Migrant Deaths
Thousands Die in the Desert as a Result of U.S. Border Policy
originally posted by Imagine 2050 Editors for IMAGINE 2050 » Immigration [click here]
Feb 27th
Stephen Lemmons chronicles the activists who are fighting back in this Phoenix New Times feature article.
Gene Lefebvre remembers the day in late August 2008 when 20 to 25 Border Patrol agents, half of them on horseback, raided the Arivaca, Arizona campsite of No More Deaths, a group dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance to migrants in the desert.
“They said they had tracked 10 migrants into our camp,” says Lefebvre, a retired Presbyterian minister who helped co-found the organization in 2004. “There weren’t 10 migrants, and there weren’t the tracks.”
No More Deaths did have a couple of migrants in the camp’s medical tent, but there was nothing unusual about that. Migrants often showed up at the camp seeking first aid or water or food, sometimes getting directed there by local ranchers. The Border Patrol was and is aware of how NMD operates.
But though the migrants were later taken into custody, the Border Patrol seemed to be about something else that day: intimidation.
Lefebvre, in his 70s, was detained as the Border Patrol searched the five-acre site, called Byrd Camp, which is about an hour and a half southwest of Tucson. The site is named in honor of Arizona children’s book author Byrd Baylor, who allows the hundreds of volunteers who come to the location each year to use her property as a base for their patrols, in which they leave water and food along the migrant trails that snake throughout the area.
Read the entire article here.
