Aid workers leave water for border crossers in the Arizona desert. Now, the U.S. is banning them for it

In the July heat, Caitlin Deighan and three other humanitarian-aid workers hiked back to their trucks on the U.S. Air Force's Barry M. Goldwater bombing range where they left gallons of bottled water.

The water, they say, is a stash to help save the lives of border crossers dying of thirst in the desert heat.

As Deighan tells it, bombing-range security guards and a deputy sheriff were waiting for her group by their trucks. They had watched Deighan and the others return with less water than when they left, Deighan said. One of the security guards, she says, told the group they would be banned from the bombing range for leaving water behind and threatened trespassing charges if they came back.

He put Deighan on a growing list of banned aid workers from the Barry M. Goldwater bombing range or the adjacent Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. Their violation? They say they left behind potentially lifesaving supplies, such as food and water, for distressed undocumented border crossers.

A few days later, the refuge also banned Deighan after an official caught her driving on a closed road during a search-and-rescue mission for a lost migrant, she said. Others have had similar experiences, according to aid workers.

The bombing range and refuge span a vast desert area where border crossers enter the U.S. far from more fortified and patrolled urban areas.

The remoteness that makes the areas lightly patrolled also makes them deadly: This year, aid workers say they have found 27 bodies or skeletal remains in the area. And a USA TODAY NETWORK examination of records border-wide found the actual number of border deaths is far higher than has ever been previously documented.

But public access to the Arizona bombing range and wildlife refuge is restricted. To enter, aid workers obtain the yearly access permits available to the general public by signing a waiver — live warheads are among the potential dangers on the range —and agreeing to certain rules.

This summer, even as the Trump administration reiterated promises to build a wall and seal off the U.S.-Mexico border, the bombing range and the refuge added a clause to their access-permit application threatening to sue, fine or ban visitors for leaving behind food, water, medical supplies, blankets, footwear and other supplies humanitarian-aid workers leave for distressed border crossers.

Resource managers at the departments of Interior and Defense say the aid workers degrade the environment and that the restriction isn't new. All visitors to these federal lands, they note, already had to pack out anything they brought in.

But banning aid workers has not deterred them from entering these federal lands again to leave behind humanitarian-aid supplies or to search for lost, undocumented border crossers.

READ MORE: ‘Mass disaster’ grows at the U.S.-Mexico border

Beefing up the permit

The clause isn't a new rule, said Sid Slone, the manager of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. “We beefed (the access-permit application) up to make it really clear so there’s no question in someone’s mind what the rules are.”

The refuge has banned fewer than a dozen people for leaving behind supplies such as water, Slone said.

The new clause in the access permit caught aid workers at No More Deaths off guard. They say they had been trying to work out an arrangement with the refuge and the bombing range for more access to drop humanitarian aid and conduct search-and-rescue missions.

Another non-profit humanitarian-aid group, Humane Borders, has a long-standing arrangement with the refuge to maintain stationary water tanks for border crossers to replenish their empty water bottles.

Everything the No More Deaths aid workers leave in the desert winds up as trash, Slone said, while the water tanks don’t generate added trash on the refuge.

Leaving supplies has a negative impact on the area’s habitat and wildlife, said Aaron Alvidrez, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Air Force at the bombing range.

Aid workers say they clean up empty water bottles and other discarded items every time they leave fresh supplies.

Water tanks are good, but they are limited to areas with road access so a water truck can fill them, Deighan said. No More Deaths aid workers, on the other hand, leave water in remote areas on migrant trails.

A long-standing battle

This isn’t the first time the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has accused No More Deaths aid workers of trashing a wildlife refuge with supplies. In 2008, for example, officers charged aid worker Dan Millis with littering for leaving gallons of water on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in southern Arizona.

The Sierra Club, a national environmental-advocacy group, hired Millis even after he was convicted of littering because he stood up for humanitarian aid, Millis said. The Sierra Club holds that the refuge should cooperate with humanitarian-aid workers.

“We know that people are part of the environment and we recognize the grim and pressing humanitarian crisis that exists on the U.S.-Mexico border and therefore we support humanitarian-aid work,” Millis said.

In 2010, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Millis’ conviction, ruling that sealed gallons of drinking water are not distinctly garbage. Judge Sidney R. Thomas did note in the majority opinion that the officers likely could have charged Millis with “abandonment of property or failure to obtain a special use permit.”

The new clause in the access-permit application for the Cabeza Prieta refuge forbids visitors from abandoning “personal property or possessions,” which it lists as water, food, medical supplies and other humanitarian-aid supplies.

Although the court left room for U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials to again bring charges against aid workers, Millis argued in court and still maintains “humanitarian aid is never a crime,” an argument still displayed on signs in some southern Arizona yards in support of No More Deaths.

