The desert terrain of Southern Arizona is continually one of the busiest areas along the U.S.-Mexico border for migrant crossings and it remains one of the deadliest. At least 129 migrants died while crossing into Arizona from Sonora, Mexico in 2017 and over 3,000 since 1999 according to data from the Arizona OpenGIS Initiative for Deceased Migrants. With a greater Border Patrol presence in border towns like Nogales, AZ—which were formally highly active crossing areas—migration trails are often being pushed further west into the more remote Sonoran Desert around the Tohono O'odham Nation Reservation. Here, in the low populated lands southwest of Tucson, water is scarce and trails filled with thorny trees are especially rugged. Leaving water, food, and blankets in strategic areas, groups like Humane Borders and the Samaritans see their work as crucial in saving migrant lives when so many are still dying from dehydration. Tucson-based artist and activist Alvaro Enciso says that in addition to a lack of water for migrants, “blisters are very common, and if they can not walk, they are abandoned. In the winter, without warm garments, they freeze to death. Many have drowned in irrigation canals—they go down into the canal to fill their bottles but can not get out as the walls are slippery and the current swift.” Enciso, who makes weekly trips into the desert, is part of a sizable community of activists and humanitarian aid volunteers working collaboratively to help save lives and remember those who died on their journey. While this community began growing as migrant deaths increased in the early 2000s in the post-NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) era, Arizona activists say the interest in humanitarian aid work has especially jumped since Donald Trump became president. Since then, there has also been a push to hire more Border Patrol agents and build a bigger border wall and activists in turn have seen more resistance to their aid work. Humane Borders has seen their water dispensers shot at while others have seen water gallons slashed open; several volunteers with No More Deaths were charged with misdemeanors for leaving water in a wildlife refuge near Ajo and their volunteer Scott Warren was charged with a felony for harboring migrants in January of 2018. Rev. John Fife, who helped start Tucson’s sanctuary movement for refugees in the 1980s and several humanitarian groups like No More Deaths in the early-2000s, says these type of charges only add to the urgency of the work. “What we have seen is, even since Scott’s arrest, the number of volunteers and the number of people supportive and helping those [humanitarian] organizations has dramatically increased,” says Fife. “And I anticipate that that’s going to continue.”

With only the clothes on his back, Francisco “Panchito” Olachea Martin was deported from Phoenix, Arizona to Nogales, Sonora, Mexico over a decade ago. Sent through the main port of entry in Nogales he had to leave his family and life of over 30 years in the United States behind. After living in the U.S. undocumented since the late-1970s, he had to start over, but in a new city that he says was not as welcoming to newcomers as it is now. “We had a lot of violence here in Nogales and immigrants pues, they were ignored a lot here for being deportees so I said, ‘I gotta do something about it.’”   For the past decade, Panchito, now 59, has built up his reputation as a nurse and EMT paramedic who hits the streets of Nogales every weekday. Working as a civil association, “Panchito y Su Cristina” (Cristina being his work vehicle named after his daughter), he serves migrants—often asylum seekers—and many vulnerable populations in Nogales. On call 24/7, Panchito lives in the impoverished hills above Nogales in a small rental house near the old city garbage dump. This is not far from the Iglesia en la Calle (Church in the Street) where many of the people he serves also live, including orphans and recovering addicts. Since all of his medical work is on a volunteer basis, he relies entirely on donations from humanitarian aid groups and churches, which are mostly in the U.S. The money that he receives covers supplies like diabetes test strips, medications for patients and their doctor’s visits, fuel and to fund his first working ambulance (the fourth vehicle he has used so far). Any money he spends for himself comes from his part-time weekend job with the Nogales Police Department, as a security guard for special events.   While Panchito doesn’t seem to mind living on a barebones budget, he does care deeply about having the money to care for others. His dilemma initially in Nogales was finding funding without having to hold his hand out. “In the first place I never know how to ask,” Panchito says of receiving donations. “I went through a hard time being an immigrant my own self even at the comedor (Kino Border Initiative) so it did affect me about asking people.” 
 (View full story at NPR’s Latino USA)

Since 2011, the Midwest’s lowrider community has gathered each summer along the industrial edge of Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood for a celebration of a longstanding subculture. Slow and Low: Community Lowrider Festival welcomes car clubs and their families alongside lowrider admirers for an all day meet up—an appreciation of an art form most visibly represented in the intricate murals and customized interiors seen on the featured cars. And each year, the car hopping competition continues to draw hundreds of spectators as do the Aztec dancers and other performers that have become a integral part of the Slow and Low Chicago tradition.

Once you hit the pavement south of 80th Street in south suburban Bridgeview, Illinois, Middle Eastern bakeries, grocery stores and specialty fashion shops – along with business signs in Arabic – become commonplace. Near 87th Street and Harlem Avenue are the popular Al Bawadi Grill and a strip mall with Arab American-owned businesses ranging from a nut shop to a hookah lounge. But the Little Palestine community located southwest of Chicago is more than businesses. Arab American families migrating from both the city of Chicago and Middle East have put down roots in Bridgeview and neighboring suburbs, establishing community centers and churches and making it one of the largest Arab American and Palestinian communities in the United States.

As migrants crossing into the U.S. from Mexico continue to use more remote regions of the Sonoran Desert to avoid the building Border Patrol presence, many continue to lose their lives in the process. The mass casualties seen each year in Arizona, around 170 in 2016 alone, have driven a diverse group to stand up in response. Organizers, activists, students and others from Tucson and across North America meet once a year on Memorial Day to remember these migrant lives lost and to walk for life. In its 14th year, The Migrant Trail solidarity walk gathered 50 participants plus a core of organizers to travel on foot from Sasabe, Sonora, Mexico to Tucson, Arizona; 75 miles in seven days. While this walk isn’t meant to try and replicate the migrant experience it does give a glimpse of the environment migrants must endure in the often unforgiving Sonoran Desert filled with thorny trees and a relentless sun. While walking along trails of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge or nearby roads the first three or four days, The Migrant Trail participants see few signs of life. That is, other than a constant flow of Border Patrol vehicles speeding by and items migrants have left behind including the oft-used black water jugs, camouflage shoe covers and backpacks. And in this relative isolation, reflection and conversation are essential. When not getting to know each other and how everyone is connected to immigration issues, the group intermittently walked in silence. The only time the silence was broken was to recognize the names of migrants who lost their lives in the desert with which the group responded in unison “presente!” As one of the Migrant Trail organizers Kat Rodriguez said during a meeting before the walk started, “we are not talking about the mass human casualty.” And that’s precisely why for this group The Migrant Trail continues.