Humanitarian Crisis: A Summer in the Borderlands
Greetings from Arivaca, Arizona. It's July, and I am writing from the desert just north of the US-Mexico border. This is not a typical summer vacation destination—I am camping along a desert corridor heavily traveled by migrants heading north, a corridor with daily temperatures regularly breaking 115 degrees.
This summer, I've taken time off from work with Global Exchange's Speakers Bureau to volunteer with No More Deaths, a movement dedicated to ending the humanitarian crisis on the US-Mexico border. Each day at the No More Deaths campground is structured the same: I wake up at sunrise with other volunteers, and set out from our campsite along the migrant trails to look for those who have gotten sick, lost or left behind in their journey north. As we walk, we regularly call out in Spanish: "We are here to help. We have water, food and medical supplies. We are not border patrol. Don't be afraid." However, it is the unplanned deviations along these treacherous migrant trails that make the difference between life and death, literally.
On my first day in the desert, we met Margarita, a 23-year-old woman from Guerrero, lying listless below a mesquite tree. Finding her, miles off our route, was completely by chance. She had already been alone, lost and without food or water for five days; she thought she was going to die alone in the middle of the Arizona desert. The first thing Margarita said to us was, "what world is this? I work only so I can work more. But I have no choice. If I go home, I also die of hunger."
Margarita never wanted to leave her hometown in Mexico. But after going into debt trying unsuccessfully to save her six-month-old baby from a critical illness, she had no way of paying back the money she borrowed. Her farm, her only asset, was worthless due to a free trade policy that forced her to compete with huge agricultural corporations in the US.
The day after we found Margarita, we found Yolanda sitting on the side of a trail. She had been deported in a workplace raid and was trying to get back to her two toddler children who were still in the US as citizens. After four days under the Arizona sun Yolanda was sick with dehydration, but she had not lost her maternal drive to reconnect with her children. She implored of us: "How can a line be drawn between me and my children? How can they keep me away?" But we knew that severing families was business-as-usual under current immigration policies, which leave parents, like Yolanda, desperate to reunite with their children.
It is that desperation that drove Paulino to cross his two daughters through our corridor of the desert. By the time we found him, Paulino had begun to panic that his dream of reuniting his border-splintered family would lead to their deaths. After returning to Mexico for his mother's funeral, Paulino had found daughters he barely knew and was determined to bring his girls back to their mother. Ten-year-old, Arlette, had sustained the harsh desert climate, but her sister, Jacqueline, had begun to show symptoms of advanced heat exhaustion and dehydration; her eyes stared vacantly, she had not urinated for three days, her speech was slurred and she could barely hold up her head. At no other time in my life have I been so confronted with the choice between the moral path and the legal path. What would you do if you found a sick ten-year-old girl in the middle of a deadly desert wanting to be reunited with her mother in Los Angeles? I know few people whose first instinct wouldn't be to take her out of danger, to take her to her mother. But the law does not allow for this basic human compassion.
Since 1998, the combination of failed trade policies, like NAFTA, raising migration rates, and the growing militarization of the border diverting the flow of migrants into increasingly dangerous terrain has led to the deaths of over 2500 migrants. These deaths are not an accident: they are policy. Within the documents of US Operation Gatekeeper, the rise in migrant deaths is expected, accepted and explicitly stated as a consequence and deterrent. Just in my first 12 days in the desert, at least 22 economic refugees died because of these policies.
In my experience, the choice migrants make to cross the border has nothing to do with breaking the law and nothing to do with stealing jobs. Rather, it has everything to do with creating a sustainable and hopeful life for themselves and their families.
Act Now:
*Join a Global Exchange Reality Tour to the Border!
http://www.globalexchange.org/tours
*Bring a speaker on immigration to your community!
Call Kate Raven at 415-575-5550
*Learn more about Global Exchange's work on Immigration at
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico/
*Volunteer next summer with No More Deaths at
http://www.nomoredeaths.org
This summer, I've taken time off from work with Global Exchange's Speakers Bureau to volunteer with No More Deaths, a movement dedicated to ending the humanitarian crisis on the US-Mexico border. Each day at the No More Deaths campground is structured the same: I wake up at sunrise with other volunteers, and set out from our campsite along the migrant trails to look for those who have gotten sick, lost or left behind in their journey north. As we walk, we regularly call out in Spanish: "We are here to help. We have water, food and medical supplies. We are not border patrol. Don't be afraid." However, it is the unplanned deviations along these treacherous migrant trails that make the difference between life and death, literally.
On my first day in the desert, we met Margarita, a 23-year-old woman from Guerrero, lying listless below a mesquite tree. Finding her, miles off our route, was completely by chance. She had already been alone, lost and without food or water for five days; she thought she was going to die alone in the middle of the Arizona desert. The first thing Margarita said to us was, "what world is this? I work only so I can work more. But I have no choice. If I go home, I also die of hunger."
Margarita never wanted to leave her hometown in Mexico. But after going into debt trying unsuccessfully to save her six-month-old baby from a critical illness, she had no way of paying back the money she borrowed. Her farm, her only asset, was worthless due to a free trade policy that forced her to compete with huge agricultural corporations in the US.
The day after we found Margarita, we found Yolanda sitting on the side of a trail. She had been deported in a workplace raid and was trying to get back to her two toddler children who were still in the US as citizens. After four days under the Arizona sun Yolanda was sick with dehydration, but she had not lost her maternal drive to reconnect with her children. She implored of us: "How can a line be drawn between me and my children? How can they keep me away?" But we knew that severing families was business-as-usual under current immigration policies, which leave parents, like Yolanda, desperate to reunite with their children.
It is that desperation that drove Paulino to cross his two daughters through our corridor of the desert. By the time we found him, Paulino had begun to panic that his dream of reuniting his border-splintered family would lead to their deaths. After returning to Mexico for his mother's funeral, Paulino had found daughters he barely knew and was determined to bring his girls back to their mother. Ten-year-old, Arlette, had sustained the harsh desert climate, but her sister, Jacqueline, had begun to show symptoms of advanced heat exhaustion and dehydration; her eyes stared vacantly, she had not urinated for three days, her speech was slurred and she could barely hold up her head. At no other time in my life have I been so confronted with the choice between the moral path and the legal path. What would you do if you found a sick ten-year-old girl in the middle of a deadly desert wanting to be reunited with her mother in Los Angeles? I know few people whose first instinct wouldn't be to take her out of danger, to take her to her mother. But the law does not allow for this basic human compassion.
Since 1998, the combination of failed trade policies, like NAFTA, raising migration rates, and the growing militarization of the border diverting the flow of migrants into increasingly dangerous terrain has led to the deaths of over 2500 migrants. These deaths are not an accident: they are policy. Within the documents of US Operation Gatekeeper, the rise in migrant deaths is expected, accepted and explicitly stated as a consequence and deterrent. Just in my first 12 days in the desert, at least 22 economic refugees died because of these policies.
In my experience, the choice migrants make to cross the border has nothing to do with breaking the law and nothing to do with stealing jobs. Rather, it has everything to do with creating a sustainable and hopeful life for themselves and their families.
Act Now:
*Join a Global Exchange Reality Tour to the Border!
http://www.globalexchange.org/tours
*Bring a speaker on immigration to your community!
Call Kate Raven at 415-575-5550
*Learn more about Global Exchange's work on Immigration at
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico/
*Volunteer next summer with No More Deaths at
http://www.nomoredeaths.org