Border Read Final

8/2/2019 Border Read Final

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Introduction

In July 2007 and July 2008, I spent a total o about six weeks volunteeringwith No More Deaths in Arizona. No More Deaths works to end sueringand death along the US/Mexico border. They collaborate with other organi-zations in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, to run resource centers or deportees,document Border Patrol abuses, and advocate or a more just immigration

policy. They are best known, however, or providing ood, water, and medicalaid to migrants along one o the deadliest stretches o the border.

In the process they save lives. But one o the greatest impacts No MoreDeaths has comes through showing people the reality o immigration andthe border in this country. It is a violent, inhumane, and shocking reality,one that might not be ully understood by anyone. But by spending time outin the desert and meeting people who are walking across it you can begin tograsp just how dire the situation is and how urgently we need to change ourcollective attitude towards immigration in this country.

This is what I have learned about the border. It is a mixture o excerpts rom

journals I kept while I was there and reections since. Sometimes I changedtenses rom present to past, sometimes I didnt. Ill never know what it s liketo leave home and cross that desert to a new lie in the United States, butthis is my attempt to communicate what the border has come to mean to me.

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YA VAN

MUCHOS

HERMANOS

MUERTOS

Hunter Jackson

Six Weeks on the

US/Mexico Border


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Breathe In: The Desert

These pages are still warm rom the aternoons heat. The thermometer said103 ater lunch but it elt cooler than in recent days. Thunder rumbles inthe distancetonight is the frst with clouds in at least a month. The sunsets pink and orange behind distant streaks o alling rain.

Undulating brown hills dotted with surprisingly green mesquite trees extendout to the base o the rocky mountains ading into the darkness. The borderis just on the other side.

The desert is beautiul but it is brutal and dangerous. I its not the heat andsun its the rattlesnakes and scorpions. Or the poisonous rogs and lizards.Or the oversized fre ants and spiders. Every plant is covered in viciousspines. Some grab on to you and wont let go; others just slice through yourclothes and skin. Any uncovered body part is vulnerable.

The wind blows in the desert like nowhere else. You can tell it comes romsomewhere ar away, just like the people traveling through it.

Otherwise it is still. That frst night I laid under the silent desert sky and eltalone, a thousand miles rom lights and pavement and anyone else. It seemed

The road to camp.

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empty, orgotten, given up on. But right now, out there in the expansivedarkness, people are walking, moving, hiding. Hundreds o people. In themorning there will be only ootprints and bits o trash along the trails.

***

I can take all the pictures I want, record every new sound I hear, try to writeeverything down, but nothing will convey how hot it is, or how still, or how

big. How slow everything becomes when its 110 in the shade. How yourbrain starts skipping steps. How the thirst never goes away yet you want topour water over your head rather than drink it. Wherever skin touches skinsweat appears (though it s so dry here you never eel it). You dont want tomove, dont want to think, stop wanting to talk. It compounds itsel andeverything slows down more and more, inside and outside.

Rain. Rain becomes a distant hovering promise. You can see it alling romthe heavy clouds to the south. A dream.

Everyday we walk but never ar. Up at dawn, bagels and granola bars orbreakast, then o in some overloaded truck to crawl along rugged roads, inand out o sandy washes, through dusty cow felds. Where the most-traveledtrails cross the unmaintained roads we park and start walking, each o uscarrying a gallon o water and ood packs to give away or leave on the trail.

Thousands o miles o rough trails run across the border to hidden spotswhere groups o walking migrants are picked up and shuttled to sae housesin nearby cities.

No tengan miedo!one o us yells every ew minutes. No somos la migra.Somos amigos, de la iglesia. Tenemos agua, comida, y recursos mdicos. Si necesi-

tan algo, grtanos!(Dont be araid! We are not the Border Patrol. We areriends, rom the church.* We have water, ood, and medical supplies. I youneed something, yell!)

Rarely does anyone answer. But one day a group on patrol let the trail andcrossed a wash. They paused and someone made a call. A eeble response

was barely audible. They yelled again. She yelled back. Someone saw her sit-ting by hersel in the shade o a boulder.

* No More Deaths is a coalition that includes a ew aith-based groups. Many o us have no

church afliations, though others are devout Christians, divinity students, and retired clergy.It might be a little misleading when we say we are with the church but it helps legitimize usto many migrants. And we are riends o the church, which is a possible translation.

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Margarit said she had been in the desert or ten days. Ater six days o walk-ing her group had let her behind because she couldnt keep up. She had noood or water ater that. She walked during the day and hid at night becauseshed been told shed be raped i someone ound her out there by hersel.

Her blisters were terrible. She wanted us to call the Border Patrol or hershe was exhausted. (People we meet want this much more than I had antici-pated: to go back to Mexico and maybe try again later.) Somehow she was in

amazing spirits, still able to walk and tell jokes.

A BORSTAR agent came, which was a decent sign. BORSTAR is theBorder Patrols search and rescue arm, whose agents have undergone medicaland other specialized training. He did have a gun and a big German Shepardin his truck, but he spoke good Spanish and wasnt an asshole.

Ater asking some questions he drove her to the volunteer fre station in thenearest town where an ambulance was waiting. Since the paramedics therehad more medical training than the BORSTAR agent, he would deer totheir judgment. I they thought Margarits health was sufcient, she could

be taken to the Wackenut bus sitting under a tree in Amado. When the busflled up shed be driven straight to Nogales and dropped o at the border,

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On patrol. probably without any ood or water. I they thought she was in need o im-mediate medical care, however, they could take her to the hospital in Tucson.

