We returned to the border town of Nogales recently with an RN for the group No More Deaths (or No Mas Muertes) named Sarah Roberts. She is an amazing, determined woman and was nice enough to translate for us when our limited Spanish got in the way.
Right across the pedestrian border, No More Deaths has a cluster of tents set up year round for people to come access its services. Although, this particular location has been used less and less recently. Border Patrol and Wackenhut (a privatized transport company) used to drop off migrants here, but Sarah says they’ve begun dropping them off in the center of town, in efforts to separate them from the coyotes who usually prowl this area. Of course, the coyotes can just follow them there. It’s all part of the cat and mouse game, and things change quickly.
But Sarah recalls working here when they would get up to 700 people a day. “They’d come off the bus limping because of blisters or a twisted ankle, and they’d received no medical care while they were in detention,” she says.
No More Deaths has been documenting abuses in detention facilities and in the field for the past few years, and they’ve found abuses to be rampant. Sarah tells us that although there are signs in the facilities instructing detainees to ask if they need water, food or medical attention, they’ve had many migrants report their requests for basic human needs repeatedly denied. They have documented many cases of verbal and physical abuse, in addition to denial of food and water.
Some of the volunteers at the No More Deaths tents are migrants who’ve given up on crossing. Marco Antonio Gonzalez, one such volunteer, says, “When I crossed, I suffered a lot, so I decided to come here and help others. I was hungry and thirsty, walking for four days. I got back here and I saw many people hurt who needed help, so I decided to stay.” Gonzalez washes windshields for money, and he receives only cookies and chocolate in exchange for his hard work here.
Juan Carlos Diaz is another volunteer. Originally from the state of Nayarit, he came here with the intention to cross, but he was caught, sent back, and told he must wait five years to apply for a visa. His four kids, ages 27, 24, 19, and 18 live in Phoenix, and have been petitioning to get him into the US. The story of families being torn apart by the militarized border is extremely common.
There’s a medical trailer in the No More Deaths facility, where Joaquim Valdez waits for patients to treat. He shows us the three nooks that serve as operation rooms, which look very outdated in terms of equipment—a small examining table in each and a hodgepodge collection of bottles with ointments and iodine. Unbelievably, he has delivered two babies here. Valdez recalls one woman who fell in the desert and went into premature labor. When a group of cowboys dropped her off here, she was already 8cm dialated. They had to start her on IVs because of all the blood she’d lost. After she delivered she was sent to the hospital, and mother and child were reportedly healthy, thanks to Valdez.
As we left the tents, we saw a group of people with backpacks gathering and speaking in low voices. Sarah guessed they were probably waiting to meet their guide to cross. They would leave that night.
We followed Sarah to Grupo Beta, the agency run by Mexico’s government where migrants can find out about different resources. The interesting thing about Nogales is, although many are homeless and in need of services, no one asks. Sarah approached people, trying to figure out if they needed help.
She spoke to one group of five people here from Chiapas—they had traveled for six days in the desert before they were apprehended by Border Patrol. They had been on their way to melon farms in Santa Rosa, where workers were needed. The patriarch of the family spoke to Sarah. “Isn’t there work?” he says in Spanish. “Why wouldn’t they want us to come?” People seem genuinely confused—people who’ve made it will tell them to come, that it’s safe, and then they are apprehended and bussed here, a no man’s land.
Sarah’s work is hard, because there’s only so much she can do. There are so many questions she can’t answer.
One of the women in the group, named Josefina, told us that she had been separated from her husband, Novy. When they were apprehended, he was taken with another group, and she had no way to contact him. They wanted to call the Mexican consulate, but had no phone. And our phones did not work in Mexico.
I told her I had a meeting with the Consulate the very next day, and that I would ask. She seemed hopeful about this and gave me his details. She told us that, in detention, they were given only one pack of crackers and a juice box for two nights. She had a headache and was nauseous, and she asked for pain pills, but the agents told her she had to wait.
They said that as soon as they heard from her husband, they planned to go back to Chiapas. “They told us if we came back within five years, we’d get a long jail sentence,” Josefina said.
The group then came with us to the Comedor, a kitchen run by Jesuits in Nogales. There was already a long line of migrants waiting outside, tickets in hand. They must produce a slip of paper from the US government saying they’d been deported in the last few days to eat here. Likewise, they are only allowed three nights in a local shelter. For some, this is not enough time to scrape together the money to get back home.
But the mood here was light, like a holiday meal. Older men and women handed out bowls of rice, pasta, chili and beans. Tortillas and vats of hot sauce were on the table. Then came coffee and sandwiches for later. People chattered happily as they ate.
After that, Sarah and her husband brought out bags of clothing to hand out. It gets much colder in Nogales than in surrounding areas because of the high elevation, and that day was particularly chilly. People clustered around them hungrily to try and score a sweatshirt or a better pair of shoes. One of the women asked me if she could have my shoes, and asked her if they would fit (she was about six inches shorter than me). We put our feet together to measure, but we both laughed because my feet were obviously much bigger.
Some of these people told us they were planning to return South, back home. Others were waiting to attempt the crossing again. I wondered how they would get the money to pay the trafficker. More and more, we have heard that the drug cartels have been getting into the human smuggling business, as it’s almost as profitable these days. And no one wants to owe money to the cartels. It’s not a stretch to see how this could bring bloodshed into America.
One young boy, Carlos, took a liking to me. He was maybe 15 or 16. I kept asking him if he planned to cross, or where his parents were, but he refused to answer serious questions. He only wanted to know if I was married. I said, “No, but there is mi novio,” in my broken Spanish, pointing to Rocky.
Just as well. His next question was, could I find him a pair of pants? The only ones left were a ratty pair of long johns, which he held up to his body and shook his head laughing. I wonder where he is now…
