Meeting With the Secretary

On July 21, a half-dozen members of the migrant-assistance group No
More Deaths met with the secretary of the interior in Washington,
D.C.

They talked about water.

Specifically, they met with Secretary Ken Salazar in the midst of an
ugly standoff between management at the Buenos Aires National Wildlife
Refuge—on the U.S.-Mexico border southwest of Tucson—and
groups such as No More Deaths and Humane Borders. Humane Borders has
three water stations on the 118,000-acre preserve, but wants more. No
More Deaths is asking to leave 1-gallon water jugs along heavily used
migrant trails.

This is what many consider the deadliest stretch of borderland in
Arizona for illegal immigrants. According to map coordinates, it
appears that at least one known migrant has perished on the refuge this
year, and activists believe that another occurred there as well.

But Buenos Aires manager Mike Hawkes has taken a hard line against
issuing further water permits to either group. Indeed, laws governing
activities on refuges are quite stringent, with wildlife prioritized
above all else. Still, many observers feel that Hawkes has more wiggle
room than he’s willing to admit. (Refuge managers, in fact, have great
latitude regarding humanitarian efforts.)

As a result, two No More Deaths volunteers were convicted of
littering on the refuge over the past few months, after they placed
water jugs alongside migrant trails. One of the men, Walt Staton, faces
up to a year in jail. (See “The Activist Question,” July 9.)

The tussle reached a rather absurd crescendo on July 9, when a swarm
of federal law-enforcement officials were on hand to ticket 13 more
humanitarian volunteers as they put out water on the refuge.

Amid this acrimony came the call from Secretary Salazar’s
office—and that could be a game-changer. Or it might just be
politics. Either way, it remains unclear whether the Buenos
Aires—which is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, within the Interior Department—has backed off from
Hawkes’ tough stance.

Even as this shell game continued, Ed McCullough and several other
No More Deaths volunteers were invited to meet with Jane Lyder,
assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks. The message they
toted back to Washington, D.C., was simple, says McCullough, a retired
dean of the UA College of Science, and the group’s official
cartographer: “We told them there were people dying in the desert, and
the primary cause of death was heat-related problems related to the
lack of water. And we told them that we wanted to put water out.

“Secretary Salazar came in about 15 minutes after the meeting
started and talked about his concern with what’s happening to the
migrants in the desert,” McCullough recalls. “He said he’s had a
general concern about immigration problems for a very long time. He
also said there were laws among the various government agencies, and
anyone proposing what we’re proposing would have to work within the
law.”

McCullough says he and the other volunteers left the meeting with a
sense “that they wanted to work something out with the humanitarian
groups.”

If that’s the case, it does signal a mood for compromise. But this
is precisely where the rubber hits the road.

Hawkes was out of town and unavailable for comment. But in a recent
interview with the Tucson Weekly, he made his position clear.
When asked whether No More Deaths will be allowed to put out water, he
replied: “Not the way they want to do it. But they can drive around the
refuge and hand out cups of water all they want.”

Meanwhile, Humane Borders already has its stations, “and we think we
have a good coverage with that,” Hawkes said in that interview. “We’re
trying to manage the refuge as a benefit to the wildlife it was
established for.”

The Rev. Robin Hoover, founder of Humane Borders, doesn’t agree that
three stations are enough. Nor is he necessarily optimistic that Hawkes
and his superiors will budge, especially after recounting a conference
call several years ago with former Buenos Aires manager Mitch Ellis and
Justin Tade, a lawyer at Fish and Wildlife’s regional office in
Albuquerque, N.M. “Tade flat-out told me not to apply for a new permit,
because it would be denied,” Hoover says. “Then he said, if asked, he
would deny ever having that conversation.”

Tade declined to comment when contacted by the Weekly.

Still, the question lingers: Does the meeting with Secretary Salazar
represent a shift away from the hard line? Yes and no, according to
Fish and Wildlife spokesman Jose Viramontes. “We’ve notified (No More
Deaths) about the process for applying for special-use permits,” he
says, “which is essentially what they’re asking for.”

Again, there’s the catch: While groups have always been able to
apply for such permits—as can any citizen—it’s largely
meaningless if the application is sure to be denied. However,
Viramontes says that’s no longer the case. “Still, the thing about
being on a wildlife refuge is that we have very limited latitude in
what we can and cannot allow. It has to be a wildlife-dependent use,
and we have to find a way that it’s not going to negatively impact the
resource.”

So this seems to be a clash of attitudes and latitudes. In the end,
it could even be considered a fabricated battle, instigated by Border
Patrol policies to deliberately drive migrants into the deepest reaches
of desert—including places such as the Buenos Aires. It seems
that strategy has now managed to pit humanitarians against
wildlife-refuge managers.

Meanwhile, the region that includes the Buenos Aires remains lethal,
says McCullough. “From the information we have, it appears that in
deaths per mile, that area between Nogales and Sasabe is almost as
dangerous as any place along the border.”

Through June of this year, that already amounted to approximately 30
dead people between Nogales and Sasabe, he says.

This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2009.