Migrant Deaths in the Arizona Desert

Migrant Deaths in the Arizona Desert
Author: Celestino Fernández
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2016-10-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0816532524

Migrant Deaths in the Arizona Desert addresses the tragic results of government policies on immigration. The book's central question is why are migrants dying on our border? The authors constitute a multidisciplinary group reflecting on the issues of death, migration, and policy.

Crossing with the Virgin

Crossing with the Virgin
Author: Kathryn Ferguson
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2010-04-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780816528547

Over the past ten years, more than 4,000 people have died while crossing the Arizona desert to find jobs, join families, or start new lives. Other migrants tell of the corpses they pass—bodies that are never recovered or counted. Crossing With the Virgin collects stories heard from migrants about these treacherous treks—firsthand accounts told to volunteers for the Samaritans, a humanitarian group that seeks to prevent such unnecessary deaths by providing these travelers with medical aid, water, and food. Other books have dealt with border crossing; this is the first to share stories of immigrant suffering at its worst told by migrants encountered on desert trails. The Samaritans write about their encounters to show what takes place on a daily basis along the border: confrontations with Border Patrol agents at checkpoints reminiscent of wartime; children who die in their parents’ desperate bid to reunite families; migrants terrorized by bandits; and hovering ghost-like above nearly every crossing, the ever-present threat of death. These thirty-nine stories are about the migrants, but they also tell how each individual author became involved with this work. As such, they offer not only a window into the migrants’ plight but also a look at the challenges faced by volunteers in sometimes compromising situations—and at their own humanizing process. Crossing With the Virgin raises important questions about underlying assumptions and basic operations of border enforcement, helping readers see past political positions to view migrants as human beings. It will touch your heart as surely as it reassures you that there are people who still care about their fellow man.

The Death of Josseline

The Death of Josseline
Author: Margaret Regan
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2010-10-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807095435

Dispatches from Arizona—the front line of a massive human migration—including the voices of migrants, Border Patrol, ranchers, activists, and others For the last decade, Margaret Regan has reported on the escalating chaos along the Arizona-Mexico border, ground zero for immigration since 2000. Undocumented migrants cross into Arizona in overwhelming numbers, a state whose anti-immigrant laws are the most stringent in the nation. And Arizona has the highest number of migrant deaths. Fourteen-year-old Josseline, a young girl from El Salvador who was left to die alone on the migrant trail, was just one of thousands to perish in its deserts and mountains. With a sweeping perspective and vivid on-the-ground reportage, Regan tells the stories of the people caught up in this international tragedy. Traveling back and forth across the border, she visits migrants stranded in Mexican shelters and rides shotgun with Border Patrol agents in Arizona, hiking with them for hours in the scorching desert; she camps out in the thorny wilderness with No More Deaths activists and meets with angry ranchers and vigilantes. Using Arizona as a microcosm, Regan explores a host of urgent issues: the border militarization that threatens the rights of U.S. citizens, the environmental damage wrought by the border wall, the desperation that compels migrants to come north, and the human tragedy of the unidentified dead in Arizona’s morgues.

The Land of Open Graves

The Land of Open Graves
Author: Jason De Leon
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2015-10-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520958683

In this gripping and provocative “ethnography of death,” anthropologist and MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Jason De León sheds light on one of the most pressing political issues of our time—the human consequences of US immigration and border policy. The Land of Open Graves reveals the suffering and deaths that occur daily in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona as thousands of undocumented migrants attempt to cross the border from Mexico into the United States. Drawing on the four major fields of anthropology, De León uses an innovative combination of ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, and forensic science to produce a scathing critique of “Prevention through Deterrence,” the federal border enforcement policy that encourages migrants to cross in areas characterized by extreme environmental conditions and high risk of death. For two decades, systematic violence has failed to deter border crossers while successfully turning the rugged terrain of southern Arizona into a killing field. Featuring stark photography by Michael Wells, this book examines the weaponization of natural terrain as a border wall: first-person stories from survivors underscore this fundamental threat to human rights, and the very lives, of non-citizens as they are subjected to the most insidious and intangible form of American policing as institutional violence. In harrowing detail, De León chronicles the journeys of people who have made dozens of attempts to cross the border and uncovers the stories of the objects and bodies left behind in the desert. The Land of Open Graves will spark debate and controversy.