Two volunteers, Kate and Cyril, ollowed in a camp truck.

At the fre station the paramedics thought Margarit was fne and said sheshould be taken straight to the bus. It was shocking, since their job is tooer emergency medical care, not to deport people. Cyril, patient and calm,tried to reason with them. He argued that shed not had water or our days

and needed to go to the hospitalwasnt it obvious? Was it even a question?They didnt seem to care. He got upset, couldnt understand their callous-ness, why they werent seeing her as a person. He gave up and Kate tookover. She mobilized all her proessional and diplomatic skills to eventuallytalk them into taking Margarit to Tucson. They reluctantly loaded her intothe ambulance as Kate walked back to the truck and burst into tears.

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***

The desert is ull o myths and olklore. To the Tohono Oodham, the peopleindigenous to the deserts o southern Arizona, it is sacred. Baboquivari Peak,always visible on the western horizon, is the center o their cosmology, thehome o their creator.

Migrants and their supporters have their own legends, tales o heroic jour-

neys to save ailing riends and amily. Shrines dot the caves and canyons.Some honor the dead, others la Virgen de GuadelupeorJess Malverde, thepatron saint o drug smugglers.

Stories o Border Patrol abuse abound, stories o cruelty and violence. Noone doubts them. The specter o vigilantes with guns haunts the desert, hid-ing behind boulders, creeping through the darkness. It is a earul place.

The desert is a land o mystery. Thousands o pieces o thousands o livesstrewn across the ground in the most inexplicable ways. The dry dusty trailsare haunted by brittle jeans hanging in thorny bushes, cracked water bottlesgathered where the path crosses a wash, single shoes abandoned along thetrails. Like they all just disappeared.

The desert takes what it wants and leaves only questions, ghosts, suggestionso what came beore. It is inexplicable. It casts a spell on those who passthrough it, leaving us conused, unsure o what happened and where. It is aland o bones. There are no witnesses. It swallows everything: people, crimes,secrets.

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Walking

Whenever the migrant death count in Arizona is updated someone inTucson calls the camp to let us know. Between October 2006 and Septem-ber 2007, the estimate was 237. The same period the next year yielded 183.Everyone knows this is just a raction o actual deaths. Lone walkers whocollapse in remote desert are rarely ound. They say the Border Patrol doesntlike to spend time looking or people who they think are going to die or arealready deadas long as the migrants dont make it into the US, the BorderPatrols job is done.

When the Wackenhut bus drops people o at the border crossing inNogales, or Douglas, or Sasabe, there are oten guides waiting just on theother side, oering to take them across again. Many are hundreds or thou-sands o miles rom home and determined to make it to the US. Sometimesthey have no alternativemaybe they desperately need money to pay or arelatives surgery, or to not lose their land. They try again, oten the same

night. These people are at especially high risk o dying or getting let behindsince they are already tired and dehydrated. Doctors claim it is impossible tostay hydrated in that desert no matter how much water your drink.Dehydration sets in quickly. It begins amiliarly enough, with dizziness,clumsiness, headaches, and an unquenchable thirst. In The Devils Highway,Luis Alberto Urrea describes the whole process in terrible detail. It ends

with heat stroke.

Your blood is as low as it can get. Dehydration has reduced all your innerstreams to sluggish mudholes. Your heart pumps harder and harder to get

uid and oxygen to your organs. Empty vessels within you collapse. Yoursweat runs out. Your temperature redlinesyou hit 105, 106, 108 degrees.Your body panics and dilates all blood capillaries near the surace, hoping to

ood your skin with blood to cool it o. You blush. Your eyes turn red: bloodvessels burst, and later, the tissue o the whites literally cooks until it goes

pink, then a well-done crimson.

Your skin gets terribly sensitive. It hurts, it burns. Your nerves ame. Yourblood heats under your skin. Clothing eels like sandpaper.

Some walkers at this point strip nude. Originally, BORSTAR rescuersthought this stripping was a delirious panic, an attempt to cool o at the last

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minute. But oten, the clothing was eerily neat, careully olded and let innice little piles beside the corpses. They realized the walkers couldnt standtheir nerve endings being chaed by their clothes.

Once theyre naked, theyre surely hallucinating. They dig burrows in the soil,apparently thinking theyll escape the sun. Once underground, o course, theybake like a pig at a luau. Some dive into sand, thinking its water, and theyswim in it until they pass out. They choke to death, their throats flled withrocks and dirt. Rescuers can only assume they think theyre drinking water.

Your muscles, lacking water, eed on themselves. They break down and start

Labeling water bottles.

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PhotobyNoraDye.

to rot. Once rotting in you, they dump rats o dying cells into your alreadysludgy bloodstream.

Proteins are peeling o your dying muscles. Chunks o cooked meat are allingout o your organs, to clog your other organs. The system closes down in a se-ries. Your kidneys, your bladder, your heart. They jam shut. Stop. Your brainssparks. Out. Youre gone.

***

No More Deaths works hard to reduce the suering and death that is soprevalent along the border. Oten the best we can do is leave water on heav-ily trafcked trails and help evacuate people who require immediate medicalattention. From May to October a permanent camp is set up in the desertoutside o Arivaca, Arizona, about 12 miles rom the ofcial border. Mul-tiple patrols go out twice a day. In the course o a summer we encounterhundreds o people on the trails and leave thousands o gallons o water thatget picked up by thirsty walkers.

