1/19/24

By Josh Rubin

Two days ago three of us rode in the car I had rented, along a section of the wall east of Sásabe, up and down the steep hills of mountainous terrain, to a camp set up to offer water, food, and the shelter of tarps and small tents to migrants who had been led by their coyotes to a place miles and miles away from the port of entry. When we arrived, it appeared that the camp was empty.

Until we saw, huddled under a tarp, a woman and her infant son. Her language was French, and it has been a long time since high school French. But little by little we learned that her son was sick, and that she would welcome it if we could transport her to where she could surrender to Border Patrol and avail herself of better shelter and perhaps treatment for her boy.

We debated how to proceed. There is a law that says we can be arrested for transporting asylum seekers, that we must wait for an agent to pick them up, that we must leave them there, perhaps through the frigid night, until the slow wheels of the bureaucracy arrange a ride to what is called an advance station of CBP.

But there is another law, and it is the one we followed: to assist people in danger. We calculated our own risk to be smaller than the risk of harm to this mother and child who had made their way from west Africa to this remote place on the southern border of the US, funneled to the desert by a policy of deterrence that keeps tightening the screws of suffering to quench the hope of refugees.

We loaded one valise and another cloth shopping bag full of clothes into the back of the SUV, and mother and child sat in the backseat. There was no cell signal at first, so we needed to wait until we were within range of service before we could use a translator on the phone, and also before we could inform authorities of a medical emergency.

I was behind the wheel, pushing the car to its limits on the rough terrain, concerned about the vigilantes along the road we saw on the way to the camp. But until the Border Patrol intercepted us, six or seven vehicles, lights flashing, we saw only Samaritans, who were there to enforce that second law I referred to.

Agents advised us of the first law, the one they said we broke. But, we objected, the baby is sick. They are all sick, said the most aggressive of the agents, while another asked for IDs and photographed the three of us holding our licenses near our faces. As we were dismissed, mother and child were taken into custody. Their bags were transferred.

We returned to the car, drove on, and soon found the paved road, and our way. But I left part of myself there beside that wall.