A6
Politics & The Nation
Arizona group offers aid to illegal migrants crossing the desert
by Peter Slevin
green valley, ariz. — “So- mos amigos,” called Shura Wallin, ducking low into the shade be- neath the highway overpass. “We’re friends,” she said again in Spanish, calling out to anyone who might be hiding. “Don’t be afraid.”
At a time when state and feder-
al governments are focused on tightening the border to keep out immigrants who cross illegally from Mexico, Wallin and her col- leagues help people who make the trip. They leave water and food along well-known foot trails. They distribute maps showing the water sites and search for trekking migrants. Sometimes, they find dead bodies. Their efforts are at odds with a
new Arizona law that makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally. Gov. Jan Brewer (R), who met behind closed doors last week with President Obama,
R
KLMNO ‘Los Samaritanos’ reach out across border
contends that the law known as SB1070 is necessary to fill a feder- al leadership vacuum on immi- gration reform. Obama, who has called the measure “misguided,” has directed the Justice Depart- ment to assess the law’s constitu- tionality.
While the debate goes on, Wal- lin and a group of 140 volunteers who call themselves Los Samar- itanos work against brutal heat and an unforgiving desert land- scape where 61 migrants died in the seven months that ended April 30. In a region split by the increasingly fortified U.S.-Mexico border, they say they are doing moral deeds in the face of a sim- ple reality: Migrants keep com- ing.
“Most of the people we find are
broken, beaten down, sobbing, so lonesome, broken. They just want to go home,” said the Rev. Randy Mayer, pastor of Good Shepherd United Church of Christ in Sa- huarita, Ariz., home to Los Sa- maritanos. “We’re just trying to stop people from dying. Some- body will say, ‘What don’t you un- derstand about “illegal”?’ Well, it’s more complicated than that.” U.S. Customs and Border Pro- tection officials, who have caught
168,000 illegal immigrants since Oct. 1 in this section of southern Arizona near Tucson, disapprove of the effort. “Anyone who encourages ille-
gal activities adds to our work- load,” said Robert L. Boatright, deputy head of the 90,000- square-mile Tucson region. He said the maps and supplies give border crossers a “false sense of security.” “That’s an incentive,” he said, “but they might be on the wrong trail or the water might be gone.” Don Severe, an activist in Green Valley who favors strict penalties for many border cross- ers, put it another way: “How would you feel if one of these peo- ple you helped went on and raped or killed your granddaughter?” The debate over the border has
intensified since the killing of Co- chise County rancher Robert Krentz, who some suspect was slain by an illegal immigrant, and Arizona’s adoption of a law that empowers police to request iden- tity papers from anyone they stop and suspect of being here illegal- ly. The law, due to take effect July 29, is being challenged in federal court. Wallin, a retiree who helped
run homeless shelters in Califor- nia, calls the desert “beautiful but deadly.” From weekly visits to the other side of the border, where she talks with Mexicans who have been deported or defeated in their efforts to cross into the United States, she knows the sto- ries of exploitative smugglers and dangerous treks. “I can’t live here knowing that people are almost literally dying in my back yard and not do some- thing to help,” she said during a recent search mission that took her south to the Mexican border town of Sasabe. Wallin and Mayer packed one of three Samaritanos vehicles with water and food one recent morning and drove to familiar stopping points on the trail from the border, 40 miles away. Near a railroad track that stretches south to Nogales, they ducked into a thicket of trees and scrub brush that offered shelter from the blistering sun and the Border Patrol alike, scouting for evidence that people had recently been there. At their next stop, they called out their greetings beneath an Interstate 19 overpass, but found only water containers. The pair made their way west
SUNDAY, JUNE 6, 2010
PETER SLEVIN / THE WASHINGTON POST
These men were among a group of migrant laborers that Shura Wallin and the Rev. Randy Mayer encountered south of the border as they looked for people to help.
through the remote landscape, stopping to talk with two security guards hired through a private contractor, waiting in a bus rigged like a mobile jail to haul away captured immigrants. In Sasabe, on the Mexican side of the border, Wallin stopped to hand out water and new white socks to a half-dozen laborers who said they were on their way south from Arizona. The Samar- itanos stopped in a small one- story building to speak with an official from Grupos Beta, a wing of Mexico’s immigration author- ity, who estimated that 200 peo- ple a day were climbing the near- by fence or driving into the desert to go around it.
“We try to convince them that
it’s dangerous and tell them to go home,” the official said. “But they say, ‘It’s the United States.’ ” On many Sundays, a man stands outside Mayer’s church and protests the rescue and relief efforts. He wears a sign that says “Good Samaritan, Bad Ameri- can.” After 12 years working along the border, Mayer is mindful of the complexities of the national immigration debate. But as he sees it, he is facing a moral imper- ative. “It degrades me as a human be-
ing,” Mayer said, “when I can’t be compassionate to another human being.”
slevinp@washpost.com
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