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Summertime in Arizona: “No Identificado,” Unknown
Sister Judy Bourg picks up rocks to help support a grave marker, while Margo McKinsey holds it upright. (Photo: Arizona Daily Star)
Summer has come to the Sonoran Desert. On June 2, we hit the 102° mark in my community located about 30 miles north of Tucson. The following day the temperature was 107°. Saturday, the high hit 108°. As has been said, it’s a dry heat; 107° feels like 105°.
The rising thermometer is not the only sign of summer. Scorpions become more active in the summer heat. I was getting ready to shave yesterday morning and just as I put my hand on the faucet to start running some water I saw a scorpion crawling out of the overflow opening in the sink. I went to the den to find a magazine that I didn’t want to keep and then back to the bathroom to dispatch the two-inch-long pest. Two whacks and then a little clean-up. I then put painters tape over all the sink overflow openings in the house.
I still do yardwork in the summer but only spend about two to three hours in the heat. I keep myself hydrated but I know my limitations. I’m bemused by those that seek to regulate nature; In the Sonoran Desert you must adapt to nature. Failure to do so results in an ambulance ride and an IV bag to stabilize and rehydrate you, if you’re found in time.
The Sonoran Desert has two types of coyotes. One type has four legs, the other has two. This two-legged coyote leads people into the United States through the Sonoran Desert. They lead and then abandon those who cannot keep up.
Smugglers trick people, said Carlos de León López, the Guatemalan consul in Tucson. They tell them it will only be a couple hours of walking. Then the reality isn’t what they were expecting. Not only do smugglers lie to border crossers, but they leave migrants behind when they can’t keep up, De León said. Before they leave Guatemala to cross into Mexico, they need to understand the difficulties that are awaiting them, he said.
The Tucson Sector is the most dangerous crossing into the United States. There’s a sector in Texas that is a close second.
Deaths in the Tucson Sector, which covers 262 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border from the New Mexico-Arizona state line to Yuma County, have decreased from more than 220 in fiscal year 2010 to 120 in 2014, data from the Pima County medical examiner show. The office handles remains found in Pima, Santa Cruz, Cochise and Pinal counties. Since 2001, nearly 2,500 bodies have been found in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector alone. While the number of deaths relative to the number of Border Patrol apprehensions has increased, there are limits to the comparison, experts warn, because the person could have died long before the remains were recovered. The date and time they are found is just that. We are reporting the number of remains found per year, not necessarily the number of deaths, said Gregory Hess, Pima County’s chief medical examiner.
The terrain is rugged and determination in pursuing a dream is not enough to survive the trek across the Sonoran Desert. I do not advocate open borders, but I do turn my thoughts when summer comes to those on that terrible trek. Regardless of the politics, I believe that Sister Judy Bourg is right when she says:
Published in GeneralRed and white crosses like Salucio’s are scattered across the Arizona desert, where volunteers led by Sister Judy Bourg of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Douglas are planting one in memory of each body found in Cochise County. We are remembering, praying, calling to mind the spirit of the person who ended their life in our Sonoran desert, Bourg said. The crosses tell people that something terrible and special happened at that spot.
If those crosses were closer to the border, maybe they would have to plant less every year. A memorial can’t double as a warning that far into the desert.
I don’t think it would really matter. There is a belief in any dream that concerns a goal that you will accomplish the goal.
You may be aware that others have lost their lives crossing the border, but it won’t happen to you.
Temp just hit 110 here in Green Valley. I can’t even survive the back patio much less walking across the desert.
During one of my morning walks a few months ago I encountered 3 Mexican teenagers walking through my subdivision. They had no English at all and my high school Spanish has mostly evaporated. I am generally in favor of sending border crossers straight back where they came from, but on a personal human level I felt very sorry for these three – they were young and destitute. If I had had any water or money on me I would have given it to them. They were polite. Don’t know what happened to them – my area is 5 miles from the nearest store/businesses.
I wrote the post as a human interest essay. The Sonoran Desert will take you regardless of where you come from, who you are, whether you’re rich or poor, whether you advocate building a wall or are in favor of open borders. There is a terrible beauty to the Sonoran Desert.
The desert is merciless and can swallow life, even the toughest of lives at times. I bear the crossers ( who aren’t criminals beyond this act) no ill will and in fact would do the same in their shoes.
