Promoting Social Justice and Human Rights for Migrants in the United States

In an effort to prevent deaths, humanitarian groups have been placing water in the Southern Arizona desert for 15 years. During that time aid has continually expanded to include trips into the desert with food and medical aid, establishment of a 24 hour medical camp in the desert, trips into Nogales, Mexico to provide help to deported migrants, including first aid and phone calls to families of the migrants. In 2012, volunteers, under the guidance of a local attorney, established a clinic to help students eligible for DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, to fill out and submit forms for deferred action. Over five hundred students have received deferred action papers giving them temporary legal status and work permits. Beginning this year, following the President’s announcement of Executive Action, these effort have expanded to include parents wanting to apply for DAPA, Deferred Action for Parental Accountability. Through all of these years Samaritans has daily driven and hiked into the desert searching for migrants lost, ill or injured. No More Deaths continues to staff the desert aid camp and volunteers from all over the country and other countries come to assist in the work in the desert. We know that the humanitarian efforts have made a difference: lives have been saved, the ill and injured have recovered, and undocumented people are obtaining temporary legal status and the right to work. But there is much more work to be done. Families are being torn apart, discrimination and abuse of migrants continues and people are still dying in the desert. Throughout the United States these injustices persist and the battle against injustice must never falter.