#apolinar rosales mendez

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A marker commemorating the death of a migrant.  San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, Cochise County, Arizona, September 2020.

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If you have followed me for any length of time, you probably know that I live in southern Arizona, just a couple of miles from the border with Mexico.  Any time other than broad daylight, you can see the twinkly lights on the border fence from the yard.

I have been hiking here every weekend for the last two and a half years, and it is the safest place I have ever lived by a long shot. Safer than Minneapolis.  Safer than central Wisconsin.  Safer than northwest New Mexico, or a touristy corner of Colorado, or a retirement mecca in northern Arizona. 

As a slow-walking middle-aged woman with a backpack full of cameras, I am fine going out by myself.  My scariest moment was a somewhat creepy neighbor jumping out of the trees to “catch” me when we first moved here, because he thought I might be a migrant. 

We have more law enforcement per capita - and per square foot - than I have ever seen anywhere.  When one of my headlights burned out the winter before last, I was pulled over within half an hour.  When a coworker hit a deer, two law enforcement agencies pulled over to help before she even got her phone out of her purse.

The only actual crisis here is the crushing sadness of people dying trying to make it to a population center.  Case in point, this poor person who died near the San Pedro River last spring, at 32.

The landscape here is dry, rugged, and full of thorny plants and biting animals.  I honestly think that anyone who walks long distances through this desert in tennis shoes and jeans, trying to reach safety or just make a better life for their family, deserves a milkshake and a bus ticket wherever they want to go.

Granted, this remote area is not seeing the huge numbers of people who are showing up in busier sectors.  But those areas also had record low numbers of crossings until the current administration intentionally created a panic on both sides of the border.

Demonizing immigrants and gleefully persecuting the poor and desperate does nothing to make us safer.  Indeed, it shifts focus from the real security issues related to the border: drug smuggling, human trafficking, and actual crime.

Immigrants are good for the economy [source], and do not commit a disproportionate number of crimes [source].  More importantly, they are people, and we have an obligation to treat them decently on that basis alone. 

I am appalled and ashamed that my tax dollars are being spent, in my name, to perpetuate racist and intentionally cruel immigration policies.  There is plenty to be outraged about these days, but please don’t let this horror fall off the national radar.  It is really, really important, even if you don’t live near here.

Cochise County, Arizona, July 2019.