Litterers or Life-Savers?

In These Times › October 15, 2009

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Summary

[Michael Hawkes] says the trash left by migrants "would appall you - in some places it's so thick you can't even see the ground." When refuge officials find migrants, they typically turn them over to the Border Patrol, which operates within the park. A portion of the refuge has been closed in the past due to violence associated with border crossing- caused mainly by "coyotes" (smugglers) or bandits targeting the migrants. "There were murders, rapes, robberies," Hawkes says.

[Robin Hoover] says there have been fewer than 10 deaths in the refuge during a period in which 1,500 migrants died in the region as a whole. Border crossings are significantly down this year, which most attribute to the economy and stricter border enforcement-hence the death toll is down as well. But Hoover thinks the proportional rate of deaths has actually increased, since stepped -up enforcement has pushed border-crossers into riskier areas. "Fewer people are crossing, but more of them are dying," he says. "They're making more difficult treks and dying in more remote areas."

"If this is just about water jugs on the refuge, its a very expensive way for them to go about proving that point," says [Staton], whose sentencing is August 11. "It seems to me they have a larger agenda. If you want to talk about disrupting wildlife, this is a war zone. They've got helicopters, ATVs, trucks all over the refuge- and they built a wall right through the refuge. Of everything out there, No More Deaths has the smallest footprint."