You see more signs o people than actual people. Fresh ootprints, emptywater bottles, ood wrappers, apple cores still yellow. Backpacks, hats, shirts,shoes. Toothbrushes, underwear, lipstick, childrens toys. You can eel thepresence o people, smell the smoke o their cigarettes, but i they dont wantto be ound you wont fnd them.

Its better to not fnd themit means they re in pretty good shape. That theydont need help. That theyre not lost, not sick, not injured. That they stillhave enough physical and psychological strength to continue walking. Atleast you hope this is true.

It is eerie to know they are out there. It gives the silence a certain weight.I you just drove along the paved roads you would think you were passingthrough an uninhabited landscape. But when you venture out it comes tolie, birds and insects and jackrabbits and chipmunks and white tailed deerbounding over it all, lizards and snakes and spiders and rogs. And thereare all the human lives that intersect out there: migrants and Border Patrol,bandits and drug smugglers, local residents and us.

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Lines that Divide, Lines that Connect

Beore I spent much time on the border I thought o it as the closest war zone.But war in the military sense, with guns and helicopters and high-tech surveil-lance, is just one aspect o the conict. All things political, economic, social,and historical intersect here. They crash into each other, they try to overpowerone another. This is where the global economy and everything that supports itis stripped o its rhetoric and shields, o its disguises and glossy advertisementsand decontextualized economic statistics. It is a complicated war in whichindividual people are struggling against an entire system that wants to makethem disappear. Men, women, and children trying to pay their bills and seetheir amilies are let standing alone, burning up in the deserts harsh heat andlight.

The border is the epitome o place, as geographer Doreen Massey would say.In her article A Global Sense o Place, she talks about all the ways peopleand places are connected, rom individual stories o migration to systems ointernational trade and histories o colonization. These connections reachacross the globe, creating complicated networks spanning both space and time.Everywhere that these dierent lines intersect, everywhere a connection exists,she calls a placea meetingplace.*

* See Doreen Massey s bookSpace, Place, and Gender.

The Wall in Nogales.

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The US/Mexico border is most defnitely a meeting place. Many people act asi it is just a line in the sand, a wall separating two countries. This gross over-simplifcation masks both the reality along that line as well as the destructiveimplications o the border that are evident everywhere in this country.

The border is a region. The line you see on a map is somewhere in the middle.The border stretches or dozens o miles into northern Mexico and the south-western US. The contours o this zone vary rom region to region. Where No

More Deaths works the border is a rugged, unpopulated desert crisscrossed bydeep canyons and rocky mountains. There, the actual line is just a barbed-wireence, no dierent rom any other that marks property boundaries out in thedesert. You have to walk or miles and miles on either side to get to a pavedroad or a house with electricity.

In other ways the border reaches much arther into the United States. TheBorder Patrol has the power to set up checkpoints and demand papers any-

where within 100 miles o both the Mexican and Canadian borders. It is nolonger possible to drive north out o Arivaca without going through a perma-nent checkpoint. I you look white like me it means just slowing down andanswering a question. Country o citizenship? the agent asks. USA, I reply.

They wave me on. I have never been asked to show any identifcation. Whena Mexican-American volunteer drove through the same checkpoint, however,he was harassed or carrying only a Caliornia drivers license instead o hispassport and the wheel-wells o the car were searched or drugs.

The suspicion and scrutiny do not end at the checkpoints. One night we wereall piled in the back o a big pickup truck, driving back to camp. It was cold so

we were lying down, trying to stay out o the wind. We drove past a stand otrees on the side o the road and a bright light suddenly shined into the backo the truck. A Border Patrol truck peeled out into the road, sirens wailing.

When we pulled over and he saw a bunch o white people he laughed like we

were all riends, like we were all on the same side.

The border unctions in other ways arther north. It expresses itsel as rac-ism that masquerades as truth, as natural and immutable. It divides cities,neighborhoods, and neighbors. It is the ICE raids on actories and houses thatshatter amilies across the country. It is the hazardous working conditions,minimum-wage violations, and extreme lack o security that comes rom the

jobs so many immigrants fnd when they arrive in the US. It is the danger obeing unable or araid to have a bank account, call the police, or fght an evic-tion. It is the stereotyping and discrimination still aced by brown people whohave been in this country or generations. The border is everywhere but most

people think they have never seen it.

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El Otro Lado

No More Deaths also helps run migrant resource centers in Naco, AguaPrieta, and Nogales, just across the border rom where the buses drop people

who have been deported. Busloads come through who have not eaten indays, who are dehydrated and have terrible blisters and nowhere to go. Pol-leros (guides) wait or them at the gate, oering them a second try, no extracost. Oten you pay a portion o the ee up ront and the rest upon arrival soits easy to say yes, even i you are in no condition to try again.

In 2007, I spent a week stafng the center in Agua Prieta. We sat in plasticchairs in the stiing heatwhich is all the more unbearable in a city, sur-rounded by concretewatching people walk through the turnstile and intoMexico. It was easy to pick out the ones who had been deported.

Two men came in one aternoon. Earlier that day theyd been doing theirlaundry in Phoenix when the laundromat was raided. The Border Patrol

had confscated everything they had, even their phones. I let them use mineto tell their wives they werent coming home that night. We gave themsome ood and pointed them towards a ree shelter a ew blocks away. Theythanked us and wandered o into the sweltering darkness, already planningthe trip back home to their amilies on the other side.

