It has been, in a terrible way, a remarkable summer.
The heat in the states along the U.S.-Mexico border has been uncaring, unceasing, record-breaking. The summer monsoons, which typically arrive in early July and bring some water and some relief, came late to Arizona this year, prolonging the difficulty.
Still, the people streamed north from Mexico and Central America, crossing the sand in the baking heat, some with their children, some traveling with no family, some just teenagers, trying to walk their way, against the law, towards a better way of life.
What U.S.-Mexico border policy should be is a matter of much passionate debate — it won’t be resolved in one long hot summer. But while the discussions over immigration policy continue, the flow of immigrants continues too, despite the best efforts of the U.S. Border Patrol. Humanitarian groups with deep involvement from some border- state Presbyterians are determined to show the face of God in the midst of all of this.
Since the federal fiscal year started last October, more than 200 bodies of migrants have been found in Arizona, according to the Arizona Daily Star, which keeps an online database of bodies discovered, in part as a service to families searching for lost loved ones. Dozens apparently died in July alone — and those were the ones whose bodies were found.
Humanitarian groups including Samaritans and No More Deaths www.nomoredeaths.org travel daily into the Sonoran Desert, searching for migrants on foot and in four-wheel drive vehicles, bringing water and food and medical supplies.
Along with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Synod of the Southwest sponsored a “Death & Life on the Border” conference last spring — and there, Presbyterians from across the Southwest spoke about the suffering of the migrants, the tensions that border issues create in their communities, and about what for some has become a crisis that they cannot, acting in faith, ignore.
Two 23-year-old volunteers with No More Deaths were arrested July 9 near Arivaca, Arizona, about 25 miles north of the border, when the Border Patrol stopped their vehicle and found three migrants inside. The two volunteers — Daniel Strauss and Shanti Sellz — told the authorities they had found the illegal immigrants lost in the desert, dehydrated, vomiting and with diarrhea; had consulted by phone with the staff at a medical clinic; and were taking them for medical help.
While it’s against federal law to transport illegal immigrants, some humanitarian groups have argued that it’s acceptable to transport them if their lives are in danger and they need medical care. In this case, the Border Patrol disagreed that the three immigrants were in acute medical need, contending they just needed water and rest, and said humanitarian volunteers who detect a medical emergency should contact the authorities, and not try to transport the immigrants themselves. If convicted, Strauss and Sellz could each face up to five years in prison.
In July, they turned down a proposed plea bargain offered by federal prosecutors, in which the charges would have been dropped if Strauss and Sellz admitted guilt and agreed to a year of probation. Their position: they didn’t do anything wrong.
Meanwhile, more migrants cross over in the night, some making it undetected, some apprehended by the Border Patrol and deported, some collapsing and dying along the way.
On July 29, St. Mark’s Church in Tucson held a funeral for Lecrecia Dominguez Luna, 35, a mother from central Mexico who died crossing the desert with her 15-year-old son, Jesus, and her 7-year-old daughter, Nora. Luna was trying to join her husband, Jesus, who had come north some years ago — she wanted to reunite her family.
She left Mexico at dusk on June 19, led by smugglers she had paid several thousand dollars. In those weeks, the heat blasted 100 degrees and more, day after day. Lecrecia became ill but the smugglers went ahead, taking Nora with them. Jesus stayed with his mother. He tried to attract rescuers, then he ran out of water. His mother did not move. Finally, he left to look for help, wandering until the Border Patrol picked him up. Jesus was deported, but the Border Patrol allowed him back in the U.S. twice on one-day passes to try to find his mother’s body. The land is vast — mile after mile of sand and cactus and gullies — and he did not succeed. So Luna’s father, Cesario Dominguez, who holds a long-term visa, came to search himself.
Dominguez walked and walked, day after day, guided by his grandson’s recollections and accompanied by a family friend, José Lerma. The two men bought disposable cameras; they would search and photograph for hours, documenting their path, looking for a water tank Jesus remembered being near where his mother collapsed. Each afternoon they developed the pictures at a Walgreen’s store, then rushed to Nogales, just across the border, to show the pictures to José.
No, he would say. Not there. That looks familiar. I think we were there. Keep going. The men found three bodies — corpses decomposing and being picked apart by animals, not the one they were seeking but other people’s loved ones. And each time they called the authorities and stood watch, knowing that somewhere, a family would want to know.
Others joined the search — volunteers from No More Deaths, Border Patrol agents, others moved by the family’s anguish.
On July 20, José recognized in a photograph a pond where he had drunk about an hour after leaving his mother.
On July 21, Dominguez found the remnants of another body, a woman’s, wearing three rings on the left hand, as his daughter did, one with a likeness of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Her funeral was at St. Mark’s — a Tucson congregation deeply involved in the humanitarian efforts.
“It has been a tragic summer,” said Sue Westfall, co-pastor of St. Mark’s. Although the humanitarian groups are sending more volunteers than ever into the desert, “there are still record numbers of people dying. It’s a humanitarian crisis. No matter what you think about people who are crossing the border illegally, there are people who are dying excruciating deaths,” Westfall said, adding that the national immigration policy is not working and needs to change.
John Fife, a former General Assembly moderator who recently retired as pastor of Southside church in Tucson, where he served more than 35 years, called recently in the Tucson Citizen for more humanitarian groups to come to the border and for support of immigration- reform legislation drafted by U.S. Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts).
“If you live in Maine, it’s probably easy not to think about the U.S.-Mexico border, but if you live in Arizona, you can’t not think about it,” Westfall said. “It’s having a tremendous impact and cries out for the theological community to enter that debate.”
Online, some Presbyterians have been doing exactly that, through the discussion group https://groups.yahoo.com/group/Its-Your-Turn/messages created by Rick Ufford-Chase, the General Assembly moderator. A variety of views have been expressed, with one Presbyterian doubting that just opening up the border would fix anything and another writing that “those who are foolish enough to set out across the desert in this heat will suffer the consequences.”
Others encourage Presbyterians to educate themselves about immigration policy and global trade issues — and they ask consumers across the U.S. to consider their role in the crisis.
Sonnie Swenston, a Presbyterian from California, wrote of visiting a small town south of Fresno where the temperatures were hitting 104 or higher — yet all day long, people labored in the fields and packing sheds and canneries, because the crops were ready.
“I suggest that you go to your local farmers’ market and buy the ripest peach that you can find and take a bite of it and really taste the flavor of it, and let the juice run down your chin,” Swenston wrote. And “when you thank God for making the peach, also thank God for the worker who labored in the field to bring it to you. And when you take communion this Sunday, remember where the grapes came from — and who picked them and processed them — to make the juice for us to drink in this holy sacrament.”
Kathie Sherman, chair of the Latin American Action Team of Giddings- Lovejoy presbytery, responded by asking people to “ponder the price of produce: what do you think that juicy peach would cost if it weren’t for the people who willingly endanger their lives, crossing the U.S-Mexican border to pick those peaches we enjoy, in order to feed themselves and their loved ones. People are dying, and not only as they cross the border but in the fields as well,” she wrote, referring people to the National Farmworker Ministry website, www.nfwm.org .
In July, the monsoons brought some relief. But the desert will dry out again in August, Westfall said, and the temperatures will stay high into October.
More heat, more migrants falling to their knees, more death.
