Traversing the desert: solidarity for the undocumented migrant : AZ IMC

The quiet desert town of Sasabe, Sonora witnessed more than 100 people cross the border Monday on the first day of The Migrant Trail: We Walk for Life event. Organized by a host of border humanitarian and activist groups, the 75-mile hike aims to draw attention to the dangerous conditions that undocumented migrants face when attempting to cross the scorching desert in hopes of finding work. Walkers will end the walk in Tucson on Sunday.

“The No More Deaths Organization is committed to stopping deaths in the desert,” said Margo Cowan, a lawyer with NMD on Monday. “We want to take back the public space where the government says it is wrong to help migrants. It’s our duty to help. We will be walking in solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are traveling all around us.”

The Migrant Trail follows only a week after 12 undocumented travelers died in Arizona during a record-breaking heat wave. Forty-one migrants have died since October. It is estimated that more than 3,000 migrants have died since the early 1990s.

No one know how many individuals trek through the 350-mile Arizona border terrain. U.S. Border Patrol detained nearly 500,000 migrants last year, deporting most of them just south of the border. Over the last decade, Border Patrol has cracked down on migrants crossing through city centers. These policies have forced migration out into the dangerous desert.

Hector Suarez, organizer with the Migrant Trail Walk Committee, emphasized the need to show support with the migrants. “We cannot say that once we complete the walk we know what it is really like for migrants,” Suarez said. “These people are leaving behind their homes and their families to risk their lives for a better life.”

The Migrant Trail embarked in the second week of the so-called “season of death,” when summer temperatures slip into three digits resulting in a sharp increase in the loss of life from heat exposure.

More than 50 individuals are expected to complete the entire Migrant Trail hike. When crossing into the U.S. through the Border Patrol checkpoint in Sasabe, they voluntarily gave up their ID cards. “We are losing our way to identify ourselves in order to become one with the unknown migrant,” said Kat Rodriquez, organizing coordinator of Derechos Humanos.

“We came to walk, weep and look at the borders within us as we look at the borders outside of us,” said John with the Christian Peace Makers Team. “We walk in hope that one day there will be no more borders on the inside or outside.”

Border activist and humanitarian organizations advocate that the main causes of the border problem are rooted in neoliberal trade policy and corruption, in addition to centuries of imperialism and economic warfare against the global south.

“Economically violent policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) force people off their land and out of their communities,” said Jonathan Shapiro, employee with BorderLinks, a non-profit organization that leads experiential education border trips. “When these economic refuges arrive at our southern border, they’re met by a corrupt border policy,” Shapiro said. Shapiro was not available to attend the walk because he was leading a group of high school students from Brophy College Preparatory on a week long border immersion trip.

For Laura Hanson, a student at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, the trip to both sides of the border was deeply moving. “It has been an intense and provocative trip for us. Whitman College has a large migrant population and it makes their lives much more important to me.” Hanson walked the first 4.8 miles of the Migrant Trail with her college group that was just finishing a BorderLinks trip.

Hanson’s professor, Aaron Bobrow-Strain, said it was his first time back to the border as a father. “I was deeply impacted by a man from Chiapas, Mexico I met in a migrant shelter in Altar, Sonora,” Bobrow-Strain said. “He had children the same age as mine and when I told him I missed my kids he started crying. He was worried what may happen in the desert and that he may not see his kids again.”

The Migrant Walk trails in the dust left by the Minuteman Project, which stirred up national political debate when they organized on a 23-mile stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border in April. The MMP, deemed patriotic by some and racist by others, has now expanded to other states.

In response to the border crisis, BorderHack is creating a 5-day border camp this year on the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego/Tijuana as part of a summer of escalation of resistance against borders. The movement will host a variety of activities to educate people about the border region. The BorderHack motto reads, “Against borders and the wars they cause, against the triple fence, and against capitalism, neoliberalism and Empire.” http://sandiego.indymedia.org/es/2005/04/108157.shtml.

You can welcome the Migrant Trail hikers this Sunday, June 5, 3pm at Kennedy Park in Tucson. For directions see at http://www.nomoredeaths.org.

For more information:
Derechos Humanos/Alianza
Indigena Sin Fronteras - http://www.derechoshumanosaz.net
Frontera de Cristo - http://www.pcusa.org/border/Frontera.htm
BorderLinks – http://www.borderlinks.org
Enlaces America - http://www.enlacesamerica.org
No More Deaths – http://www.nomoredeaths.org
Humane Borders – http://www.humaneborders.org
Indymedia Chiapas - http://www.chiapas.mediosindependientes.org
Sonoran Samaritans - http://www.pcusa.org/border/sonoran_samaritans.htm
La Jornada Sin Fronteras - http://www.jornadasinfronteras.com
Border Action Network – http://www.borderaction.org
Free Trade of the Americas newswire – http://www.ftaaimc.org
Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice - http://www.sneej.org
Samaritans - http://www.samaritanpatrol.org
Just Coffee – http://www.justcoffee.org
Migration Policy Institute - http://www.migrationpolicy.org
La Resistencia - http://www.laresistencia.org
Global Issues - http://www.globalissues.org
Border Matters - http://www.bordermatters.net

More than 100 individuals walked the first 4.8 miles of the Migrant Trail Monday. The trek began in Sasabe, Sonora and will end in Tucson on Sunday.

All hikers wore this badge.

It was not surprising to see a Border Patrol helicopter buzz over the Monday camp. Hundreds of Border Patrol agents roam the Arizona desert every day.

Baboquivari Peak is a sacred peak to the Tohono O'odham Nation. The peak is a landmark for migrants traveling across the desert, and many die every year in sight of this mountain.

You should send this to Jimmy Boegle of the Tucson Weekly..I bet he'd be interested in publishing it for the guest opinion section. Good work.

Great article, just a correction, http://www.deletetheborder.org it's not the borderhack website and it has inaccurate info about the event... this website was made by our good friends in San Diego before the actual dates were set and it's info it's out of date... future info about borderhack 05 will be posted at http://www.borderhack.org

saludos.

Thanks for this article, Jessica -- great job. Only wish we had more writing like this on AZ IMC, instead of the continual spamming by a couple of individuals of article after article from the mainstream media, with a line or two of their own semi-literate jibber-jabber.

Please write more.

If they truly cared about rights, equality, and helping illegal aliens, they'd sell everything they have and hand it over to the illegals. Instead, these folks have the gall to expect to be safe in their own homes with their own property. The nerve! Apparently illegal aliens are just fine as long as they don't live in these folks' neighborhoods and charge less than half a legal worker to cut their lawn oh-so nicely.

Hope the pretty lawn is worth it when all the handwringing obstruction to abet illegal aliens lets through a terrorist with a nuke. My...isn't the city glowing nicely tonight?

When (yes, when) a terrorist torches off a dirty bomb in Phoenix, we'll see all the liberals crying about how Bush didn't do anything about the border.....

Keep up your open border nonsense for the ILLEGAL's sake......it's gonna bite you in the ass in the end....

Oh yeah......"undocumented migrant"......gotta love the euphemisms......