Immigrants risk losing lives they hope to
improve
Where Everything Is Wrong Another five people whose
only mistake was the hope of finding a job in this country have died since last
Sunday. The desert did not forgive them their innocent ambition, adding them
instead to the growing number of illegal immigrants killed by desert
heat.
-- From an editorial, Arizona Daily Star, June 11, 2000
By JIM WRIGHT
Special to the National Catholic Reporter Bisbee,
Ariz.
Unbidden, and in some cases unwelcome, they come to the United
States by the hundreds of thousands each year to harvest our crops, keep our
packing plants and restaurants running and build new homes for increasing
numbers of affluent Americans. Desperately needed by U.S. industries, they come
to do the work Americans dont want to do, living in conditions most
Americans would shun, and often sending the bulk of their wages to families
back home.
These are the undocumented immigrants who often, in their efforts
to cross the border undetected, risk losing the life they hope to improve. And
often -- far too often their advocates say -- they die in the mountains or
desert before they get their chance.
As the number of deaths along the Arizona-Mexico border has risen
-- and it has risen dramatically in recent months -- the chorus of critics has
grown. And in a surprising development, some of the most compelling new voices
are former members of the very agency responsible for keeping illegal
immigrants out.
Former officials of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and
of the U.S. Border Patrols Tucson Sector have said in a series of
astonishing revelations that the agency has blood on its hands. The border
patrol is the uniformed law enforcement arm of the INS. The patrols
Tucson Sector includes all but the westernmost section of the Arizona
border.
INS Commissioner Doris Meissner said in a talk to new border
patrol recruits last November that the rising number of deaths has been the
unfortunate and unforeseen result of a strategy shift that forced determined
immigrants to attempt crossings over dangerous terrain but failed to take the
steps that might have prevented their deaths.
During Meissners tenure, which ended with her resignation in
mid-November, the INS budget nearly tripled to $4.3 billion, and the size of
the border patrol more than doubled.
The growing number of deaths within the Tucson Sector has
implications for the rest of the southern border states where death rates are
on the rise. Since 1994, the number of crossing-related deaths along the entire
U.S. border with Mexico has pushed over the 1,600 mark.
Although no one can say with certainty how many die attempting to
cross the border, the border patrol gives regular reports on those found dead.
According to Rob Daniels, public information officer for the agency, 74 people
died in illegal crossing-related incidents within the Tucson Sector from Oct.
1, 1999, to Sept. 31, 2000.
Forty-one died of heat exposure, and three died due to exposure to
the cold.
Since Oct. 1, 18 people have already perished attempting to enter
the United States within the sector.
In past years, deaths along the same section of border had been
far less frequent. For example, in a four-year period when Ron Sanders, one of
the agency whistleblowers, was the chief patrol agent for the Tucson Sector, 25
people died. That four-year death toll, while too high in Sanders view,
is barely higher than the number of deaths reported in the past four months
alone. Sanders retired in July 1999.
In 1995, under Sanders care, the Tucson Sector actually
experienced no crossing-related fatalities; then 12 people died in 1996
(including eight who drowned in a flooded culvert), two died in 1997 and 11
perished in 1998.
Press accounts from 1996 indicate that Sanders began making the
safety of border-crossers a top priority, even before the apprehending of
illegal entrants. As part of the effort, Saunders shut down the major traffic
checkpoints and reassigned agents to dangerous crossing areas like the West
Desert on the Tohono Oodham Reservation.
Sanders, who lives in retirement just north of Tucson, told
NCR he is haunted not only by the numbers of deaths but by his memories
of coming upon dead bodies in the desert. If youve ever seen
someone whos died in the desert youll never forget it, he
said.
Meissners admission of guilt in her talk to border patrol
recruits made news in Phoenix and Tucson. It also provoked a challenge from
Sanders, who said in an interview with NCR that the deaths were neither
unforeseen nor unexpected, but totally predictable.
The problem was not with the strategy per se, but with another
shift that took place in early 1999, Sanders said. Most agents were at that
point diverted to the urban crossing points, leaving the isolated mountainous
desert areas unattended. Previously agents in those areas had served as a
safety net for crossers who became dehydrated or lost.
