Sasabe is another one of those don't-blink-or-you'll-miss it kinda towns. Less than 50 people live here. El Sásabe, Mexico is the border town.
We are warmly greeted by an amazing womon organizer, border justice advocate, and incredibly brave pillar of this community, Dora.
Dora tells us she has lived here her whole life and never in the past 40 years of her adulthood has she seen anything like what has been happening in the past few years since the building of the border ‘wall’.
She told us there are 21 miles of ‘wall’ here with 23 ‘gaps’ – where the builders left openings for refugees to attempt to make it through. Those openings are in the most dangerous, most isolated and desolate, most remote parts of this desert.
This means they’ve been seeing a huge increase in the number of people dying.
In addition, since the beginning of construction and now a continuous presence, there are huge trucks carrying water, spraying it on the dirt roads on either side of the ‘wall’ at least twice a day – to keep the dust down but to also look for footprints.
How immoral is this, spreading water onto dirt while people in town have no water and others are dying the painful death of dehydration.
Coinciding with the construction of the ‘wall’, border patrol or ICE or law enforcement began dumping up to 1000 deported refugees every single day at this tiny border crossing, totally overwhelming the small city of El Sasabe.
Dora got in gear, organized and went to the media. She says NPR picked up the story and then the NYT and other media outlets. Now border patrol only dumps 150 people per day at the most, often groups of children under 10 years old.
But the u.s.ofa. border vigilantes were so pissed 1000+ people were no longer being expelled here from the u.s., they embarked on a campaign to out Dora especially on social media, written and tv media, posting her picture, name, home address and invited violence against her – and her comadres.
This threat did and does not stop her. In addition to going to the media and politicians, Dora and her comadres opened Casa de la Esperanza, a sweet, tiny building maybe just 100 feet inside the border wall. There they see migrants who have been walking thru the desert for 10 days, with blisters on their feet bleeding through socks, if they have, and shoes if they’re not barefoot.
There they also feed people. We are fed another fabulous meal prepared for us by the womyn who staff and volunteer at Casa de la Esperanza. They now have a weekly womyn’s circle there and classes where they share skills, stories, books, troubles and triumphs.
They also invite womyn to embroider together here weekly, which also provides a small income for them, and a place to talk if they want.
The volunteers take daily trips into the desert to try to find migrants, bringing medical assistance, water to rehydrate, splints for sprained ankles.
They have to go in a team of two so when they find people, one person can stay and attend to the refugee needs, the other can go back to where there is cell service to notify border patrol. When they are picked up, hopefully they will be given the chance to apply for asylum.
There is no public transportation here if they need more help. She guesses that only half of those who try have a chance of survival, let alone making it to file an asylum claim. She says there is a constant presence of helicopters – the kind that love to try to scatter groups of people so they won’t get across the border, increasing their chances of death because they are terrified and run and hide, then cannot reconnect with the others.
Dora tells us of yet another dreadful, horrific, heart-breaking, defeating thing. They cannot help children and womyn who are being trafficked – actually they cannot help them escape. They can help provide medical assistance, food, respid but they cannot even encourage them to escape or even offer alternatives.
Organized crime owns these children and womyn. And allow Casa de la Esperanza – and the volunteers, staff, and participants – to survive and continue their work.
Lastly we meet the one and only paid staff member of the Sierra Club that is working on the border – which I find also find so difficult to comprehend. How can an organization that is dedicated to the protection of Mother Earth not have a million people down here trying to prevent this irreversible destruction to Mother Earth called the border ‘wall’? How?
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