigrants into walking longer distances in more treacherous terrain.
"People are being pushed into more and more isolated areas," Rodriguez said.
Candelaria agrees that illegal immigrants are crossing in more remote areas because of the increased presence. "The smugglers are trying to find the places where we are not at," he said.
But the blame should be on the smugglers, not the Border Patrol, he said.
"To lay the blame on the Border Patrol for this is just not right," Candelaria said. "What we are doing is to protect the nation. The smugglers are the ones taking them to these far-out areas and not preparing them."
The Border Patrol - with 48 agents assigned to its search, trauma and rescue team and 200 others who are trained EMTs - has rescued 390 illegal border crossers in the Tucson Sector from Oct. 1 to June 30. That's up from the 300 rescued through the same time period the year before.
With one of the hottest months over and rain more frequent, the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office hopes the death toll will slow, although there have already been two bodies brought in during the first two days of August.
"It will slow down," Parks said. "I can't imagine it getting any worse."
On StarNet: Search an online database of people who have died attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, at go.azstarnet.com/borderdeaths
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/article_e2da2bc8-9e08-55a5-bce6-bd16db7f3599.html
Friday, July 16, 2010
July migrant deaths could set record
Arizona Daily Star
July 16, 2010
by Brady McCombs
Illegal border crossers are dying at record rates this month.
Since July 1, the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office has handled the bodies of 38 illegal border crossers, said Dr. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner. That midmonth total puts July on pace to match or break the single-month record of 68 in July 2005.
"I never thought we would see that again," Parks said. "It's scary. Maybe the rain will slow these down."
Parks said his office has been picking up and examining between one and four bodies of illegal immigrants daily since the beginning of the month. Field agents were on their way to pick up four more bodies Thursday, he said. Most of the people are being found recently deceased.
The deadly month puts 2010 even further ahead of the pace from the past three years. From Jan. 1 to July 15, the office has handled 132 bodies of illegal border crossers, up from 93 at the same time last year and 102 in 2008.
It's been a deadly decade for illegal immigrants trying to cross through Arizona. The bodies of more than 1,750 men, women and children have been discovered since 2001 - about 175 a year.
The Pima County Medical Examiner's Office has handled about 1,600 of them.
The fact that the deaths continue at such high numbers despite widespread indications that fewer people are crossing the border has led many experts to conclude that illegal border crossers face a deadlier trek than ever across Arizona's desert.
Apprehensions in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector have decreased each of the past five years; remittances to Mexico have declined and anecdotal reports show the economic recession has slowed illegal immigration. Yet more people are dying than ever.
Border-county law enforcement, Mexican consular officials, Tohono O'odham tribal officials and humanitarian groups say the buildup of border fencing, technology and agents has caused illegal border crossers to walk longer distances in more treacherous terrain, increasing the likelihood that people will get hurt or fatigued and left behind to die.
The Border Patrol disagrees that it's pushing illegal immigrants into more hazardous terrain and points to its rescue efforts as evidence that its presence prevents deaths rather than causes them.
http://azstarnet.com/article_a9828263-acfd-553c-b247-da12c5ae8d9a.html
July 16, 2010
by Brady McCombs
Illegal border crossers are dying at record rates this month.
Since July 1, the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office has handled the bodies of 38 illegal border crossers, said Dr. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner. That midmonth total puts July on pace to match or break the single-month record of 68 in July 2005.
"I never thought we would see that again," Parks said. "It's scary. Maybe the rain will slow these down."
Parks said his office has been picking up and examining between one and four bodies of illegal immigrants daily since the beginning of the month. Field agents were on their way to pick up four more bodies Thursday, he said. Most of the people are being found recently deceased.
The deadly month puts 2010 even further ahead of the pace from the past three years. From Jan. 1 to July 15, the office has handled 132 bodies of illegal border crossers, up from 93 at the same time last year and 102 in 2008.
It's been a deadly decade for illegal immigrants trying to cross through Arizona. The bodies of more than 1,750 men, women and children have been discovered since 2001 - about 175 a year.
The Pima County Medical Examiner's Office has handled about 1,600 of them.
The fact that the deaths continue at such high numbers despite widespread indications that fewer people are crossing the border has led many experts to conclude that illegal border crossers face a deadlier trek than ever across Arizona's desert.
Apprehensions in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector have decreased each of the past five years; remittances to Mexico have declined and anecdotal reports show the economic recession has slowed illegal immigration. Yet more people are dying than ever.
Border-county law enforcement, Mexican consular officials, Tohono O'odham tribal officials and humanitarian groups say the buildup of border fencing, technology and agents has caused illegal border crossers to walk longer distances in more treacherous terrain, increasing the likelihood that people will get hurt or fatigued and left behind to die.
The Border Patrol disagrees that it's pushing illegal immigrants into more hazardous terrain and points to its rescue efforts as evidence that its presence prevents deaths rather than causes them.
http://azstarnet.com/article_a9828263-acfd-553c-b247-da12c5ae8d9a.html
Friday, March 12, 2010
Border Patrol eyes replacement for downtown fence
Nogales International
March 12, 2010
by Jonathan Clark
New fencing east and west of town is helping to reduce illegal border activity in the local area, Nogales’ top Border Patrol agent said, but it’s also exposing an older stretch of barrier in the downtown area as a weak link in the agency’s line of defense.
In the wake of the construction of two-plus miles of new fencing to Nogales’ west and another nearly eight miles to the east, local Border Patrol agents have seen a 17-percent drop in narcotics seizures and a 15-percent decline in apprehensions during the current fiscal year, said Al White, patrol agent in charge at the Nogales Station, during a meeting of the Border Patrol Citizens’ Advisory Board on Tuesday.
“It’s showing that we’re starting to make a dent,” White said.
But anecdotal evidence suggests a rise in illegal activity along the two-and-three-quarters-mile border fence that runs through the center of town, White said, since wrongdoers have an easier time cutting through and tunneling under the sheets of aircraft landing mat that have separated Ambos Nogales since the late 1980s.
Agents have found more than 240 cuts in the fence since October, and the Nogales station has spent approximately $750,000 on fence repairs during the past year, White said.
“It’s just a constant battle,” he said.
The new sections of local border wall are comprised largely of a series of interconnected, 15-foot-high steel tubes filled with concrete and driven five feet into the ground. Known as bollard fencing, these barriers have only been penetrated twice, White said.
He’d like to replace the landing-mat barrier with bollard fencing, not only because the landing mats are easier to cut, but also because the solid slabs block water runoff and create impediments and hazards for agents.
“You can’t see someone with a torch, you can’t see someone with a rock,” he said.
Even so, a replacement fence for central Nogales is likely to remain on the Border Patrol’s wish list for the near future. White estimates that the project would cost up to $7 million, and the Nogales Station’s budget has already been reduced by 18.5 percent for the current fiscal year. He said he’s not willing to reduce personnel or cut other essential expenditures to fund the effort.
“We’re going to be living with (the landing-mat fence) a little bit longer,” he said.
Terry Shannon Jr. , who runs a customs brokerage firm one block from the landing-mat fence in downtown Nogales, said he hadn’t noticed any recent increase in illegal activity in the area. Shannon says he considers the downtown area to be one of the city’s safest spots, thanks to the large number of law-enforcement agents on duty there.
Still, he favored the idea of a replacement fence, largely for aesthetic reasons.
“As far as the landing-mat fence is concerned, anything would be better than that,” he said. “It looks like something out of the ‘MASH’ movie.”
A better-looking fence could help improve the image of Nogales and make the city more appealing to tourists, Shannon said.
But Sarah Roberts of the humanitarian group No More Deaths doubted the effectiveness of a new border wall and said a new, more impenetrable barrier in central Nogales would only serve to drive migrants further out into the dangerous surrounding areas.
“It’s another example of deterrence through death,” she said.
http://www.nogalesinternational.com/articles/2010/03/12/news/doc4b9a5e2b64a35729263502.txt
March 12, 2010
by Jonathan Clark
New fencing east and west of town is helping to reduce illegal border activity in the local area, Nogales’ top Border Patrol agent said, but it’s also exposing an older stretch of barrier in the downtown area as a weak link in the agency’s line of defense.
In the wake of the construction of two-plus miles of new fencing to Nogales’ west and another nearly eight miles to the east, local Border Patrol agents have seen a 17-percent drop in narcotics seizures and a 15-percent decline in apprehensions during the current fiscal year, said Al White, patrol agent in charge at the Nogales Station, during a meeting of the Border Patrol Citizens’ Advisory Board on Tuesday.
“It’s showing that we’re starting to make a dent,” White said.
But anecdotal evidence suggests a rise in illegal activity along the two-and-three-quarters-mile border fence that runs through the center of town, White said, since wrongdoers have an easier time cutting through and tunneling under the sheets of aircraft landing mat that have separated Ambos Nogales since the late 1980s.
Agents have found more than 240 cuts in the fence since October, and the Nogales station has spent approximately $750,000 on fence repairs during the past year, White said.
“It’s just a constant battle,” he said.
The new sections of local border wall are comprised largely of a series of interconnected, 15-foot-high steel tubes filled with concrete and driven five feet into the ground. Known as bollard fencing, these barriers have only been penetrated twice, White said.
He’d like to replace the landing-mat barrier with bollard fencing, not only because the landing mats are easier to cut, but also because the solid slabs block water runoff and create impediments and hazards for agents.
“You can’t see someone with a torch, you can’t see someone with a rock,” he said.
Even so, a replacement fence for central Nogales is likely to remain on the Border Patrol’s wish list for the near future. White estimates that the project would cost up to $7 million, and the Nogales Station’s budget has already been reduced by 18.5 percent for the current fiscal year. He said he’s not willing to reduce personnel or cut other essential expenditures to fund the effort.
