No More Deaths

Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime, Saving Lives of Migrants

Sue Lefebvre

• Publisher: Carolyn Sue Lefebvre
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781087867441
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Diritto
• Subtopic: Diritto dell'immigrazione

Roots of the current border crisis began almost 25 years ago with the passage of NAFTA. No More Deaths and other humanitarian groups responded to the resulting surge of migrants into Arizona beginning in 2000.

"No More Deaths" chronicles this response through desert and border work, conflicts with Border Patrol and Fish and Wildlife, federal trials of humanitarians for assisting migrants, energetic support from volunteers, substantial financial response from supporters throughout the country and collaboration with other humanitarian groups.

After ten years of restraint by government agencies, at this printing, a No More Deaths volunteer, Dr. Scott Warren, faces federal trial for feeding, clothing, and providing a resting spot for two migrants in Ajo, Arizona. In FY 2000, Border Patrol processed more than 1, 600, 000 migrants, yet 390, 000 asylum seekers during 9 months of FY 2019 constitutes a crisis. This doesn't make sense. Read real stories of volunteers assisting migrants so they can join their families, feed their children, and work in jobs "we" don't want to do. This book provides a strong case for comprehensive immigration reform NOW.

PART I

Early Days of No More Deaths 2004-2007

John Fife at Byrd Camp Dedication 2004 (Michael Hyatt)

CHAPTER 1

No More Deaths—Some Background

When No More Deaths began, we thought we would just be doing direct humanitarian aid in the desert. But it wasn’t long after starting this work that we heard all the appalling stories. At that point, we had an obligation to act.

THE REV. JOHN FIFE

RETIRED PASTOR OF SOUTHSIDE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

FORMER MODERATOR OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

GENE AND I SPEAK WITH many people who ask why the migrants come to the U.S. when it is so difficult for them to get here? “For goodness sakes, why don’t they just stay home?” Some remarks are a bit cruder.

The comments of the migrants we met in Altar, Sonora, provided some glimpses into the causes. These people have the same dreams we have—to work, to obtain healthcare…and to be somebody. The inability to fulfill these dreams where they live drives them to seek alternatives.

Many of us are also aware of the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that has devastated small-scale farming in Mexico. Dr. Miguel A. de la Torre, our friend who teaches at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, states that since NAFTA was enacted, the United States dumped about $4 billion worth of subsidized corn in Mexico between 1995-2004. This caused a 70 percent drop in Mexican corn prices and a 247 percent increase in the cost of housing, food, and other essentials.⁶

Not surprising, over one million Mexican farmers lost their land within a year of NAFTA’s ratification. Our trade policy pushes migrants out of Mexico, while our demand for cheap labor, labor that native-born Americans do not want to do, pulls them toward the U.S. But rather than acknowledge our complicity in causing undocumented immigration, and rather than work toward comprehensive and compassionate immigration reform, our government responded to the predicted increase in immigration by implementing Operation Gatekeeper the same year we ratified NAFTA.

In October 1994, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) launched Operation Gatekeeper in an effort to move people away from the traditional migration routes in the San Diego area. The number of Border Patrol agents was increased dramatically and construction of a wall between Mexico and the U.S. was underway.

Aviva Chomsky, in her book titled, “They Take our Jobs!”: And 20 Other Myths about Immigration,⁷ places migration in an historical context and sees it as part of a larger global system. It explains that each immigrant comes for individual reasons, but that patterns of immigration have structural and historical causes. While there is not one single cause that explains all immigration, there are, however, several major interrelated factors that have structured immigration in the past and continue to structure it today.

As in the case for most migrant flows, the sending and the receiving countries, such as United States and Puerto Rico, have a long-standing relationship. The United States took Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898 as part of the spoils of the Spanish-American War and ruled it as a colony until 1952. Globally this kind of long-standing relationship is an important one to look at in understanding migration. People from India and Pakistan go to England; people from Senegal and Algeria go to France; people from Morocco go to Spain; people from Mexico and Puerto Rico come to the United States. Colonization sets the stage for later migration….

That Mexico is by far the largest source of U.S. immigrants is hardly surprising. In addition to sharing a land border with the United States, it was twice invaded by U.S. troops in the 20th century (1914 and 1917), it has been the target of two U.S.-sponsored labor recruitment efforts (during 1917-18 and 1942-64), and since 1986, at U.S. insistence, it has undertaken a radical transformation of its political economy and entered the global market. Moreover, since 1994, it has been linked to the United States by NAFTA, a comprehensive economic treaty that presently generates $250 billion per year in binational trade. Under these circumstances, immigration between the two countries is inevitable, even though Mexico is wealthy by Third World Standards…migration is a result, not a cause of global economic changes.

Mexico certainly carries its share of the responsibility. My husband, Gene, and I have heard about government corruption in Mexico ever since we were children, with some of the bounty mounting to inconceivable levels of American dollars. In more recent years, the Mexican government has continued to neglect community development and refuses to create jobs. They have tried to limit the number of births per family with some success, but lack of education and absence of job opportunities have left people bereft with many mouths to feed. The drug cartels continue to gain power and terrorize people along the border and in Mexico’s interior by killing their competitors, including women and children. Thus, people seek a better option.

