By Ryan Fatica
Sasabe, AZ — The afternoon sun cut diagonally through the 16-foot-tall concrete-reinforced steel bollards marking the international boundary between the United States and Mexico east of Sasabe, Arizona. The wall’s long shadows cast a strobe light effect on cars passing along the roughly graded road cut into the mountainside along the U.S. side of the desert.
Along the road, migrants walked in groups of five or ten, men, women and some children, carrying backpacks of clothes and supplies. They were bundled in coats, and some wore turbans, others baseball caps. All together, perhaps 50 people made their way along the road, walking the 15 miles to the Sasabe.
They held out their thumbs to passing cars, mostly humanitarian aid workers, in hopes of catching a ride as the setting sun foretold dropping temperatures.
The migrants, most of whom hailed from oceans away — from the Indian subcontinent and from Africa — were not passing through the rough desert areas along the Southern Arizona border in hopes of evading capture by Border Patrol. They walked openly down the road in hopes of arrest. Their destination: the Border Patrol Station in Sasabe, where they have been turning themselves in in droves since early November to petition the U.S. government for asylum.
At times, hundreds of people have huddled in makeshift camps near the border wall, struggling to stay warm under tarps amidst rain and freezing temperatures.
“There’ll be times where there’s fifty screaming babies, just forced to stay here overnight,” said Bryce, a volunteer with No More Deaths, a humanitarian aid organization in Southern Arizona that has been responding to the crisis.
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