Dead in Their Tracks

In America's latest border wars, Samaritans are arrested as smugglers and migrants keep dying.

Comments (0) By Marc Cooper Wednesday, Feb 22 2006

...continued from page 3

They come to America: The high numbers of migrant deaths last summer led Arizona�s Pima County to rent refrigerated trucks to store bodies when space ran out at the morgue. Photos by Danny Gawlowski

Illegal search? Despite the arrests of two fellow Samaritans, Steve Johnston hasn�t stopped offering aid.

More About

What everyone knows is that the trial, assuming it goes ahead, and independent of its conclusion, will change absolutely nothing in the current border drama. Nothing has, over the last decade or more. No matter the pronouncements or policies from Washington, no matter how many billions are spent fortifying the border, about a million people a year keep getting arrested as they come across the line. Hundreds of thousands or more don’t get caught. They take up jobs in just about every state of the union now. And the game grinds on.

On a recent weekday evening, just before dusk, the well-known ritual once again repeats itself in the ramshackle Mexican border town of Sasabe, about 90 minutes south of Tucson. In la ladrillera, the old semi-abandoned brick yard, knots of young men, some with their families, begin to gather. They are dressed in dark colors, water jugs in hand, baseball caps drawn tightly over their heads and their backpacks stuffed with bare essentials — a toothbrush, a change of clothes, some cans of tuna. After days of arduous travel through Mexico itself, the men make their final contact here with the “guides” provided by their “polleros,” their smugglers. As night falls, they fan out into the desert hills and quietly walk north along the footpaths already firmly etched into the brush. Their forward march will continue unimpeded, regardless of the outcome of the Samaritans’ trial. And they will soon take up new jobs on the other side, with or without any legal recognition of their work, or even of their existence.