Migrant Resource Center, Aqua Prieta, Mexico
5:00 a.m.

I am finishing a night shift in the Migrant Resource Center, a drop-in agency sponsored by a coalition of faith-based humanitarian organizations. It provides free services to workers who are recently deported back to Mexico.

Our 13 guests are waking up. They’re talking about moving on but will wait until it warms up a bit outside. Here they’re wrapped in blankets. The night gets very cold in the desert.

Who are they? They are Mexican nationals who were apprehended sometime in the past three days. They were detained in a U.S. immigration facility just “inside” the border in Douglas, Arizona and were released sometime after 8:00 last night, just “outside” the border in Agua Prieta, Mexico. The U.S. spends over $3.5 billion dollars a year on border defense, utilizing over 10,000 Border Patrol agents whose job is to protect the U.S. borders from workers who cross without documentation.

Jesús will go to the local bank to retrieve the bit of money he left for just such an occasion, although in that he is an exception. Then he’ll find his friends and tell them he’s not going to try to cross the border again: it was too traumatic to have been lost in the desert so long. Weeks earlier he left his wife and 6 year old son in California where he has been working in a hotel as a waiter and bartender. His English is quite good. He came back to visit his sick mother in Puebla, Mexico. She’s better now so he tried to return to his home in California. He and 13 others hired a “coyote” (an illegal trafficker of people) who told him they would walk maybe 3 or 4 hours, then get picked up and driven to California.

Coyotes commonly assure their potential clients that any U.S. destination is a two day walk from the border. Jesús and the others were told they didn’t need much water or food, that it would be an easy walk in the desert. They walked for 14 hours in the blazing sun. Early on the coyote left them. He already had their money. The supplies were gone. Jesús told me they came across all kinds of snakes and scorpions. They rested under thorny mesquite trees: he was scratched and his clothes were torn. Finally Border Patrol found them and took them into detention. They were held for a day and a half in freezing cold holding cells and were given only a juice box and a small cup of soup.

He was separated from his friends. Border Patrol officials released him at the border at 1:00 a.m. – no money, no food, torn clothes, limping badly from his wounds. Fortunately, volunteers at the Migrant Resource Center located in the first storefront as one walks out of the border zone, were there for him. We welcomed him in, gave him burritos, coffee, and aspirin, offered use of the bathroom, settled him in a comfortable chair to rest, and let him talk through his trauma.

I have been part of a delegation sponsored by Christian Peacemaker Teams. My purpose is to learn first hand the challenges and opportunities related to immigration issues on the border. We were given a reading list beforehand (best resource is The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea). All week we’ve been meeting with faith-based humanitarian organizations that work to stop the deaths of immigrant workers who cross into the United States from Mexico. We’ve heard story after disturbing story of the exploitation and suffering of those who cross the border without the required documentation. Last night the stories I heard from the workers themselves confirmed the stories I’ve been hearing from multiple other human rights groups. I thought it couldn’t possibly be as bad as the experts were saying.

Zita and her 4 companions traveled from Oaxaca. Their ages are between 16 and 23. They paid as much money as they could pull together and agreed to what comes down to indentured servitude in order to pay a coyote to take them across the border. Because of the wall and the highly technical measures that have been constructed across most of the border to increase enforcement against illegal entrance, migrants are now forced to cross through the desert in Arizona.

Without adequate preparation the desert is a brutal, violent place. Right now the desert is blooming but the unique beauty does not mitigate the danger involved in three digit temperatures, razor sharp vegetation, poisonous creatures of many sorts and the extreme lack of shade and water. The average walk of migrant workers is four days in the desert before they reach their destination or get picked up by Border Patrol, if the migrants are not attacked by robbers or succumb to exposure. Many never make it.

No one knows how many workers die in the desert. A longtime religious leader in Douglas reports that some 6000 workers have died in the desert over the last 10 years. No More Deaths, a faith-based humanitarian organization, documented over 250 deaths in the Tucson Sector last year. The Tucson Sector of the U.S.-Mexico border has more migrants, more law enforcement agents, and more deaths than anywhere on the border. There were about 370,000 arrests made last year in the Tucson Sector. Border Patrol estimates that they apprehend about one fourth of total migrants in the desert, about 1000 a day. They admit that only a tiny percentage of those they catch are “bad guys”.

The Oaxaca group that I met was separated from their coyote. They managed to survive the desert for awhile but were overtaken by bandits who stole all their money, food and water. They wandered until apprehended by the Border Patrol. The agents made them wait outside in the searing sun without hats or water. They baked in the sun until the agents were ready to take them into town for processing. Inside detention the temperatures are freezing cold – to keep the germs, bacteria and smell down. Zita was taken to a separate holding area from her male companions, including her 17 year old brother, Gaston. At some point an officer took Gaston to a separate area. He was never brought back to the holding area. Zita and the other four were released and came to the Center. Gaston never showed up. Zita continues her worried vigil at the door, watching as each new group of released workers passes by, hoping her brother will be among them.