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Electrolit is an electrolyte solution or children made in Mexico. Thousands o empty bottleslitter the trails and every store in Altar sells them.

Not long ater two women and a man walked through the door. They had arelative who had tried to cross with his cousin. Four days earlier hed gottensick and the cousin let him alone to go look or help. He hadnt been seensince. His amily was going to all the ports o entry, talking to people onboth sides, leaving photos and phone numbers everywhere in case he showedup. They were surprisingly calm, all things considered.

The desert is ull o stories o people who let their riend or relative behind

to go or help. Sometimes the Border Patrol looks or the lost person, othertimes they ignore the pleas or help and just deport the ones who turnedthemselves in.

Volunteers in Agua Prieta and other migrant resource centers spent twoyears recording accounts o Border Patrol neglect and mistreatment. Theproject confrmed that the denial o ood, water, and medical care, as well as

verbal and physical abuse, are pervasive. In 2008 No More Deaths publishedthese fndings, entitled Human Rights Abuses o Migrants in Short-TermCustody on the Arizona/Sonora Border.* Undocumented immigrants havelittle legal recourse in the ace o this institutional violence. Oten their sto-ries are untold, or at least unheard.

***

The trip to the United States does not necessarily begin at the border line;rather it is a long journey that can start hundreds or thousands o miles awayin Central or South America. The US/Mexico border might be the secondor third or ourth one that people cross on their trip north. The arther peo-ple travel, the more expensive and dangerous it is.

As soon as I arrived at camp the frst year I started hearing about Altar, thestaging ground or the last leg o many journeys into Arizona. Its hard to getthere but one weekend we decided to drive down and explore another pieceo the migration puzzle.

A rough dirt road connects Altar to the border at Sasabe, 50 or 60 slow milesaway, but the threat o bandits and washed-out roads orced us to take thelonger route, through Nogales and Magdalena.

We didnt anticipate how suspicious our presence would be, fve white peoplesnooping around a town that seems to exist only to connect walkers withguides. We wandered around, into shops ull o Electrolit, Red Bull, sar-

* The report is available on No More Deaths website in the Documents section.13


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dines, saltines, black backpacks, and gallon jugs o water. Outdoor marketssold black t-shirts, bandanas, individual oversized black trashbags, and tennisshoes. All the things we fnd on the trails, the same brand names and pat-terns that have become so amiliar.

We sat at a table outside a restaurant drinking cokes and watching the plazain ront o the church. We saw groups o nervous men with little backpacksmaterialize and gather around other men who were clearly in charge, men

whose jobs it was to recruit walkers or the coyotes. The recruiter would talkor a ew minutes and then lead them o to a house nearby. Nadie puede ase-

gurarte que sobrevivirs a las altas temperaturas en el desierto, donde sobrepasanlos 50 grados,says a huge banner hanging above the church doors. Ya vanmuchos hermanos muertos. No te arriesgues!(Nobody can ensure that you willsurvive the high temperatures in the desert, which can exceed 50 C/122 F.Many have died who have gone beore. Its not worth the risk!)

All the people standing around town looked exactly like the ones we run intoon the trails. We saw only three womentwo working in stores and anothersetting up some sort o event in ront o the church.

No one talked to us. They stared but never even asked where we were romor what we were doing. We elt immediately sel-conscious and so wereunable to talk to anyone either. Instead we just chattered to each other inEnglish and looked extremely out o place in a town on edge. Beat up white

vans with no license plates rattled around, shuttles to Sasabe. Those whocant aord the overpriced rides start walking rom there. Some never evenreach the border.

Back at camp we talked to someone who had also been to Altar on a trip he

took with a college class. Hed met people whose riends had been kidnappedo the street and held or ransom. Other people he talked to had comeup rom Central America on reight trains, a perilous journey o its own.

Thousands o lives rom all over Mexico and Central America converge inthat dusty little town and then spread back out again all along the border, allacross the country.

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Violence

Tuscon-based organizationCoalicon de Derechos Humanos keeps a databaseo bodies recovered in the Arizona desert. Most deaths are attributable tohyperthermia (overheating) or exposure. Oten the cause is undeterminedbecause they ound only skeletons. Twenty last year were murdered. Two

were hanged, the circumstances unexplained.

A shrine in the desert or Josseline Hernandez, a 15-year old girl rom ElSalvador whose body was recovered by our No More Deaths volunteers inFebruary 2008.

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Humane Borders, an organization based in Tucson, makes and distributes these mapsto churches, shelters, and shops in northern Mexico. It shows approximately how ar onecan expect to walk rom the border at Sasabe in one, two, and three days. The dots markrecorded migrant deaths in 2007. Flags represent potable water stations that HumaneBorders maintains in the desert. The bar graph in the corner shows the number o migrantdeaths per month, with July being teh most deadly. They have similar maps or the areasaround Nogales, Lukeville, and Douglas.

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It is common knowledge that as the US government militarizes and triesto seal the border, people try to cross in more and more remote areas o thedesert. The more dangerous and arduous the journey, the more coyotes cancharge to bring people across. The more money is in the equation, the moreorganized and high-stakes the human smuggling becomesit can costseveral thousand dollars per person to get across the border, depending on

where you start and how you travel. Already more money is made transport-ing humans than drugs into the US.