“We’re going to be living with (the landing-mat fence) a little bit longer,” he said.
Terry Shannon Jr. , who runs a customs brokerage firm one block from the landing-mat fence in downtown Nogales, said he hadn’t noticed any recent increase in illegal activity in the area. Shannon says he considers the downtown area to be one of the city’s safest spots, thanks to the large number of law-enforcement agents on duty there.
Still, he favored the idea of a replacement fence, largely for aesthetic reasons.
“As far as the landing-mat fence is concerned, anything would be better than that,” he said. “It looks like something out of the ‘MASH’ movie.”
A better-looking fence could help improve the image of Nogales and make the city more appealing to tourists, Shannon said.
But Sarah Roberts of the humanitarian group No More Deaths doubted the effectiveness of a new border wall and said a new, more impenetrable barrier in central Nogales would only serve to drive migrants further out into the dangerous surrounding areas.
“It’s another example of deterrence through death,” she said.
http://www.nogalesinternational.com/articles/2010/03/12/news/doc4b9a5e2b64a35729263502.txt
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Unusually wet Arizona winter leads to more illegal immigrant border deaths
February 13, 2010
Associated Press / Los Angeles Times
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — An unusually wet winter in Arizona this year has been lethal for illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into the United States, with nine people dying from hypothermia since November.
The same number of immigrants died of hypothermia during the previous three winters combined.
"When you are wet, your risk is a lot higher," said Dr. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner at the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office. "Wet clothing takes the heat away from the body. You've lost that insulation — your body can't react."
The 2.1 inches of rain that fell in Tucson in January made it the eighth-wettest January in Arizona's recorded history, and the wettest since 1993, according to the National Weather Service. And the 0.6 inches of rainfall through the first 10 days of February is nearly double the average for those days, said Ken Drozd of the National Weather Service.
During one particularly wet week in January, the bodies of three illegal immigrants who died of hypothermia were found.
Among them was Enrique Zapata Senduo, a 47-year-old Mexican who died in a pool of muddy water under a cottonwood tree in the desert southwest of Picacho Peak, about 75 miles southeast of Phoenix.
A rancher discovered his soaking-wet body in the late morning on Jan. 26. Zapata left his hometown of Mazatlan, Sinaloa, on Jan. 13 and planned to cross the border near Sasabe illegally, meaning he was likely out in the desert during the rainy days of Jan. 20-23, when nearly 2 inches fell in southern Arizona.
It's possible other illegal border crossers also have died from the cold this year or past years, but the cause of death often can't be determined due to the conditions of the bodies.
This winter, for instance, the cause of death of 32 of the first 57 bodies was undetermined, according to the Arizona Daily Star's border-death database. The database is compiled using information from the Pima and Cochise County medical examiners' offices.
Despite an estimated slowdown in illegal crossings, the number of bodies found continues at the same or higher levels. The 60 bodies found from Nov. 1-Feb. 12 mark a 58 percent increase from the same period last year and are more than in any of the previous five years.
Border authorities and humanitarian groups attribute the increase in deaths to the buildup of agents and border fences, which cause immigrants to walk longer distances in more treacherous terrain.
"They are staying up in the mountains longer than they ever have before," said Gene Lefebvre, a member of No More Deaths, a humanitarian group. "That means they are more likely to get injured or exhausted."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-immigration-winter,0,2799004.story
Associated Press / Los Angeles Times
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — An unusually wet winter in Arizona this year has been lethal for illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into the United States, with nine people dying from hypothermia since November.
The same number of immigrants died of hypothermia during the previous three winters combined.
"When you are wet, your risk is a lot higher," said Dr. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner at the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office. "Wet clothing takes the heat away from the body. You've lost that insulation — your body can't react."
The 2.1 inches of rain that fell in Tucson in January made it the eighth-wettest January in Arizona's recorded history, and the wettest since 1993, according to the National Weather Service. And the 0.6 inches of rainfall through the first 10 days of February is nearly double the average for those days, said Ken Drozd of the National Weather Service.
During one particularly wet week in January, the bodies of three illegal immigrants who died of hypothermia were found.
Among them was Enrique Zapata Senduo, a 47-year-old Mexican who died in a pool of muddy water under a cottonwood tree in the desert southwest of Picacho Peak, about 75 miles southeast of Phoenix.
A rancher discovered his soaking-wet body in the late morning on Jan. 26. Zapata left his hometown of Mazatlan, Sinaloa, on Jan. 13 and planned to cross the border near Sasabe illegally, meaning he was likely out in the desert during the rainy days of Jan. 20-23, when nearly 2 inches fell in southern Arizona.
It's possible other illegal border crossers also have died from the cold this year or past years, but the cause of death often can't be determined due to the conditions of the bodies.
This winter, for instance, the cause of death of 32 of the first 57 bodies was undetermined, according to the Arizona Daily Star's border-death database. The database is compiled using information from the Pima and Cochise County medical examiners' offices.
Despite an estimated slowdown in illegal crossings, the number of bodies found continues at the same or higher levels. The 60 bodies found from Nov. 1-Feb. 12 mark a 58 percent increase from the same period last year and are more than in any of the previous five years.
Border authorities and humanitarian groups attribute the increase in deaths to the buildup of agents and border fences, which cause immigrants to walk longer distances in more treacherous terrain.
"They are staying up in the mountains longer than they ever have before," said Gene Lefebvre, a member of No More Deaths, a humanitarian group. "That means they are more likely to get injured or exhausted."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-immigration-winter,0,2799004.story
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Disorder on the Border: Trashing the Law in the Name of Immigration Deterrence
Common Dreams
September 8, 2009
by Randall Amster
In two recent criminal cases in the United States, defendants received similar sentences for very different sorts of actions. In the first, a young man was convicted of negligent homicide for texting while driving and killing two scientists in the process. The New York Times reported on the case and the sentence meted out to the young man:
"He pleaded guilty to two counts of negligent homicide, but his record will be cleared if he fulfills the sentence imposed by the judge. It included 30 days in jail, 200 hours of community service, and a requirement that he read Les Misérables to learn, like the book's character Jean Valjean, how to make a contribution to society."
In the second case, another young man received a sentence of 300 hours of community service, one year of probation, and a one-year ban from a large swath of land on the U.S.-Mexico border. His crime? Leaving jugs of water in the desert for would-be border crossers, in an attempt to help prevent deaths. Walt Staton, 27, was convicted in June of this year and sentenced in August on federal littering charges in an absurd scenario reminiscent of something straight out of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant":
"And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n ugly 'n nasty 'n horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, 'Kid, whad'ya get?' I said, 'I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage.' He said, 'What were you arrested for, kid?' And I said, 'Littering.' And they all moved away from me on the bench there...."
The prosecution in Staton's case had actually pushed for five years of probation and a $5000 fine, arguing (as reported on CNN.com) that he had "knowingly littered" and that the inscription on the plastic jugs of "buena suerte" ("good luck") evidenced an intention "to aid illegal aliens in their entry attempt." The prosecution's Sentencing Memorandum went further in its rhetoric, making thinly-veiled allusions to themes suggestive of the so-called "war on terror" and fanning the flames of racialized fear-mongering:
"The collateral damage the plastic water jugs cause is also severe. The defendant intended the water jugs to be used by illegal immigrants crossing through the [Buenos Aires National Wildlife] Refuge. His intent and purpose was to give the illegal immigrant the capability to go further into the interior of the country, and into the Refuge.... The defendant left full, plastic water jugs on the Refuge with the intent to aid illegal immigrant traffic. This enhances the range of illegal immigrants and other smuggling activity by sustaining their efforts to move further north. This is evidenced by exhibit 4, in which [Border Patrol Agent] Baron states that he has seen water jugs discarded in the northern section of the Refuge. He also makes clear that not all illegal immigrant traffic are people whose sole purpose is to find a better life in the United States. Many of them are drug smugglers and, according to exhibit 5, approximately 16% of illegal aliens arrested have significant criminal histories, to include murder, assault, rape, and sexual offenses with minors. These are the people that the defendant intended to assist when he committed the offense on December 4, 2008. Instead of targeting people with a legitimate medical need, he haphazardly left water for illegal aliens, drug smugglers and/or dangerous felons, all of whom are in the country without permission...."
Recall that the charge in this case was littering, not aiding and abetting or drug smuggling or terrorism. These sorts of rhetorical and juridical machinations undermine the spirit of the law, if not the letter of it, and create untenable outcomes in which homicide and littering are given comparable sentences. Moreover, it is estimated that the U.S. government spent at least $50,000 (a figure that the prosecution did not dispute) to try Staton, a clean-cut young man who was described by the LA Times as a "web designer and soup kitchen volunteer [who has worked] for five years with the faith-based aid group No More Deaths" (NMD), promoting humanitarian relief in the perilous desert "during often-sweltering days, offering food, water and medical help to anyone they find." Spurred by repeated abuses of migrants and the deaths of thousands of border crossers, NMD formed in 2004 with volunteers from among diverse faith communities, social activist groups, and concerned individuals like Staton. In the Tucson sector alone this year, it is estimated that nearly 200 people may have died trying to cross the border.
Now beginning seminary school at the Claremont School of Theology in California, Staton was characterized by his lawyer Bill Walker as "the kind of guy you'd want to have as your next door neighbor." Indeed, I first met Staton when we traveled to New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina as part of a grassroots group seeking to provide food and assistance to the people of the region. Staton's positive outlook, good humor, and dedication to human rights were integral to the ability of our small group of volunteers being able to make our way into the storm-ravaged region and set up relief networks for people who had been ignored by the official organizations. As with most of NMD's volunteers, Staton's compassion is genuine and he is willing to place himself at risk to promote respect for the wellbeing of others.
