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Province of USA: Memorial in the Santa Teresa Desert, Remembering Refugees Who Died on Their Journey to Hope

P eventThursday, 12 December 2024

At this time when we remember all the saints and souls who have gone before us and remain in communion with us, we want to share a recent experience which marked us deeply.  We know it’s one not just for ourselves and is meant to be shared.

As we move toward our national elections on Nov. 5th, the rhetoric regarding migrants and refugees grows uglier and more violent.  Policy changes regarding entry at the southern border have become more restrictive.  Perhaps the most dramatic and tragic face of this anti-immigrant attitude showed itself in our experience last October 26th when we took part in an Interfaith Memorial Service for those who perished in the desert as they sought a way to enter the USA. 

Since June, the main entry points for the refugees we received in Chaparral have been closed.  Now, only those who make an appointment for entry through the CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) app on their phones are allowed into the USA.  There is a daily cap of 1,500 refugees being accepted into the country all along the southern Border, from California to Texas.  At peak moments in past years, the Juarez-El Paso crossing alone had around 2,000 refugees entering the country each day.  This new policy means that many refugees are stranded in Mexico and at other points in their northward journey, waiting to be given an appointment.  Some wait months to receive it.

This new hardship for refugees and asylum-seekers has made them seek other, more perilous ways of fleeing from the violence in their homelands and entering the USA.  The number of people dying in the desert has increased dramatically.  In the El Paso – Juarez corridor alone, 164 deaths were recorded between January and August 2024.  In comparison, there were 72 deaths recorded for the whole year of 2021.

Some of those pathways bring them to the desert sands of Santa Teresa in Doña Ana County, New Mexico – the same County as Chaparral.  It is there that the refugees meet their death.  It’s there that their bodies are left.  It’s there that the desert heat, wind, and animals claim their mortal remains.  And it’s there that the all-volunteer Battalion Search and Rescue (BSR) group finds what is left of them – bones, teeth, clothing, an occasional purse.  (https://battalionsar.com/)

In the last several months BSR discovered eight different sites of human remains. And for all those months they’ve reported them to the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s office, the only entity authorized to collect the remains and send them to a forensic lab for identity purposes.  BSR can only share the location coordinates and pictures with the Sheriff’s Office.  The sites are considered crime scenes and they would be in violation of the law if they attempted to recover the remains.

For months the reports have been sent but no action has been taken to remove the remains.  They stay in the desert, exposed to the elements, claimed by the desert that was meant to be their pathway to a better life, to freedom.  Meanwhile, back in their homelands, a mother is in anguish, a sister is bereft, a wife is inconsolable, a husband is beside himself and a child is bewildered.  Where is their loved one?  What has happened to her?  Is he still alive?

The volunteers of BSR themselves had no other recourse but to cry to the heavens and gather an inter-faith group to make the trek into the desert, there to pray for these souls who died alone and abandoned, to honor their memory and to insist that their dignity as human beings demanded that a community mourn them and not forget them.  Sisters Chabela, Nha Trang, Carmen Amalia and Mary Ann joined about a dozen other people who made it out to the desert sands of Santa Teresa, driving along seriously unpaved roads and walking into the interior, there to find one of the sites and set up a makeshift altar.  A couple of news teams accompanied us.  The silence that has accompanied their deaths and the inhumanity of failing to honor their remains needs to be broken.  Something dies in each of us when we treat each other this way.

We prayed.  We sang.  We read from Scripture.  We sprinkled holy water around the site.  We blessed the bones of the person(s) lying there.  We placed flowers around them.  And we begged for mercy from the God who walks with His people as one of them.  We asked forgiveness for our lack of humanity, for our failings as sisters and brothers.  And we promised each other that we would let this story be known.  No more silent, anonymous deaths in the desert.  No more.  Not one more.

We know that this is a somber message. Our faith tells us that the Lord hears the cry of the poor and death does not have the last word.  Our God is a God who saves and frees his people from slavery and oppression.  Salvation history continues today and demands, calls and urges us to do our part in the work of justice and mercy and liberation.  Only then can we rightly sing, “Alleluia, the Lord is Risen!” and with him, all of us.

May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

 

Chaparral Community Mary Ann, Anne Francoise, Chabela, Maria Teresa, Carmen Amalia, Nha Trang