In Arizona, while voters must vote on a bill aimed at criminalizing illegal immigration, in the south of the state, an NGO is helping migrants crossing the perilous Sonoran Desert.
From our special correspondent,
It is still dark over the Sonoran Desert. At the wheel of his 4×4 speeding along Route 286, Tim Doherty thinks out loud. “ No need to build a wall all along the border: this desert is a wall. During the day, it’s a furnace; at night, it’s a fridge. The hills, the bushes that seem harmless but are full of thorns, the rattlesnakes, the scorpions… Here, the environment is a danger in itself. » His grandfather, he says, liked to drive because it helped him think. He must have got that from him.
For three weeks, Tim Doherty seems to be living the same day. It begins around 4 a.m. in front of the warehouses of the Tucson Samaritans, the humanitarian organization in which he has worked since its creation more than twenty years ago. After loading his trunk with food and cans of water, the fifty-year-old takes on board journalists who have come to cover the American elections to take them to the border which thousands of illegal migrants cross every day. In August, 53,038 people were apprehended by the border police, according to the latest figures from the Pew Research Center. In December 2023, 249,741. Never seen before.
