'What I found was grotesque'
3 Samaritans who aid migrants tell of desert plights
By Stephanie Innes
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.12.2007
Three volunteers with a local faith-based group that gives water and medical aid to illegal immigrants during their desert treks will share their stories at a public event tonight.
"We're not presenting a politician's story or a journalist's essay. It's a story of the people as we meet them on the desert," said Kathryn Ferguson, a filmmaker, dance instructor and volunteer with the Samaritan Patrol group. "Our stories are about anyone we meet out there — some are more violent than others. Some are quick encounters."
She recalls one young man she met along a road near Arivaca who asked if the nearby town was Florida. When she explained where Florida is, the man began to cry.
Another woman had spent 23 days in the desert, crawling on her knees with a broken ankle, Ferguson said.
As part of the Festival Sin Fronteras, Ferguson, along with fellow volunteers Ted Parks, a local businessman, and Dr. Norma Price, a retired oncologist, will read excerpts of stories they've written about the migrants who illegally cross the border, traveling by foot from Mexico to the United States.
Thousands continue to risk the trip each day. On average, the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector alone apprehends at least 1,000 illegal entrants each day.
And at least 204 have died in Arizona's punishing borderlands since last October, according to Pima County Medical Examiner's Office statistics. Typically, the illegal entrants succumb to heat exhaustion and dehydration.
"I suggest anyone who has an idea on how to solve the problem on the border spend a few days with Samaritans and see what the people are like," Parks said. "Every time you come into contact with people who are crossing, trying to make a better life, all their stories — every one of them affects you, or it does me."
The Samaritan Patrol, which began in 2002, monitors remote areas near the border daily throughout the year, carrying food, water and emergency medical supplies.
Ferguson recalls a recent encounter with a group of seven members of one family from Michoacan, Mexico, including two boys of about 9 and 10 years old. Their 38-year-old father, who had been hoping to find a job in California, was so dehydrated that he was taken by helicopter to St. Mary's Hospital in Tucson for treatment.
The family had been part of a group of 27 crossing the border with a smuggler — coyote — whom they'd paid about $2,000, Ferguson said. But they were too slow, and the group abandoned them.
"They had no idea where they were. They were just amazing people. In three hours in an emergency situation, we really got to know them personally — the boys, where they went to school," she said. "Then they were deported, and we never heard anything else from them."
Price says the children she has encountered are the most memorable. She recalls one little boy giving her the bracelet of saints he was wearing. She has encountered migrants in diabetic comas, migrants who become gravely ill after drinking water from cattle tanks, and others who find it impossible to walk because of severe blisters.
"The thing that we have continually been almost overwhelmed by is the humanity — they are all such kind and good people," Price said. "The migrants are always so grateful and so many of them are so intelligent. They have had menial jobs because of circumstances. They had no other choice."
Ferguson and Parks, both in their 50s, and Price, in her 60s, are writing a collection of stories about their experiences. What they encountered in the desert has widely differed from their expectations.
"I signed up because I kept hearing about all these deaths," Ferguson said. "What I found was grotesque. I saw decent, normal human beings in search of a job going through hell. I don't know how many of the men I've met had their legs amputated from being smashed in a train ride. . . . Everything is surreal, deadly and not nice."
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