Heading North
By Jay Rochlin
I looked forward to shooting a pretty one-sided story about nice people helping migrants in distress. Instead, I was surprised at the contradictions.
We were on assignment near Arivaca, Arizona, for a local Tucson weekly. Margaret Regan and I were covering an encampment set up to aid migrants crossing the desert into the U.S. through Arizona from Mexico. Volunteers, calling their effort, “No More Deaths” set up a camp about 10 miles north of the border near one of the most dangerous corridors between the two countries. There was another camp nearby, but they shut it down because it interfered with pronghorn sheep mating season.
All year, thousands of men, women, and children brave a three-day trek through the Sonoran Desert from Altar, past Sasabe, to highway 86 near Kitt Peak, and hopefully a ride into Tucson. There, hopefully, they will make connections that will take them to jobs all over America. Every summer hundreds die, usually as a result of dehydration.
After about 45 minutes on a rough dirt road, my 150,000 mile grey Camry station wagon trudged to the top of yet another hill and we finally saw the “No More Deaths” encampment, set up in a wash.
Down the hill and around a bend, we pulled in. First we saw the vehicles. Three SUVs and a brand new, Jaguar sedan. Hummmm.
There weren’t a whole lot of people there either. Just five folks, four men and a woman gathered under a canopy attached to a camper truck.
Daniel and Erin just graduated from college in Colorado, and were volunteering for the summer. The other three, a Fox News crew, blasted into town from the coast to do a hit and run interview about some do-gooders on the border. Turns out the video guy drove the SUV and the producer and reporter rented the Jag for the drive through the dirt.
I wondered whether it struck the Fox crew at all ironic that they would fly from L.A. to Tucson, rent an SUV and a luxury Jaguar, spend half hour doing an interview with two upper class white college students, not lay eyes on anyone with brown skin, drive back to Tucson, and fly back to L.A., spending more money than one of the immigrants they’re talking about might have made in a year?
The sunset over the hills to the west turned the clouds pink then red then purple then grey. The setting sun shined through the twin white flags, one decorated with two blue drops as a signal to passers-by that water was available.
Kids from Chicago
About 7:30 we noticed headlights coming over the hill. Then some more. Daniel and Erin told us they were expecting a group of high school students from Chicago, on a field trip to learn about border issues. Five vans, 64 teenagers, and about half a dozen adults pulled in to camp – with dinner.
After the group consumed about 200 bean burros, one of the adults with the kids gathered everyone into a sharing circle. Daniel and Erin spoke eloquently about the migrants, the deaths, and their personal motivations for spending the summer in the desert sleeping on cots and going to sleep under the stars to the sounds of coyotes in the distance.
Daniel grew up in Manhattan’s upper west side (the 70s). Erin was from New Orleans. Both had just graduated from Colorado College, a small liberal arts school in Colorado Springs.
They spoke about their Memorial Day march to highlight the migrants’ plight, protest government immigration policy, and kick off the No More Deaths campaign. The march covered 70 miles in 6 days. Volunteers supported the 25 or so walkers with water, food, and vans to carry supplies. Daniel said their hike was tough and they couldn’t imagine what it must be like for the migrants.
Last summer more than a hundred men, women, and children died during their journeys, mostly of heat exhaustion or dehydration. This year, the number will likely be higher.
He also told the group about a visit from two border patrolmen and a man in a suit. The suit identified himself as being from the attorney general’s office. He was there to tell the volunteers how much of a shame it would be if they were convicted of felonies at their ages. The volunteers believed the suit was sent by Ashcroft.
The grown-ups asked questions. The high school students didn’t. At about 8:45 they boarded their vans and drove back to Tucson.
Somos Amigos
Awake by 6:00 and ready to hit the road by 6:30, we piled into Daniel’s air conditioned Jeep and headed toward a location where there might be migrants in need of help.
As we rolled through Arivaca, a man standing in front of a feed store flipped us off – with feeling. We passed by without making eye contact driving toward a nature preserve that Daniel thought might be a migrant route.
“Somos Amigos.” We are friends. “Tenemos agua y comida.” We have water and food. We were searching dirt roads and washes, looking for people who might have just trekked more than a hundred miles across some of the must rugged terrain North America can dish up and Daniel was hoping a migrant in distress might hear him, believe him, and trust him.
We saw a few footprints.
Daniel took us to a spot that had been well used by people crossing. Discarded things were everywhere. Empty gallon water bottles. All sorts of clothes. Shoes. All sizes. I pictured desperate migrants unloading their last ounces of extra gear, just to continue the struggle to make it to America. Daniel told us that usually wasn’t the case. Migrants who had made it this far, to this point, had all but completed the most dangerous part of their journeys. They had made it to a major highway. Now they were ready to begin a new phase in their lives. He said that many had brought a nice change of clothes, kept clean and fresh, so they could change and look good as they started life in America. As I looked closer at the trash, among the discarded blankets, child sized flip flops, and bras, I also noticed discarded make-up kits, combs and brushes, and deodorant.
The Finger
After our search proved fruitless, Daniel dropped us off and we exchanged good byes, best wishes, and email addresses. We returned to town, walked into the feed store, and asked Jack Baker why he had given us the finger – or, more accurately, the fingers -- both of them.
After a minute or so of angry obscenities about wetbacks, damned liberals, and spoiled children out here not having a clue, Jack told us his plan for solving the illegal immigration problem. “Just shoot ’em on sight.” He was disappointed though, because a friend of his, a deputy sheriff, told him he couldn’t shoot illegal immigrants, not even one.
Jack Baker looked about 55, was only slightly overweight, has thinning hair, and spaces between teeth that look too small for his mouth. He works hard. He runs the feed store, operates a small towing company, and picks up whatever other work comes his way in this small ranching community.
Life’s not easy for the ranchers either. It’s tough just to make ends meet. The working ranchers and cowboys, Jack told us, are the forgotten folks on the front lines. They’re the people that the reporters and government and damned liberals don’t think about when they talk immigration policy.
Once Jack calmed down he told us about the ranchers who, in his opinion, pay a price the rest of us don’t. Cowboys spend a good part of their days mending fences that have been cut by coyotes or people smugglers or migrants themselves. When fences stay cut, cattle escape. If immigrants only pull barbed wire apart, it creates a space just large enough for a calf to get partly through. They get stuck and rip their hide when they try to get loose.
Thirsty immigrants poke holes in ranchers' water tanks to fill up a jug of water so they can continue their treks through the desert. The water leaks out the holes and might cost the rancher 6,000 gallons of water, and perhaps a few head of cattle that die of dehydration because their water is gone.
I felt somewhat guilty leaving the feed store thinking that Jack had made some good points.
Black Patrolman
On our way out of town we noticed a border patrol car parked on a hill. We drove up hoping to talk. We were polite and deferential and so was he. We asked whether he was allowed to visit with us. He told us that he wasn’t allowed to speak with reporters and offered the name of the spokesperson in Tucson. He was soft spoken and his seemed gentle and kind.
As we drove on, I wondered whether this officer, just doing his job, out in the desert, far away from home and likely the great grandson of slaves, feels any irony, when he arrests a family of hungry and thirsty migrants, carrying everything they own on their backs, following a trail that thousands of others have traveled, hoping and praying for a better life, following the drinking gourd to the north.