Still, during sentencing the government tried to portray him as an unrepentant criminal who "does not care about the environmental impact of his actions." In response, environmental organizations like the Sierra Club wrote to the judge on Staton's behalf:
"[W]e do not believe that preserving imperiled species and the lands that support them is at odds with the efforts of border humanitarian groups such as No More Deaths. Flooding, erosion, sedimentation, habitat loss and fragmentation all pose legitimate and serious threats to those species we seek to protect. We do not regard individuals leaving jugs of clean water as a comparable threat, or frankly, as much of a threat at all.... The Sierra Club supports the actions of Walt Staton and other humanitarian groups who attempt to save the lives of undocumented migrants in the desert by leaving jugs of clean water at strategic locations along known migrant trails. They later return to check on the water and to remove garbage. These lifesaving actions do not constitute a threat to the environmental integrity of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, but rather are of benefit to it. Mr. Staton is a first-time offender who sought no personal gain in his attempts to save life and remove trash from the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and surrounding areas. A lifelong Arizona resident, longtime humanitarian volunteer and former employee of an Arizona environmental conservation organization, Mr. Staton understands the environmental and humanitarian crisis facing our borderlands. As much leniency as possible would be appropriate when considering a sentence."
The Center for Biological Diversity concurred, in a July 27, 2009 letter to the judge:
"The Center has been particularly alarmed in recent years at the impacts of activities in the borderlands related to illegal immigration. However, we see the problem of trash left along migrant trails to be a relatively minor problem in the grand scheme of things. The pernicious effects of border wall construction and other enforcement activities threaten to sacrifice the integrity of our precious border ecosystems for a policy that not only fails to solve the problem, but in fact demonstrably worsens it. Migrants continue to be pushed further into remote, environmentally sensitive areas such as the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and enforcement activities follow, with disastrous results for border species and habitats. The last thing we wish to see is human rights pitted against environmental concerns in this matter.... We support the work of humanitarian groups and determined volunteers such as Walt Staton who work to save human lives in the midst of the failure of the federal government to produce such a policy reform. We are intimately familiar with the work of No More Deaths, and it is our understanding that they regularly remove more discarded materials from the areas they patrol than they leave behind in the form of life-saving water bottles.... Trash is ephemeral -- it can be cleaned up, as No More Deaths volunteers demonstrate -- and it really is just a small part of the damage being done to our nation's natural resources as a result of a misguided and failed federal policy."
The perversity of federal immigration policy is well-documented on the NMD website and in other places, so I won't belabor it here except to note that the strategy of deterrence that drives both border enforcement and crackdowns on humanitarians is fundamentally flawed. People compelled by immiseration and displacement to seek a better life by risking the one they have in the process are not going to be dissuaded by border walls and stringent punishments. Likewise, those who feel called by faith or humanism to put themselves at risk to help others will not let pretextual littering charges deter them from manifesting their compassion. And so, during the course of Staton's ordeal, thirteen more NMD volunteers were issued littering citations for engaging in the same behavior that had literally resulted in a jug of water being turned into a federal case.
This open defiance actually got the attention of Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and in July a delegation of NMD volunteers met with him in Washington, D.C. "Secretary Salazar came in about 15 minutes after the meeting started and talked about his concern with what's happening to the migrants in the desert," Ed McCullough told the Tucson Weekly. "He said he's had a general concern about immigration problems for a very long time. He also said there were laws among the various government agencies, and anyone proposing what we're proposing would have to work within the law." McCullough said that the volunteers left the meeting feeling "that they wanted to work something out with the humanitarian groups." This led to a proposed Memorandum of Understanding between NMD and the Department of the Interior about the placement of food and water in the desert, but it has not warded off the littering prosecutions currently underway, and the thirteen humanitarian activists are scheduled to be tried in Tucson later this year.
Our legal system contains a provision dating back to the common law that essentially says a violation of the law may be excused in cases where a greater harm is sought to be averted. Called the "necessity defense," the classic example is a person who sees a house on fire and commits a trespass in order to rescue someone from the inferno. In a manner analogous to this textbook illustration, NMD volunteers seek to aid those caught in a metaphorical and literal desert inferno by (at least in the government's eyes) committing the minor offense of littering. Under this basic principle of justice, a small illegal act should be excused in the name of preventing a far greater harm -- so when Secretary Salazar says that the activists should "work within the law," they already are. Forcing them through the gauntlet of American criminal justice is a waste of time, energy, and resources that could be better spent on both the social and environmental issues that pervade U.S. immigration policies.
Walt Staton and his fellow humanitarians working on the border are about the only thing that makes sense in this exercise in absurdity. "The border has been built in the most intentional way to use the desert as a deterrent, as a weapon that has cost thousands of lives," Staton told IPS News in July. The border wall itself may be the most extreme form of environmental degradation in the region, and the collateral damage it yields has resulted in the desert being littered with corpses that have succumbed to the unforgiving terrain. Perhaps those who approved the wall and crafted the proto-genocidal policies of deterrence ought to be charged with "knowingly littering" and/or "negligent homicide," since both crimes apparently carry similar consequences in our Kafkaesque system.
In a world where justice seems to be buried in the bowels of bureaucracy, it is time to finally declare that "humanitarianism is not a crime." What needs to be cleaned up in this case are not merely a few plastic water jugs in the desert, but rather the litter of the law that has brought us to this ominous juncture in the first place.
Randall Amster, J.D., Ph.D., teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College, and is the Executive Director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is Lost In Space: The Criminalization, Globalization, and Urban Ecology of Homelessness (LFB Scholarly 2008).
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/08-2
September 8, 2009
by Randall Amster
In two recent criminal cases in the United States, defendants received similar sentences for very different sorts of actions. In the first, a young man was convicted of negligent homicide for texting while driving and killing two scientists in the process. The New York Times reported on the case and the sentence meted out to the young man:
"He pleaded guilty to two counts of negligent homicide, but his record will be cleared if he fulfills the sentence imposed by the judge. It included 30 days in jail, 200 hours of community service, and a requirement that he read Les Misérables to learn, like the book's character Jean Valjean, how to make a contribution to society."
In the second case, another young man received a sentence of 300 hours of community service, one year of probation, and a one-year ban from a large swath of land on the U.S.-Mexico border. His crime? Leaving jugs of water in the desert for would-be border crossers, in an attempt to help prevent deaths. Walt Staton, 27, was convicted in June of this year and sentenced in August on federal littering charges in an absurd scenario reminiscent of something straight out of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant":
"And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n ugly 'n nasty 'n horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, 'Kid, whad'ya get?' I said, 'I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage.' He said, 'What were you arrested for, kid?' And I said, 'Littering.' And they all moved away from me on the bench there...."
The prosecution in Staton's case had actually pushed for five years of probation and a $5000 fine, arguing (as reported on CNN.com) that he had "knowingly littered" and that the inscription on the plastic jugs of "buena suerte" ("good luck") evidenced an intention "to aid illegal aliens in their entry attempt." The prosecution's Sentencing Memorandum went further in its rhetoric, making thinly-veiled allusions to themes suggestive of the so-called "war on terror" and fanning the flames of racialized fear-mongering:
"The collateral damage the plastic water jugs cause is also severe. The defendant intended the water jugs to be used by illegal immigrants crossing through the [Buenos Aires National Wildlife] Refuge. His intent and purpose was to give the illegal immigrant the capability to go further into the interior of the country, and into the Refuge.... The defendant left full, plastic water jugs on the Refuge with the intent to aid illegal immigrant traffic. This enhances the range of illegal immigrants and other smuggling activity by sustaining their efforts to move further north. This is evidenced by exhibit 4, in which [Border Patrol Agent] Baron states that he has seen water jugs discarded in the northern section of the Refuge. He also makes clear that not all illegal immigrant traffic are people whose sole purpose is to find a better life in the United States. Many of them are drug smugglers and, according to exhibit 5, approximately 16% of illegal aliens arrested have significant criminal histories, to include murder, assault, rape, and sexual offenses with minors. These are the people that the defendant intended to assist when he committed the offense on December 4, 2008. Instead of targeting people with a legitimate medical need, he haphazardly left water for illegal aliens, drug smugglers and/or dangerous felons, all of whom are in the country without permission...."
Recall that the charge in this case was littering, not aiding and abetting or drug smuggling or terrorism. These sorts of rhetorical and juridical machinations undermine the spirit of the law, if not the letter of it, and create untenable outcomes in which homicide and littering are given comparable sentences. Moreover, it is estimated that the U.S. government spent at least $50,000 (a figure that the prosecution did not dispute) to try Staton, a clean-cut young man who was described by the LA Times as a "web designer and soup kitchen volunteer [who has worked] for five years with the faith-based aid group No More Deaths" (NMD), promoting humanitarian relief in the perilous desert "during often-sweltering days, offering food, water and medical help to anyone they find." Spurred by repeated abuses of migrants and the deaths of thousands of border crossers, NMD formed in 2004 with volunteers from among diverse faith communities, social activist groups, and concerned individuals like Staton. In the Tucson sector alone this year, it is estimated that nearly 200 people may have died trying to cross the border.
Now beginning seminary school at the Claremont School of Theology in California, Staton was characterized by his lawyer Bill Walker as "the kind of guy you'd want to have as your next door neighbor." Indeed, I first met Staton when we traveled to New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina as part of a grassroots group seeking to provide food and assistance to the people of the region. Staton's positive outlook, good humor, and dedication to human rights were integral to the ability of our small group of volunteers being able to make our way into the storm-ravaged region and set up relief networks for people who had been ignored by the official organizations. As with most of NMD's volunteers, Staton's compassion is genuine and he is willing to place himself at risk to promote respect for the wellbeing of others.
