I recently returned from the southern border, where I participated in border watch activities with Arizona Border Recon, a group of volunteers from around the country who spend a week in the Arizona desert helping to secure our border with Mexico.
On my way to Arizona for my 10th trip, I saw an electronic sign on the roadside that triggered a startling reminder of one of the more tragic but largely ignored aspects of our inability to secure our borders.
The sign, one of four on the way from Texarkana to Dallas, informed motorists there were “596 Deaths on Texas Roads last year.” It is not clear which year as there were more than 3,700 highway fatalities in the state as recently as 2016, but the sign triggered in me a memory about a story of other deaths: the bodies of 463 illegal aliens recovered from the U.S. desert in 2012. The story described the work of a forensic pathologist at Baylor University in Texas who identifies remains found in the desert so they can be reunited with their families.
I was stunned, and ashamed to be an American when I read that article. I want the border secured, which is why I have been to the border so often since 2005, but to have people die needlessly this way — in my country — is truly appalling.
I first became aware of this gruesome aspect of the border in 2004, even before my first trip in 2005. A friend of mine from Framingham, Massachusetts, spent a weekend in Arizona with Chris Simcox of Tombstone, a local activist who was doing informal border watch activities. While driving through the desert they came across two “solos,” illegal aliens who come across the border without “coyote” guides.
Both were in trouble. One was on the ground needing immediate medical attention, all of which was captured in a 12-minute video I have in my files. Simcox called the sheriff’s office, and an ambulance came to take both of them to the hospital, saving the life of at least one of them.
On another occasion a couple of years later, a body was discovered near our encampment at mile 38 on Arizona Route 286.
Last year, the Border Patrol reported 294 deaths along the Southwest border. I am not the only one making these observations.
Nicholas De Genova, who is an immigration scholar, had the following to say at a recent Zolberg Institute conference: “Thus, we are confronted not only with a lethal border but one that contributes systematically to the production of Mexican and other Latina/o lives as disposable.”
I want the border secure from all illegal entrants, with special attention paid to drugs and criminals.
The responsibility for securing our border rests with our elected official in Washington, D.C., who, with the exception of President Donald Trump, have shown little desire to secure our southern border.
An executive order Trump signed on Jan. 25, 2017, includes as one of its goals obtaining “Operational control” of the southern border, which “shall mean the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States.”
A September 2017 press release promotes his border wall: “President Trump intends to secure the southwest border with a border wall and a robust law enforcement presence on the border.”
There is little support in Congress for the president’s wall. Congress denied the president’s request to fully fund the border wall in the 2018 omnibus spending bill. U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, boasted about this denial in a press release:
“It [the spending bill] also rejects his request to build a ‘big, beautiful wall’ on the Southern border. Instead of his original $1.6 billion request for 74 miles of wall, which was later increased to a request for $18 billion to build a wall along the entire southern border, the bill funds only a fraction of that and includes important restrictions on how the funds can be used.”
Without a serious commitment from Congress to “operational control” of our southern border, we will continue to have more unnecessary deaths on our doorstep, a truly tragic result of the deep political divide in Washington, D.C.
Bob Casimiro is executive director of Mainers for Responsible Immigration. He lives in Bridgton.
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