"Giving testimony to the atrocities":

Coalición de Derechos Humanos/ Arizona Border Rights Project

Dr. Yolanda Chávez Leyva

The University of Texas at San Antonio

"The present push to militarize the border with U.S. troops, 5,000 more border patrol agents and triple fences, for us means human and civil rights challenges well into the next century."

--Roberto Martínez, 1998 Midyear Abuse Report U.S.-Mexico Border Program & Immigration Law Enforcement Monitoring Project

The small conference room at the Sam Lena Library in South Tucson is filled to capacity. Around the table sit members of the Coalición de Derechos Humanos/ Arizona Border Rights Project, a group founded in 1994 to increase public awareness of human rights abuses at the border, educate people about their rights, and to lobby for changes in government policies. The grassroots group, which includes people of all ages, ethnicites, and backgrounds, is cemented together by a common goal—to work, as its name proclaims, for human rights, particularly for the most vulnerable in our society, undocumented immigrants.

Undocumented immigrants, because of their illegal status, are easily victimized, by coyotes, gangs, vigilantes, and law enforcement officers. In its seven-year history, Derechos Humanos has documented an increasing number of human rights’ violations by federal, state, and local law enforcement officials, including harassment, illegal stops, rape, and even murder. As Coalition staff member, Roberto Martínez, points out during the meeting, "We are giving testimony to the atrocities." All along the U.S.-Mexico border, human rights groups are documenting a wave of human rights offenses.

At today’s meeting there are several issues on the table—the second anniversary memorial for Ezequiel Hernández, the Redford, Texas high school student killed by a Marine while Hernández was herding his family’s goats; the work of the youth group, the Brigada Juvenil, who has been working the "migra patrol," where students follow law enforcement agents with video cameras, handing out "Know Your Rights" cards to people detained by agents. Foremost on the agenda today are recent events along the Douglas/ Agua Prieta border.

On Easter Sunday, east of Douglas, Arizona, a group of ranchers, wearing camouflage jackets, armed with guns, high-powered binoculars, radios, and badges, captured twenty-seven Mexican immigrants. One of the ranchers is a former county sheriff’s deputy. The ranchers are among a larger group who signed a proclamation in March warning that "friction between invaders and property owners in this area may increase to the point of blood being shed." Coalition member, attorney Isabel García, believes that the actions of the ranchers represent a conspiracy to intentionally violate the civil rights of immigrants crossing the border.

José Matus, Yaqui ceremonial leader, director of Derechos Humanos and representative of the Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras (Indigenous Alliance without Borders, a part of the Derechos Humanos coalition) blames governmental policies for the situation along the border. "Congress has provoked this unfortunate environment which forces undocumented workers to take increasingly serious risks and vigilante groups to try to protect their property by taking the law into their own hands,'' according to Matus.

As a consequence of public pressure, particularly from Derechos Humanos and other activist groups, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has started an investigation. Government officials on both sides of the border worry that this is just the beginning.

In the final decade of the millennium, human rights activists have increasingly turned their gaze to the border as anti-immigrant rhetoric and violence have continued to rise. The paramilitary nature of the ranchers’ group, along with their threat of possible "blood being shed," represent a growing danger along the U. S.-Mexico border. While politicians garner votes by promising to end social services to immigrants and newspapers print headlines characterizing Mexican immigration as "alarming" "floods."

As historian John Higham documented in his now- classic study, Strangers in the land; Patterns of American Nativism, 1860- 1925, Americans have always exhibited greater xenophobia, a greater fear of immigrants during times of economic change or crisis. Such patterns of anti-immigrant rhetoric and activity can be observed through our nation’s history.

Mexicans and Mexican Americans were the targets of anti-immigrant activity in Arizona and other parts of the Southwest as early as the 1890s. In the 1930s during the Great Depression and later in the 1950s, Mexican immigrants were again targeted. In response to economic changes, Americans embraced an anti-immigrant stance which played itself out in a variety of ways, ranging from the implementation of massive federal deportation campaigns in 1931 and 1954 to anti-immigrant legislation which excluded immigrants from working in government jobs to violence carried out on a day to day, individual level. In 1931, for example, a mob burned the Mexican section of Ranger, Texas to the ground and ran its residents out of town.

In the 1990s, massive changes in the Mexican and U. S. economies have again contributed to a resurgence of anti-immigrant sentiments and policies. As economic policies have facilitated the movement of goods and capital across borders, the movement of people has been vilified.

Mexican workers continue to feel the devastating effects of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), including growing urban unemployment and land loss as subsistence farmers are displaced. Guadalupe Castillo, one of the founders of Derechos Humanos, and a long-time human rights activist, explains that "many [immigrants] leave their family and life and have to make the journey [to the United States] to find a job, so they can buy food. For them it's a question of life."

Similarly, economic restructuring in the United States has left many Americans unemployed, underemployed and scared. Today, many Americans have again embraced an anti-immigrant stance, which has exacerbated, and justified, violence against immigrants, both documented and undocumented. Politicians, seeking votes by appealing to the fear and insecurity experienced by American workers, have endorsed, and at times, initiated anti-immigrant activities. The violence, verbal and physical, occurs on many levels.

With the growing numbers of Border Patrol Officers stationed along the border and with the implementation of programs such as El Paso’s "Operation Hold the Line," coyotes, or smugglers, now charge exorbitant fees to cross immigrants into the United States. As newspaper headlines in Texas, Arizona, and California attest, after paying hundreds to thousands of dollars, immigrants are often left to die of thirst in isolated border areas or locked in the almost-airless holds of trucks. Undocumented immigrants are susceptible to assault, robbery, and rape by gangs of youth who understand too well the vulnerability of undocumented people.

Perhaps most shocking, however, is the violence carried out by law enforcement officers. One study, conducted by Mexican researchers, found that undocumented immigrants report being assaulted by the Border Patrol at a rate almost equal to assaults by others groups, including criminals.

According to Derechos Humanos, 89 people were killed, beaten, or injured by Border Patrol agents in 1998, up more than 40% from 1997. The number of reported violations more than doubled in the same time period. In Arizona, human rights activists still talk about the case of Dario Miranda Valenzuela, a young Mexican man who was killed by Border Patrol agent Michael Elmer, on June 12, 1992. Elmer shot Miranda, of Nogales, Sonora, twice with in the back with an unauthorized weapon, an M-16 rifle, then tried to hide Miranda’s body in a hollowed-out tree. Elmer’s partner turned him in, despite Elmer’s threat against his partner, and Elmer became the first Border Patrol agent charged with capital murder. Despite the powerful evidence against him, he was acquitted in both state and federal trials. The acquittals shocked many Americans.

María Jiménez, director of the Immigration Law Enforcement Monitoring Project of the American Friends Service Committee, has argued that although the outcome of the Elmer case was "very disappointing," it did create "the awareness within the institution and with the agents that they will be held accountable in some way, even if it’s through the public scrutiny of different sectors of the community." It is precisely this accountability that Derechos Humanos and other border rights groups are working to achieve. According to Derechos Humanos, demilitarizing the border is essential for the survival and well-being of people on both sides of the line. Border policies must be firmly grounded in deep respect for both civil and human rights.

As anti-immigrant activity grows on the border, so does public awareness. Derechos Humanos continues to expand it educational work and the number of people involved in working towards human rights on the border grows daily.