Still, during sentencing the government tried to portray him as an unrepentant criminal who "does not care about the environmental impact of his actions." In response, environmental organizations like the Sierra Club wrote to the judge on Staton's behalf:
"[W]e do not believe that preserving imperiled species and the lands that support them is at odds with the efforts of border humanitarian groups such as No More Deaths. Flooding, erosion, sedimentation, habitat loss and fragmentation all pose legitimate and serious threats to those species we seek to protect. We do not regard individuals leaving jugs of clean water as a comparable threat, or frankly, as much of a threat at all.... The Sierra Club supports the actions of Walt Staton and other humanitarian groups who attempt to save the lives of undocumented migrants in the desert by leaving jugs of clean water at strategic locations along known migrant trails. They later return to check on the water and to remove garbage. These lifesaving actions do not constitute a threat to the environmental integrity of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, but rather are of benefit to it. Mr. Staton is a first-time offender who sought no personal gain in his attempts to save life and remove trash from the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and surrounding areas. A lifelong Arizona resident, longtime humanitarian volunteer and former employee of an Arizona environmental conservation organization, Mr. Staton understands the environmental and humanitarian crisis facing our borderlands. As much leniency as possible would be appropriate when considering a sentence."
The Center for Biological Diversity concurred, in a July 27, 2009 letter to the judge:
"The Center has been particularly alarmed in recent years at the impacts of activities in the borderlands related to illegal immigration. However, we see the problem of trash left along migrant trails to be a relatively minor problem in the grand scheme of things. The pernicious effects of border wall construction and other enforcement activities threaten to sacrifice the integrity of our precious border ecosystems for a policy that not only fails to solve the problem, but in fact demonstrably worsens it. Migrants continue to be pushed further into remote, environmentally sensitive areas such as the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and enforcement activities follow, with disastrous results for border species and habitats. The last thing we wish to see is human rights pitted against environmental concerns in this matter.... We support the work of humanitarian groups and determined volunteers such as Walt Staton who work to save human lives in the midst of the failure of the federal government to produce such a policy reform. We are intimately familiar with the work of No More Deaths, and it is our understanding that they regularly remove more discarded materials from the areas they patrol than they leave behind in the form of life-saving water bottles.... Trash is ephemeral -- it can be cleaned up, as No More Deaths volunteers demonstrate -- and it really is just a small part of the damage being done to our nation's natural resources as a result of a misguided and failed federal policy."
The perversity of federal immigration policy is well-documented on the NMD website and in other places, so I won't belabor it here except to note that the strategy of deterrence that drives both border enforcement and crackdowns on humanitarians is fundamentally flawed. People compelled by immiseration and displacement to seek a better life by risking the one they have in the process are not going to be dissuaded by border walls and stringent punishments. Likewise, those who feel called by faith or humanism to put themselves at risk to help others will not let pretextual littering charges deter them from manifesting their compassion. And so, during the course of Staton's ordeal, thirteen more NMD volunteers were issued littering citations for engaging in the same behavior that had literally resulted in a jug of water being turned into a federal case.
This open defiance actually got the attention of Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and in July a delegation of NMD volunteers met with him in Washington, D.C. "Secretary Salazar came in about 15 minutes after the meeting started and talked about his concern with what's happening to the migrants in the desert," Ed McCullough told the Tucson Weekly. "He said he's had a general concern about immigration problems for a very long time. He also said there were laws among the various government agencies, and anyone proposing what we're proposing would have to work within the law." McCullough said that the volunteers left the meeting feeling "that they wanted to work something out with the humanitarian groups." This led to a proposed Memorandum of Understanding between NMD and the Department of the Interior about the placement of food and water in the desert, but it has not warded off the littering prosecutions currently underway, and the thirteen humanitarian activists are scheduled to be tried in Tucson later this year.
Our legal system contains a provision dating back to the common law that essentially says a violation of the law may be excused in cases where a greater harm is sought to be averted. Called the "necessity defense," the classic example is a person who sees a house on fire and commits a trespass in order to rescue someone from the inferno. In a manner analogous to this textbook illustration, NMD volunteers seek to aid those caught in a metaphorical and literal desert inferno by (at least in the government's eyes) committing the minor offense of littering. Under this basic principle of justice, a small illegal act should be excused in the name of preventing a far greater harm -- so when Secretary Salazar says that the activists should "work within the law," they already are. Forcing them through the gauntlet of American criminal justice is a waste of time, energy, and resources that could be better spent on both the social and environmental issues that pervade U.S. immigration policies.
Walt Staton and his fellow humanitarians working on the border are about the only thing that makes sense in this exercise in absurdity. "The border has been built in the most intentional way to use the desert as a deterrent, as a weapon that has cost thousands of lives," Staton told IPS News in July. The border wall itself may be the most extreme form of environmental degradation in the region, and the collateral damage it yields has resulted in the desert being littered with corpses that have succumbed to the unforgiving terrain. Perhaps those who approved the wall and crafted the proto-genocidal policies of deterrence ought to be charged with "knowingly littering" and/or "negligent homicide," since both crimes apparently carry similar consequences in our Kafkaesque system.
In a world where justice seems to be buried in the bowels of bureaucracy, it is time to finally declare that "humanitarianism is not a crime." What needs to be cleaned up in this case are not merely a few plastic water jugs in the desert, but rather the litter of the law that has brought us to this ominous juncture in the first place.
Randall Amster, J.D., Ph.D., teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College, and is the Executive Director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is Lost In Space: The Criminalization, Globalization, and Urban Ecology of Homelessness (LFB Scholarly 2008).
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/08-2
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Feds are real borderland scofflaws
Arizona Daily Star
September 2, 2009
by Dan Millis
For the next year, border humanitarian Walt Staton will spend his Saturdays picking up trash. He'll also have regular check-ins with a probation officer, who will make sure he doesn't set foot on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, from which he's been banished.
Thirteen additional No More Deaths border humanitarians accused of littering will be arraigned today.
It is true that environmental destruction along the U.S.-Mexico border has run rampant lately, causing serious, perhaps irreparable, harm to the fragile ecosystems of the borderlands. However, neither Staton's upcoming year of toil, nor the hearings, jury trial or sentencing in federal court that he endured bring us any closer to environmental justice on the border.
They got the wrong guy.
The Sierra Club wrote a letter to the judge on behalf of Staton, voicing its opinion that "we do not believe that preserving imperiled species and the lands that support them is at odds with the efforts of border humanitarian groups."
We know the humanitarians regularly strive to remove as much trash as they can. We in the Sierra Club have come across them and even collaborated with them in our own efforts to clean up the borderlands.
But trash, though an eyesore, is hardly the big issue here. Our borderlands environment is constantly subjected to crimes far more heinous than littering.
If littering is the jaywalking or shoplifting of the borderlands, then the border wall itself is a much more serious crime. And the offenders are still on the loose.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is at the top of the most-wanted list. He used a little-known caveat of the Real ID Act to build hundreds of miles of border wall despite laws that may have prevented it. Among the 36 federal protection laws Chertoff waived like a cowboy hat: the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act.
Flooding, erosion, sedimentation, habitat loss and fragmentation have plagued natural areas along the more than 630 miles of border where barriers and walls now exist. Though inconvenient and ugly, ephemeral border trash poses a much smaller environmental problem than these massive threats to the security of our ecosystems.
If anyone deserves banishment from the Buenos Aires Refuge, it is Chertoff. Photos show a mountain lion blocked by his border wall there, and more than 50 acres of potential habitat for the endangered masked bobwhite quail, for which the refuge was established, have been lost forever in wall construction.
Also preying on border wildlands is South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. He slipped an amendment into the Senate version of the Homeland Security appropriations bill that calls for construction of more than 350 more miles of environmentally devastating border wall. True border environmentalists will do whatever it takes to remove that amendment from the bill in committee, probably late this month.
We hope, but do not anticipate, that Chertoff and DeMint will turn themselves in so that true environmental justice can be served on the border. In the meantime, Staton will be serving their time.
Dan Millis is appealing a September 2008 conviction for littering in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, for which he was given a suspended sentence. His case is separate from that of the No More Deaths group.
http://www.azstarnet.com/opinion/307229
September 2, 2009
by Dan Millis
For the next year, border humanitarian Walt Staton will spend his Saturdays picking up trash. He'll also have regular check-ins with a probation officer, who will make sure he doesn't set foot on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, from which he's been banished.
Thirteen additional No More Deaths border humanitarians accused of littering will be arraigned today.
It is true that environmental destruction along the U.S.-Mexico border has run rampant lately, causing serious, perhaps irreparable, harm to the fragile ecosystems of the borderlands. However, neither Staton's upcoming year of toil, nor the hearings, jury trial or sentencing in federal court that he endured bring us any closer to environmental justice on the border.
They got the wrong guy.
The Sierra Club wrote a letter to the judge on behalf of Staton, voicing its opinion that "we do not believe that preserving imperiled species and the lands that support them is at odds with the efforts of border humanitarian groups."
We know the humanitarians regularly strive to remove as much trash as they can. We in the Sierra Club have come across them and even collaborated with them in our own efforts to clean up the borderlands.
But trash, though an eyesore, is hardly the big issue here. Our borderlands environment is constantly subjected to crimes far more heinous than littering.
If littering is the jaywalking or shoplifting of the borderlands, then the border wall itself is a much more serious crime. And the offenders are still on the loose.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is at the top of the most-wanted list. He used a little-known caveat of the Real ID Act to build hundreds of miles of border wall despite laws that may have prevented it. Among the 36 federal protection laws Chertoff waived like a cowboy hat: the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act.
Flooding, erosion, sedimentation, habitat loss and fragmentation have plagued natural areas along the more than 630 miles of border where barriers and walls now exist. Though inconvenient and ugly, ephemeral border trash poses a much smaller environmental problem than these massive threats to the security of our ecosystems.
