Tucson, AZ, Spring 2008

This post is part of a writing project called #30daysofessays. For more about the project, click here.

She was taking pictures of them as they stumbled from the bus, their belongings in plastic grocery bags. Tying shoelaces. Fastening belts. Herded like so many cattle back to the border. They might have called a handful of different countries home, but dropping them just that side of the dividing line put them out of our hands. America's hands.

We attending a hearing in Tucson. Not for those people. For others like them. People we call "illegal." (Because people can be "illegal"...) One man had crossed the border and been sent back thirty-seven times. Others just once, twice, half a dozen times. Those for whom the court could not provide a translator were released on time served and sent back across the border. Others would serve longer sentences before they, too, were returned to the desert. We learned many of these would attempt again to enter the country. They had nowhere else to go.

At an aid station near Nogales, Mexico, we saw the effects of prolonged exposure in the desert. Burned and calloused feet. Mouths dry with thirst. Skin parched from the dry heat. Water barrels marked by blue flags are scattered along the US-Mexico border, filled regularly by Humane Borders volunteers. Opponents of the organization's work contend that such provision encourages illegal crossings. Research refutes this idea, but research cannot stop the destruction of barrels and the waste of a life-sustaining resource.

They're breaking the law and should be treated like criminals, one side argues. This means robbing them of their humanity. Reducing them to less than livestock. Turning a blind eye to officer behavior that would not be out of place in a concentration camp. Deporting people to a place that is not their home. Naming this justice because it appeases the supposedly law-abiding masses. Because at least it looks like some effort is being made.

But to what end?

A nation built on the backs of immigrants turns its nose up at a new generation of immigrants. Their path may be different, but that doesn't make them unworthy. A person willing to trek thousands of dangerous miles across hot sand just to attempt to gain entrance into the United States seems like a person with the kind of work ethic held in such high esteem here.

That ethic is irrelevant because that person failed to obtain a visa and enter the country legally. Why? Surely, the system is perfectly formed and allows entrance to all people and doesn't put any kind of barriers in place that would limit people's opportunity based on economic status. That's an absurd suggestion. Is it? So he sits in limbo, waiting, expecting to be deported, to end up in that aid camp in Nogales. No better prospect awaits him than to try again and again and again. Until maybe one time he slips through and gets a low-paying, long hours job and hopes against hope he isn't found out.

Forced to march with dozens of other migrants across the border while a wide-eyed college student takes his picture.

12/8/2013