CONCERN FOR MIGRANT DEATHS—1976-2004

The roots of No More Deaths go as far back as the 1970s when the Manzo Area Council in Tucson took on the plight of El Salvadorans and Guatemalans who had come to the United States seeking asylum. “Manzo,” originally a child of the War on Poverty, had had a brief brush with the law once, in 1976, when four of its female staff members were indicted by the Justice Department on charges of transporting and aiding and abetting the presence of illegal aliens in the United States. Essentially what they had been doing was advising undocumented Mexicans of their legal rights, driving them to appointments, and otherwise facilitating their lives in Tucson—without alerting the federal government to their presence. As Manzo saw it, did a social agency in the United States have the right to help undocumented people? If they did so without reporting, was Manzo guilty of violating a law?

The issue was never put to a test in court, for as it happened, the election of 1976 brought the Carter administration into office. Margo Cowan, who had been trained by Cesar Chavez, and others in Manzo, successfully put pressure on the Democrats coming into the Justice Department to have the charges against these four staff members dropped. Not only was the case against them dismissed, but the new commissioner of INS, Leonel J. Castillo, shortly thereafter certified Manzo to represent undocumented aliens in the immigration courts. Manzo thus became one of the first grassroots organizations in the country legally certified to get immigrants greater access to the legal process.

Throughout the next few years, Manzo members prepared asylum applications, raised money for bail bonds, and provided social services to refugees, many of whom were in detention in El Centro, California. Within a short period of time, they raised around $30,000 for bond money, and then, folks even put up their homes for the bonds. They bonded out as many as 14 people in one day. They were aided by members of 60 Tucson churches, synagogues, and other religious groups of the Tucson Ecumenical Council, who had set up a task force focusing on Central America. They hired Timothy Nonn, a recent college graduate, as a staffer for $500 per month. Tim moved forward into this type of work, which had little definition.

When many asylum applications were denied by the courts, the religious workers concluded that their work had been futile. INS warned participating church groups that they would be indicted if they continued to aid undocumented Central Americans. So, the churches decided to seek public support.

On March 24^th, 1982, Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson and five East Bay congregations and a handful of churches around the United States publicly declared themselves sanctuaries for Central American refugees. At the time, participants believed the declarations broke the law. A March 23^rd, 1982 letter from Southside’s pastor, the Reverend John Fife, to the U.S. attorney general stated, “We are writing to inform you that Southside United Presbyterian Church will publicly violate the Immigration and Nationality Act, Section 274(A).” The letter justified the church’s actions by noting that the U.S. government was violating both international law and the 1980 Refugee Act by detaining Central Americans and deporting them to places of persecution.⁸

As early as 16 months after the original declarations, attorneys began to advise Sanctuary workers that their actions could be considered legal under the very laws they accused the government of breaking. Nevertheless, a Tucson Grand Jury indicted 14 movement members on felony charges of conspiracy and alien smuggling. Moreover, in court, Judge Earl Carroll ruled most of the defendants’ legal arguments inadmissible. (the conditions in El Salvador and Guatemala, the death squads, international law, their own personal religious convictions, etc.) Thus, there was nothing to be said in their defense during the trial. When the trial ended with convictions for eight of the 11 defendants who actually stood trial, movement members renewed their determination to continue sanctuary work.⁹

Sister Darlene Nagorski, one of the defendants, had previously said:

The conditions I have seen and heard, in which our brothers and sisters from Central America are forced to survive, call out to me and all persons of faith and decency…. What could I have done, judge, knowing what I knew? What would you have done if you had experienced what I experienced? If you knew what I knew? How else could I have tried to stop the deportations? What could I have done to follow my call as a School Sister of St. Francis to defend life?¹⁰

After the judge gave Sister Darlene a suspended sentence with five years’ probation and told her to stop her work with migrants, she said, “Judge, you haven’t been listening. As soon as this trial is over, I am going to start working with migrants all over again.” He was visibly stunned and left the room, but when he returned, he didn’t put her in jail.

The wars in El Salvador and Guatemala which had been supported by the United States, were ended by the signing of Peace Accords in 1992. The American Baptist Church v. Thornburg federal court settlement ended deportations to El Salvador and Guatemala and provided temporary legal status for citizens of those countries residing in the U.S. Thus, Sanctuary workers and their many supporters were able to reclaim their lives and turn to other work.

______________________

6Dr. Miguel A, De La Torre, Latino/Latina Social Ethics (Texas: Baylor University Press, 2010), 20.

7Aviva Chomsky, “They Take our Jobs!”: And 20 Other Myths about Immigration (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), 123,132.

8Susan Bibler-Coutin, Enacting Law through Social Practice: Sanctuary as a Form of Resistance, 287-29...