If anyone deserves banishment from the Buenos Aires Refuge, it is Chertoff. Photos show a mountain lion blocked by his border wall there, and more than 50 acres of potential habitat for the endangered masked bobwhite quail, for which the refuge was established, have been lost forever in wall construction.
Also preying on border wildlands is South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. He slipped an amendment into the Senate version of the Homeland Security appropriations bill that calls for construction of more than 350 more miles of environmentally devastating border wall. True border environmentalists will do whatever it takes to remove that amendment from the bill in committee, probably late this month.
We hope, but do not anticipate, that Chertoff and DeMint will turn themselves in so that true environmental justice can be served on the border. In the meantime, Staton will be serving their time.
Dan Millis is appealing a September 2008 conviction for littering in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, for which he was given a suspended sentence. His case is separate from that of the No More Deaths group.
http://www.azstarnet.com/opinion/307229
Friday, July 10, 2009
The Activist Question: Tensions between humanitarians and federal officials are on the rise along the border
Tucson Weekly
July 9, 2009
by Tim Vanderpool
This is a place of ghosts. Ask anyone who walks these trails, in the bare-knuckle desert.
July 9, 2009
by Tim Vanderpool
This is a place of ghosts. Ask anyone who walks these trails, in the bare-knuckle desert.
Here among high scrub, south of Arivaca, sunlight glances off water bottles, candy wrappers, tennis shoes, rosaries and a tiny picture of the Virgen de Guadalupe in yellowing, cracked plastic. Such things are hastily abandoned in the headlong passage between life and death, the fate of their owners unknown.
Officially, migrant deaths here each year number in the hundreds. Humanitarians who hike this country call those numbers bullshit. They say the desert is haunted by thousands of unfound dead people. Out here, a corpse gets about two weeks, tops. By then, sun and scavengers have sealed the deal.
A handful of rescue volunteers have come across bodies, but everyone has seen the bones. And in a place where mortality crunches underfoot, folks can get a bit touchy.
Take the feds and the humanitarian outfits. They've never shared much in the way of mutual adoration. Sure, everyone pledges bonhomie—each appreciates the other's "tough job" or "dedication" or "good intentions." But those are just words muttered to reporters. As it happens, the thing keeping them at odds also binds them together: death all around. Death behind that shrub or in that wash, or settled in the shade of that half-buried boulder.
Death is the third partner in a relationship that nobody wants. The humanitarians provide assistance, food and water to migrants. The feds mostly leave them alone to do so.
Until recently.
Over the past couple of years, federal agencies ranging from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management to the Border Patrol have been putting activists under the gun. Consider Kathryn Ferguson. In January 2008, she was arrested while checking migrant trails with the Samaritans group, and held roadside for several hours by Special Agent Bob Ruiz of the Bureau of Land Management. According to Bart Fitzgerald, BLM special agent in charge for Arizona, Ferguson was detained for "acting mysteriously." She was cited for creating a nuisance. On the eve of her trial, that charge was mysteriously dropped. (See "Requiem for an Arrest," Oct. 9, 2008.)
In February 2008, No More Deaths volunteer Dan Millis was cited for littering after he left water jugs for migrants on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge south of Tucson. Two days earlier, he'd come across the body of Josseline Jamileth Hernandez Quinteros, age 14. Josseline made it all the way from El Salvador before death caught her here.
Seven months after Millis found her, he was convicted.
In August 2008, the No More Deaths camp near Arivaca was raided by two dozen Border Patrol agents, some on horseback. They had tracked two migrants to the compound, resulting in an ugly confrontation lasting nearly two hours. The migrants were taken into custody and probably deported.
Water stations long maintained on the Tohono O'odham Nation by a tribal member are removed. The man, a retired member of the military, suspects Border Patrol pressure on the tribe to shut down his stations.
In December 2008, No More Deaths volunteer Walt Staton, like Millis, was cited for littering on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. It was a Border Patrol agent who spotted Staton putting out sealed water jugs and alerted refuge officers.
These showdowns aren't limited to Arizona. Earlier this year, Border Patrol agents near San Diego detained a Methodist minister attempting to give communion through the border fence. It made great material for the nightly news.
But to Bill Walker, it's all a bit perplexing. He's the Tucson attorney who handled Ferguson's case, and currently represents convicted litterers Millis and Staton.
"There is clearly a pattern of increased activity by the government against humanitarian groups," Walker says. "I can't understand why. I see no justification for it. It diverts significant resources from the prosecution of other crimes."
He estimates the federal government spent more than $50,000 to convict Staton. Even more troubling, says Walker, is that Staton's case represents a clear escalation. "Just to give you an example of the heightened scrutiny, Dan Millis was prosecuted first, in front of a magistrate for an administrative violation. They charged him with littering, and that's (up to) a six-month penalty. The magistrate in that case found him guilty but suspended the fine (and sentence)."
He says the government had an attorney and three agents working the Millis case, "and must have spent $20,000 or $30,000.
"Now they charge the second guy, Walt Staton, and they up the ante on it. They don't charge him with littering; they charge him with 'knowingly littering.' That means the potential penalty for him is a year in jail. A prosecutor, the agents that have to come in, empanelling a jury—all this stuff to prosecute a guy for putting out water in the desert for migrants."
Wyn Hornbuckle is a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for Arizona. He says it's impossible to calculate the costs of convicting Staton. "But as for the merits of this particular case, having a unanimous jury verdict speaks for itself."
Here's what it says: Heads-up, all you potential litterers!
Confrontation has taken a different tact in California. Friendship Park is a venerated border meeting ground where binational friends and family have long shared chats or picnics through the fence, in the San Diego area. At least that's how it was until February, when Border Patrol agents sealed off the park for construction of a secondary border wall.
The closure prompted a protest by more than 100 park fans, who strode right into a barricade of Border Patrol vehicles. The scent of violence was heavy—and before it cleared, a Methodist minister named John Fanestil had been detained. During the protest, he led an ecumenical service, complete with a choir.
Fanestil says Border Patrol officers unnecessarily ratcheted up tensions during that bitter standoff. "They're claiming the land between those two walls as their 'theater of operations,'" he says, "and using the same tactics they've been trained to use on people entering the United States illegally from Mexico. But all of a sudden, they aren't facing south; they're facing north, and their tactics are really beyond the pale for dealing with nonviolent activists."
He recalls one female agent who threatened to spray a protester in the face—although the man was on crutches. "She told him to go ahead (and try to reach the park), because she was a pretty good shot."
A video of the incident shows the Border Patrol pushing Fanestil back as he tried to serve communion. "There's also an agent pointing a gun at one of our guys and saying, 'Go ahead, make my day,'" he says. "It was one of those kinds of things."
But Fanestil believes there's a darker subtext to this melee.
"The Border Patrol is really trying to lock down the borderlands near the fence," he says, "and prohibit access of any kind. In fact, they refer to people who would enter that area as 'clutter.' Their dream is of an uncluttered theater of operations."
Back in Washington, D.C., Assistant Chief Mike Reilly of the Border Patrol dismisses Fanestil's claims. "At the Border Patrol Academy, we get riot-control training," he says, "and the rest of it is he-said, she-said stuff."
Reilly also denies that these incidents are part of a larger crackdown on activists. Instead, he argues that an increased Border Patrol presence and intensified security measures are simply pushing everyone closer together.
"We're just doing our job," he says. "In the process of securing our nation's border, with the fence and everything else, there are other issues that come up. And because illegal immigration is out there in the media, it seems that more people are saying we're against them. But we're not against anybody. There's no policy to take a hard stance against any type of humanitarian group."
Chad Berkley walks the migrant trail, and he totes a few ghosts of his own. Lanky and intense, Berkley spent nine years with the military, the last one with a combat crew in Iraq. There was a tremendous roadside bomb, and a lot of his buddies never came home. Berkley took concussion damage to the brain. That, he says, has played hell with his concentration skills.
The year since deployment has been about getting divorced and pulling himself back together. A solid night's sleep is still wishful thinking. But by day, he now roams these hungry hills, on the far outskirts of Arivaca, under the banner of No More Deaths.
"At first, I felt like I was back on patrol in Iraq," Berkley tells me, "always looking around."
But he came here to bury Iraq, not relive it. "I want to do something altruistic," he says. "I want to put all the skills I learned in the military to something positive. This isn't necessarily a war zone, but it's a similar militarized zone."
He pauses, glancing at the calloused land. "I have a hard time being back in the world," he says. "So many people are dying, and so many other people don't care."
Then Berkley returns to patrol. "Agua!" he barks as we walk. "America! Ayuda! Agua!"
Later, we pile into a Suburban with the No More Deaths crew, and rumble back to the camp Berkley shares with a dozen or so volunteers. The camp entrance is marked by a rusted car door, and secured by a nylon rope strained between two steel posts. Beyond are a smattering of tents, a pair of semi-gutted travel trailers, and a decrepit motor home with its sliding window askew. A well-used fire pit smolders to one side.
Stints here vary. So do the residents. Most are college students, volunteering for a week or two of hot, remote duty. Some, like Berkley, sign on for a month. It's all decidedly low-budget, and deceptively well-disciplined. Each day, soon after sunrise, small groups head out into the deep desert with topographic maps and water jugs. They place water at precisely chosen spots, returning with empties to be disinfected and reused.
Other trail debris comes back, too. "If anything, I'd call us a net-delittering operation," says camp coordinator Steve Johnston. He's a jack of all trades, and once schmoozed as a publisher's publicist; he still can't resist a snappy line. Now in his early 60s, he also runs an amiably tight ship.