Armed bandits roam the desert trails, preying on migrants. We assume theycross over rom Mexico and operate in areas along the border. Sometimes

Border Patrol helictoper ies low over the desert.

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US every year. Many have amilieshusbands, wives, parents, siblings, orchildrenalready in the US that they are trying to join. Others leave theirhomes to come work or a ew years, save some money, and then go back.Some came to the US when they were small children, lived here their wholelives, and were deported. They may not speak Spanish or know anyone inthe country the US government sends them back to. They are seen as illegalin the country they call home.

Oten those who oppose immigration act as i it is based on peoples wantsthey want more money, they want more opportunity, they want to live andraise their children in a better place. It is true that many migrants are pushednorth by grinding poverty and a lack o economic options, but this processis driven not by wants as much as by needs: the need or money to buy oodand school books, the need to reunite with amily members, the need toreturn to a lie rooted here in the United States.*It is getting more and more difcult or people to saely come to the UnitedStates. To those who advocate or a closed border this might seem like prooo an eective immigration policy, but this increase in danger does not mean

ewer people try to cross the border. The undocumented population contin-ues to grow in the United States, as does the death count in the desert.

Even two years ago things were a bit simpler and saer along the part o theborder south o Tucson. In 2008 the Border Patrol began enorcing Opera-tion Streamline in Arizona. Under Streamline, 80-100 o the approximately1000 migrants detained daily while crossing the border are randomly se-lected or prosecution. Every aternoon at 1:00 PM a new group is usheredinto a courtroom downtownstill wearing the clothes they were picked upinto stand in ront o a judge who fnds them all guilty o illegal entry.Usually the sentence (up to 180 days) is suspended and they are deportedimmediately. But i they are caught again they can go to prison or up totwenty years or illegal re-entry.

What this means is that people we fnd who are lost, sick, or tired, peoplewho would ordinarily return to Mexico to rest and try again later, now haveto worry about ending up in that group o 100 unortunate people. Thepotential consequences or giving up and turning themselves in are a strongincentive to keep going, which can be extremely dangerous. But what alter-native do they have?

*Immigration is massively complicatedI do not mean to explain it here, by any means.

Free trade, neoliberalism, and a history o political and military intervention by the USaswell as individual choiceare all are major actors that contribute to immigration. But this iswhat Ive heard directly rom people crossing the border.

they work in collusion with the guides, who lead groups straight into am-bushes where everyone is robbed o all the money they are carrying to payor their journey. One day three volunteers were on a patrol when a mancalled out to them. He warned them that they should be careulan hourearlier his entire group had been held up by men with guns who had takeneverything, even their ood. Shortly thereater a BP helicopter had buzzedthem, scattering the group. Now he was by himsel with nothing.

***

I have never heard any stories o white people being hassled by bandits onthe US side. The Border Patrol would undoubtedly be much more respon-sive to a report rom a gringo, or any US citizen, than rom a group oundocumented migrants. But the bandits are out there.

One morning a patrol ran into an injured man who needed medical atten-tion. Hed been walking with his riend, on their way to Phoenix, and was

jumped by a gang with AK-47s on the trail. Theyd been beaten and heldcaptive, assault ries to their heads, and ordered to call their bosses in Phoe-nix and ask or a $5000 ransom. Neither had bosses in Phoenix.

He was saved by the sound o an engine. Someone drove by on a our-wheeler, neither on the road nor on a trail, just riding through the desert.The bandits tried to hide and the man took advantage o the conusion totake o running ater the our-wheeler. Help me! he screamed in Spanish.Theyre going to kill me!

He managed to get away. He didnt know what happened to his riend.

***

Beyond the physical violence there is a great emotional and psychologicalviolence that results rom the border and migration.

The people I met out in the desert expressed no excitement about comingto the United States. On the contrary, they did not want to risk their lives tomove to a country where they know they will be reviled and expected to livein the shadows, to work difcult, low-paying jobs and live with the constantthreat o ICE raids. For most it is not a choice.

O course the range o experiences is massiveit is impossible to draw gen-eralizations about the hundreds o thousands o people crossing into the


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Monsoon

Its raining on the beach in Arizona. It s so weird I had to write it down,but its true. We sat under the little palapa and watched raindrops pound thelake and elt conused. We swim during the day and at night migrants walkby our tent on their way north.

Ruby, Arizona. Population: 1. An old mining town, fve paved and sevengrueling dirt miles out o Arivaca, that s been abandoned since the mine shutdown in the 1940s. Now Sun Dog lives there. He gets a house and a smallsalary to take care o things and collect money rom what tourists mightbrave the roads. His graying beard is so thick you can barely see his mouth

when he talks. He is a gracious host. One week this year we set up a supple-mentary camp there so we could explore some new, very active trails.

Ruby is a truly amazing place, a relic o the wild west that is ull o bats, rarebirds, mine shats, crumbling machinery, and murderous olklore. The bestpart, though, is probably the lake, our oasis in that inhospitable desert. Tail-

ings rom the mine were dumped alongside it, pure white tailings that looklike sanda at, white, sandy beach in the middle o thousands o square

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On patrol ater the monsoon.

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miles o scrubby, rocky desert. Rumor has it theres millions o dollars wortho gold in that sand, but it costs more to extract it than it is worth.

