Journey For Justice December 12th Day 12 Douglas to Nogales

We've left New Mexico behind and now we leave Douglas, Arizona well-fed and glad to have been familiarized with some of the current and past local immigrant rights people. We're heading off to Nogales to spend two nights there. I'm looking forward to returning after 3 years and many inspiring memories as well as deeply painful ones.

We will be on the road for a few hours so I will post some pics taken from the truck window as we chug along. Again, look carefully at the terrain - and weep. The dark, strate-appearing line in the background is the fuckin 30 foot 'wall' with lots of barbed-wire guaranteed to injure if not kill. Also guaranteed to disrupt (at best) migration of animals, birds, insects, even plant live.

And yes, there is snow - and it is snowing - as we trundle through Bisbee - but the worst thing visible is the 'remains' of the open pit copper mine that destroyed acres if not miles of Mother Earth.

Journey for Justice Dec 12th, Day 12 from Rodeo to Douglas AZ

We spend the night at a campground outside Lordsburg and proceed to re-connect with the non-campers early in the morning at Rodeo so we can be to Douglas AZ by 11am.

Once we get to Douglas, we gather in one of the five churches that are in a 3 block radius or so we are told. This church members and the other immigration activists are providing a scrumtious meal for us - fajitas both vegetarian and mole chicken, which I'm tempted to eat but I stick to veggie fajitas - as they talk about their decades of work with immigrants!

I ask these workers what kind of community and humanitarian energy went into trying to block the building of the wall. We were told none. That people either didn't believe it was really going to happen, after all they'd been crossing back and forth for generations, or they thought they were going to get jobs out of the 'project' which of course didn't pan out.

Although one Chicano fellow, eyes glistening, tone almost pleading, said he was 1000% against the 'wall' but then he got laid off his retail job during covid and the only work he could find was that fuckin wall. "Here I am," he says, "making money at something I'm morally opposed to."

There we are taken by the humanitarian community of Douglas from the church to the walmart parking lot where we walk across the border crossing that cost $20 million dollars, again not including the 'wall' into Agua Prieta to where C.R.M - Centro de Recursos para Migrantes is located and someone from CAME Centro de Atención al Migrante “Exodus” was also there.

We crowd into their small room where they normally welcome deported refugees mostly before they are sent far into Mexico. They provide food, a shower and toilet, water, information and directions, a resting place but not an overnight shelter.

They say that less than 4% of refugees crossing the border here and following the 'legal' steps in an attempt to be documented, are allowed to stay in the u.s.ofa. to complete the process, and of that group they think less than 1% actually are granted asylum.

We return heart-broken yet again but determined to keep on this journey and keep spreading the word of what is really occuring on our border.