Crossing with the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail

Story Twenty-four

Story Twenty-four R ain and snow came to the desert in the form of a fast-moving storm that originated way up in the northern climes. It is brutal in its cold swiftness. On Sunday morning the newspapers report that four migrants are dead from hypothermia or exposure, and scores have been sent to the hospital. The mountains surrounding Tucson are beautiful when the snow level drops, and that morning all the major ranges had a dusting of snow down to six thousand feet. They sparkle in the morning sunlight, and from the warm environs of the house they beckon my granddaughter to ask her Tito if he will take her to the snow so she can play. For a person walking through the night in the desert with clothes that are wet and temperatures dropping to the upper thirties along with winds in the twenty to thirty miles per hour range, the weather is deadly. Fatigue, exhaustion, dehydration, and hunger, the bane of migrants who have been traveling in the desert, will cause them to succumb more readily when exposed to the cold. The core temperature of the body drops. The muscles spasm uncontrollably, creating friction and therefore heat. As the inside of the body cools, this shivering may stop, and the arms and legs no longer have blood moving through them. The body begins to shut down, conserving precious heat. A person will exhibit poor speech, nausea, dizziness, poor judgment, apathy, and then finally stupor to unconsciousness in severe hypothermia. The blood pressure and respiratory rate fall, and the heart will try and pump the cold blood to someplace warm. The heartbeat flutters and then stops. Treatment is basic and straightforward: remove the wet clothing and warm the body. Do not massage the extremities, since this may cause the heart to start beating wildly as small pools of warm blood where you have rubbed begin to push cold blood into and through the heart. 134 stories from the migrant trail On Friday and Saturday in southern Arizona, those unfortunate souls who had no Weather Channel, no radio or daily news, just the clothes on their backs, some water in a gallon jug, and a few personal belongings in a backpack were walking north as the storm clouds gathered , temperatures dropped, and the cold hard rain came without warning . By the time my little granddaughter asked me to take her to the snow, those who would die were dead. There were four known. There were the unknown, never to be discovered, who lost their lives looking for a job. A good friend constantly reminds me that all work has dignity, whether it’s digging a ditch or teaching algebra. I wonder if a country that forces its laborers to cross its border on life-threatening journeys for a job has any dignity left. Our borders have continually been used as a gate to keep out those of a lower status. Allow enough of them in to keep the labor pool cheap and expendable but not too many as to put a drain on social services or anger those who are afraid of people of color. I received a call from a fellow Samaritan late Sunday afternoon asking if I would be willing to travel early Monday morning. I agreed. I awoke before dawn to find all the cars in my neighborhood covered with a thick frost. I met him at the church. Two women from out of town were to accompany us. They seemed pleasant enough. We drove out to the desert the usual way and saw nothing but Border Patrol zooming by at high speed on the two-lane blacktop road. The rain was welcome in this desert. The fine dust was packed tight with moisture so that old footprints were obliterated and the ground was too hard to take new ones, at least that the untrained eye could see. We walked a trail in Brown Canyon and saw many signs of people having camped under mesquite trees whose branches were bent low. I worried what we might find in these camps, but thankfully no bodies lay dead upon the desert floor. Later on the blacktop we saw a big Homeland Security bus on the side of the road. A young woman standing solo, waiting to be boarded, looked lost and forlorn. The agents would not let us give her food and water, and we could not tell if there were others inside. Farther south, more men...