ILLEGALS ALSO POLLUTE AND DESTROY OUR ENVIROMENT!
Drugs and people are smuggled from Sonora to Phoenix.
Money and guns are smuggled from Phoenix to Sonora.
The people know they are the most expendable cargoes, so they say their prayers.
Red high heels. A New York Yankees baseball cap. Star Wars figurines. Dirty diapers. Backpacks. Framed photographs. Gunnysacks. Tuna fish cans. Electrolyte solution bottles. Jackets. Hoodies. T-shirts. Hair ribbons. Human feces. Plastic water jugs. Pink thong panties.
In the years I’ve covered the Arizona-Mexico borderlands as a reporter for newspapers and magazines, I’ve come across hundreds of objects of immigrant trash strewn in the desert. The litter had always outraged and saddened me.
On the one hand, it seemed disrespectful, contaminated pristine stretches of desert, and killed wildlife. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but wonder about the untold story behind some migrant trash. Who abandoned that bright green hair clip beneath the acacia? Who speared those size-five Cherokee blue jeans on the angry spines of an ocotillo?
Each immigrant crossing illegally into Arizona drops an average of eight pounds of belongings during his or her journey, according to federal environmental officials. Even though illegal immigration has declined, tons of fresh trash are still strewn along Arizona’s borderlands. Volunteers pick it up. Federal employees pick it up. Cowboys pick it up. Hikers pick it up. Although the trash is offensive, just about anyone who cleans up immigrant trash is moved by some of what the travelers leave behind.
Volunteers who leave water for migrants on the desert trails make shrines out of immigrant trash. I came across one such shrine near Arivaca, a tiny town that sits about twelve miles north of the border. Whoever made the shrine had arranged little stones (in the shape of a heart) around a pile of immigrant trash. A small figurine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, that beloved brown Mexican national goddess- Madonna, overlooked a choppy mound of photos, worn-out athletic shoes, T-shirts, baseball caps, plastic one-gallon water jugs, hooded sweatshirts, backpacks, blankets, and empty bottles of electrolyte solution.
There was a cell phone in the shrine, a large black plastic garbage bag that had been fashioned into a makeshift raincoat, a yellow toy truck, an inhaler for an asthmatic, and a small sun-baked Spanish prayer pamphlet called Oraciones de los Emigrantes, which literally means Prayers for Emigrants.
The fragile booklet was tiny, about three inches square, designed to fit in a pocket of a jacket or a backpack. The sun-brittle pages contained prayers to patron saints of travel, prayers appealing for safe passage.
Had the immigrant been robbed or raped by smugglers or border bandits who’d rifled through a backpack or a jacket, dumping the prayer booklet and everything else on the desert floor in a search for money or documents? Had the migrant lost the prayer book at night, when the smuggler led his group of men, women, and children through mesquites and oak trees and flesh-ripping acacia? Assuming the person survived, would he or she end up in my city, Phoenix?
God help the owner of the tiny book of prayers if Phoenix was his or her final destination.
The nation’s fourth-largest city is also the nation’s kidnapping capital, and virtually all the victims are undocumented Mexicans.
Phoenix is a major transportation hub for human smugglers, drug smugglers, firearms smugglers, and money smugglers. We’ll get to all that later.
https://www.goucher.edu/learn/graduate-progra...rk/illegal
Drugs and people are smuggled from Sonora to Phoenix.
Money and guns are smuggled from Phoenix to Sonora.
The people know they are the most expendable cargoes, so they say their prayers.
Red high heels. A New York Yankees baseball cap. Star Wars figurines. Dirty diapers. Backpacks. Framed photographs. Gunnysacks. Tuna fish cans. Electrolyte solution bottles. Jackets. Hoodies. T-shirts. Hair ribbons. Human feces. Plastic water jugs. Pink thong panties.
In the years I’ve covered the Arizona-Mexico borderlands as a reporter for newspapers and magazines, I’ve come across hundreds of objects of immigrant trash strewn in the desert. The litter had always outraged and saddened me.
On the one hand, it seemed disrespectful, contaminated pristine stretches of desert, and killed wildlife. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but wonder about the untold story behind some migrant trash. Who abandoned that bright green hair clip beneath the acacia? Who speared those size-five Cherokee blue jeans on the angry spines of an ocotillo?
Each immigrant crossing illegally into Arizona drops an average of eight pounds of belongings during his or her journey, according to federal environmental officials. Even though illegal immigration has declined, tons of fresh trash are still strewn along Arizona’s borderlands. Volunteers pick it up. Federal employees pick it up. Cowboys pick it up. Hikers pick it up. Although the trash is offensive, just about anyone who cleans up immigrant trash is moved by some of what the travelers leave behind.
Volunteers who leave water for migrants on the desert trails make shrines out of immigrant trash. I came across one such shrine near Arivaca, a tiny town that sits about twelve miles north of the border. Whoever made the shrine had arranged little stones (in the shape of a heart) around a pile of immigrant trash. A small figurine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, that beloved brown Mexican national goddess- Madonna, overlooked a choppy mound of photos, worn-out athletic shoes, T-shirts, baseball caps, plastic one-gallon water jugs, hooded sweatshirts, backpacks, blankets, and empty bottles of electrolyte solution.
There was a cell phone in the shrine, a large black plastic garbage bag that had been fashioned into a makeshift raincoat, a yellow toy truck, an inhaler for an asthmatic, and a small sun-baked Spanish prayer pamphlet called Oraciones de los Emigrantes, which literally means Prayers for Emigrants.
The fragile booklet was tiny, about three inches square, designed to fit in a pocket of a jacket or a backpack. The sun-brittle pages contained prayers to patron saints of travel, prayers appealing for safe passage.
Had the immigrant been robbed or raped by smugglers or border bandits who’d rifled through a backpack or a jacket, dumping the prayer booklet and everything else on the desert floor in a search for money or documents? Had the migrant lost the prayer book at night, when the smuggler led his group of men, women, and children through mesquites and oak trees and flesh-ripping acacia? Assuming the person survived, would he or she end up in my city, Phoenix?
God help the owner of the tiny book of prayers if Phoenix was his or her final destination.
The nation’s fourth-largest city is also the nation’s kidnapping capital, and virtually all the victims are undocumented Mexicans.
Phoenix is a major transportation hub for human smugglers, drug smugglers, firearms smugglers, and money smugglers. We’ll get to all that later.
https://www.goucher.edu/learn/graduate-progra...rk/illegal