Dead in Their Tracks

Dead in Their Tracks
Author: John Annerino
Publisher:
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2009-02-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

It is America’s killing field, and the deaths keep mounting. As the political debate has intensified and demonstrators have taken to the streets, more and more illegal border-crossers die trying to cross the desert on their way to what they hope will be a better life. The Arizona border is the deadliest immigrant trail in America today. For the strong and the lucky, the trail ends at a pick-up on an Interstate highway. For far too many others, it ends terribly—too often violently—not far from where they began. Dead in Their Tracks is a first hand account of the perils associated with crossing the desert on foot. John Annerino recounts his experience making that trek with four illegal immigrants—and his return trips to document the struggles of those who persist in this treacherous journey. In this spellbinding narrative, he takes readers into the “empty quarter” of the Southwest to meet the migrant workers and drug runners, the ranchers and Border Patrol agents, who populate today’s headlines. Other writers have documented the deaths; few have invited readers to share the experience as Annerino does. His feel for the land and his knowledge of surviving in the wilderness combine to make his account every bit as harrowing as it is for the people who risk it every day, and in increasing numbers. Each book includes an In Memorium card recognizing an immigrant, refugee, border agent, local, or humanitarian who has died in America's borderlands." The desert may seem changeless, but there are more bodies now, and Annerino has revised his original text to record some of the compelling stories that have come to light since the book’s first publication and has updated the photographs and written a new introduction and afterword. Dead in Their Tracks is now more timely than ever—and essential reading for the ongoing debate over illegal immigration. For information on First Serial Rights, Book Club, Film, Television, & Options, visit the Author's Web site.

Illegal

Illegal
Author: Terry Sterling
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2010-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1493003062

Terry Greene Sterling enters the fearful ghettoes of Arizona, the gateway for nearly half of the nation's undocumented immigrants and the state that is the least welcoming toward them, to tell the stories of the men, women, and children who have crossed the border.

Showdown in the Sonoran Desert

Showdown in the Sonoran Desert
Author: Ananda Rose
Publisher:
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2012
Genre: Emigration and immigration
ISBN: 9780199949793

This text offers reflections on a daunting and controversial ethical question: How should we treat the strangers who enter this country illegally? To understand the experience of those directly confronted by this problem, Rose travelled to the Sonoran desert at the border between the US and Mexico.

The Beloved Border

The Beloved Border
Author: Miriam Davidson
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre: HISTORY
ISBN: 0816542163

The Beloved Border is a potent and timely report on the U.S.-Mexico border. Though this book tells of the unjust death and suffering that occurs in the borderlands, Davidson gives us hope that the U.S.-Mexico border could be, and in many ways already is, a model for peaceful coexistence worldwide.

Compassionate Migration and Regional Policy in the Americas

Compassionate Migration and Regional Policy in the Americas
Author: Steven W. Bender
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2017-04-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137550740

This book explores the contested notion of compassionate migration in its discourse and practice. In the context of today's migration patterns within the Americas, compassionate migration can play a fundamental role in responding to the hardships that many migrants suffer before, during, and after their journeys. This volume explores the boundaries of compassion from legal, political, philosophical, and interdisciplinary perspectives, and supplies examples where state and non-state actors engage in practices of compassion and humanity through formal and informal regimes. Despite the lack of a concise and precise definition of the concept and practice of compassionate migration, all authors in this volume agree on the pressing need for more humane and compassionate treatment for those leaving their home country behind in search of a better life.