It has been raining a lotthe monsoon started. Everythings exploding ingreen, blooming in a hundred bright colors. The rain awakens the desert,

which everyday becomes more and more colorul, more and more lush. Atera ew days o storms the landscape is transormed into a totally dierentplace than the scorched hell wed gotten used to.

Weve been walking a lot toodown past old mines and the remains ostone buildings, almost to the border, up through steep canyons that sud-denly have rivers owing through them, soaked to the bone.

We ran into people waiting out the rain who were crossing without a guide(or so they said). We told them to be careul o ash oods and then con-tinued on up the canyon. They probably thought we were totally crazy, twodripping-wet gringos wandering around in the middle o nowhere. The rainkept alling.

Just like the heat, the rain is intense when it fnally comes. And just likeeverything in the desert, the rain is dangerous.

Tonight it ell hardest while we were packing up to go back to Tucson orthe weekend. It got hectic, a stream appeared that ate a channel through thesand on its way to the lake, and I couldnt fnd my raincoat. We let or townin two trucks and the washes were running.

Last year I didnt understand why everyone called those dry gullies washes.They told me the washes turn into rivers when the monsoon comes but Icouldnt imagine it, didnt believe the stories about stuck cars that had to beabandoned until the rain stopped. Now I get it.

At the frst sizeable wash we waited so Geo would go frst. He had a lotmore experience with desert driving and didnt hesitate. Just dont stop, hesaid, and then plowed through, water splashing up to the roo o his gianttruck.

The next one was bigger, much bigger. A river, raging, brown, 50 eet across.We watched rom the top o the hill as Geo barreled into it, slid back andorth, powered through, and then suddenly dropped down into deeper water.

The tail lights ickered. The engine went o. Water was up to the doors.

Everyone in our car panicked and started to jump out into the rain. We


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watched in the dying light as a passenger climbed out the window andjumped into the thigh-high water: Sun Dog, laughing. He got in our truckand drove us back to Ruby, tearing around corners and shooting across wash-es. He got his even bigger truck, kept laughing, and took o. By the time wegot back to where everyone else was waiting Sun Dog had driven all over theside o a steep hill and uprooted a mesquite tree in his maniacal attempt toget across the wash. There was just too much water to do anything but wait.

Eventually the rain slacked and the water level dropped enough or Sun Dogto pull them out. The biggest wash was still ahead so we had to turn back.He let us sleep in an empty house with no glass in the windows, old aded

National Geographics stacked in the corner, and a bat ying around inside.

Everything got crazy so ast. The line between order and chaos is thin in thedesert. It is exhausting.

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Driving across a wash.

PhotobyNMD.

Us and Them

We passed two Border Patrol trucks, at least one with people in the littlecaged box in the back. Later we came across three Latino men sitting on theside o the road while a BP agent no older than I am explained the voluntarydeparture papers they were about to sign. It elt like a treasure hunt, a con-test between us and the BP to see who can be the bigger hero.

***

Other times being our there, walking the trails and calling out into the ex-pansive desert, eels totally useless, helpless. One morning we ran into Edu-ardo, walking by himsel and carrying nothing but a little sot cooler bag.

The day beore he ell and hurt his leg so his group let him. He elt better,he assured us, but didnt really know where he was going, or even where hisgroup was going. He kept telling us he was fne, took three ood packs andtwo gallons o water, and kept walking.

I dont understand what happens to people like him, cant imagine anythingother than them getting caught (at best). No one would pick them up i theytried to hitchhike. There are no bus stations nearby. Checkpoints are on allthe paved roads. I dont understand the plan, or even i there is one otherthan to keep going, al norte, to walk until they re there, here.

Hed been walking our days already and was too ar in to turn backhesstuck in the middle, in the middle o everything: o the desert, o a war, othe global economy, o a border that stretches 50 miles north and 50 milessouth o a line in the sand. Some people would say hes living at the periph-

ery but he is right in the middle o it all.

We continued south on patrol and he went north. He had to walk right byour car, parked a hal-mile away alongside the trail. I wondered i he wouldbe waiting or us when we got back, i he would ask us why we dont just givehim a ridetheres no one around to see, right? Just a ew miles, just intotown. Maybe hell have a better chance o making it rom there.

Ater turning around we ollowed his ootprints past the truck, across thedirt road, and down the trail on the other side. We drove back to campalone. It elt awul. Selfsh. Cowardly.

In 2005, volunteers Shanti Sellz and Daniel Strauss were pulled over while


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driving three very sick migrants to doctors in Tucson. They were arrestedand charged with two eloniesone or transporting and one or conspiringto do so. They aced up to 15-year sentences.

Ater a massive mobilization by dierent church and human rights groups,Shanti and Daniels charges were dropped. But the message was clearweare playing with fre, and the consequences o going too ar are very real.

But is there any other human thing to do? What risks are we wil ling to take

to make clear our opposition to the violence o the border? As long as ouractions are constrained by the laws and policies enacted by a governmentdriven by capitalist logic we will be on the deensive, orced to operate in theever-shrinking gray area where the dierence between legal and illegal isnot clearly defned.

This lays it all bare, makes us choose between ourselves and them, our ree-dom and their saety. Or maybe the little things we can oer, the ood and

water and frst aid, are enough that they ll be able to make it. We have tohold on to this hope, another question without an answer.

***

25

A walker is loaded into the cage in the back o a BP truck. A second is alreadyinside.

PhotobyNMD.

