Annunciation House Newsletter - Winter 2005

College Students Arrested Providing Humanitarian Aid To Migrants In Arizona

By Katie Sharar and Mary Fontana

“We judge ourselves as a community of faith by the way we treat the most vulnerable among us.” So write the United States and Mexican Conferences of Catholic Bishops in their pastoral letter Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope (2002). Their message must be heard this December, when two people who offered humanitarian aid to a group of undocumented migrants—some of the most vulnerable people in the United States— are themselves about to be judged.

On July 9th of this year, two college students stopped their truck in the desert of southern Arizona, near Tucson, to help a group of undocumented immigrants they found walking along the road. The Mexican family had crossed illegally through the Sonoran desert. They were badly dehydrated and their feet were blistered. Some of the migrants suffered from diarrhea and were vomiting.

The students, Daniel Strauss and Shanti Sellz, called doctors in Tucson on a satellite phone to describe the medical conditions of the migrants. The doctors’ instructions were to evacuate three members of the group and bring them to a church in Tucson. A doctor would meet them at the church to provide emergency medical treatment. After calling the doctors they also notified a lawyer in Tucson, per their protocol for transporting migrants. Then they set off in the truck.

The group never made it. En route to Tucson they were intercepted by Border Patrol agents. The agents confiscated the truck, took the undocumented people into custody, and arrested Daniel and Shanti. The two 23-year-olds were charged with one felony count each of transporting an illegal alien and conspiracy to transport an illegal alien. If convicted, they could be sentenced to five to fifteen years in prison.

Daniel and Shanti never expected to become the focus of a courtroom battle over the legality of humanitarian aid when they came to Arizona to spend a summer volunteering with the grassroots organization No More Deaths. Since the organization’s founding two years ago, volunteers for No More Deaths have staffed desert camps that provide food, water, and basic first aid to undocumented migrants in the desert south of Tucson. They educate the public about migrant deaths in the desert, and about the U.S. policies that divert the flow of undocumented crossers away from cities and into dangerous desert corridors. Volunteers also replenish water tanks placed in the desert in high-traffic crossing corridors. The tanks fly a blue flag marked with the Northern Star and a drinking gourd, evoking parallels to the Underground Railroad.

The main No More Deaths camp consists of a trailer and tent located outside of Arivaca, Arizona. It’s a small compound with a big name; they call it an “Ark of the Covenant” after the biblical tent where the Israelites kept the Ten Commandments during their forty years in the desert. The blue flag flies over the camp, which is under constant surveillance from Border Patrol. In the summer about a dozen people take up residence here to volunteer. They come from all walks of life. Many are college students and recent graduates; others are retired. Religious and humanitarian beliefs motivate them. Each day, starting early in the morning, volunteers travel through the desert by car and on foot, looking for migrants in distress. They carry water bottles and high-energy snacks to hand out to those they may encounter. They do not report undocumented migrants to the Border Patrol, unless a migrant asks them to do so.

Daniel and Shanti were volunteers at the Arivaca Ark of the Covenant when they were arrested for driving three undocumented migrants to see a doctor. Their arrest and the ensuing legal proceedings have galvanized many members of the Tucson community to protest this criminalization of humanitarian aid. Since the arrest, No More Deaths has arranged weekly press conferences with the participation of various “interest groups.” Tucson’s legal, medical, interfaith, artistic and literary communities have all been supporters, and the press conferences routinely draw 100 to 200 people. Not all supporters are pro-immigration, but they join together to defend human rights. Gary Wolfe, a retired businessman living in Tucson, explains: “I’m not crazy about migrants using tax money, but I’m not about to let anyone die.” A letter-writing campaign is under way as well; the goal is to send 10,000 signatures to Paul K. Charlton, the U.S. Attorney whose district includes the state of Arizona, urging him to drop the charges. The campaign, which is being waged under the standard “Humanitarian Aid Is Never a Crime,” will continue until Daniel and Shanti go to trial on December 20th.

