When millionaire adventurer Steve Fosset disappeared one day last September, aircraft scoured the Nevada wilderness as part of a massive search effort.
As the story topped headlines on TV stations and in newspapers across the country, the Samaritans of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Ariz., pitched in to plan another search.
This search was focused not on a famous American millionaire but an unknown, 18-year-old woman, without even official identity.
The story of her disappearance unfolded with sad predictability.
She came from Mexico. Hoping to reunite with her parents in Charlotte, North Carolina, she tried to cross into the United States illegally through the harsh Sonoran desert, where she was separated from her group and not heard from again. She was eight months pregnant.
Silently, anonymously, her young life added to the tally of thousands of migrants who have disappeared or died along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Samaritans are a group of people of faith who came together as a concerned response to migrant deaths in the Sonoran desert. They conduct searches for migrants in need of water or medical care and make trips into the desert every day of the year.
For the Samaritans, the woman was not anonymous; not just another illegal immigrant. She was the unknown stranger, the angel in disguise cited in Hebrews 13:2 of the New Testament.
The Samaritans are just one of a number of faith-based humanitarian aid groups, representing diverse denominations, who have found a mission on the border. Humane Borders (Baptist,) American Friends Service Committee (Quaker,) Christian Peacemaker Teams (interdenominational,) No More Deaths and others work to stop migrant deaths.
They are strengthened by a deep faith and a belief that Luke’s parable of the Good Samaritan has real implications for their work in the community.
“There are some faith communities that are very, very involved and that’s really exciting,” said Delle McCormick, an ordained /denomination?/ minister and director of Border Links, an educational organization devoted to consciousness-raising about border issues and building collaboration across borders.
Border Links organizes a college-accredited “Semester on the Border” and hosts visitors from around the United States so that they can experience life on both sides of the border. Participants gain an understanding of how, economically and culturally, Latin America and the United States are connected.
Border Links also works with communities in Mexico, through micro-loans and cooperatives, to help make it easier for people to stay in their own communities if they choose, McCormick said.
“From a faith perspective as a pastor, the greatest commandments are to love God with all your body, mind and heart and to love your neighbor as yourself,” she said. “So that is not a walled state. That is not a gated community. That is a respectful, dignified relationship that we need to have.”
Through her travels in Latin America, which began with a transformative journey in 1989, McCormick became concerned about the impact of global trade and foreign corporate investment on traditional and indigenous Latin American communities.
As an example, she said, rich investors have bought sacred Mayan sites and turned them into commercialized tourist attractions. The new owners forced indigenous Mayans, who once survived selling their handicrafts on the sites, off the properties.
“Now they (the owners) sell crafts made in China that are made to look like they are made by indigenous Mayans, but they’re not,” McCormick said. “So they (the Mayans) have no other way to survive besides to migrate.”
She also said she was concerned about privatization on the U.S-Mexican border, where the Office of Homeland Security has subcontracted detention and deportation duties to the private corporation Wackenhut.
McCormick said migrants under Wackenhut care will be more vulnerable because of lack of government oversight. Wackenhut also has a history of human rights violations, she said.
McCormick gives public talks about border issues and the reasons for human migration at churches and community groups around the U.S.
In her talks, McCormick points to a link between U.S. consumption habits and human migration.
“I just did a whole week of talks in a very, very affluent part of the U.S where people have three or four houses in different parts of the country or world,” she said. “Everyone was talking about what I said, but there was so much fear and hatred among some people.”
When someone challenges their “right” to consume, she said, some people express hostility or fear.
“Talking about loving others as yourself and loving God, but also getting people to think critically about how we consume and how we are using resources and how we spend ourselves in the world makes some people really mad because they are afraid of losing it,” she said. “It’s very complex.”
On that Sunday in late September at Southside Church, members of the congregation and many guests gathered for the service.
The service focused on migrants in the desert, their journey and the dedication of a sculpture in the church courtyard in memory of those migrants who have died.
The congregation sang “Sanctuary” and several hymns in Spanish. Mark Bautista and Greg Lewis played Woodie Guthrie’s song, “Pastures of Plenty” on the guitar.
“Something is wrong when hospitality is replaced by hostility, compassion with complacency and a wall is put up instead of a welcome mat,” Pastor Larry Graham-Johnson told his audience. He read Hebrews 13:2.
After the service, the congregation moved outside, each person taking a stone with the name of a migrant who died or is still missing in the Sonoran desert.
The congregation stood near the sculpture by artist Valarie James with Antonia Gallegos titled “migrant shrine.”
Shrines, sites of special devotion or prayer, are common to the Southwest; an region influenced heavily by the Catholic tradition.
After a prayer of dedication, the people filed forward, placing the stones beneath the shrine, reading each name out loud.