No More Deaths by Sue Lefebvre

Author:Sue Lefebvre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steve Johnston
Published: 2019-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

No promises were made.

CHAPTER 54

Negotiations with BANWR Begin

GENE LEFEBVRE:

Finally, under pressure from above, we got a meeting scheduled with BANWR for the 5th of August. Samaritans and No More Deaths named a team of five people to meet with their officials: Ed McCullough, former assistant provost at the University of Arizona and mapmaker for Samaritans and No More Deaths; Margo Cowan, our attorney and long-time immigration rights advocate in Southern Arizona; Danielle Alvarado, fluent Spanish-speaker, recent college graduate in education, and former No More Deaths volunteer coordinator; Dr. Norma Price, retired physician who responds to calls for medical assistance from the field for both Samaritans and No More Deaths and conducts our first aid training; and me, a retired Presbyterian minister and immigration activist.

We drove there together in one car. I’d never been to BANWR headquarters before and really enjoyed the ride. The thick mesquite trees were abundantly green from recent monsoons, and the tall grasses swayed in the mild wind. We took Highway 286 south to Three Points where we drove onto BANWR. From there, we drove to about six miles from the border where we turned into the Headquarters compound. As we approached the office we saw several low buildings constructed in a natural style compatible with the habitat.

When we arrived, the agents weren’t quite ready for us, so we entertained ourselves in the visitor center with maps, photographs, narratives on the walls, and statuary of birds and other wildlife. We read over the rules on BANWR and discovered how much stricter they are than those for other land-use agencies. Most of the BANWR land was purchased from local owners by the government, and the relatively new refuge was established in 1985. Visitors are barred from taking anything into the Refuge and from taking anything out. Someone in our group had heard of a person being threatened by an agent for trying to remove a rock. We believed these keepers of the Refuge really meant business.

We met in a conference room. Their representatives included two officers from the regional office, Chris Pease and Tom Harvey. In addition, director Michael Hawkes, his assistant, Sally Gall, and two other local officers were in attendance. All were dressed in uniforms. It was obvious from their reaction to us that we didn’t conform to their expectations. Mike Hawkes had been presenting us in the media as a shadowy, disorganized, group of radicals. He’d said we didn’t have a contact person, we refused to meet with him, and we just cluttered the desert. The local agents were used to seeing No More Deaths folks in the wild. Some of them wear tattoos, many have long hair, and several of the grey-haired hikers tend to look a bit scruffy in the field. We weren’t dressed for the opera, but we dressed appropriately for a meeting with government officials. Once they got past all that, they welcomed us cordially.

We saw in the recent letter from Mike that the requirements for their permit would make it impossible for us to comply.

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