UUSC Condemns Shameful Raid on Migrant Desert Camp

June 19, 2017

UUSC is extremely disturbed by last week’s raid on the humanitarian aid camp operated by No More Deaths (NMD), a Tucson, Ariz.-based group with whom we partner. NMD provides life-saving food, water and medical care for people making the dangerous journey through remote parts of the Arizona desert on foot, and the raid on their camp represents a reprehensible disregard for the lives of migrants and refugees by the current administration.

On a day when temperatures surged over 100 degrees, U.S. Border Patrol descended on NMD’s aid camp with a helicopter, fifteen trucks and thirty armed agents in an unprecedented show of force. Four patients receiving medical care were arrested, and countless others in need of aid were prevented from doing so by a mobile checkpoint that had been set up at the entrance to the camp.

Since its founding in 2003, NMD has had a good working relationship with the Tucson Sector of Border Patrol. In 2013 the groups agreed in writing that their camp would be respected as a medical facility. The raid marks a disturbing shift in U.S. government policy and violates not only this agreement but international humanitarian law and International Red Cross standards that prohibit government interference with aid centers.

Many of those who make the unauthorized crossings through the Mexico-U.S. border in Arizona are refugees escaping extreme violence and instability in Central America. When people are fleeing for their lives, the merciless desert terrain and the threat of arrest will not deter them from seeking safety in the United States. The aid camp is an essential tool to prevent loss of life—human remains are found on average once every three days in this area—and the raid is a targeted attack on the migrants and refugees who seek its services.

UUSC been in solidarity with NMD since 2015 and is currently funding a series of reports that exposes Border Patrol’s anti-humanitarian policies and practices which have created a crisis of migrant death in the desert. We continue to support NMD in their mission, and we call on the Trump administration to direct Border Patrol to immediately comply with the law and stop obstructing humanitarian aid.