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Volunteer ~ Ted I n the fall of 2005 a friend told me about a press conference being held at a church not far from my house. It had been called to publicize the plight of two young people volunteering for an organization called No More Deaths. They had been charged with crimes relating to their transporting three migrants in their vehicle to Tucson for medical care. The case had been getting a fair amount of publicity in the local newspapers. My understanding was that one of the three border crossers had bloody diarrhea for two days, and all suffered vomiting, severe dehydration, and blisters on their feet. The pair had been advised by medical staff to bring them into Tucson, since their condition was such that leaving them in the desert might be fatal. Hundreds of people are found dead each year in the Tucson Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, a 240-mile-long frontier that stretches from Lukeville, Arizona, to the New Mexico border. Almost all die from exposure to the elements. The area has vast expanses of uninhabited desert in which a person can become lost, die, and the body would never be found. Ever. I could not understand why the U.S. government was wasting resources prosecuting people who, as I understood it, were only giving a ride to three men who needed medical care. Providing assistance to people in need of medical attention was now apparently a felony punishable by fifteen years in jail and a $500,000 fine. These people were not smugglers transporting migrants for the purpose of making money or for personal gain. I went to the press conference hoping some of these questions might be answered. The press conference was being held in the sanctuary of a church. Inside there were more than a hundred people. Some lawyers for the organization No More Deaths were making speeches, and then they 2 discovering the migrant trail fielded questions from the media. I learned that one of the lawyers for the two defendants believed that their arrests had been a mistake. Rookie Border Patrol officers had made the bust, a new U.S. assistant attorney then filed charges, and now the government was stuck with an unpopular case that would end up being decided by a jury. The prosecutor had offered a generous plea bargain for the two defendants, but they had taken the high moral ground and would not accept it. With the rallying cry “Humanitarian Aid Is Never a Crime,” this group was standing up for basic human rights and would not give up without a good fight. As I was leaving the church, an acquaintance I had not seen in a while said hello and asked if I was interested in volunteering with a group called the Samaritans, who, she said, drove out into the desert each day and looked for people who were in need of food, water, and medical care. When I told her I might be interested, she informed me that a training session would be held on Sunday at the church and told me just to show up at the appointed time. The following Sunday I arrived at the church in the afternoon. A number of people were milling about. We went into a meeting room and sat in a circle. There were about eleven of us; most were Christian Peace Maker team members from all over the United States and Canada. They were here as observers and were going to be deployed on the border to monitor the situation. The meeting was very informal. A nurse gave us general information on what to look for in the field regarding medical issues, and a doctor gave us general guidelines as to what to do when we ran into these situations. We were told that Samaritans usually travel in groups of three: a medical person, a fluent Spanish speaker, and a third person called the “other” who is an observer. The patrols, we learned, leave in the early morning in one of two four-wheel-drive vehicles the group owns, packed with water, food, and medical supplies. Bottled water is iced down during the summer months. The medical supplies consist of basics used to treat blisters on the feet and scrapes and sprains. There is also a baby bag with diapers and formula , since infants are encountered from time to time. The food packs are large plastic baggies filled with PowerBars or granola bars, tuna fish...

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