Quellenangabe:
USA/Mexico: Deaths on the Border (vom 07.12.2005),
URL: http://no-racism.net/article/1481/,
besucht am 24.04.2024
[07. Dec 2005]
A record number of migrants died in southern Arizona this past year (2005) while crossing the U.S. / Mexico border.
As the U.S. Border Patrol continues a strategy of militarization along the border, :: 282 bodies were recovered of workers who have no legal channel with which to migrate north.
Since 1994 it is estimated that more than 3,000 people have died attempting to cross the border, with the death toll growing every year as a result of law enforcement policies that push migration out of accessible, urban areas and into remote desert.
It is significant that each of the "immigration reform and border security" bills currently before congress seeks to increase border militarization, a failed policy of applying para-military logic, technology and manpower to resolve a civilian crisis. After ten years of pursuing such a strategy, violence and organized crime have only increased - as has undocumented immigration - partly as a result.
The impact is felt most in border communities, where both ranchers and city residents are affected by hyped-up law enforcement, racial profiling and police abuse, caught in the cross-fire of a low-intensity conflict that has been created around them. These impacts are now beginning to expand across the state, as border vigilante groups have begun :: harassing workers at day labor centers in Phoenix and the U.S. Border Patrol engages in illegal sweeps of workers in Tucson.
In the midst of the suffering and death created by U.S. border policy, the government is continuing its prosecution of two humanitarian workers arrested July 9th while trying to evacuate three critically ill migrants to medical care in Tucson. In response, the :: No More Deaths coalition has launched a campaign "Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime". The trial is scheduled to begin on 20th of December 2005.
This article was published first on 02. Dec 2005 @ :: arizona.indymedia.org