Certainly, not all of southern Arizona supports the work of No More Deaths. The Border Patrol is concerned that the work of the group increases illegal immigration. According to the Border Patrol, human smugglers, commonly known as coyotes, are telling desert crossers not to worry about survival, because Americans stock the desert with food and water. This gives migrants a false and dangerous sense of security. Some residents of towns in popular crossing corridors are angered by the property damage and lack of privacy that they say accompany high migrant traffic. One Arivaca resident suggested at a recent town meeting that the Border Patrol “use sharpshooters to kill the smugglers and then hang their bodies on poles to scare off the migrants.” Such attitudes are at odds with Catholic teaching on immigration, which “urge[s] communities to offer migrant families hospitality, not hostility, along their journey.”

Border Patrol does dedicate resources to finding and aiding migrants in the desert. The Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue Team (BORSTAR) have 70 agents who are trained paramedics and emergency medical technicians; they frequently offer food, water and first aid to migrants in distress. However, their priority is enforcement of immigration laws. The Catholic Conference of Bishops acknowledges Border Patrol’s efforts in migrant rescue, but also recognizes the importance of grassroots humanitarian aid: “The U.S. Border Patrol has recently launched a border safety initiative to prevent migrant deaths. We ask the Border Patrol to redouble their efforts in this area and to work closely with community groups to identify and rescue migrants in distress.”

Identifying and rescuing migrants is expressly the mission of No More Deaths. Members of the organization insist that their actions are legal, and that furthermore the Border Patrol was aware of the group’s work long before the incident that resulted in Daniel and Shanti’s arrest. Border Patrol denies this, however, and maintains that No More Deaths had already been instructed not to transport people before the arrest occurred. Rob Daniels, the Border Patrol spokesman for Tucson, stated, “It is against the law to transport illegal aliens if it is furthering their illegal entry into the United States.”

William Walker, the lawyer who represents Daniel and Shanti, says that the Border Patrol “hasn’t done their homework” for this case in terms of legal precedent; that it is in fact lawful to transport undocumented people in case of medical necessity. Border Patrol representatives say that there was no medical necessity. They assert that the migrants in the truck were not ill; they only needed rest and water, and that they turned down medical treatment after they were in custody. Mr. Walker is prepared to demonstrate in court that this is untrue. One of the migrants, Emil Hidalgo Solis, will testify that he had been vomiting for three days before Daniel and Shanti found him, had bloody diarrhea and needed a doctor.

Daniel and Shanti are adamant in insisting that their actions on July 9th did not constitute a crime. Four days after they were arrested, the Border Patrol offered a plea bargain to Daniel and Shanti. Instead of being tried for the crimes, the plea would have placed them on probation for one year. After that year, if they kept out of trouble, all charges would be dropped. But the plea bargain would require that the two volunteers state that they “had ulterior motives, that they wanted [the undocumented migrants] to stay in the country,” said Jeffrey Rogers, their second lawyer. Because of that one stipulation, Daniel and Shanti rejected the offer. They would not admit to committing any crime.

The volunteers will stand trial December 20th for their treatment of the most vulnerable among us. Once again, the Catholic Bishops speak to this moral crisis in our country: “We share in the concern of religious and social service providers who, without violating civil law, attempt to respond to the migrant knocking at the door.”

“Shanti and Daniel are on trial but it’s the principle that’s on trial,” says Margo Cowan, lawyer and co-founder of No More Deaths. This arrest was an indictment of hospitality, a challenge to the law of hospitality that is higher than any federal statute. It is our country’s collective humanity that stands trial on December 20th. If we make it a violation of our law to offer hospitality to the migrant that knocks on our door, we may shore up our economy for a little while. We may see fewer undocumented people actually pass safely through the Sonoran Desert to reach the U.S. But what will we have done to our humanity? And what hope is there for the United States without it?