Our Projects General Info
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Mexico Aid Centers
Our work in Mexico, centered around aid stations operated by local partners, directly addresses the needs of the large numbers of people ejected every day into the border towns of Sonora. Volunteers provide humanitarian assistance—including medical care, orientation/referral, and recovery of confiscated belongings—and carefully document human rights violations.
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 The U.S. Department of Homeland Security uses the official ports of entry in the Arizona–Sonora border towns to expel people who are found to be in the United States without papers. On average (but with a great deal of fluctuation), there are about 1,500 expulsions per day borderwide, almost half of them in places where we work.
The majority of the people who we meet being pushed south have been apprehended in the same deserts where we camp. (See Desert Aid.) There is a great deal of overlap between the humanitarian needs we encounter in Mexico and in the desert: injuries to the lower extremities, dehydration, heat-related illness, hunger, and psychological trauma, to name only some of the most common issues. These issues do not get resolved in the detention process, despite the solemn obligations of custody. It is often a shocking experience to witness the state that people are in who were moments earlier in federal custody. Sometimes they are literally hospitalizable.
Far from addressing the human needs of detainees adequately, prevailing detention practices aggravate existing conditions and add new injuries/indignities/“deterrents.” We receive frequent reports of physical and verbal abuse committed by Border Patrol agents, and of overcrowding, extreme temperatures (hot/cold), and unsanitary conditions in detention facilities. Few migrants have adequate access to water, food, medical care, consular advice, and legal advice.
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Read more... [Why We Are Doing This]
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Aid Stations, Resource Centers, Shelters |
 No More Deaths does not own or run a migrant aid station in Mexico. Rather, our role is to work in partnership with multiple groups along the border that run such facilities, complementing local resources with our own resources, including our labor. In this way, we maximize our reach and effectiveness.
No More Deaths has partnerships in the three Sonora–Arizona border communities that receive significant numbers of deportees: Nogales, Naco, and Agua Prieta–Douglas. Nogales is the largest of these, and the main point of removal for migrants apprehended in Pima County. Naco and A.P.–Douglas are both on the Cochise County border, and also receive significant numbers of deported/repatriated people.
Here is a review of facilities that we have supported and continue to support in various ways. All rely on Mexican volunteer workers, usually local community members, for their day to day operation.
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Read more... [Aid Stations, Resource Centers, Shelters]
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 Volunteering at the aid centers is an opportunity to work in a binational context with other people of conscience from both North and South. Border volunteers confront the suffering created by U.S. border policies in a place where it is arguably at its most concentrated, thanks to the custodial processes that "funnel" apprehended migrants and immigrants through the major ports of entry. The experience is frequently emotionally intense and challenging, but also rewarding, informative, and transformative.
Each site is different. At all of them, volunteers sleep and eat in volunteer housing (as opposed to pitching a tent and cooking on a camp stove). In Douglas–Agua Prieta, volunteers are hosted by Frontera de Cristo in a mobile home park on the U.S. side, commuting to the Migrant Resource Center using Frontera's fleet of bicycles. In Naco, volunteers both live and work at the Migrant Resource Center/Shelter. In Nogales, volunteers are hosted by the Kino Border Initiative in an apartment on the Mexican side.
The aid centers and the work are on the Mexican side of the border. (U.S. citizens now need to show a passport when re-entering the United States.) The task is basically twofold: address immediate human needs and bear witness to injustices. Addressing immediate needs means providing food, water, medical care, and information about local social services, and helping put people back in touch with their loved ones and their belongings. Bearing witness to injustices means, in the first place, documenting them, but also becoming a credible and vocal witness to them.
Volunteers normally work in shifts. The work can be unpredictable. It is largely dependent on the flow of people through the ports; the where/when/how many depends, like too much else, on the whims of Customs and Border Protection.
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Read more... [The Volunteer Experience]
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Property Restoration Project |
Since 2008, No More Deaths and the Tucson Samaritans have been engaged in a project to reunite deported/repatriated migrants with their confiscated property. This usually consists of a backpack or bag that was taken from them upon apprehension and not returned to them upon release. In many cases, the bag contains the person's identification, money, family photos and mementos … pieces of their life.
The work of property restoration faces a number of challenges. A person who has had their property confiscated must, while still in custody, be informed by their lawyer (or find out in some other way) that they need to sign a waiver to let No More Deaths/Samaritans or the public defender's office recover their property for them. Then, after their removal from the country, they need to make contact with us, and wait for us to retrieve their belongings from storage and deliver them. This is often difficult for people on the move.
In 2009, we successfully returned 115 bags to their owners, about half of them personally delivered at the Mariposa aid station in Nogales. |
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News Updates, Press Releases and Media Hits |
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Cialis AU
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