No More Deaths boosts migrant-saving efforts
Hundreds expected to assist with desert patrols this summer
CLAUDINE LoMONACO
Tucson Citizen
Seventy-five-year-old retired geologist Ed McCullough walked hundreds
of miles through the desert in the last year, carefully charting a
web of migrant trails in the hope of saving lives.
The former University of Arizona professor turned his findings into
maps for volunteers with the humanitarian aid group No More Deaths,
which will patrol the desert around Arivaca in search of distressed
illegal immigrants for the fourth straight summer.
The group kicks off its effort Saturday with an opening ceremony at
its round-the-clock camp east of Arivaca, where hundreds from around
the country, including doctors and nurses, are expected to volunteer.
New Jersey native Matt Mittelstadt, 27, recently came to Tucson to
join No More Deaths after spending a year as a volunteer with the
Presbyterian Church Peace Fellowship in Colombia.
Mittelstadt said he first heard about the dangers illegal immigrants
face crossing the border from Salvadorans he used to work with at a
restaurant.
"I'm humbled by them," he said.
For years, Arizona has been the busiest and deadliest crossing point
for illegal immigrants, who often succumb to the region's three-digit
summer temperatures and harsh, barren terrain.
McCullough put his skills as a geologist to use after his first
summer of volunteering with the group three years ago, when he found
himself largely wandering the desert.
"It was just pretty much serendipity," McCullough said. "We would
drive the roads, hoping to find people that needed help. There wasn't
any real pattern to it and you have to think, 'There's got to be a
better way.' "
McCullough focused on a series of heavily trafficked corridors, each
made up of three or four trails that weave and intersect, leading
from Mexico between the Tumacacori Mountains to the east and the
Baboquivari Mountains to the west. Volunteers go out with one of
McCullough's maps and a hand-held Global Positioning System so they
can find their way back.
"Hopefully, we will be able to get out walking these trails and find
people before they die," he said.
The U.S. Border Patrol has recorded 210 deaths of illegal immigrants
along the entire U.S.-Mexico border between October 2006 and May 2007.
No More Deaths has intensified the training of volunteers this year,
and more than 20 have taken a 72-hour emergency medical course to
become Wilderness First Responders. The group will also have bicycle
teams and a mobile unit this year to target areas with heavy traffic,
and it will continue its partnership with Sonora's migrant aid office
to staff aid stations at the Mariposa and downtown ports of entry in
Nogales, where migrants are voluntarily returned after failed
attempts to illegally cross the border. The group is seeking
donations of socks, shoes, water and food to stock the aid stations.
No More Deaths is still working out the details of its policy on
transporting ailing migrants with Robert Gilbert, new chief of the
Border Patrol's Tucson sector, said Gene Lefebvre, a retired minister
and co-founder of No More Deaths.
The group stopped transporting ailing migrants in July 2005 after
federal authorities charged two No More Deaths volunteers with
smuggling for driving three illegal immigrants to a medical clinic. A
federal judge later dismissed the charges.
For more information about No More Deaths, call 245-7560.
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