Sanders said that the policy shift in 1999 was neither reviewed
nor approved by Congress. It was an ad hoc policy, he said.
Sanders said that before January 1999, when the INS changed the
local strategy, he was able to deploy his agents along the border with a
sensitivity to the most treacherous crossing areas. Every morning at
staff meetings, I would ask for a report from our air patrols on the
availability of water in the [cattle] tanks, he said. When the
tanks began to dry up, I would assign more [agents] in the hope we could
prevent a disaster from occurring. When the desert began to heat up in the
spring, all of my aircraft were assigned to our high-risk areas.
The precise number of people who have died as a direct result of
the border strategy remains a matter of dispute. The INS and its border patrol
maintain a category of casualties they say are smuggler-related.
Such deaths may result from traffic accidents involving vehicles allegedly
driven by smugglers, and thus presumably cant be blamed on policy or
enforcement. Their immediate cause may be bad driving or packing too many
people into a tight space with inadequate ventilation.
But some activists insist that the INS itself is culpable in all
border crossing-related deaths, even those involving smugglers.
People wouldnt be forced to hire a smuggler or cross
the desert at risk to themselves if we had a realistic immigration
policy, said Isabel Garcia, Tucson attorney and border rights advocate
with the Coalición Derechos Humanos.
Sanders humane approach to border strategy came to a
grinding halt during the winter of 1999, when Western Regional INS Commissioner
Johnny Williams called a meeting at the Nogales, Ariz., border patrol station.
Nogales is part of the Tucson sector.
Williams announced a new plan under which all available agents
would be reassigned to Nogales. John Koren, 53, a retired patrol agent formerly
in charge of the Douglas, Ariz., station, remembers the meeting as if it were
yesterday. Williams told us we had a new strategy. Under the new plan,
all available [agents] were to go to Nogales. The shift of personnel to
Nogales left some patrol stations in a precarious position.
Sanders vividly recalls protesting. He said he told Williams that
the sector needed to maintain coverage in high-risk areas or the number of
people dying in the desert would skyrocket.
The 1994 border strategy calls for the border patrol to prevent
illegal entry along the border and to strengthen enforcement of the
nations immigration laws. Sanders said the congressionally approved
border strategy was radically altered by Williams to a point where coverage by
the patrol in certain areas was virtually non-existent.
Williams action on behalf of the attorney general is,
in my opinion, an abuse of discretion under U.S. law, said Sanders who
says he was a whistleblower even during his last tour with the border patrol.
I even testified before Congress. I told them what was happening here. I
told them how this policy is killing people.
When the temperature suddenly dropped on the Tohono Oodham
reservation in April 1999, Daniels remembers 350 people being gathered up and
transported to the tiny emergency medical facilities of the Indian Health
Service in Sells.
These rescues by the border patrol came about when
people living on the reservation began calling authorities about people
wandering on the roadside begging to be picked up. An Indian Health Service
worker told the Tucson Weekly that by the time the border patrol was on
the scene, It was more like a mass surrender than any sort of
rescue.
In July 2000, with the number of deaths skyrocketing, Williams
came to Tucson to join Tucson Sector Chief David Aguilar in announcing
Operation Skywatch. Williams said the new program would add seven planes to the
sectors nine aircraft. The pilots would scout for smugglers, while
looking out for the safety of crossers. By September, though, 22 more crossers
would die.
Williams did not respond to telephone messages from a
reporter.
Garcia told NCR, There wouldnt be any
border-crosser deaths or a need for border patrol rescues if the
United States had a fair and equitable immigration policy that actually
recognized we [Americans] are dependent on Mexican workers. The construction,
hotel, meat packing and agriculture industries wouldnt be able to keep
operating if they were not able to employ cheap Mexican labor.
So, why are we forcing people to run a deadly obstacle
course to find employment in U.S. industries which are begging for them?
Garcia asked rhetorically.
National Catholic Reporter, February 2,
2001
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