This place is part summer camp and part Reality 101. After all, you can always stumble across a body out there. Dan Millis certainly did. Johnston pulls up a plastic chair and hands me a small card. On one side is a prayer. On the other is a photograph of Josseline, in a church and very much alive. Pretty, petite, dark, somber. She could be any moody teen you'd see at the mall. But you won't seeing her there.
Here's how Steve Johnston tells it: "Her parents live in L.A. They've been there for some years. So she and her younger brother were traveling to L.A., to meet up with her parents. On the way, she got injured or sick, I don't know which, and they left her. The brother continued. When her brother got in touch with the parents, they called the Mexican consulate, and the consulate called (immigrant-rights group) Derechos Humanos, and Derechos Humanos called us. We started looking for her, and the Samaritans did as well.
"We were looking for her around Ruby Road. That's where we thought she was, because that was the best information we had. But she wasn't there."
He pulls out a map. "We were looking here," he says, pointing, "and she was over there. She was in between two trails. We walked within a quarter of a mile of her. It was February—cold, cold. Froze every night. She had been alone out there for two weeks, with no food, no water."
Millis found the body while hiking a shortcut. It has messed with him.
"She had taken off her shoes," Johnston says. "When she was found, her feet were in a little puddle of water, and her shoes were neatly next to her."
Steve Johnston is not a quiet man. But quietly, he tucks away the map.
Any policy driving desperate people into the desert is wrong, Johnston says. But he doesn't blame the Border Patrol, or at least not the guys he sees out here.
"This is not between us and them," he says. "They've got their job to do."
Of course, that doesn't mean agents can't get a bit, well, ornery. He recalls a few years ago, when they'd park up in the hills. "They'd turn deer lights on the camp and keep them on," he says. "They'd set up speakers on their trucks and blast rock 'n' roll at us. It was like Guantanamo."
These crude psych-ops occurred under the reign of Tucson Sector Chief Michael Nicley, who openly disdained the activists. "They feed them, give them water and let them loose," he told the Tucson Citizen in 2005. "They believe that's a humanitarian effort. I believe that turns into a rescue for me later on."
When Nicley retired in 2007, the humanitarian groups figured his replacement could only be an improvement. That successor was Robert Gilbert, formerly head of the El Paso Sector, a friendly fellow who seemed genuinely interested in a little give-and-take.
At that time, Mark Townley was president of Humane Borders, a group that maintains some 70 desert water stations, including three on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. He quietly helped arrange a series of meetings between activists and the new chief. And soon, Gilbert was touting these parleys to the media. "I thought it would be best if everybody gets together, we sit at a table, look at each other in the eye and say what can we do to make this border safer," the chief told the Arizona Daily Star in May 2007. "I think anybody who is out there trying to save a human life, I think that is a great thing."
But things didn't quite work out so well. After about a year, the activists pulled out, ending what Townley characterizes as an exercise in frustration. He says their concerns—such as getting food and water to migrants awaiting Border Patrol transport—received lip service from Gilbert, and little else. The same happened with abuse reports, he says. "But what really ended the meetings was when Gilbert was quoted in the paper saying what wonderful communication and relationships he had with our groups. It really wasn't the case.
"It was wonderful from his side, perhaps. Not only was it a PR plus for him, but it was also filling a spot on a PowerPoint presentation for his management. He could go to his boss and say 'Hey, see the wonderful things I'm doing?'
"But we weren't getting anything," Townley says. "If anything, we were losing ground—we were losing the ability to give some people aid who needed it."
Agent Omar Candelaria is a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector. He says the spirit of these meetings did result in better access to the Mexican consulate for detainees, and a video detailing their rights. The video plays around the clock in the detention centers. "I can't say those have come specifically from the meetings," he says, "but they are things that have happened in the recent past."
Still, Candelaria can't cite a single point raised by the activists that's found its way into sector policies.
In fact, just a few months after those meetings ended, the teetering relationship took a big tumble, and Gene Lefebvre had a front-row seat. He's a retired minister from the Shadow Rock United Church of Christ in Phoenix, and a No More Deaths co-founder. Late in the morning of Aug. 27, 2008, he was out checking migrant trails near Arivaca when he got a call that agents were massing at the camp. By the time Lefebvre got there, he says, they "had the camp surrounded. There were about 25 agents, and they were working through the brush on every side."
Among them was another sector spokesman named Mike Scioli. "Horse-patrol agents had followed foot-sign up to the No More Deaths campsite," Scioli tells the Weekly. "When asked if there were any (migrants) there, they said no. A search of the area discovered the two individuals."
Therein lies a big deal: According to No More Deaths protocol, volunteers must declare if migrants are in the camp, to avoid charges of harboring.
When this was mentioned to Scioli, he backtracks, suggesting that the volunteers told agents "they didn't know" if there were any migrants at the camp. They might have been confused, he says, because "a lot of people had just woken up from being in a tent."
It was 11:15 a.m. when Gene Lefebvre received that call from a young woman at the camp. And wakeup time at the No More Deaths compound is 6 a.m., sharp.
Agents later found a marijuana bale in the camp's vicinity, though in that heavy trafficking area, they've never implied that it was connected to No More Deaths volunteers.
Regardless, Lefebvre says he was twice read his Miranda rights during the confrontation—a fact confirmed by several witnesses. And he directly contradicts Scioli about the migrants. "When agents were questioning me, I asked them, 'What did (the young woman) tell you when you came into camp regarding whether there were migrants?'" Lefebvre says. "And the officer in charge confirmed that she told him there were two people there."
Also visiting the camp that day was Dr. Miguel De La Torre, a seminary professor at Denver's Iliff School of Theology, and several of his students. "What I found frustrating," De La Torre says, "is that here we were providing medical attention, providing food and water for people in the desert, and that somehow, this is a crime. As Christians, we're practicing our faith, and we're detained for it in this country. When a law says that we can't give basic medical attention to somebody, then that's not a law."
Stand at the camp's edge and throw a stone west about 50 miles, and you might hit one of Mike Wilson's water tanks out on the Tohono O'odham Reservation—or at least where those tanks used to be. For nearly a decade, Wilson, a tribal member and retired U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant, has risen before dawn to haul water from Tucson out to the rez. But the same month of the camp raid, he was approached by a Tohono O'odham police officer while showing his water stations to seminary students led by De La Torre and the Rev. John Fife of Tucson. A co-founder of No More Deaths, Fife is a charter member of the humanitarian-assistance movement.
During that encounter, Wilson was ordered to pull the stations, and his guests were banned from the reservation for life. He says the moves were directed by Baboquivari District Chairwoman Veronica Harvey, who didn't return a phone call from the Weekly seeking comment.
But Wilson suspects that federal officials may have swayed Harvey's decision. For him, Walt Staton's littering conviction only stokes those suspicions. "My fear is that a precedent has been set," he says. "I think that if the Border Patrol can put that kind of pressure on Fish and Wildlife, they might try to do the same thing with the Tohono O'odham police. Tohono O'odham tribal lands are first and foremost federal property. That's why the Border Patrol is out there now."
Down on the Buenos Aires, manager Mike Hawkes says he's not priming for any fights. But he does take a hard line on do-gooders like Staton putting out water jugs. "It's illegal to litter on the refuge, basically," he says. Nor will No More Deaths be getting any permits to make it legal. Humane Borders already has its stations out there, "and we think we have a good coverage with that."
Hawkes says he's not sure how much the water stations help, anyway. "Most of these folks who die are dying of exposure, because it's either too hot or too cold. Some of them have been found dead in water tanks (for wildlife and livestock). If people are too young or too old or not healthy enough to be making that trip, then they probably shouldn't be making that trip."
But to Jose Garcia, Hawkes is rolling the mortal dice. Garcia is a professor of government at New Mexico State University who specializes in border-security issues. He says the first migrant death at Buenos Aires after Staton's conviction will be telling. "I can't imagine how the refuge justifies taking a harder line, since you would think that human rights issues would trump littering. I would think the first death will be enough to attract the attention of the president of the United States."
Even the Fish and Wildlife Service seems confused about its policy regarding those water drops. Just this past November, for instance, Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett wrote a memo suggesting that land managers could make their own call if certain steps were followed—including notification "of the appropriate Border Patrol sector chief."
However, Fish and Wildlife Service officials say the policy is simple: No more refuge water stations. Confusing? Hell yes, says the Rev. Robin Hoover, founder of Humane Borders. Hoover recalls a conversation between himself, former Buenos Aires Manager Mitch Ellis, and a lawyer in the agency's Albuquerque regional office named Justin Tade. "Tade flat-out told me not to apply for a new permit, because it would be denied," Hoover says. "Then he said, if asked, he would deny ever having that conversation."
Contacted by the Weekly, Tade declined to comment. But the conversation was confirmed by Ellis, now project leader for the Southwest Arizona National Wildlife Refuge Complex in Yuma.
Later, I call Tom Harvey, Fish and Wildlife's refuge supervisor for Arizona and New Mexico. In our conversation, he emphasizes the refuge system's wildlife-comes-first mission. "It's a balancing act," he says, "and the recent littering citation with the No More Deaths organization is unfortunate. But the backdrop for that whole thing is the more than 40 tons of trash per year annually that our volunteers and our refuge staff have to remove. We're just saying that if we're going to keep this refuge free of trash, we have regulations that we have to implement and abide by."
In response, No More Deaths has issued an ultimatum: If no agreement is reached, they'll again start putting out water on Buenos Aires, consequences be damned. And Hoover says he'll ask for more permits. If his requests are denied, he's ready to raise hell.
As for the Border Patrol agents who tipped off refuge officers in the Staton case, Hawkes says he isn't aware of any interagency agenda. "I do know that, by necessity, we do work very closely with the Border Patrol—they coordinate very closely with our law-enforcement staff on a whole host of issues related to drug-smuggling and illegal immigration."