The reality o the border is so much harder to handle when it becomes aboutindividual people. Its easier to think o them as one thing, one sad story thatgets sadder the more details you have. Each person you meet on the trailsis one more piece o the puzzle, one more piece o the collective identity othe migrant. Its easier that way than thinking o them as thousands andthousands o people with thousands and thousands o hopes and dreams andreasons or leaving home and coming here. The emotional burden o engag-ing with the complexity o each person out on the trails is too overwhelming.

I hate calling them them. I hate calling them migrants. It makes them allthe same. The migrants are always there, always coming. But in reality thereare dierent people there everyday, people who came rom one place and aregoing to another, people who will melt into a neighborhood in some US cityand build a lie. There maybe they can be people, not just migrants.

This desert is something they pass throughwere the ones who stay, whokeep coming back to the same trails every day. When we think o them asthe migrants they stop being individual people crossing one at a time andbecome a single, permanent presence: a set o recurring ootprints, a group o

thirsty people returning every night to drink all the water we leave out.


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Breathe Out: Tucson

Its not always so intense out in the desert. Sometimes we go days, a weekeven, without running into anyone. There are always ootprints and reshtrash, but ater a ew days o hiking without seeing any walkers it can startto eel silly to be there. Its part o the perverse psychology o the workthemore people you fnd who need help, the more useul you eel. Shouldnt

we hope to never see anyone, that we become obsolete? Dont we think noone should be out there? The worse the situation on the border becomes themore necessary it eels to be there, the more satisying and rewarding.

***

At the end o a particularly uneventul week we had brie check-ins beoregoing to sleep. When it was my turn to talk I had nothing to say, just thatI wasnt really sure how I elt. Just tired. I passed and tried to think about itand it was like shining a brighter and brighter light into a room ull o stu.

Everything that had been there in the dark rumbled to lie and got big-ger and bigger. By the time it was my turn again to talk it was clear to methat I had not been thinking at all about my week, about where I was and

what I had been doing. It hadnt elt like very much had happened, nothingtoo crazy or upsetting, no dying people or small children or heartbreakingstories. But just being there, out in the desert, out near the Wall, surroundedby the BP and the violence and ear, out in the heat and rain with tarantulasand snakes and circling vultures and the smell o death, is a lot. Too much totry to ignore.

Its important to take breaks. Oten wed drive back to Tucson on the week-

end where we could wash our c lothes, take showers, and cool o. ThatSaturday I arrived in Tucson weak and exhausted and ell asleep in a coeeshop. It was amazing and scary how much my brain just shut down once Idstarted down the road o thinking about how I was eeling.

Its traumatic and exhausting to be here. It helps me begin to imagine whatits like or the people crossing, but Il l never really understandand theyhave so many dierent experiences, theyre all dierent too. Ill never standon the other side o a metal wall thats keeping me rom seeing my parentsor my children. Just thinking about it makes me tremble inside, makes me

want to scream, makes me eel crazy. And I can choose to go back home andignore it, to make it invisible again.

27

***

A ew seasonal residents o Tucson donate their houses and apartments toNo More Deaths in the summer when it gets too hot. They are available or

volunteers to use when were in town. One has a swimming pool. My a-vorite is on the edge o town, surrounded by towering dancing suguaro cacti.

There, on the back porch drinking a beer and watching the sunset, theborder eels a thousand miles away, unreal even. Forgettable, ignorable. Thelight gets soter, more orange, beautiul on the mountain tops. Everything isthere to make you orget about it.

But its then, when I make mysel think back, remember just a day ago and50 miles south, that it can seem more real than when I m there, hot, tired,and hungry. In Arivaca scared migrants show up on your doorstep, the BPpulls you over because your skin is brown, dead bodies turn up on the side othe road. All these things happen everydayit becomes a part o everyoneslives. For so much o the country this is all just an idea, something on thenews that politicians talk about. In the Arivaca paper I read about the needto secure the border and the ineectiveness o the BP and urther militariza-tion. In other places those would sound like opposite perspectives but herethey can both be true.

It transcends politics and books and theories and debates. Its about lie and


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death, humanity and dignity, about people who oten dont have a choicespending all their money to have someone they have no reason to trust sneakthem into the country, to show them how to pack a little backpack with

water and sardines and walk or days through this unorgiving, inhospitablelandscape. Maybe theyre robbed and raped. Maybe they are let behind be-cause they got tired or sprained an ankle. Maybe they are caught by the BPand dragged o to Tucson in a metal cage to stand in ront o a judge whotells them theyre guilty or trying to fnd a job. Maybe they all get lost and

their blood turns to sludge in the heat and they die, alone in a oreign land.

Academics and politicians spend a lot o time proposing eloquent theoriesand myopic policies that swallow up all o these people trying to satisytheir human needs in the ace o a violent, hateul, viciously inhuman reality.

You can read all you want about comprehensive immigration reorm and 14million undocumented immigrants and 3500 recorded deaths on the bordersince 1994 and never know the name o one o these people walking up anddown mountains in the inky darkness.

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The Man with no Name

To live your whole lie in a place and then go somewhere else to die. Its onething during the day, under the crackling sun, but altogether another oncenight sets in and everything eels arther away and all the little invisiblethings come out.

Maybe he was on his way to see his amily. Now hes out in the desert al lalone and we dont even know his name.

