'Border Angels' Save Migrants from Dying in the Heat on Mexico-US Border Agence France-Presse
go to original September 12, 2014

"Border Angels" hide water bottles to help illegal immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border in California, August 20, 2014. They often find corpses in the desert (AFP/Mark Ralston)

Every year, would-be immigrants steal across the US-Mexican border — and over the years, thousands have died in the baking, snake-infested desert on either side.

A group of activists is now working to keep the desperate migrants alive.

The so-called “Border Angels” hide bottles of water in the desert along the border, where temperatures can top 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius).

“Lots of them die of thirst while crossing,” said Enrique Morones, his arms full of water bottles near the fence in California’s Imperial Valley designed to stem the tide of migrants from central America.

“The lack of water is the primary cause of death for the 10,000 people who have died while illegally crossing these desert regions,” said Morones, a Mexican-American from San Diego who founded Border Angels 20 years ago.

Staff members leave the large water bottles under shrubs on both sides of the border, from Sonora and Baja California in Mexico to Arizona and California.

“You have to put the bottles underneath foliage,” says Nelly, a Peruvian who has worked for the group since June.

That was when a genuine crisis erupted as a huge tide of migrants began sweeping across the border, many of them unaccompanied minors, leaving police and immigration centers struggling to cope.

Since October, nearly 65,000 children have arrived, most of them fleeing poverty and violence in central America.

Read the rest at The Raw Story

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