Her friends have made contact with a relative who will pick them up but they wait with her until there is word of Gaston. Though she came to the Center directly after days of wandering in the desert and 24 cold hours in detention, with only a box of juice and a few crackers to eat, she insisted on helping us wash the cups from the last group of guests before sitting down and having her coffee and lunch. She refuses to lie down and rest as she keeps watching for Gaston.

Annunciation House, El Paso, TX
8:00 p.m.

Armando is a tall, gentle 26 year old from Mexico City. He is staying for a few days at Annunciation House in El Paso, a shelter for those who have recently crossed into the U.S. without proper documentation. Guests at Annunciation House are able to rest, heal and figure out how to proceed with their lives.

Armando initially tried to cross the border at Tijuana because he had contacts for a job in California. He had paid a coyote $3,000 at the border area for help to cross the mountains. The first time he got separated from the group and had to return to Tijuana. The second time the coyote took the money and left the group in the mountains. They were assaulted by “banditos” who stole their money, beat up the men and raped the women. Armando weeps as he tells us about the woman. He stops momentarily, then continues, saying it was very hard for him and he went back home to Mexico City.

But Armando’s son needs an operation and he desperately wants to buy a decent, stable house for his wife, so he again tried to cross into the U.S., this time successfully near El. Paso. His brother-in-law is a chef in Chicago and will get him a job washing dishes. He’s waiting for him to come and get him. He will cross the “second border” – the checkpoints all around El Paso - by hiding under a semi or something.

Armando tells us that he worked very hard in Mexico City, driving taxi, hauling cargo, doing construction, whatever he could find. But he only made 7 pesos a day and it is impossible to support his family. He only wants to come to the States to work for a couple of years to get financially stable. Then he wants to return to Mexico City to raise his family in his own culture.

I look around at my companions on the delegation. Zach is 26. My nephew is almost 26. What makes this fine young man in front of me a criminal in the eyes of my country? Armando asks us if we think they’re criminals. Then, “Do you think we’re taking your jobs”, he asks us. “No”, one of my colleagues answers, “on the contrary, we’re taking your jobs through NAFTA”. “Yes”, Armando says softly, “and our land”.

There is a long history of “push-pull” on the U.S. – Mexico border: come and do our work but we don’t really want you here. For many generations no one really guarded the border: it was relatively porous. Workers crossed back and forth pretty freely. And, like the German, Italian, Irish immigrants who entered before them, Mexican immigrants in the U.S. were not considered criminals.

NAFTA changed that. In 1994 we passed the free trade agreements that promised open trade borders and equal trade opportunities for all. What it really did was allow the U.S. to dump corn and other goods into Mexico and dry up their local economy. Mexicans lost their jobs, their land, their livelihood...

Could it be just coincidence that at the same time as hundreds of poor Mexican workers – forced from their homes by NAFTA - came north looking for work, our government decided to seal the border with Operation Hold the Line? Billions of our tax dollars have gone into enforcing the border in urban areas. The stated plan is to force crossings into the desert areas where it is more dangerous as a way to dry up the number of crossings. It is more dangerous. But it is not stopping desperate workers from trying to cross to support their families. Workers who are picked up now by ICE or Border Patrol are charged as criminals: with a criminal record, they will not be able to adjust to resident status once we finally get a just immigration policy. And it is now more lucrative to smuggle people for prostitution and indentured servitude than to smuggle drugs.

Southside Presbyterian Church, Tucson, Arizona
8:00 p.m.

Volunteers from Humane Borders, a humanitarian group that puts water stations in the desert and regularly patrols the known trails to help Mexican workers who are lost in the desert, tell us about 14 year old Josseline. Her mother found work in California and saved enough money to hire a coyote to bring Josseline and her 8 year old brother from their family home in El Salvador. Coyotes typically bring groups of immigrants at a time and make them keep a fast pace through the desert to avoid detection by the Border Patrol. Josseline, like so many others, fell behind and, as in most cases, the group didn’t wait. When her little brother was delivered to their mother without her, a massive search was initiated. Josseline’s body was found on February 20, 2008 after more than 2 weeks of searching the desert. She was in a wash, with her feet in a little pool of water – it had rained. The coroner said she didn’t die of dehydration. Rather, “her spirit left her”.

Human mobility does not equal terrorism or drug trafficking. Our immigration policy no longer stands up to our values of protecting sovereign borders, family unification, and the need for workers. Our immigration policy compromises the best values of our democratic nation and our faith traditions. We have left behind our corporate spirit.