How to save a life

The refuge and aid workers are on the same side, Slone said. Both want to save lives. Only Slone says, aside from trashing the desert, the aid workers may give border crossers a couple more days of hiking only to wind up back in harm’s way farther north.

The aid workers could also inadvertently help drug smugglers, he said.

Deighan's bottom line is to stop people from dying, she said. For some migrants, the only way they can afford passage across the border is by carrying drugs.

Describing humanitarian aid as aiding drug smugglers is a way to prevent people from feeling empathy and shock over the high number of deaths in the desert, she said.

Water may encourage border crossers to travel farther north and traverse the active bombing range, said Susan Gladstein, a spokeswoman at the Air Force’s Range Management Office.

But aid workers blame border-security strategy for funneling border crossers into the area.

“People in the desert aren’t tragedies. They’re dying for a reason and there is a policy at fault,” said Geena Jackson, a No More Deaths aid worker.

Border Patrol strategy relies on the desert's rugged, deadly terrain to deter undocumented migrants from crossing the border illegally.

In the Tucson Border Patrol Sector, for example, Operation Safeguard aimed to push these border crossings away from urban areas, according to a 2014 Congressional Research Service report.

This operation was part of a larger Clinton-era "prevention through deterrence" strategy, which anticipated that undocumented border crossers, when faced with remote and deadly areas, would be "deterred, or forced over more hostile terrain, less suited for crossing and more suited for enforcement," according to a 1994 agency plan charting future strategy.

In April, the Tucson sector Border Patrol held a media event in Nogales, Arizona, to dissuade would-be undocumented border crossers by amplifying the dangers of the desert journey.

They encouraged distressed undocumented migrants to use rescue beacons placed in the desert or to call 911 “for those determined to gamble with their lives,” the agency said in a statement.

These rescue beacons are a better solution than leaving supplies or maintaining water tanks to prevent border crossers from dying because they don’t trash the desert or allow border crossers to travel farther north, Slone said.

The Border Patrol has about seven beacons on the Cabeza Prieta refuge, he said.

They have blue lights, which are visible 10 miles away at night. When border crossers press a button on the beacons, Border Patrol agents arrive.

The rescue beacons aren’t inherently bad, but they aren’t a good enough solution, Deighan said.

Some are hidden from view, nestled in places like Charlie Bell Pass, aid worker Jackson said. And when a beacon’s blue light does shine unobstructed for 10 miles, it feels disorienting. It may seem close when it’s actually miles out of a distressed migrant’s reach.

“It’s like if you have a sea full of drowning people and you throw out one life vest and say that it’s the solution. It’s not.”

READ THE PROJECT: The Wall: A 2,000-mile search for answers

Roads: Good or bad?

The same day a bombing-range security guard banned Deighan, the No More Deaths missing-migrant hotline rang. Deighan and the others set out to find a group on the Cabeza Prieta refuge.

As Deighan tells it, both Border Patrol and No More Deaths searched separately for several days for one missing migrant in the group. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife official caught Deighan's group driving on a closed road during their search, she said. He recorded their information and the refuge later banned them.

Since the 1990s, federal officials have been monitoring the damage caused by unauthorized roads that off-road vehicles blaze in the area.

The National Park Service led restoration of nearly 200 miles of these roads in Arizona’s western deserts, although they mapped thousands across federal land including the Cabeza Prieta refuge.

Some roads are administrative and off-limits to the public, but open to refuge staff performing certain duties and federal border agents.

The Border Patrol has an agreement with the Department of the Interior to drive on other closed roads and off-road in protected wilderness under exigent circumstances. These include life or death circumstances and injuries, Christopher Sullivan, a Border Patrol spokesman, said in June.

That permission, however, does not extend to aid workers.

Aid workers asked for permission to drive on protected wilderness, Slone said, but that’s not something the refuge can grant.

Southern Arizona environmentalists and aid workers say that the Border Patrol loosely defines exigent circumstances resulting in lots of driving on protected wilderness.

"So the land really isn't even protected from being driven on," Deighan said. "They cite this rule that's not even effective in this area."

Slone said Border Patrol agents are serious about following the agreement between the two departments.

Different refuge, same fight

Despite the added clause in the access permit, the aid workers say they do not intend to stop leaving food, water and other humanitarian supplies. Their argument is the same argument Millis wielded in federal court nearly 10 years ago: “Humanitarian aid is never a crime.”

The last time the Cabeza Prieta refuge met with No More deaths was in April, Slone said.

The two groups didn't reach an agreement.

“They essentially said ... they gotta do what they need to do. And we have to do what we need to do,” Slone said.

Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at OurGrandAZ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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