Hoover considers Hawkes' stance a deal with the devil. He recalls when the agency denied his group's request to put out water stations on the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, near Ajo. That led to a wrongful-death lawsuit, after 14 people died there in 2001. The judge ruled that the land manager had discretion to approve water stations if he so desired.
"If I were writing this story, I would say, 'Here we go again,'" Hoover says. "A local land manager denies permission to put out water, and we've seen what happened before, when we had 14 deaths in one day."
A few days after my visit to the camp, I sit in a downtown Tucson coffee shop with Margo Cowan, an attorney who's represented immigrants and groups like No More Deaths for years. Just down the street are all the trappings of power—the city building, county headquarters and the federal courthouse where Staton was convicted.
Even after all these years in the trenches—and all the failed attempts at border-policy reform—Cowan remains an optimist. She sees the tide turning with the new administration. And she believes things will change when word of the recent law-enforcement brush-ups reaches new Interior Secretary Ken Salazar—who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service—and Janet Napolitano, our former Arizona governor who now heads the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Border Patrol.
"I'm surprised that the United States is digging in on their position about humanitarian assistance," Cowan says. "But I'm sure Interior Secretary Salazar would not support this if he knew about it. Certainly, Gov. Napolitano wouldn't support it. She understands clearly what death in the desert is all about."
For a moment, we sat, inexplicably, in silence. Perhaps there are ghosts even here.
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/the-activist-question/Content?oid=1230781Friday, June 19, 2009
US-MEXICO: Humanitarian Aid Criminalised at the Border
IPS News
June 19, 2009
by Valeria Fernandez
ARIVACA, Arizona, Jun 19 (IPS) - Humanitarian aid groups trying to avert migrant deaths on the U.S- Mexico border are facing increased roadblocks in their mission. The hazards are not connected to a spike in drug cartels’ violence, but rather restrictions from the federal government.
Transporting a migrant in despair to a hospital could mean a volunteer is charged with human smuggling. A simple act of kindness like leaving water in the desert can be subject to penalties as well.
"We’re being intimidated and criminalised as humanitarians," said Walt Staton, a 27-year-old volunteer with No More Deaths, a humanitarian aid group.
Staton knows this firsthand. He was convicted on Jun. 3 by a 12-person jury of "knowingly littering" for leaving unopened water jugs on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge southwest of Tucson, Arizona.
Arizona the main gateway for undocumented migration into the U.S. is ground zero to a human rights crisis, according to border activists. In the summer, triple-digit temperatures in the remote Sonoran desert have caused a deadly toll.
Over the past decade, it is estimated that at least 5,000 men, women and children have lost their lives attempting to cross the U.S-Mexico border.
No More Deaths (NMD) has been providing help in the form of water and food to migrants. This June, for the sixth consecutive year, they set up a campsite 24 kms from the border with volunteers from all over the country.
Water can be a lifesaver in some of the most remote areas of the treacherous Sonoran desert, explained Steve Jonston, 64, a volunteer with NMD.
Daily, volunteers set up hundreds of gallon-sized water containers at drop points in some of the most heavily transited migrant trails. Once the jugs have been used, they recycle them.
By the time some of the migrants find them, they have spent from three to four days lost in the desert, Jonston said.
"To ticket Walt Staton for littering would be to ticket an ambulance for speeding," he told IPS.
But not everybody agrees on the approach.
"There’s other ways it can be done," said Michael Hawkes, elected director and manager of the Buenos Aires Refuge. "Just leaving the jugs there is like leaving trash, it is like a McDonald's happy meal in front of your yard, it is trash."
Hawkes said garbage left by migrants during their trek has been a challenge for preserving the 117,000 acres refuge. He believes Border Patrol beacons, which allow migrants to call for rescue, are more effective than putting water.
The refuge currently allows for at least two water stations set up in the area by another volunteer group. But Jonston argues that’s not nearly enough.
During the summer, temperatures reach up to 115 F (45 C) in the desert. Drinking as much as a gallon of water per hour might be necessary to survive, said Mario Escalante, a spokesperson for the Tucson Border Patrol.
"Most of the people attempting to cross don’t have a clue where they’re, they’ve never been here before," said Escalante.
Smugglers lie to migrants, giving them the false hope that they’ll find water in the desert, he said. It’s not uncommon for them to abandon migrants to their own luck, he added.
Camila Chigo, 24, was barely conscious when the Border Patrol found her on a side road. The migrant from Chiapas, Mexico was lost and alone for four days and later spent three hospitalised for heatstroke.
"I almost died," said Chigo, who spoke with IPS in a migrant shelter after being deported to Nogales, Sonora. Her arms revealed scars and scratches from the desert vegetation.
Humanitarian activists claim that the increased fortification of the border through the construction of a fence and deployment of manpower is to blame for stories like Chigo’s.
"The border has been built in the most intentional way to use the desert as a deterrent, as a weapon that has caused thousands of lives," said Staton.
And extreme heat is not the only threat to their lives. As the business of human smuggling is getting more lucrative, migrants are often subject to kidnappings and women are exposed to sexual abuse and rape by border bandits.
Yet the Border Patrol in Tucson cites a decrease in the number of arrests this fiscal year –which began in October 2008 - as a sign of success of the border strategy.
Apprehensions are down from 235,800 in 2008 to 164,600 on 2009.
The death toll on the 262 miles of the Tucson border has increased from 79 fatalities in 2008 to 83 this year.
"The migrant death rate is going up. It’s not necessarily the total number of deaths, it’s the ratio of the number of people that are crossing and dying," said Rev. Robin Hoover, president of Humane Borders, a humanitarian group that provides water in the desert at 102 water stations.
Hoover claims increased enforcement is pushing people into more desolate areas, making it harder to reach them with aid. One of these main points is the Tohono O’odham nation land.
Mike Wilson, a Native American who has been leaving water tanks in the reservation, said that recently, tribal police officers told him to take them down.
"I respectfully declined," said Wilson, only to find out later that somebody had taken them away. Now he’s substituting them with gallon jugs.
Humanitarian aid volunteers claim things have gotten more difficult in the last four years.
In 2005, volunteers Shanti Sellz and Daniel Strauss were accused of human smuggling after attempting to transport a group of injured migrants to the hospital. The charges against them were later dropped. Their case was the catalyst for launching a campaign to bring awareness called "Humanitarian aid is not a Crime".
Staton’s is not the first case to go to court for littering charges.
In 2008, Dan Millis another NMD volunteer found the body of a 14-year-old girl from El Salvador in the desert. Motivated by the tragedy, two days later Millis was leaving water jugs around the migrant trails where he found her and was ticketed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He refused to pay the 175-dollar fine and fought the littering misdemeanor charge on the grounds that humanitarian aid is not a crime.
The U.S federal attorney's office would not comment on Staton’s case since his sentencing is pending for Aug. 4. He could face one year in jail or up to 10,000 dollars in fines.
Staton is planning to go to seminary school by then to become a Unitarian Universalist minister. He hopes his story brings attention to the human rights crisis on the border.
In 2008, the Special Rapporteur to the United Nations issued a report stating that the United States has failed to adhere to its international obligations to make the human rights of migrants a national priority.
"It’s the responsibility of the people to come out and say we won’t let these people die," said Staton. "Maybe we can’t drive them somewhere, but we are just not going to let them die."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47289
June 19, 2009
by Valeria Fernandez
ARIVACA, Arizona, Jun 19 (IPS) - Humanitarian aid groups trying to avert migrant deaths on the U.S- Mexico border are facing increased roadblocks in their mission. The hazards are not connected to a spike in drug cartels’ violence, but rather restrictions from the federal government.
Transporting a migrant in despair to a hospital could mean a volunteer is charged with human smuggling. A simple act of kindness like leaving water in the desert can be subject to penalties as well.
"We’re being intimidated and criminalised as humanitarians," said Walt Staton, a 27-year-old volunteer with No More Deaths, a humanitarian aid group.
Staton knows this firsthand. He was convicted on Jun. 3 by a 12-person jury of "knowingly littering" for leaving unopened water jugs on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge southwest of Tucson, Arizona.
Arizona the main gateway for undocumented migration into the U.S. is ground zero to a human rights crisis, according to border activists. In the summer, triple-digit temperatures in the remote Sonoran desert have caused a deadly toll.
Over the past decade, it is estimated that at least 5,000 men, women and children have lost their lives attempting to cross the U.S-Mexico border.
No More Deaths (NMD) has been providing help in the form of water and food to migrants. This June, for the sixth consecutive year, they set up a campsite 24 kms from the border with volunteers from all over the country.
Water can be a lifesaver in some of the most remote areas of the treacherous Sonoran desert, explained Steve Jonston, 64, a volunteer with NMD.
Daily, volunteers set up hundreds of gallon-sized water containers at drop points in some of the most heavily transited migrant trails. Once the jugs have been used, they recycle them.
By the time some of the migrants find them, they have spent from three to four days lost in the desert, Jonston said.
"To ticket Walt Staton for littering would be to ticket an ambulance for speeding," he told IPS.
But not everybody agrees on the approach.
"There’s other ways it can be done," said Michael Hawkes, elected director and manager of the Buenos Aires Refuge. "Just leaving the jugs there is like leaving trash, it is like a McDonald's happy meal in front of your yard, it is trash."
Hawkes said garbage left by migrants during their trek has been a challenge for preserving the 117,000 acres refuge. He believes Border Patrol beacons, which allow migrants to call for rescue, are more effective than putting water.
The refuge currently allows for at least two water stations set up in the area by another volunteer group. But Jonston argues that’s not nearly enough.
During the summer, temperatures reach up to 115 F (45 C) in the desert. Drinking as much as a gallon of water per hour might be necessary to survive, said Mario Escalante, a spokesperson for the Tucson Border Patrol.
