by Bryan Gibel
Daily Lobo
Delle McCormick came across Olivia, a 12-year-old Mexican migrant, last year while walking along the Arizona-Mexico border.
The girl had been in the desert for days, trying to reach the United States, and was suffering from dehydration and exposure.
When they were only five minutes from a hospital and five minutes from a road, Olivia's body gave out, and she died of a heart attack.
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McCormick, the executive director of Borderlinks, said the Arizona-Mexico border is littered with immigrants' lost dreams and, sometimes, their bodies.
"The people come through, and when they begin to die, or begin to realize how difficult the journey is, they throw their personal effects away," she said. "So we see their Bibles and their journals and their family photographs. We see all the ways that people hope to come into the country, and we see bones."
Borderlinks is an organization that leads border walks and seminars to raise awareness about immigration and border security.
McCormick spoke to about 15 people Tuesday at the Latin American and Iberian Institute.
Immigrants attempting to cross into the U.S. are immediately deported, even if they are in critical need of health care,
McCormick said.
There were 205 documented deaths along the Tucson area of the border in 2006, but unofficial counts estimate more than 2,000 immigrants died in the area during that time period, McCormick said.
She said border security is becoming increasingly militarized.
"What you see when you go down to the border in Nogales (Ariz.) is a 15- to 20-foot wall," she said. "We also have 6,000 National Guardsmen present with big weapons and tanks. They are absolutely meant to terrorize the migrants and anyone else who's around."
McCormick said the U.S. Border Patrol has plans to add 700 miles to the wall, use nonlethal weapons and build more detention facilities.
Border control is a revenue source for private companies, McCormick said.
"Most of this technology comes through private contractors," she said. "So, there are a lot of industries that are making millions of dollars off the migrants. This is big business."
Wackenhut, the second-largest private security agency in the world, signed a one-year, $17
million contract with the Department of Homeland Security to operate in Arizona, McCormick said.
She said there have been more outcries against border militarization since she started with Borderlinks.
"In Tucson, there's a pervasive sadness, but there's also a great determination to change the situation," she said. "I think there's a trend in this country to say, 'We will not stand for this. We will make more humane policies and practices.'"
Ivis Garcia Zambrana, president of the Student Organization for Latin American Studies, said she hopes McCormick's stories of migrants like Olivia will inspire more criticism of border
militarization.
"Many times, when we hear in the news about immigrants that die along the border, we only see numbers. But these people are not numbers," Zambrana said. "It's heartbreaking to know that our government is treating people like they are not (human beings)."
