By Emily Sitton
Dry brown bushes dot the landscape every few feet. Thorns poke from branches, waiting to prick the next unsuspecting victim. Bush after bush stretches on for miles, interrupted by cacti that tower high above the sandy, flat desert. The sun beats into my skin as the wind whips hair across my eyes, obscuring my vision.
After two hours in the desert picking up trash I was desperate to get back in the car, blast the A/C and guzzle a bottle of water. I couldn't imagine surviving five days in conditions like this, as hundreds of migrants do daily, to come to the United States.
Spring break at the University of Portland last week saw some students off to Las Vegas for a basketball tournament. Some headed home, while others were off to the beach or the mountains. But 17 students and two staff members took a trip to the border.
This year's Border Plunge, one of several service trips organized by students through the Moreau Center for Service and Leadership, took place March 7-14 and focused on life on both sides of the United States border with Mexico. We stayed in Tucson and traveled to the Sonoran Desert and to parts of Mexico.
"We do these trips because encounters with injustice transform and inspire people," said Laura Goble, director of The Moreau Center for Service and Leadership. "For students who are more inexperienced, they throw a cold cup of water in the face of isolation and apathy. For students who have a deeper understanding, where there's already an ember burning about injustice, they fan their ideas and interests into flame."
For me, a young American woman, who is accustomed to a clean home and a safe city, who knows she has many opportunities in life, this trip was an awakening, a wake-up call to the reality of hardships my neighbors to the south face daily. There are no easy answers to the questions that swirl around immigration, an issue that affects thousands of Americans and Mexicans every day, and of which there are several points of view.
The Border Plunge gave me a different glimpse of life and helped me become more informed, and hopefully, a more understanding and compassionate human being.
Migrants who start out across the desert in hopes of a better life in the United States are often ignorant or misinformed about the conditions they face. The reality is the conditions are horrendous.
"If people want to come they will find a way to come," said Hank Kenski, adviser to Arizona Senator Jon Kyl.
Most immigrants from Mexico pay a guide or "coyote" $800 to $1,000 to lead them across the border and through the desert. Coyotes often tell the migrants that it will only take a few days to cross so the migrants bring sometimes only two gallons of water. In reality, two gallons is only enough water for one day and it takes the immigrants at least five days to reach a place to be picked up by friends.
Humane Borders, a Tuscon-based organization that was created in 2000 to reduce the number of migrants who die crossing the border, works with the Border Patrol to identify areas where large numbers of migrants have died and maintains water stations at those locations.
"These agents don't want to pick up dead bodies either," said the Rev. Robin Hoover, a founder of Humane Borders. Despite the group's efforts, more than 1,100 migrants have died in the Arizona desert between 1999 and 2007.
Humane Borders and migrant shelters in Mexico also seek to reduce the number of deaths by distributing flyers, pamphlets and comic books that illustrate to migrants the real dangers of crossing the border. Both organizations also educate immigrants about their rights and proper options for seeking legal residency and citizenship.
Liliana learned about the desert the hard way. Liliana, 20, told us she left her 2-year-old with her mother so that she could go to school in the United States. She couldn't afford to go to school in Mexico so when her cousin offered to pay for a coyote to lead them across the border, she accepted. She said her cousin paid the coyote 15,000 pesos each - about $1,050 - to lead them across the desert. They never made it. After being lost in the desert for three days, Liliana was picked up by Border Patrol. The officers were very nice and she was grateful that they found her, Liliana said. She said she won't try to cross again.
Bonnie Arellano is a Chief Customs and Border Protection Officer who joined the organization to help people like Liliana. "I'm tired of seeing people being taken advantage of," Arellano said.
Arellano has caught both migrant farm workers and drug smugglers coming across the border. Most who cross are hardworking people who want to earn money and send it to their families, but are ignorant of the legal way to do so, said Arellano.
"I educate people when I catch them," she said.
Drug dealers create a problem for everyone who crosses the border, Arellano said.
Although the new U.S.-built fence along the border allows for more control over who and what enters the country, every day, 7, 621 pounds of drugs are caught coming illegally into the United States, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The problem is how to tell the difference between the drug smugglers and those coming to work in the U.S., said Arellano.
Al Garza is a retired private investigator of Mexican descent who moved to Arizona with his wife for a quiet retirement. So far his retirement it has been anything but quiet. Garbage has been strewn all over Garza's property, his fences were broken and he lost renters because of it. Garza is now the National Executive Director for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a citizen group that wants illegal immigration to end. Group members set up lookouts at different points in the desert and notify Border Patrol if they see migrants. The Minutemen also report immigrants who are suspected of working or living illegally in the United States.
"I am totally against illegal behavior, no matter what it is," Garza said.
This trip gave me a chance to see the trash piles that line the sides of the dirt roads we took on our way to Altar, Mexico. My body was still vibrating from the road as we hit pavement and sped toward our destination. Altar was a stark reminder of the gap that divides the poor from the rich in Mexico. A freshly painted house with a seven-foot high fence and a new car parked in the garage stood a few blocks from a house that had no door, but only curtains and a dryer door to keep out the dust from the road. In a country littered with trash, where houses don't have doors and workers are sometimes paid as little as $7 a day, it is easy to see why so many of its citizens risk everything, including their lives, to cross the border in search of a job that pays 10 times more per day.
"It's not a single dimension issue and that's the problem," Kenski said.