"Most of the people attempting to cross don’t have a clue where they’re, they’ve never been here before," said Escalante.
Smugglers lie to migrants, giving them the false hope that they’ll find water in the desert, he said. It’s not uncommon for them to abandon migrants to their own luck, he added.
Camila Chigo, 24, was barely conscious when the Border Patrol found her on a side road. The migrant from Chiapas, Mexico was lost and alone for four days and later spent three hospitalised for heatstroke.
"I almost died," said Chigo, who spoke with IPS in a migrant shelter after being deported to Nogales, Sonora. Her arms revealed scars and scratches from the desert vegetation.
Humanitarian activists claim that the increased fortification of the border through the construction of a fence and deployment of manpower is to blame for stories like Chigo’s.
"The border has been built in the most intentional way to use the desert as a deterrent, as a weapon that has caused thousands of lives," said Staton.
And extreme heat is not the only threat to their lives. As the business of human smuggling is getting more lucrative, migrants are often subject to kidnappings and women are exposed to sexual abuse and rape by border bandits.
Yet the Border Patrol in Tucson cites a decrease in the number of arrests this fiscal year –which began in October 2008 - as a sign of success of the border strategy.
Apprehensions are down from 235,800 in 2008 to 164,600 on 2009.
The death toll on the 262 miles of the Tucson border has increased from 79 fatalities in 2008 to 83 this year.
"The migrant death rate is going up. It’s not necessarily the total number of deaths, it’s the ratio of the number of people that are crossing and dying," said Rev. Robin Hoover, president of Humane Borders, a humanitarian group that provides water in the desert at 102 water stations.
Hoover claims increased enforcement is pushing people into more desolate areas, making it harder to reach them with aid. One of these main points is the Tohono O’odham nation land.
Mike Wilson, a Native American who has been leaving water tanks in the reservation, said that recently, tribal police officers told him to take them down.
"I respectfully declined," said Wilson, only to find out later that somebody had taken them away. Now he’s substituting them with gallon jugs.
Humanitarian aid volunteers claim things have gotten more difficult in the last four years.
In 2005, volunteers Shanti Sellz and Daniel Strauss were accused of human smuggling after attempting to transport a group of injured migrants to the hospital. The charges against them were later dropped. Their case was the catalyst for launching a campaign to bring awareness called "Humanitarian aid is not a Crime".
Staton’s is not the first case to go to court for littering charges.
In 2008, Dan Millis another NMD volunteer found the body of a 14-year-old girl from El Salvador in the desert. Motivated by the tragedy, two days later Millis was leaving water jugs around the migrant trails where he found her and was ticketed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He refused to pay the 175-dollar fine and fought the littering misdemeanor charge on the grounds that humanitarian aid is not a crime.
The U.S federal attorney's office would not comment on Staton’s case since his sentencing is pending for Aug. 4. He could face one year in jail or up to 10,000 dollars in fines.
Staton is planning to go to seminary school by then to become a Unitarian Universalist minister. He hopes his story brings attention to the human rights crisis on the border.
In 2008, the Special Rapporteur to the United Nations issued a report stating that the United States has failed to adhere to its international obligations to make the human rights of migrants a national priority.
"It’s the responsibility of the people to come out and say we won’t let these people die," said Staton. "Maybe we can’t drive them somewhere, but we are just not going to let them die."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47289
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Quenching Thirst in the Desert: An Interview with Dan Millis
June 4, 2009
Ecohearth
by Marita Prandoni
To many, immigrant rights and ecological issues seem worlds apart. Others see a strong connection between the two, none more so than Dan Millis, a volunteer with No More Deaths • No Más Muertes (NMD). Along the Arizona-Mexican border, NMD workers administer first aid, food, water and clothing at desert humanitarian stations to ease the suffering of migrants as they attempt the desert trek north, or are deported back to the south. In the first year and a half of operation, one station in Nogales aided more than 200,000 people who were dumped off by US Homeland Security and forced to walk across the border to Mexico.
Ecohearth
by Marita Prandoni
To many, immigrant rights and ecological issues seem worlds apart. Others see a strong connection between the two, none more so than Dan Millis, a volunteer with No More Deaths • No Más Muertes (NMD). Along the Arizona-Mexican border, NMD workers administer first aid, food, water and clothing at desert humanitarian stations to ease the suffering of migrants as they attempt the desert trek north, or are deported back to the south. In the first year and a half of operation, one station in Nogales aided more than 200,000 people who were dumped off by US Homeland Security and forced to walk across the border to Mexico.
In February of 2008, Dan—who was born and raised in Arizona, studied Hispanic issues, and spent time living in Chile—was leaving gallon-jugs of water along a migrant trail in the southern Arizona desert when he was spotted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and given a $175 fine for littering, despite the boxes full of trash he and fellow volunteers had picked up. Just two days earlier, he found the body of a 14-year-old girl from El Salvador along a trail who died of exposure on her way to reunite with her family. Though Millis was excused from paying the fine or serving jail time, he was given a guilty sentence. He fought the conviction on the grounds that humanitarian aid is not a crime.
EcoHearth: What motivated you to volunteer with No More Deaths?
Dan Millis: I got involved when I was a high-school Spanish teacher and was looking for a social-justice issue to involve the students and to do environmental service projects.
I think it’s important for people to make the connection between social justice and environmental restoration, as the two are inextricably linked. Valuing human lives expands the sphere of caring for our planet because we’re not really separate from nature. Currently, I work with the Sierra Club Borderlands campaign as a team organizer.
EH: Where does your conviction for littering stand?
DM: We’ve appealed to the US District Court and it was upheld. Now we are appealing to the 9th Circuit Court and we’ll see if they hear the case.
EH: Which activities on the US-Mexican border impose the most significant damage to the desert ecosystem?
DM: That’s easy—the border wall. We now have nearly 370 miles of border wall and another 300 miles of vehicle barriers strewn across our fragile desert ecosystems. This ridiculous project has been undertaken in direct violation of 36 federal protection laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act. The wall itself has stranded migratory wildlife, destroyed and fragmented habitat, caused significant erosion and sedimentation problems, and has resulted in disastrous floods. Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security has installed high-voltage lighting that disturbs nocturnal animals, plowed access roads through pristine desert, and torn across roadless areas in off-road vehicles. We don’t know what the costs will be of this project to endangered species and their habitats, but we do know that construction of the wall itself has already cost taxpayers at least $2.4 billion and could end up costing as much as $49 billion as it is tunneled under, climbed over and cut over the next 25 years. Walls and enforcement-only policies like these don’t stop migration, but rather push it out farther into the more remote desert areas, where hundreds of migrants die each year.EH: For those of us who live far from our southern border, describe what is it like on the frontlines of humanitarian aid for migrants from the south.
DM: I can’t tell you how horrible it is to see droves of exhausted, dehydrated people of all ages wandering in the heat. Whether lost or tired along a migrant trail in southern Arizona, or disoriented and abused after deportation to northern Mexico, it’s horrible to see people victimized by our insane trade and border policies.
EH: What are the main reasons people leave their homes in the south to come to the US?
DM: Each person has her or his own reasons, but most people I talk to feel they really have no choice. Either stay home and continue to endure impossible conditions, or chance it and head north to improve their lot and salir adelante (move ahead). Many people are not only fleeing poverty, but have specific needs like reuniting with family members on the US side, or earning enough money to pay for a loved one’s surgery, for example.
EH: There are people who are vehemently opposed to immigration from Latin America. Do they also have a physical presence where you are giving humanitarian aid? If so, do they pose a threat to your work?
DM: If you’re talking about the so-called Minutemen, I’ve never seen one while working on the Arizona border. They’re more hype than help. I have seen one vigilante-type man on a quad once, who said he was looking for “wetbacks and drugs.” You see racist counter-protesters at immigrants’-rights marches, but in the desert, where there are no cameras, there aren’t many vigilantes either. There are, however, vandals who destroy our humanitarian aid supplies left on migrant trails. The most common form of vandalism of water is stabbing. Vandals will take the time and effort to individually stab each water jug or water bottle, usually multiple times. These guys need some serious anger-management classes.EH: Are you also seeing climate refugees?
DM: I don’t know. Many campesinos (country folk) and indigenous people come through the desert after losing access to their land. I blame NAFTA more than climate change, but it might be a factor as well.
Border walls and increased border militarization were really stepped up in the mid 1990s, right around the same time as the passage of NAFTA. This is not sheer coincidence. If trade is allowed to flow freely across borders, labor will naturally follow suit. Border-enforcement initiatives like Operation Hold the Line and Operation Gatekeeper were launched in the mid 1990s as an attempt to block this inevitable flow of migrant workers. NAFTA has resulted in the privatization of communal farmlands, dumping of cheap and subsidized US corn on Mexican markets, and the expansion of free-trade zones along the border. As poverty in the countryside increased, the border region grew more crowded, polluted and poor. Instead of addressing the root causes of this problem, the US response was to wall it off.
EH: No More Deaths has documented abuses by the US Border Patrol while migrants are in custody (up to 72 hours), including the denial of water, food and medical treatment. Has your campaign to implement humane and sanitary processing-center conditions, and humane repatriation and deportation processes, received any attention from Arizona’s Congressional representatives?
DM: Now that we’ve put out a report documenting abuses of migrants in short-term Border Patrol custody, we’re launching a new custody-standards campaign based on that. We hope that by exposing these injustices in a verifiable and methodical way, we can seek real change that allows for independent oversight and enforcement of humane custody standards.
[Breaking News: Yesterday another NMD volunteer, Walt Staton, was convicted of "knowingly littering garbage or other debris" after leaving humanitarian aid for undocumented migrants in the Arizona desert. Read the Arizona Daily article and the NMD press release.- Ed.]
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