Post by Hilary Almanza and Mark Moreira. Colgate Class of 2022.

On Sunday January 15th, our study group met with Shura Wallin in Green Valley Arizona at her home where she greeted us all and told us about her work in the organization she founded to help immigrants called the Green Valley Samaritans. The organization she described is mostly based in Nogales but also does work in Tuscon to support asylum seekers in many ways. She described aiding across the border in El Comedor by serving hot meals and first aid to migrants that come rest there. The main work Shura described the Green Valley Samaritans doing was in the desert by performing desert searches and water drops for migrants facing the harsh unforgiving conditions of their journey. Shura was kind enough to show and give us a description of a few of the items she’d found in the desert during her searches that migrants had left behind. She also led us through a brief walk around the desert path behind her neighborhood that many migrants had taken. If you’d like to donate and reach out to the Green Valley Samaritans and help any way you can the link is as follows https://www.gvs-samaritans.org/donate.html. 

When Shura first began to speak on the items we saw sprawled across the table, they could’ve easily been mistaken for damaged items that had been thrown out or left out to rot. However, a closer look at the miscellaneous items one could observe minuscule bits of sand still present in the bristles of all the toothbrushes, sun damage on the photographs carefully tucked in a bag, and torn pieces of clothing that were tied and refashioned into backpacks. Shura held and passed around some of these leftover items that were all that remain from the migrants that had once owned them. Each carried an obvious story of family, faith, and hope while some were seemingly random items that could only make sense being left behind when Shura reasoned a possible story behind them. Some of the most memorable items included photographs, a bible, rosaries, huge jugs of water painted black to prevent sun reflection, a paintbrush, baby formula, scorpion bite antidote, a belt buckle, a bookbag that could’ve only belonged to a small boy, sandshoes and a hang noose meant as warning to all who decide to cross. It was a very moving experience as it brought the stories of the victims of the desert to life and came as close to as possible to visualizing how severe the cost of immigration really is. 

When we began to walk into the dessert, the reality of the situation in which the migrants have to suffer when they cross the border into the United States became relevant. We only had to walk a few yards from her house before we entered the desert. Even in January, we were all beginning to get hot and uncomfortable trying to avoid getting pricked by cacti. Even though we were right outside Shura’s home, we could see the remains of a migrant’s travels. We saw speakers, water bottles, and fragments of clothing from what the migrants left behind. Having heard of what migrants go through to come to the United States from the different speakers throughout the week, it was very powerful to see these articles left behind in the dessert. After being in the sun and walking through the sand, we took the stories that Shura gave us and our first hand experience of walking in the desert to Tucson where we continued our conversations on immigration.