With the hot summer taking a vicious toll on human life on our southern border, we should welcome, not prosecute, humanitarianism. Temperatures have been soaring over 110 degrees in the Southwest, and at least 21 immigrants died last month trying to enter the United States illegally.
One Arizona faith-based group, No More Death, says it rescued 175 undocumented migrants in the Arizona desert in the month of June alone.
Then on July 9, the Border Patrol arrested two volunteers from the group for transporting three immigrants in their vehicle. The volunteers, Shanti Sellz and Daniel Strauss, said they found nine migrants about 50 miles outside of Tucson. Three were too sick to treat on site so, after contacting a registered nurse, Sellz and Strauss made arrangements to take the immigrants to see a doctor.
Before they got there, however, the Border Patrol picked up Sellz and Strauss. And of the three migrants, two were deported and one was kept as a witness. Sellz and Strauss, both 23 years old, are looking at possibly five years in prison and a $250,00 fine if they are convicted.
The prosecution of these two volunteers is unjustified. They were simply trying to help migrants in need. That is the mission of No More Deaths, which describes itself as a "coalition of communities and individuals of faith and conscience that works to end the suffering and deaths of migrants in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands." No More Deaths is not the only humanitarian group doing good work on the border.
Paisanos al Rescate (Countrymen to the Rescue) drops containers of water by parachute to immigrants crossing U.S.-Mexico border. Using a 30-year-old Cessna and a volunteer pilot, the group is now in its second year of dropping bottles to migrants on the border. Last summer, they dropped 80 to 100 bottles, the El Paso Times reported. "We are just good people that want to try and prevent the horrific, painful and tragic deaths of so many innocent men, women and little children who have been lost or abandoned in the hot desert and left to die a painful death," the group's founder, Armando Alarcon, told The New York Times. He said he started the group after he heard about an 8-year-old girl who died in the desert after being left behind by a smuggler.
The work of groups like Paisanos al Rescate and No More Deaths affirms the spirit of America. They look beyond the rhetoric of fear propagated by armed groups like the Minuteman Project to see these immigrants as human beings with names.
This is a lesson I learned as child. I grew up on the U.S.-Mexico border, and the movement back and forth across the border shaped the history of my family. I recall neighbors providing food and water to immigrants passing through. No one asked questions or demanded papers. We just gave these fellow humans the basics that they needed. Paisanos al Rescate and No More Deaths understand that alleviating the suffering of others is a moral obligation. At a time of poisonous rhetoric and reckless violence against immigrants, these groups remind us that there is a better way.
Yolanda Chávez Leyva is a historian specializing in Mexican-American and border history. She lives in Texas. This column was produced for the Progressive Media Project, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by the Tribune News Service.