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Demented Sadists in US Border Patrol Wage War On Migrants and Refugees

Humanitarian Activists Persecuted

Eleven days ago, disgusted by what I saw and experienced along the US – Mexico Border, I posted a rant, see: They Policed Paradise and Put Up An AeroStat.

[Update: In an amazing coincidence, I now learn via Google that the humanitarian group No More Deaths, released an important report that same day. ~~~ end update]

After just learning yesterday of the sadistic, demented, murderous practices of US Border Patrol agents, I now regret that post and it’s self absorbed ignorance and grossly misplaced focus on aesthetic effects and impacts on wildlife migration.

Specifically, yesterday I heard a segment on local radio station KBRB -Radio Free Bisbee, and just now have read in the Washington Post:

Border Patrol agents were filmed dumping water left for migrants. Then came a ‘suspicious’ arrest.

Last Wednesday, a nonprofit group that provides humanitarian aid to migrants in the Arizona desert released a lengthy report alleging Border Patrol agents were intentionally destroying supplies left for migrants in the desert, the group said, to “condemn border crossers to suffering, death and disappearance.”

What received wider attention, however, was a video that the Tucson-based aid group, No More Deaths, also distributed with its report. The footage, taken between 2010 and 2017, showed Border Patrol agents kicking over water jugs that had been left in the desert. In one clip, a male agent sneers at the person filming him, demanding to know whom the water is for, as he empties a gallon bottle of water onto the ground.

Now the aid group is calling the arrest of one its volunteers suspicious. On Wednesday, Border Patrol agents arrested Scott Warren, 35, in the desert near Ajo, Ariz., about eight hours after the No More Deaths report and video were released.

Warren, a longtime volunteer with the group and a faculty associate at Arizona State University, was detained on preliminary felony charges of alien smuggling; he appeared in court Thursday and was released on his own recognizance, the group said in a statement.

Border Patrol agents also arrested two people who were with Warren on Wednesday and “receiving humanitarian aid” at the time, according to No More Deaths. Those two people remain in custody, the group said.

This is the behavior of a Fascist government – period. I really don’t know what’s worse, the sadism or the retaliatory repression. I suspect that they are inseparably linked psychologically and politically and institutionally: (The Intercept reports – please read the whole story):

A FAITH-BASED HUMANITARIAN GROUP that provides aid and shelter to undocumented migrants on the southwestern border fears it has become the latest target in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration advocates. Nine members of the group, No More Deaths, were charged with federal crimes and misdemeanors in recent months, including one volunteer arrested last week shortly after the publication of a report documenting alleged abuses by the U.S. Border Patrol.

This is intolerable and must be resisted at all costs. I urge readers with resources to contribute – financially and/or with activist support – to the humanitarian group No More Deaths who is trying to help.

I am sickened by it and ashamed that I was so ignorant and unaware of the repression that is happening right around me here along the border.