I want a wall. I want our borders closed. I want the illegals with bad histories removed and those without bad histories registered and carded for tax purposes. I want our welfare system removed from them to encourage non dependence on it which essentially means democrat for life. I want this issue handled sensibly and realistically which means as little democrat influence as possible. It’s possible to be patriotic compassionate and not stupid.
Go Sharks !
I want machine gun nests with machine guns manned by machine gunners who shoot real bullets at people who attempt to traduce our border.
This is one of the most humanitarian things we could possibly do. Anything to dry up the flow of abused and misled victims dying on our doorstep.
We should also ruthlessly pursue deportations, especially at great expense to the illegal invader. Make it such an unpleasant, ruinous experience that it is unlikely to be repeated. Confiscate every penny, peso, stick of furniture, house, car, safety lifting belt and short-handled hoe they may have, and donate the proceeds to the Little Sisters of the Poor, or to whatever order is out there planting crosses in the desert.
Anything else is just a bunch of deluded happytalk that ends in our destruction.
Just the same, I would give water, food, a ride, whatever to a person I found in danger. I have no ability to affect policy through refusing to help a fellow human — people are not policies, and firmness is not hatred.
BDB. I’m ok with the machine guns.
I don’t think the deportation and confiscation thing is going to fly regardless of the purity of the idea. I don’t see our country as having the stomach for it right now although Muslim invaders might elevate the gastric fortitude.
So is a softer idea going to potentially work or likely fail? Because what you discuss most likely won’t happen
One thing that drove me crazy during the multiple amnesty pushes is that Congress always chose the start of summer to debate the issue. Like clockwork, illegal immigrants would pour through the deserts at that deadliest time of year, encouraged by media reports of blanket amnesty. It was a deeply cruel trick to give so much false hope to desperate people, thousands of whom paid with their lives.
Geez, a wall might save lives. Fancy that.
It wasn’t a trick. It was a policy.
Perhaps we should start by re-applying 225 years of immigration policy that existed before the advent of Ted Kennedy and the treasonous left who were handed control by the left; read college age, electorate of the 1970s.
That would restore the traditional humanity of a once great America.
OK, people. Whip out your Myers-Briggs scores.
As a side note scorpion number two was dispatched this morning in the same sink.
I read a NY Times article as I was preparing this essay. The Times reporter interviewed the Pima County Coroner. There are the unidentified remains of 771 border crossers in the Pima County Morgue. Families contact Pima County and the Border Patrol on a regular basis seeking news of loved ones that have attempted the crossing.
Jon is absolutely correct in pointing out the messages that come from Congress, as well as open border advocacy groups encourage the trek into the Sonoran Desert.
Perhaps some of them should try walking from Nogales on the border to Tubac in the summer months, a distance of 22 miles in the summertime heat. According to some you need to carry a gallon of water for each hour that you spend hiking. That’s 22 miles assuming you don’t get lost.
Off topic I suppose: That’s not a grave marker the good Sister is planting. It’s a marker. Like those markers we have all over New Mexico– bicycles and crosses and such with plastic flowers all around.
Cemetery stuff belongs in cemeteries. That’s why there are cemeteries.
Perhaps there is another way to look at it. There once was a wall that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea to keep people in. There is a wall on our southern border, albeit broken in places that is designed to keep people out.
The eastern wall has memorials to those who sought to get out. The southern wall has memorials of those that sought to get in. I don’t think it is inappropriate for US citizens to see memorials of those who wanted what they have and risked and lost their lives to pursue a dream.
I don’t advocate illegal crossings of the southern border. I do have some respect for those that risked everything and lost everything to get here.
Not enough. They’ve gotta go back, Doc.
Letting them stay, no matter how harsh the other provisions, signals that you can still get away with it if you just achieve X. It’d be the same in any other crime. “Ok, here’s the deal: if you shoplift, and we catch you, you’re going to jail. But if you make it out of the store, well, then we’ll give you a lecture and a fine. And you can keep what you had stolen”. It’s a signal that, beyond a certain point, they’ll be rewarded for flauting the law.
They’ve gotta go back.
Correctamundo!
Heard a wonderful question today. How many illegal acts are enough to warrant deportation? I’d say one.
I’m open to being persuaded. Curious how it shakes out but a secure border is the only option as a starting point.
Yes, it is. OK, Doc, here’s a one-liner for you. How can a nation be classified as an entity without borders and laws?