Activists: Deaths in Arizona Desert Could Have Been Avoided

by Jonathan Treat

The May 23 discovery of 14 dead migrants in the harsh deserts southeast of Yuma, Arizona, has catapulted the issue of U.S. border control policy back on to center stage. Immigrant rights activists in the area, however, say the tragedy should have been anticipated—and could have been avoided.

“I’m shocked by the deaths, but not surprised. The Border Patrol has known that this is exactly what was going to happen. We’ve been saying it for three years,” says Rev. John Fife, a Tucson pastor and member of Humane Borders, a nonprofit group that provides aid to border crossers in distress.

In fact, on March 27, 2001, Humane Borders asked the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife for permits to build seven new water stations in the harsh border terrain of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge east of Yuma, Arizona—the same area where the 14 migrant deaths occurred. “Our permits to build the new water stations in the Cabeza Prieta were denied on April 8,” relates Rev. Robin Hoover of Tucson’s First Christian Church, one of the founders of Humane Borders. “It turns out that the 14 men who died last week would have crossed the area where we were intending to deploy water. They would have at least known that there was water to their backs. So we’re quite concerned that we weren’t able to put water there.”

Apparently, now the Department of Fish and Wildlife is also concerned. Their office called Hoover the afternoon of Thursday May 24 to set up a 2-day meeting between Humane Borders representatives, Fish and Wildlife personnel, and Mexican officials to discuss the placement of water stations in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. Some of the victim’s bodies were also found on desert lands within the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range. In January, American Beginning, an immigration service provider in Yuma, initiated negotiations with authorities for permission to deploy water there. Those talks had stalled as well—until May 24.

“Everyone’s been dragging their feet. Nothing’s happened. Then, all of a sudden, we’re being invited into conversations. In the last two days, representatives of elected officials, including Sen. Ted Kennedy, have been contacting us saying we need public administrators to step up to the plate and do something to avert further tragedies,” says Hoover.

Following a May 31 meeting involving Humane Borders and 11 different government agencies that manage land in southern Arizona, some officials agreed to evaluate expanded options for aiding migrants in distress. Others were less receptive to the idea. According to a report in the Arizona Star, Col. Kim Uken of Luke Air Force Base expressed concern that “the placement of water would encourage transiting the range and create a safety hazard for unauthorized transits.” In a related development, on June 5 the Pima County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to contribute $25,000 to Humane Borders to help it set up water stations.

Ground Zero in the Immigration Battle

In 1994, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) initiated Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego. Combining increased use of high-tech surveillance equipment with the construction of new border barriers and stadium lights and a three-fold increase in Border Patrol agents, Gatekeeper made crossing the line in the Tijuana-San Diego corridor exceedingly difficult. As a result, Arizona has become a popular place to make the try. In southern California, Border Patrol arrests have fallen by some two-thirds over the past five years, while arrests in the Tucson sector have more than doubled, to almost half a million in fiscal 1999.

“The Tucson sector of the Border Patrol now has 1,635 officers and about 200 support staff,” says Hoover “This is Ground Zero in the immigration battle.” Indeed, activists say that southern Arizona is starting to take on the look of occupied territory. For example, over the past year the small town of Douglas has endured the construction of miles of new border walls; increased patrols by INS agents mounted on horses and all-terrain motorcycles; and the installation of high-powered stadium lights, portable observation towers, motion sensing devices, remote video equipment, and night vision cameras.

At the same time, the harsh conditions in the largely unpopulated stretches of the Arizona borderlands catch many migrants unprepared. Between 1998 and 2000, according to INS figures, deaths on the border increased 41%—of all border states, Arizona showed the greatest increase in fatalities, registering four times as many deaths in 2000 as in 1998. In 2000 alone, at least 490 people died trying to cross the international boundary—106 of them in Arizona, and most from exposure or dehydration. Some estimates double that death toll.

Last year, former INS commissioner Doris Meissner told the Arizona Republic that her agency knew the crackdown in San Diego would push migrants into the mountains and deserts to the east. The idea, she said, was that they would be deterred from crossing by the harsh conditions there. “We did believe that geography would be an ally to us,” Meissner said. “It was our sense that the number of people crossing the border through Arizona would go down to a trickle, once people realized what it’s like” (08/10/00).

Research conducted by the Center for Immigration Research at the University of Houston has linked shifts in enforcement patterns to increased migrant deaths on the border, and INS critics say the agency should have known that increased fatalities were likely. “We knew this was coming,” Isabel García, Tucson attorney and cofounder of the nonprofit Arizona Border Rights Project, told the New York Times recently. “We’ve been forewarning, lobbying, begging, cajoling, protesting, shouting, praying. We’ve done everything to bring attention to this very deadly law enforcement strategy that has been used by the border patrol of driving people into the most remote areas, where they have to know this will occur” (5/24/01).

“I think they [the INS] believe the policy is working and that if enough people die in the desert it will deter others from trying to cross,” says Fife. “It’s an extraordinarily cynical and destructive policy.”

Cecile Lumer, a migrant-rights activist in the border town of Bisbee, Arizona, agrees. “It’s murder,” she replies flatly when asked about the recent deaths in the desert. “There is a viciousness behind current immigration policy. The only thing that will stop death at the border is when people can walk through the door like a human being.”

Growth Industry

The INS border crackdown has also led many migrants to rely more heavily on smugglers—also known as coyotes, pateros, or polleros—to get across, rather than making the attempt on their own. But crossing the border with a smuggler is no less dangerous—as the recent deaths in southern Arizona illustrate. In that case, the victims were dropped off once in the United States and told they only needed to walk a couple of hours to U.S. Interstate 8. In reality, however, the nearest highway was more than 60 miles away.

