Thread: Network places crosses on fence in tribute to "migrants

Stop this insane invasion and these people won't be dying trying to cross!

Network places crosses on fence in tribute to migrants
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 11/02/2007 12:00:00 AM MDT

Martha Jaquez of the Border Network for Human Rights attached a wooden cross to a fence Thursday along the American Canal near the Bridge of the Americas. Fifteen people have drowned this year in the American Canal while trying to cross into the United States from Mexico. Immigrant advocates attached 450 crosses to the fence. (Rudy Gutierrez / El Paso Times)

Video: Crosses pay tribute to migrants
# Candles shine for those lost

El Pasoan Eva Castorena hung white wooden crosses Thursday on the border fence along the American Canal, where at least 15 undocumented immigrants drowned this year.

Castorena and about 30 immigrants and advocates honored Dia De Los Muertos by remembering the hundreds of men and women who died while trying to cross into the United states.

They spent three hours Thursday morning tying 450 crosses to the chain-link fence. Some held the names of dead migrants. Others were bare to represent those who died and were not identified.

"It made me sad to be holding a cross with a name on it and to think that that life ended trying to cross the border," said Castorena, a medical secretary who lives Downtown and is originally from Juárez.

She used twine and plastic ties to attach 30 crosses to the fence.

The event was organized by the Border Network for Human Rights, an El Paso nonprofit group that keeps a count of migrant deaths.

According to Border Network officials, 371 migrants died this year on the U.S.-Mexico border, including 25 in El Paso and New Mexico.

Border Patrol officials in El Paso recorded
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27 deaths in this sector.

Thursday evening, community members gathered at the Chamizal National Memorial for a candlelight vigil in the memory of dead migrants.

"This is the day that we mourn our dead and demand a change in the policies that caused those deaths," said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network.

Garcia said migrant deaths shot up after 1993, when some strict border-control programs, such as Hold The Line in El Paso, were instituted.

The programs contributed to moving immigration corridors toward more-remote and riskier crossing areas.

Garcia said that the programs were meant as deterrents, but that people continued crossing anyway and deaths increased. Garcia also blamed the Mexican government.

"We are shocked that Mexico is not doing anything," he said. "It's a human-rights crisis."

Last month, Border Patrol officials in El Paso announced Operation Lifeguard, a binational effort to reduce deaths of immigrants by prosecuting migrant smugglers who lead their charges through through dangerous areas such as canals, drainage tunnels and the desert.

The Border Network obtained a permit from the Texas Department of Transportation to put the crosses up, network officials said.

The crosses, which can be seen from the Border Highway west of the Bridge of the Americas, will stay up until Saturday.

Louie Gilot may be reached at lgilot@elpasotimes.com, 546-6131.



Remembering the dead
Some of the undocumented immigrants who died trying to cross into the U.S. this year.
# Rubina Jose Manuel, 24, of Veracruz, Mexico, was hit by a car and two tractor-trailer rigs Feb. 26 near Deming when she and a group of migrants tried to cross Interstate 10 on foot.
# Silvestre Garcia Gonzalez, 33, of Durango, Mexico, died March 19 in the American Canal. He was reported missing March 16 by other migrants traveling with him who saw him fall in.
# Benjamin Rivera Nevarez, 38, of Chihuahua was pronounced dead at Thomason Hospital March 22 after being pulled from the American Canal by El"Paso firefighters.
# Irma Rios Rodriguez, 34, of Veracruz, the mother of three girls ages 11, 8 and 2. Drowned in the American Canal Sept. 27 despite rescue attempts by Border Patrol agents who went in the water to help her.
Source: Times archives.


http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_7345537

Good, maybe like crosses keep vampries away, it will keep the illegals from crossing over!

Where's the outrage with the Mexican government that these people had to flee their country?

She used twine and plastic ties to attach 30 crosses to the fence.

Uh, do they OWN the property that they are defacing with these 'tributes'?

A foreign national tries to break the law by sneaking across the border and they die or are killed, they are not a freedom fighter or hero. The persons who died were given autopsies at great expense to American taxpayers and then returned to Mexico where they are buried. The crosses belong on their graves, not on our border wall as politcal statements and sympathy grabs! These people placing the crosses need to be prosecuted and fined for tresspassing and littering.

Originally Posted by kniggit

Where's the outrage with the Mexican government that these people had to flee their country?

First thought that crossed my mind, too.