October 5, 2020

Border Patrol agents, including members of the Border Patrol’s SWAT team-like Tactical Unit (BORTAC), carried out another raid on the Byrd Camp, a desert facility near Arivaca, Arizona operated by the faith-based humanitarian group No More Deaths (NMD). This follows a raid just over two months earlier, on July 31.

The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild described the operation:

After staking out the Byrd Camp for nearly two days, Border Patrol agents stormed the Camp in a convoy of vehicles that included a Bearcat tank. A Border Patrol helicopter buzzed the camp, flying so low that its rotor wash destroyed a NMD tent and storage shed. Agents detained at least a dozen people, including at least six NMD volunteers.

BORTAC “came in, guns drawn, in full camouflage. The sun had just gone down, so it was totally pitch-black. They detained all of the volunteers,” No More Deaths volunteer Paige Corich-Kleim told the Nation. “All of the people [migrants] that were at camp receiving [humanitarian] aid were chased in the darkness. Border Patrol detained 12 people there.” Corich-Kleim noted an increase in aggressive behavior from the agency:

We’ve been documenting their abuses since 2008, but under the Trump administration, more explicitly racist and violent policies and tactics are more widely accepted and endorsed by the president and by the political institutions. They’ve been able to normalize and escalate all of these tactics over the years. I think what we’re seeing now is Border Patrol is able to operate with even more impunity and in even more violent ways, and still get away with it.

— Tory Johnson, “Border Patrol is Going After Humanitarian Aid in the Arizona Desert—Again” (United States: Immigration Impact, American Immigration Council, October 15, 2020) https://immigrationimpact.com/2020/10/15/border-patrol-raid-humanitarian-camp/.

— Sirine Shebaya, Joseph Meyers, Matthew S. Vogel, Khaled Alrabe, Letter to Customs and Border Protection (Washington: National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, October 5, 2021) https://nipnlg.org/PDFs/2021_05Oct_NMD-letter.pdf.

— Jessica Suriano, “The Border Patrol Is Cracking Down on Humanitarian Aid” (United States: The Nation, December 15, 2020) https://www.thenation.com/article/society/no-more-deaths-arizona/.

Sector(s): Tucson

Agency(ies): Border Patrol, BORTAC

Event Type(s): Intimidation of Humanitarian Workers, Use of Force

Accountability Status: Unknown

Victim Classification: Advocate or Humanitarian Worker, U.S. Citizen or Resident