We lost a riend, the message said this morning. Another patrol had runinto two people who had been walking with him, both o whom were inpretty bad shape themselves. Theyd had to leave him behind, a tired middle-aged man whod allen and couldnt get back up.

We searched all day. The usual routes were abandoned and every volunteer incamp was deployed. The two men who made it out had a vague description

o where they had let him. Theyd been on a rocky trail in the dark whenhe ell, they said. An hour or so later they hit a rough road, turned let, andwalked until they ound a major trail that took them over a pass. The patrolound them on the other side.

There are hundreds o miles o trails, dozens o dirt roads, and several passesout there. Dehydration conuses people. The details changed in dierent

versions o the story. No More Deaths is not a search and rescue outft. Wedont know the best ways to fnd a single lost person. We called the BorderPatrol but they said it was too late in the day to send out BORSTAR. Callback tomorrow, they told us.

We did our best but couldnt fnd any sign o him. I wonder what the nightwill do to him, all alone on the ground out there, no idea where he is, thun-der and lightning all around.

***

We looked or him again this aternoon, but this time it was pretty hal-hearted, no sense o urgency, back to the banter and sarcastic jokes. Itsalmost like any other day at campthere are always people alone out there,lost. The Border Patrol said today that too much time has already passed andtheyre not going to search or him.


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Maybe he just needed to rest, maybe he kept walking aterwards and made itout, maybe another group ound him and helped him, maybe the BP stum-bled across himwed like to think these things but theyre all unlikely. Hesprobably still lying out there on some remote trail, waiting or something tohappen to him, or someone to save him, or death to take him.

***

As I was about to go to sleep I heard Maeve crying sotly.

Whats wrong? I asked.

Im thinking about the man, she said. Do you think hes still out there?

***

Its so much harder when its this close, when it eels like we can actuallydo something, when its just one person were talking about. The migrantsdont die, dont go away, dont get lostindividual people do. The migrants

are always out there, always coming, always walking.

We sit here, waiting out the hottest part o the day. Two o our three truckslet to go back to Tucson and pick up new volunteers or this week, leavingus pretty much unable to do anything. We continue on our short patrols,hoping we somehow run into him on our regular routes, hoping that being

where hed end up i he managed to keep walking is enough, is anything.

***

We searched or him a third day but again less urgently. We did fnd a placethat ft the description o where he was let but didnt have the time or heat-resistance to look much once we got all the way out there. Too much driv-ing on barely passable roads, too much walking in the brutal sun, too muchdesert to fnd one man.

***

Everything elt dierent ater that. He became another ghost wandering thetrails, a weight that would settle on me, that haunted me. Everything eltbigger, hotter, ather away. He would blow through my mind on the wind

and Id wonder what he looked like, what his name was.

31

He quickly aded rom our conversations. Some people wanted to orgetabout him. Others were rustrated by the silence, by what seemed like indi-erence. But theres only so much reality you can handle out there.

A ew days later Maeve and I let, packed up our tents and sleeping bags andheaded east to New Orleans.

PhotobyNoraDye.


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There is no End

From the reeway coming into El Paso you dont realize the houses you seeare actually Jurez,Mxico, el otro lado. Then you see the Wall, the ood-lights, the razor wire. It s scary, its imposing, its about to get even bigger.But still its ull o holes.

Were staying at Casa Vides, which is part o Annunciation House, a serieso shelters or people whove slipped through the cracks and are on their waynorth. The house we are in is or long-term guests, mostly people apply-ing or political asylum. Across town is the emergency shelter where peopleshow up in the middle o the night, still wet rom swimming across the river.

Everyone knows about these houses but the BP leaves them alone, and hasor over 30 years. The sta is not transporting, not giving people jobs, nothooking them up with rides, but they are harboring criminals, as one vol-unteer put it, and that is illegal. But somehow it s okay. Maybe the BP just

recognizes that shutting down these houses isnt going to stop people romcoming. They dont seem to realize that building more walls wont either.

Poor Mexico, poor United States, Carlos Fuentes wrote. So ar rom God,so close to each other. The United States is tied to Latin America, tied bybonds that were ormed hundreds o years ago. Walls cannot break theselinks, walls cannot keep amilies apart, walls cannot keep parents romproviding or their children. Any policy that tries to subjugate history andhuman necessity is bound to ail.

This is a story with no end.

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For more information:

The Devils Highway, by Luis Alberto Urreaa heartbreaking retelling o thedeadly journey o a group o 26 migrants through the Arizona desert in 2001 inwhich all by 12 died. A good comprehensive look at the industry o undocumentedimmigration.

Wetbacka documentary in which the flmmaker travels with two men rom theirvillage in Nicaragua to the United States. The movie shows many o the piecesand players in the journey, rom reight trains and river crossings to bandits and

Minutemen.

El Otro Lado, by Sascha Scattera zine about riding reight trains in Mexicoand the US with Latino immigrants and exploring the cultural connections be-tween the two countries. Available at www.microcosmpublishing.com.

The Crystal Frontier, by Carlos Fuentesa fctional story that also examines thecultural connections and disconnections across the border, but in a very dierentlight.

www.nomoredeaths.orgNo More Deaths is always looking or more volunteers,i even or a week. Its amazing.

Thanks to Maeve, Molly, Asa, Du, Matt, and Kate or editing, Nora and Steve(NMD) or photos, Sue at Humane Borders or the maps, and Tim or the coverdesign. Unless otherwise noted, photos by me.

December [email protected]