'Los Samaritanos' aid immigrants in Arizona desert

[teko]

'Los Samaritanos' aid immigrants in Arizona desert

Washington Post
By Peter Slevin
Sunday, June 6, 2010

GREEN VALLEY, ARIZ. -- "Somos amigos," called Shura Wallin, ducking low into the shade beneath the highway overpass. "We're friends," she said again in Spanish, calling out to anyone who might be hiding. "Don't be afraid."
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At a time when state and federal governments are focused on tightening the border to keep out immigrants who cross illegally from Mexico, Wallin and her colleagues help people who make the trip. They leave water and food along well-known foot trails. They distribute maps showing the water sites and search for trekking migrants. Sometimes, they find dead bodies.

Their efforts are at odds with a new Arizona law that makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally. Gov. Jan Brewer (R), who met behind closed doors last week with President Obama, contends that the law known as SB1070 is necessary to fill a federal leadership vacuum on immigration reform. Obama, who has called the measure "misguided," has directed the Justice Department to assess the law's constitutionality.

While the debate goes on, Wallin and a group of 140 volunteers who call themselves Los Samaritanos work against brutal heat and an unforgiving desert landscape where 61 migrants died in the seven months that ended April 30. In a region split by the increasingly fortified U.S.-Mexico border, they say they are doing moral deeds in the face of a simple reality: Migrants keep coming.

"Most of the people we find are broken, beaten down, sobbing, so lonesome, broken. They just want to go home," said the Rev. Randy Mayer, pastor of Good Shepherd United Church of Christ in Sahuarita, Ariz., home to Los Samaritanos. "We're just trying to stop people from dying. Somebody will say, 'What don't you understand about "illegal"?' Well, it's more complicated than that."

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, who have caught 168,000 illegal immigrants since Oct. 1 in this section of southern Arizona near Tucson, disapprove of the effort.

"Anyone who encourages illegal activities adds to our workload," said Robert L. Boatright, deputy head of the 90,000-square-mile Tucson region. He said the maps and supplies give border crossers a "false sense of security."
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"That's an incentive," he said, "but they might be on the wrong trail or the water might be gone."

Don Severe, an activist in Green Valley who favors strict penalties for many border crossers, put it another way: "How would you feel if one of these people you helped went on and raped or killed your granddaughter?"

The debate over the border has intensified since the killing of Cochise County rancher Robert Krentz, who some suspect was slain by an illegal immigrant, and Arizona's adoption of a law that empowers police to request identity papers from anyone they stop and suspect of being here illegally. The law, due to take effect July 29, is being challenged in federal court.

Wallin, a retiree who helped run homeless shelters in California, calls the desert "beautiful but deadly." From weekly visits to the other side of the border, where she talks with Mexicans who have been deported or defeated in their efforts to cross into the United States, she knows the stories of exploitative smugglers and dangerous treks.

"I can't live here knowing that people are almost literally dying in my back yard and not do something to help," she said during a recent search mission that took her south to the Mexican border town of Sasabe.

Wallin and Mayer packed one of three Samaritanos vehicles with water and food one recent morning and drove to familiar stopping points on the trail from the border, 40 miles away. Near a railroad track that stretches south to Nogales, they ducked into a thicket of trees and scrub brush that offered shelter from the blistering sun and the Border Patrol alike, scouting for evidence that people had recently been there. At their next stop, they called out their greetings beneath an Interstate 19 overpass, but found only water containers.

The pair made their way west through the remote landscape, stopping to talk with two security guards hired through a private contractor, waiting in a bus rigged like a mobile jail to haul away captured immigrants.

In Sasabe, on the Mexican side of the border, Wallin stopped to hand out water and new white socks to a half-dozen laborers who said they were on their way south from Arizona. The Samaritanos stopped in a small one-story building to speak with an official from Grupos Beta, a wing of Mexico's immigration authority, who estimated that 200 people a day were climbing the nearby fence or driving into the desert to go around it.

"We try to convince them that it's dangerous and tell them to go home," the official said. "But they say, 'It's the United States.' "

On many Sundays, a man stands outside Mayer's church and protests the rescue and relief efforts. He wears a sign that says "Good Samaritan, Bad American." After 12 years working along the border, Mayer is mindful of the complexities of the national immigration debate. But as he sees it, he is facing a moral imperative.

"It degrades me as a human being," Mayer said, "when I can't be compassionate to another human being."

[Sarajmt]

You're absolutely right about the revolving door.  No one with the notable exception of Arizona will enforce the law.  Business likes the cheap labor.  Liberals see a potential voting block.  That's why they are denouncing the law.  Arizona law does nothing except enforce present laws already on the books.  And no one wants them enforced.  But I do!!!

Jail time for any employers with illegals on the payroll.

[melimeli]

I think we need to cut off the job source that is why they come... if there weren't jobs for them they wouldn't come.  Deporting this is ridiculous as it is just a revolving door... they just come back the next day..

[Sarajmt]

I agree.  If I were living in Mexico, I'd do the same.  But as it is, I live in Texas and we are being overrun.  It should be harder for the illegals to set up shop here.But not only do they get government aid, think of all the organizations who rally in order to keep them here.

The problem I have with all the organizations that rally to keep them here and protest the Arizona law is this.  Why haven't these organizations rallied in Mexico to better the plight of their people instead of  trying to increase the flood of illegals?  Wouldn't helping Mexico to industrialize and fight drug lords accomplish their stated goal of helping the Mexican people?   I think their goal is to open the floodgates even further for illegals.  Not better their lives.

[melimeli]

I agree with adgal, they are people with kids to feed they are doing what they need to do to be a good parent.  illegal immigration is 100% the us's fault.  We have put the crack and the lighter in front of the addict so to speak.  It is very easy for us to stop the desire to come here.. Take away the jobs.  Make companies know there will be NO tax breaks for any worker without a valid SSN.  We can't blame them for coming when we have made it so easy for them to establish a life here...

[Sarajmt]

I agree.  These people are aiding and abetting.  They should be arrested and charged.  I do have to wonder if these people are willing to ante up their own personal funds to cover what these illegals cost?  Are they personally willing to cover educational costs for the children?  How about their emergency room visits?  In other words, just how committed are they.  Or are they just committed as long as someone else is footing the bill?  It'd be interesting to find out.  

If they really wanted to save lives and be good citizens at the same time.  They could turn them over to the border patrol.  Border patrol agents would provide food, water and any necessary first aid prior to their bus ride back home.  That would be humane and legal.  And would put to rest any thoughts that their intentions were anything but altruistic.  

[R Glass]

   “At a time when state and federal governments are focused on tightening the border to keep out immigrants who cross illegally from Mexico, Wallin and her colleagues help people who make the trip. They leave water and food along well-known foot trails. They distribute maps showing the water sites and search for trekking migrants”


Aiding and Abetting -To assist and/or incite another to commit a crime.

[adgal]

This is sort of what I meant in the last thread.  Yes, it's illegal and needs to be stopped.  Yes, it is a huge drain on the economy.  But they are human beings, not human trash.  From what I understand of the situation, the only way to save both the financial drain on the US and protect human life is to stop them from coming in the first place.  Come down hard on those hiring so they don't do it any more.  Go after those that take everything these people have with promises on getting them into the country.  Stop it before it starts.  I believe you can have all the laws you like, but desperate people will resort to desperate measures.  This is just so very sad.

[teko]

That tug on the heartstrings works every time.