Walter from Tisbury, MA

Shortly after purchasing a condo in Tucson, AZ, and joining a progressive Episcopal Church (GraceSt.Paul's) our associate rector intoduced us to Samaritan of Tucson and Humane Borders. One trip into Nogales, Sonora with a delegation from GSP Church was enough to persuate us that the alarming number of deaths in the borderlands was a matter that we could not ignore.

Since that time we have lengthened our winter to 6 months of the year with trips into the Sonoran Desert and Mountains with Samaritans, No More Deaths, and Humane Borders have become routine for us. At 71 years of age (now) it is physically challenging to carry gallon jugs of water, rolling ourselves under barbed wire fences to find the trails where migrants are likely to get lost. We provide food packets that contain a day's worth of balanced nutrition, blister treatment materials and first aid.

Whatever a person's attitudes are regarding "illegal aliens", as the people are often called, to us they are the "strangers in our midst." No one deserves to die for choosing to migrate north as a means of avoiding starvation of their families when they have lost their subsistant farms.

Most of the migrants we encounter come from the indigenous states of Mexico where the negative effects of NAFTA and other factors have pushed them into poverty!