The men had little water, and temperatures were running around 115° Fahrenheit. One Border Patrol official estimated that temperatures on the desert floor could have gotten as high as 130°F. Heat exhaustion and dehydration were listed as the cause of death for all 14 victims.

With the U.S. border build-up making migrant smuggling more profitable, smuggling operations have changed, becoming both more organized and more ruthless. Instances of migrants abandoned in the desert and similar acts of abuse are increasingly common on both sides of the border. In late May, for example, Mexican police discovered the bodies of five Guatemalan migrants in the back of a sealed truck in Veracruz. Abandoned by their coyotes, they died of asphyxiation when the air in the trailer ran out.

Enough Blame to Go Around

In a statement made after news of the deaths in southern Arizona broke, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft blamed the tragedy on the “lack of moral judgement” and “disregard for life” of the polleros involved. “The actions of these smugglers selfishly risked and ended the lives of 14 people,” he said. “They are to be condemned for putting profits before people.”

Rev. Fife agrees with Ashcroft that the coyotes who left the group of migrants stranded in the desert should be blamed. But, he adds, they aren’t the only guilty parties. “There’s plenty of guilt to go around,” he explains. “A year and a half ago, Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Bank asked the INS to stop employer sanctions for the good of the economy. There have been no INS raids since February 2000. It is an extraordinarily absurd policy that on the one hand you are intentionally made to run a gauntlet of death, but if you make it, you get a free pass, because we need you.”

The INS has over 9,000 Border Patrol agents deployed to keep would-be migrants out of the country; INS officials tasked with enforcing immigration laws in the workplace nationwide total just 300.

According to Fife and other members of Humane Borders, many migrants from impoverished communities in Mexico are lured across the border by private Mexican labor contractors working for U.S. businesses. “We have U.S. companies who actually contract people to go to Mexico, advertise jobs, and encourage people to come north,” says Hoover. Janssen King, an Albuquerque activist who works with Humane Borders, has seen that dynamic first-hand during visits to Mexican border communities. “People have tattered and torn photocopies of flyers in Spanish advertising jobs in meatpacking plants. They’re offering living wages, health benefits, and immigration security for the workers and their families.”

Others she meets are in more desperate straits, she says, and would do anything to cross the line and get a job, no matter the risk. “I met an 18-year-old in the plaza of Palomas, Mexico, who was soon going to make his sixth attempt at crossing the border. He told me he had five siblings and a mother at home that he needed to provide for. He said he wouldn’t go home, that he would cross the border to help his family—or die trying.”

Border Communities Offer Aid to Migrants, Question U.S. Policy

Humane Borders was started last year in reaction to the growing number of migrant deaths in the parched southern Arizona desert and the increased militarization of the region. Members of the coalition began meeting with representatives of the Border Patrol last year to express their dismay over INS policies and to explore ways to save the lives of migrants along the 2,100-mile U.S.-Mexico border. They also began to take more direct action.

“We talked together and pointed to the problem: death in the desert. And we said, ‘That’s wrong’” Hoover explains. “We asked what we could to in order to change that, and one of the first things we decided to do was explore lifesaving measures in the desert. And we came up with a novel idea—put water in the desert.”

Humane Borders set up its first relief station on December 12 last year, placing water jugs along with food and clothing underneath a 30-foot-high flagpole flying a 3x4 foot blue flag with the group’s symbol, water pouring out of the Big Dipper. Since then, the group has received permits from the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior to build another two more permanent water stations in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument—with two water tanks holding a total of 130 gallons in the southern station and three tanks with a total of 190 gallons in the north. Eventually, Humane Borders plans to install as many as 800 water stations along 200 miles of border desert.

Group members argue that the U.S. approach to immigration policy has to change. First, they recommend legalizing migrant workers already in the United States. Next, they’d like Washington to take up President Fox’s offer of a guest worker program that would allow migrants legal entry into the country to fill the abundant jobs being offered them. Finally, they think the government should increase the number of visas granted to Mexicans.

Despite expressing his “deep sadness and condolences” over the 14 migrant deaths in Arizona, President Bush is not backing away from established U.S. border policing policies. On the campaign trail, Bush raised eyebrows for his gentle rhetoric regarding undocumented border crossers, but his budget proposal would increase the number of Border Patrol agents by 1,140 over the next two years. If his request is approved, the total increase of 5,000 agents mandated by the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 will be achieved, with over 10,000 agents on the rolls. Currently the U.S. spends as much as $2 billion a year to stop migrants from crossing the border.

Ray Borane, the mayor of Douglas, Arizona, agrees that U.S. immigration policy needs to change. “It is clearly a failed policy. It’s completely misguided. And it’s hypocritical, because the government isn’t really interested in keeping workers out. The businesses that hire them have too strong of a lobby,” he says. “And it’s a policy that is causing death, suffering, and heartache to a lot of families.”

Remembering a day in 1997, when he witnessed the recovery of the bodies of eight migrants who had drowned in a Douglas storm drain, Borane adds: “Unfortunately, it takes tragedies to put pressure on people to change policy.”

Jonathan Treat regularly writes for borderlines.

BIOS Homepage   w   borderlines 79  Index   w    borderlines Homepage   w   IRC Homepage

Please send comments, questions, information on new resources, or changes to borderlines@irc-online.org