Students from around the country and the world came to dusty camps outside of Arivaca in March to walk the pathways frequented by Mexican migrants who enter the United States illegally. They wanted to see the impact of U.S. immigration policies, they told the Nogales International.

Illegal migration draws students from around the world

The organization No More Deaths (NMD) hosts the spring break camp each year, where students sleep in tents, cook together and bond over their interest in migration.

NMD was formed in Tucson in 2004 to take action to prevent immigrants from dying in the desert as they cross illegally into the United States. It has chapters in Phoenix and Flagstaff.

“I don’t want to see death in the desert,” said Yifan Liu, a business major at the University of Oregon who is from Guilin, China. “Why don’t people help each other?”

For Chad Berkley of Pittsburgh, Pa., who survived a violent year in Iraq with the U.S. Army, trying to aid migrants was “cathartic,” he said. “Me going back to the desert to help people instead of trying to kill them.”

Emily Aubut came from the University of Montreal, Canada, to complete a graduate internship in international studies, she said. “I chose to come here and study Mexican migration.”

When she lived in Los Angeles, Aubut listened to her Latino neighbors describe their immigration troubles, she said. Her work with NMD helps document incidents of abuse against migrants.

Leah Bright, a Spanish and art history major at the University of Oregon, said she hopes to bring something back to her campus. “It’s important to do something �- when you leave,” she said.

Karlis Rokpelnis, a native of Latvia, came from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., where he joined a march for immigrant rights in 2006, he said.

“I wanted to come and see how this organization (NMD) works,” Rokpelnis said. “How do you work in a militarized zone?”

An NI reporter accompanied students from a camp off Arivaca Road on March 24 on a morning patrol where they scrambled up and down steep trails in a canyon off Ruby Road. While no migrants appeared, the students left gallon jugs of water under a tree where thirsty travelers had taken water before, said NMD volunteer John Heid. This year, more students who camped for a week last year returned for two or three weeks, he said.

“I’m seeing more people than ever in the desert,” Heid said. He criticized what he called the U.S. policy to “let them (migrants) in and let them suffer in the desert as a maximum deterrent.”

NMD volunteers try to be cordial with everyone they meet, including Border Patrol agents and ranchers unhappy with migrants crossing their land, Heid said.

In the afternoon, 16 students and volunteers walked to a dumpsite in the shadow of Las Guijas Mountains north of Arivaca.

This is a spot where migrants don their best clothes for the final walk to Interstate 19. They leave their backpacks and extra clothing behind, said Christa Sadler, a volunteer from Flagstaff.

“You can’t afford to look like you’ve been walking in the desert for four or five days,” she said.

As students walked the rocky arroyo, more clothing and backpacks appeared. When they reached the dumpsite, the sheer volume of personal belongings strewn on the ground left most of them speechless.

Several students stuffed trash into plastic bags on the way back, but barely made a difference.

Migrants walk the same rough trails, but they are often malnourished, carry heavy water jugs and walk at night with little rest, and may not have hiking boots or tennis shoes like the students wore, Sadler said.

No More Deaths estimates that more than 2,000 men, women, and children have died trying to cross the Mexican border into the United States since 1998, according to its Web site.