Campus ministry winter break trip to US-Mexico border

by Melissa Wales

Over winter break, I had the pleasure and privilege of accompanying eleven Ohio University students to the US-Mexico border for a week to examine the impacts of US economic and immigration policies. We were hosted by BorderLinks (www.borderlinks.org), a faith-based nonprofit with nearly two decades of working on the border, beginning with Central American refugees in 1987 and continuing now with a focus on immigration issues and global economics. BorderLinks is committed to providing experiential education for people from developed countries.

We flew into Tucson and received a brief history of US-Mexico border relations and the history of BorderLinks by founder and current Moderator for the Presbyterian Church, Rick Ufford-Chase. He explained that in 1994, NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) resulted in increased pressure on the border with the establishment of free trade zones and a dramatic increase in US-owned manufacturing plants (maquiladoras). US Border Patrol stepped up to tighten the major cities along the border, pushing migrants into the inhospitable Sonoran Desert, presumed to be a natural barrier to illegal migration. But the push of poverty in Mexico and Central America and the pull of employment opportunities in the US have proven to be stronger forces than fear of the serious dangers of the high desert.

The results of what most would agree is a failed US immigration policy have been tragic and immoral: more than 2000 men, women and children have died while attempting to cross the desert in Arizona alone in the last 5 years. Recently, people of faith came together to struggle with how to respond to the crisis, and founded No Mas Muertes: No More Deaths (www.nomoredeaths.org) with three goals: 1) to provide water, food, and medical assistance to migrants walking through the Arizona desert; 2) to monitor US operations on the border and work to change US policy to resolve the “war zone” crisis on the border; 3) and to bring the plight of migrants to public attention.

Last summer No More Deaths received national attention when the Border Patrol arrested volunteers Shanti Sellz and Daniel Strauss, who were transporting three sick migrants to a medical facility. No More Deaths had been in continuous communication with US Border Patrol about their humanitarian work and their operations have followed a mutually agreed-upon, transparent protocol. But amid fear of “outsiders” in this post-9-11 political climate and a growing uneasiness about job security and the restructuring of the US economy, the US-Mexico border is becoming more and more militarized. “Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime” is the campaign to drop the charges against Sellz and Strauss. At this point, no trial date has been set, and Amnesty International has declared that Sellz and Strauss will be designated prisoners of conscience if found guilty.

Perhaps the most memorable moment for me, in an intense week of many memorable moments, was meeting with Sarah, a 22-year old migrant from northern Guatemala who’d been traveling for a month and had just been returned to Mexican immigration after jumping the wall in Nogales (yes, there are walls, old landing strips from the Vietnam War, along many miles of the border). I’ll never forget her sitting small and afraid in the cement cell, offering up her story to us as tears streamed down her face. I’ll never forget her bravery: risking her life to provide for her impoverished family and her willingness to share her personal struggle with strangers.

We spent most of our time in Agua Prieta and Nogales, Mexico to get a better understanding of life on the border. We toured a maquiladora and met with an organizer from the Border Workers’ Alliance who educates and organizes workers about their rights. The maquiladoras offer the “best” employment at $40-$70/week (a wage that keeps people in poverty), and often times in unsafe working conditions. We participated in weekly vigil at the border to remember and honor people who have died in the desert. We walked along the wall separating a people from themselves and reflected on history, geography and a quote we’d heard from a resident of the borderlands, “I didn’t cross the border, the border crossed me.”

We learned that most migrants don’t want to leave their families and homes, but NAFTA and other forces of globalization have pulled the economic rug out from under many Mexicans, especially rural coffee growers. We visited a roasting facility for Just Coffee (www.justcoffee.com.), a cooperative coffee business owned by 25 families in Chiapas, a region in Southern Mexico that has seen a dramatic increase in out-migration when coffee prices fell in the early part of the decade. Just Coffee markets organic, high quality coffee while keeping the profits with the growers, who can then remain on their land and offer a more promising future to their children. Another great reason to buy fair trade products!

There are several hotly-debated immigration bills in the US Senate now to keep an eye on, with solutions ranging from building more fences to recognizing the reality of the US economy and pushing for the decriminalization of migrant workers. And President Bush (who happened to fly into Tucson the same day we did) is cautiously promoting a dubious guest worker program while weighing the very vocal concerns of border state politicians and vigilante ranchers with those of agribusiness, construction companies and other US employers who rely on an undocumented workforce to fill their low wage jobs.

Absent from much of the media’s presentation of the debate is the perspective of progressive people of faith, who have much to offer on the topic of US immigration policy. No More Deaths has outlined a proposal for immigration reform that can be found at http://www.nomoredeaths.org/faithbasedprinciples.html

The day we left, I picked up a copy of US News and World Report at the airport, with the cover story “Border Wars,” and tried to reconcile a perspective that portrayed migrants as mostly would-be terrorists and dangerous drug runners with our encounters with Sarah and others who are pushed to the border’s edge in desperate attempts to provide for themselves and their families. I thought of the migrant community in Southeastern Ohio, employed by large commercial farms along the Ohio River. Did their journeys begin in Chiapas or Guatemala, leaving family and friends and the only home they’d ever known? Did they pay thousands of dollars for a coyote to guide them through the desert with the promise of better wages and the chance to lift their families out of grinding poverty? The border is not “down there.” The border is here: picking our produce, slaughtering our meat, building and cleaning our homes, and caring for our children. We all have a stake in creating an immigration policy founded in compassion and justice.