Sasabe, Arizona March, 2022

In March of 2022, my husband and I traveled to Sasabe, Arizona for a week. We tent camped on public lands about 1/4 mile from the border wall. We wanted to know the truth of what was happening at the border at that time. We brought with us snacks, Bibles, blankets, bottled water, and care packages for the children that were donated by our church members and the members of a Patriot group we were active with. We went to meet and work with a group that was helping the children at the border. What we envisioned when we left home was that we would spend some time with these children and get a better understanding of how they were coming and why. We envisioned playing with them and building some trust. We envisioned something entirely different from what we found.

We anticipated after coordinating with the group we came to meet and work with a rustic campground, but we weren't prepared for a flat spot in the middle of the desert with no shelter, no water, no restroom, no nothing on a hill overlooking the border wall. That's ok, we weren't there for comfort. We slept in a tent, and someone, thankfully, had left a tent-like shelter with a porta-potty inside. We were about 25 minutes away from the nearest gas station and roughly an hour and a half away from Tucson (and civilization). We worked nights and slept during the day, because it was immediately obvious that very few people were crossing the border during daylight hours.

The weather was weird - about 25-30 degrees in the middle of the night, and about 85 degrees by 10am. 85 degrees was a little warm in a tent, so not much sleep happened that week. Again, ok, because we spent time during the day writing messages and a phone number to call for help in the front of the Bibles we were handing out at night, and organizing the blankets, snacks, water and other things we'd hand out during the night to those that crossed the border.

There was an amazing man named Chris that was there when we arrived, and he was literally the hands and feet of Jesus. I have never met a more caring, more driven man to help those children in my life. I will remember him forever.

We would go to the border shortly before dark, and the men (my husband Pat and Chris) would set out motion detector lights for two reasons. 1. So that if we missed seeing the headlights of the vehicle dropping the kids off up to a mile away from the wall, the lights would alert us to their approach. 2. To light the way for the children so they wouldn't injure themselves on the large rocks leading up to the border wall in the dark. Then they would gather wood for fires at known locations (openings) along the wall. Before we arrived and after we left Chris would do this work by himself every day and night.

We would then sit in our vehicles and wait and watch. Every night, sometimes multiple times per night, we would see headlights in the distance and start preparing a fire for the kids as they came. It was COLD, and they were not dressed for cold. We would get them around the fire, give them blankets and Bibles, try to gather as much information as we could, and then border patrol would come and gather them up and take them for processing. Where they went after that, we didn't know. I would guess that they probably were taken to detention facilities like the one we had seen in Carrizo Springs the year before.

One of the things that struck us as odd during that week is that none of the children we spoke with were from Mexico. The countries that we remember were Guatemala, Honduras and Ecuador. There may have been more, but we found that odd.

What we did figure out was that each child had a piece of paper in their pocket with a name and a phone number on it, and nothing else. The group coordinator said that many of those phone numbers were recurring over the weeks and months that she had been there. Some she recognized as having been repeated more than 50 times.

This video of testimony given to Congress by Tara Lee Rodas (My hero) connects some of the dots as to the papers and where they may have been sent. Please take 5 minutes to watch it.  https://youtu.be/Y06vLTRZNKM?si=rqo9Fc7xsZ9ROKnP

Over the course of the week (we were on vacation and only had a week to give), my guess is that around 500 children crossed the border under the cover of darkness alone and in the middle of the night. One crossing just sticks with me. 26 children crossed at 2AM  and it was 27 degrees. The oldest of the group was 14 years old. He was holding a baby a year-old gives or take. The 14-year-old was from Guatemala and spoke English. When I asked the baby’s name, he said he didn’t know. That he was told to carry the baby. This is unacceptable, and I have been haunted by that week since.