Humane Borders News and Opinion Pieces: The Season Of Death Has Begun: Tohono O'odham Nation Must Allow Water Stations

Tucson Citizen Op-Ed, 04.17.03

The season of death in the desert has begun, and the public is asking what is being done about it. With the cooperation of federal, county, and private land managers, Humane Borders, Inc. is placing and maintaining proven life-saving water stations in the desert. The Border Patrol is responding in a number of ways through public information, personnel, equipment, and infrastructure. On the Tohono O'odham Nation, though, no immediate promising responses are being made. One has to question why not?

For at least five years, the Tohono O'odham Nation has rejected ideas of putting water in the desert offered by members of the Nation. For three years, Humane Borders has requested that the Tohono O'odham Nation put out water, and those requests have been rebuffed as being naïve. Our organization has offered to erect water stations and maintain them at no expense. We have offered to provide equipment and supplies for members of the Nation to do the work without our presence on Nation lands. For two years, the Nation has refused to let the Border Patrol place proven migrant rescue towers on Nation lands. For nearly one year, the Nation has refused to let the group called the Samaritans search in strategic areas to rescue migrants. For nearly a year, the Nation has thwarted efforts by an O'odham pastor to place water in the desert, even slashing the jugs of water he placed on tribal land.

At a two hour meeting of district chairmen last summer, the following argument was laid out in great detail: 1) The Tohono O'odham are afraid of the migrants. Smugglers commit crimes, drive fast through communities all hours of the day and night, etc. 2) The O'odham resent the Border Patrol and other law enforcement agents. Agents reportedly have a bad bedside manner and treat members of the Nation as criminal suspects. 3) The O'odham spend enormous sums of money rehydrating migrants in their health facilities. 4) The Tohono O'odham police spend enormous sums of money and time for search and rescue operations. 5) The O'odham are a hospitable people who give away food and water every day. 6) Finally, water stations attract more migrants.

Humane Borders sees each of these points as very good arguments to place water stations in the desert: 1) Water stations can be strategically placed to encourage migrants to avoid going through communities. Rationally, if one needs water, would one choose to go to a water station or to a house where one's presence may be detected and reported? 2) With fewer migrants in distress, fewer Border Patrol agents can do the same work and tear up less desert. 3) If migrants are hydrated, they will not need their health facilities, nor will they need emergency treatment in Pima County facilities. 4) If migrants are not in peril, they will not need Tohono O'odham Police Department search and rescue services, and O'odham police can provide more traditional police services to members of the Nation. 5) No matter how hospitable the O'odham people are, the O'odham communities are not evenly distributed along the migration corridors to provide adequate supplies of water where water is needed most. 6) Finally, following two years of placing water on every federal property adjacent to the O'odham Nation, the empirical evidence is clear: Migrants do not die near water stations, and migrants choose where to cross the border not because of water station locations but because of where the Border Patrol is working and where supporting infrastructure exists. The farther west one travels in the west desert, the greater are the chances one will not be apprehended. Many migrants die, but most cross the border successfully. Thus Humane Borders and the Tohono O'odham Nation are diametrically opposed on the question of providing humanitarian assistance to people perishing in the desert.

In March, the Chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation read into Congressional testimony the Nation's decision to ask Congress for roads, fences, surveillance, and other elements of infrastructure to secure 76 miles of the Nation's border with Sonora, Mexico. We oppose militarization of the border. The U.S. government agrees that it is not effective in reducing the numbers of migrants crossing. Militarization only changes where migrants cross. The United States does not have the political will or the financial resources to close our border with Mexico, and should not support the creation of an international, and in this case, an intra-national partition. What is needed is a concerted humanitarian response by all concerned parties to the immediate crisis that is killing people and a serious effort to move the migration back through the ports of entry. Migrants could be given a limited legal status, security objectives could be achieved, and money could be taken out of the people smuggling business.

Humane Borders is a faith-based organization. In our judgment, no political status, no legal posture, no moral tradition, and no social ethic can absolve the Tohono O'odham Nation for not proactively providing water or allowing others to help.

For more information, please contact us.