In the vast desert scrub of the Arizona borderlands, makeshift camps erected to protect asylum seekers from the elements have long been frequented by a menacing presence: vigilantes and armed militias who roar through tarped shelters or along the border wall on ATVs, clad in body armor and camo gear and harassing migrants they accuse of being terrorists.
Water tanks left by humanitarian groups to prevent migrant deaths are found shot up and drained. Volunteers have been doxxed, chased, and forced off the road by conspiracy theorists convinced they are trafficking children. Extremist podcasters, calling themselves journalists, have made the border a favorite spot for inflammatory livestreams full of calculated misinformation about terrorist invasions and satanic cartels, inspiring their thousands of followers to leave comments yearning for violent solutions.
This is the reality for humanitarian aid workers along Arizona’s border with Mexico, who have long navigated a delicate balance between their mission to save lives and the complex politics of immigration enforcement. But as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office with promises of “the largest deportation effort in American history,” these increasingly targeted organizations face an unprecedented wave of intimidation that threatens to upend decades of humanitarian work and threaten lives.
Aid workers from Samaritans place crosses where human remains have been found in border areas. Source: Jim West/Alamy Stock Photo
This pattern of criminalizing humanitarian aid has deep historical roots in the borderlands. In 1977, the Manzo Area Council in Tucson — a federally funded social service center — saw their offices raided by Border Patrol agents who seized over 800 client files, leading to the deportation of 150-200 people. The center’s director, Margo Cowan, and three staff members faced charges carrying up to 77 years in prison for actions like driving a pregnant 15-year-old to a courthouse to obtain marriage permission that would help legalize her status.
Like today’s aid workers, they provided basic services to help people navigate the immigration system legally. The raid devastated their work — just as today’s intimidation threatens to do — as undocumented immigrants became too frightened to seek help, knowing their information could be seized and used against them. As Cowan, who has devoted her life to fighting for immigrants’ rights in the years since, noted then, ‘People are continually living in fear and waiting for raids in the middle of the night’ — words that could just as easily describe the present moment. Despite these risks, today’s humanitarian volunteers continue their vital work, beginning each dawn with the same commitment to saving lives that drove the Manzo workers decades ago.
Just after sunrise each morning humanitarian volunteers load their vehicles with water jugs, blankets, and first aid supplies. They drive into remote desert areas where winter temperatures plunge into the 20s at night, checking inland water stations for vandalism — a frequent occurrence — before they head to the wall to distribute water bottles and food.
Some savvy volunteers carefully hide tins of sausages behind the bars of the border wall on the Mexico side and place water bottles on their sides so they appear tipped over and empty. They do this so marauding vigilantes won’t take or destroy what is meant for migrants.
Many of the asylum seekers they encounter are families who have been dropped off in isolated locations, walking for miles to the end of the border wall where they hope to turn themselves in to Border Patrol. The volunteers provide immediate medical aid when needed, coordinate rescues with authorities, and wait with the migrants to be picked up by border patrol, which usually happens three times per day.
Asylum seekers line up to turn themselves into the Border Patrol. Source: Alamy
This work of compassion and basic human kindness on the part of the aid workers stands in stark contrast to the false accusations of harboring terrorists or human trafficking that vigilantes level against them. Recently, these accusations have taken a more organized form: In late December, at least three Tucson-area migrant aid groups received anonymous postcards warning them to report undocumented immigrants to ICE.
The postcards, which suggested places where undocumented people might be found — “at school, at work, at church, at restaurants, in your neighborhood” — came with an ominous message: “There is nowhere to hide!” These warnings arrived as similar mailings circulated in coastal Oregon’s Lincoln County, where officials received letters entitled “The Brown Round-Up, Part I” — a racist chain letter that similarly encouraged residents to surveil “brown folks” at churches, schools, and stores. That letter went so far as to promise white residents a chance to seize the homes of deported families, making explicit comparisons to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
For Dora Rodriguez, founder of the Tucson-based nonprofit Salvavision, these threats strike a particularly personal chord. In 1980, Rodriguez nearly died in the Arizona desert, one of only 13 survivors among a group of 26 Salvadoran migrants fleeing political violence who were abandoned by their guide. That harrowing experience transformed her into a lifelong advocate for migrant safety. The threatening postcard arrived at her personal address, which isn’t publicly listed on the organization’s website. “They did their homework,” Rodriguez told the Arizona Daily Star. “This intimidation is not only for the migrant community, but also for the humanitarian organizations.”
Intimidation tactics and vigilante activity have deep roots in the borderlands. In 1977, the same year that political pressure sparked the Manzo raid, Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke launched a “border watch” operation, claiming he would deploy Klansmen to patrol 900 miles of frontier. While that effort proved more publicity stunt than patrol, it inaugurated decades of armed civilian groups targeting migrants and humanitarian workers.
The pattern intensified after 9/11 and during the Obama years, as self-styled militia groups began conducting armed patrols. In 2009, this vigilante movement turned deadly when members of Minutemen American Defense murdered 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in their Arivaca, Arizona home. The killers hoped to collect enough money through robbing immigrants to finance their paramilitary operation.
The violence has only escalated since then. During Trump’s first presidential term, armed groups responded to rhetoric about migrant “invasions” by flocking to the border. In 2019, Larry Hopkins and his United Constitutional Patriots group in New Mexico made headlines for detaining large groups of migrants at gunpoint. The FBI later revealed Hopkins had trained followers for planned assassinations of political figures including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George Soros.
Now, fueled by QAnon conspiracy theories and promises of mass deportations, new waves of vigilantes are appearing in South Texas and Arizona, targeting both migrants and the humanitarian workers who try to prevent deaths in the desert.
Aid workers signal that militias should stay away.
Adding to these concerns, Trump’s incoming administration signals an even harder line ahead. “Either you help us or get the hell outta the way because ICE is going to do their job,” says Tom Homan, Trump’s incoming border czar who has pledged to review the role of nongovernmental and humanitarian organizations, while Vivek Ramaswamy, tapped to identify areas for federal spending cuts, has characterized these groups as “a waste of taxpayer dollars.” Advocacy groups are already scrubbing their addresses from websites, fearing infiltration or targeting, and moving to encrypted communication. Immigration experts expect the administration to weaponize fear and heightened publicity of routine ICE enforcement to encourage “self-deportation.”
Yet implementing mass deportations would face significant logistical, financial, diplomatic, and legal hurdles—from scaling up ICE staffing and detention capacity to negotiating with countries that refuse to accept U.S. deportations.
Amid this mounting pressure, the names chosen by groups like Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans and Tucson Samaritans carry particular resonance, referencing scripture’s parable of the Good Samaritan who stopped to help a stranger left to die on a dangerous road. Today’s humanitarian workers face a similar moral imperative: offering aid to asylum seekers in deadly desert terrain, while some who profess Christian values work to criminalize and punish such assistance.
As these organizations brace for an uncertain future, volunteers bravely continue their daily missions, knowing that lives depend on their work. They have adopted a “keep calm and carry on” attitude, vowing to continue bringing water, rather than bullets, to those they find parched and weary in the desert.
The question remains whether such humanitarian principles will withstand the political pressures of a second Trump term, or whether decades of established aid work along the border will be recast as something more sinister in service of an aggressive deportation agenda.
