A new report from No More Deaths and La Coalición de Derechos Humanos, Left to Die: Border Patrol, Search and Rescue and the Crisis of Disappearance, finds that Border Patrol systematically ignores and mishandles the search and rescue emergencies of migrants, who are funneled into dangerous and remote terrain by the agency’s policy and practices. The report also finds that Border Patrol obstructs family and community search efforts, leaving thousands to die.

Every year, Congress gives more than $25 billion dollars to ICE and CBP to profile, jail, deport and terrorize immigrants. Their records of abuse and consistent rejection of oversight and accountability demonstrate that these enforcement agencies are beyond reform.

To end the crisis of death and disappearance in the borderlands we must decriminalize migration, demilitarize the border and defund Customs and Border Protection, the agency that causes people to become missing and leaves them to die.

Take Action today by supporting community-based search and rescue efforts & joining the #DefundHate Campaign to demand Congress defund Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

What you can do:

1. Donate to community-based search and rescue groups in the borderlands
2. Demand that Congress defund Customs and Border Protection with the #DefundHate Campaign! 
   1. Sign the petition bit.ly/DefundHatePetition
   2. Contact your elected officials with the tools below:
      1. Find your representative
      2. Find your senator

Sample Script:

“Hello, my name is [_______] and I’m a constituent of [congressional member’s name]. I thought you would be interested in a new report that analyzes Border Patrol’s search and rescue response system. The report is called Left to Die: Border Patrol, Search and Rescue, and the Crisis of Disappearance.

The report provides overwhelming evidence that Border Patrol’s emergency response system is plagued with systemic and deadly discrimination, routinely ignoring and mishandling life-threatening emergencies and fueling a crisis of death and disappearance. It’s clear that the agency is unfit to be involved in search and rescue efforts.

I’m calling on [Member of Congress] to oppose funding increases for border and immigration enforcement. Instead of using public funds to criminalize migration and militarize the border, we demand that you exhibit leadership and call for drastic cuts in funding for ICE and CBP. This includes cutting funds for “smart border” technologies that only serve to further militarize an already hyper-militarized border, endangering the lives of migrants.”

To you, and everyone in the streets, organizing within their communities and building a world where Black lives not only matter, but thrive, we thank you and stand alongside you.

It’s midsummer in Arizona, and many of us are in the desert leaving water, responding to missing persons calls and providing care to people crossing during the heat, navigating a humanitarian crisis mid-pandemic. For aid workers, it’s not uncommon to meet people in the desert with a familiar story: Profiled by police, arrested, handed over to ICE, deported and now trying to get home to their families and loved ones. 

As the uprisings have increased in the United States, we’ve also seen Customs and Border Protection drones circle Minneapolis, Border Patrol deployed to Washington D.C. and armed CBP agents posing in front of community shrines in San Diego. ICE and Border Patrol have long extended the militarization of the border into cities and the interior of the country and through these actions are only reaffirming their racist and xenophobic agendas. 

The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Riah Milton, Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells and Dion Johnson are only the most recent examples of police brutality, actions of an institution rooted in white supremacy. What we recognize as modern day policing in the U.S. was born from a need to prevent uprisings amongst slaves, and to preserve Black people as property. 

This legacy of white supremacy lives on in the prison system, which is a clear reimagination and continuation of slavery, incarcerating Black people at a rate five times that of white people. Immigration detention and deportation are an extension of the same racist policing and court systems, often occupying the same buildings and being run by the same for-profit corporations.

Migrant justice and Black liberation are inextricably linked. 

Immigration is a Black issue. The stories of Black migrants are often erased or minimized, as are the struggles of Black people everywhere. Routine discrimination against the undocumented community is increased even more by anti-Blackness, making Black immigrants far more likely to be funneled into the deportation machine.

In the most recent installment of our Disappeared report series, we demanded that Border Patrol be defunded and dismantled, with reparations paid to family members of all those killed or disappeared by U.S. border enforcement policy. This recommendation was built on the understanding that no reform could end Border Patrol violence and extrajudicial killings. In making these demands we took guidance from centuries of Black abolitionist thought and organizing. 

Black feminist, activist and professor Angela Davis summed up the current political moment in a recent interview: “What we are seeing now are new demands: demands to demilitarize the police, demands to defund the police, demands to dismantle the police and envision different modes of public safety. We’re asked now to consider how we might imagine justice in the future. This is a very exciting moment. I don’t know if we have ever experienced this kind of global challenge to racism and the consequences of slavery and colonialism.”

No More Deaths/ No Más Muertes affirms our call to defund ICE and CBP and joins the call to defund the police nationwide.

When we defund and demilitarize the police and pay reparations to the communities they have terrorized for centuries, we may finally begin to construct a society which is not based on brutality and murder.

So we invite you, as friends and supporters of migrants, immigrants and racial justice to give generously to Black immigration organizations at this pivotal time in history. Donations to organizations such as Movement for Black Lives or to Black Trans groups will save lives.

In solidarity and gratitude,

No More Deaths/ No Más Muertes community

Since January, No More Deaths’ Missing Migrant Crisis hotline has logged 6,640 calls in their mission to help migrants lost, injured, and dying in the desert borderlands.

“When we established the hotline in 2017,” an operator remembers, “there were very few of us.

Often it’s a mother calling, consumed with unimaginable pain and worry, searching for her son or daughter. Cases include detention searches and migrants missing in the desert of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and California.”

If you Google “Searching for Someone Lost at the Border” or “Persona Desaparecida Arizona,” No More Death’s hotline comes up. When a call comes in, volunteers ask the caller’s relationship to the missing person and where the individual crossed, urging callers to contact their home country consulate. When the person is detained, No More Deaths helps them navigate the detention system, explaining their rights while in detention and how to open a phone account and commissary.

For those seeking asylum, No More Deaths offers legal resources. If the person is not detained, the volunteer ascertains who had the last communication and when, where the person departed from, and any other source of information, such as someone who crossed with them or knew their route. The window for potential rescue is two to five days.

“Our response depends on time frame, whether the missing person has a phone, and their physical condition,” a volunteer explains. “It’s a tremendous emotional strain for the same few people on call, so it’s healthy to build up the team. Soon, there will be eight trained operators. We’ve established protocols for interacting with Border Patrol. We are expanding our relationships with several consulates, the Colibri Center (who works with the Pima County Medical Examiner), the Tohono O’odham Nation, and allied search groups.”

Many families don’t want to talk directly with authorities who work within the system that has deliberately disappeared their loved one. Detention center employees don’t always speak Spanish. Often relatives are put through to an answering machine. The ICE locator is the only public database for detainees, and it can be difficult to navigate or inaccurate because authorities enter the name wrong, and there can be long delays.

“We act as a humane cushion between the family and authorities,” an operator observes. “We give emotional support during recoveries, disappearance, and death. We meet with the family, have
dinner with them, light a candle for their loved one, offer what comfort we can.”

If families can help with a search, No More Deaths teammates take their lead from the family. “We accompany them on searches, assist with logistics and navigating maps, and give moral support,” a volunteer says. “But we have to be clear about our capacity and not give false hope. We try to stay realistic.”

When medical examiners confirm the identity of remains, No More Deaths team members travel to be with the families, if in Arizona or Sonora, Mexico. Struck by the families’ strength and resilience, volunteers strive to uphold their stories, to prevent them from being defined only by a dot on a map, lost in the flood of statistics.

— Katherine Pew, No More Deaths volunteer