CPTnet
22 July 2011
BORDERLANDS: CPT reservist charged for leaving humanitarian aid on migrant trail

On 10 July 2011, law enforcement personnel issued violation notices to four humanitarian aid workers, including CPT reservist John Heid at the Buenos Aires Wildlife Refuge (BANWAR).  They charged the four with “non-permitted activity” because they resupplied water and food sites along an active migrant trail twelve miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Four days earlier, The Arizona Daily Star, a Tucson newspaper, reported a spike in the number of migrant deaths in the Tucson Sector of the border.  Twenty-eight human remains have been recovered since 1 June, nineteen in the previous nine days alone.  Temperatures were well above 100 degrees nearly every day during that period.

Efforts by humanitarian aid groups to secure permits to place food and water along the trails in the rugged mountainous terrain on the eastern edge of the refuge have been futile.  The citations were the first issued by BANWAR officials in two years. No arraignment date has been set.  The charge carries a maximum penalty of $5,000 and six months incarceration.