SIERRA VISTA, Ariz.—A newly opened center that caters to illegal immigrants returned to Mexico from Arizona has helped more than 1,000 people in its first month of operation.
The Migrant Resource Center in Naco, a small town on the Mexican border about 100 miles southeast of Tucson, is a bi-national effort of Citizens for Border Solutions in Bisbee, Ariz. and Iglesia del Camino in Naco.
Volunteers at the center offer food, drinks, clothing and advice to migrants freshly dropped off at the border by the U.S. Border Patrol. They work to help them receive medical treatment at the nearby Red Cross building, find a place to sleep or get a bus ride home.
All the help is free.
Most migrants the center sees have been captured by U.S. authorities, and some will try again to make the border crossing. Others, worn out by the ordeal, have given up.
“There are people who want to cross again, which is probably the majority of them, and then there are people that are saying, ‘I am going home,’ ” said Peggy Bryant, a volunteer at the center. “Those people we help return home.”
The center opened on Jan. 5 and during its first month helped more than 1,000 people. The Mexican Consulate spent about $6,000 to pay for some of them to return home during the same period.
On Wednesday, the center reached another milestone, helping its 100th migrant return home with financial assistance from the Mexican Consulate.
Groups of anywhere from one person to up to 34 come to the center daily.
“The lone travelers are the most distraught,” said Bryant, who recalled one day when a man came to the center in tears because he needed to return to his house, family and job in Chicago.
“This guy’s mother was dying of brain cancer in Mexico City and he went home to see her and realized how bad she was and he knew he better get back to Chicago to earn some money so she could have surgery,” she said. “He was like, ‘Is there anything you can do to help me?'”
One day last week a group of 15 migrants sat on chairs and couches inside the center. Volunteers gave them coffee and bologna sandwiches and items such as shirts, socks and shoes.
Their names were logged in a notebook. They were also asked questions like whether they were abused by Border Patrol, how long they were detained, where they were caught and if they got separated from anyone.
Volunteer Roger Guzman conducted an informal survey, asking if they wanted to try to cross again. Some raised their hands. None gave an affirmative response when he asked if any wanted to return to their homes in Mexico.
He spoke with the group about the dangers of crossing the desert into the U.S., reminding them that it was also illegal.
“First, they are violating the law of a country,” Guzman explained later. “Second, they can get lost, dehydrated, suffer hypothermia, they can fall and break a leg, a snake can bite them, and they could die.”
Few will listen, he knows.
Activists who oppose illegal immigration say the center may act as a staging area for those who want to rest up and then try to cross the border again.
“They have already worked out with their families and their friends that they need money. They have hired a smuggler and they are coming to the U.S. That is their plan,” area resident Cindy Kolb said.
“Why do they have that plan is what is going to solve this problem,” she added. “They have this plan to come here for work. Well, why don’t they have work in Mexico? Why are they willing to leave their family, their church?”
Kolb and her husband founded Desert Visions, a Web site designed to educate the public about the amount of trash left in the desert by illegal immigrants who cross the border.
The migrants at the center recently were clear as to why they were trying to get to the U.S.
“There is not much work in Mexico and it doesn’t pay very well,” said Juan Carlos Chavez Rosas, 16, of Puebla. “In the United States there is work and it pays better.”
Chavez had entered the U.S. as part of a group but they had been spotted by Border Patrol agents, who flushed them from their hiding spots, detained them and then returned them to Mexico.
He was on his way to New York, where some of his relatives live, and said he planned to try to illegally enter the U.S. again.
