Missing from Mexico (http://missingfrommexico.com/category/what/page/5/)
Think I’m missing something? Tell me. I wants news from YOU – and now it’s a lot easier for you to submit articles, photos & video you find online with the fresh news submission form. Currently, not all articles end up on the news page where every entry has to be hand coded. But the next phase of the news project is a database display (which I’m working on now).
On the corner of my desk there’s a sealed manilla envelope that I’ve been avoiding. As I work on other things, cook, clean, and do everything else to avoid sitting down and opening it, it sits, waiting. The envelope has two copies of Andy’s dental records. Eddie mailed them after our last conversation, an extra set like the ones he’s taking to aid groups, medical examiners and law enforcement at every opportunity. “I sent two copies,” Eddie said.
I have to admit there’s been some unanticipated delays (somehow summer flu is always more surprising than the winter version) but as well as working on the news page project, I’ve been prepping background content and starting new reporting projects. So bear with me – there’s a lot in the works. Look for more short updates about interviews, records requests and other process work as stories get off the ground in the next weeks. Of course, this wouldn’t be a teaser post without a taste of what’s coming:
Well. Last Thursday, things did not go as planned
Well, unless the plan was to spend 3 hours in the desert trying to reach my source and hoping he was just running late (he wasn’t), things did not go as planned. The appointment had been to find out about an active search for a 21-year-old man who disappeared approximately 7 weeks ago. I’d spoken to the man leading that day’s trip and tracked down the phone number of the missing man’s father, who’d come to Tucson from Tennessee in hopes of finding answers, the original tip coming from a mass email:
“Could you please run on the [humanitarian organization] site a notice that there is a father here from [a southern state] who has been looking for his 21 yo son left by his group 5 weeks ago and please call and take him out if people have time?…He has been here in Tucson for five weeks, living on the street and searching daily…He’s been sent a map of where to look but it’s a very bad map from the person who was with his son and was apprehended and deported. The map maker would like to be paid for a better map……..BTW, he’s already checked the morgue (negative) and I will check hospitals today.”
If things go as currently planned, when this scheduled update posts I will be in the desert for more information on a story I have been following since last week. And then writing it up for to post, and then doing the originally planned update on Eddie’s search for his brother-in-law, Andy. It’s the latest in a series of big changes that are happening in my schedule and therefore will affect the blog a bit. My day to day schedule has changed a great deal as of June 1st, including switching from a nightshift back to daylight (or at least, trying to – I’ve been very confused about time since Friday and apparently getting back to daylight will take a little time!). What that means for the blog: a little upheaval in the short term as the blog switches to this new schedule too, but ultimately more regularity and reliability as I can better report and report back here.
A small border town scene: while waiting to meet someone this morning, I counted at least 27 Border Patrol vehicles (also 1 Immigration Customs Enforcement, several federal land management & multiple local emergency service vehicles) passing through Robles Junction between 6:14 & 7:13. (then as I type this: 3 more USBP & 1 ICE getting gas)
This is the last of a three part series on hiking in southern Arizona with humanitarian volunteers: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & photo gallery
The sun is emerging more frequently as we start take the left branch and begin the last stretch before we reach the border. There is no question that this trail is in use. There are signs of passing people everywhere, some old like a cloth shirt deteriorating into the debris in the stream bed but others fresh like a brightly colored Mexican toilet paper wrapper resting in the grass. The feet that trod these trails both leave and return to family. Migrants seeking jobs may be hoping to pay for anything from food and shelter to housing and medical care.
This is the second of a three part series on hiking in southern Arizona with humanitarian volunteers: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & photo gallery
There’s wildflowers everywhere. Tiny, low blue blossoms blanket the ground with taller, springier pink trumpets erupting at intervals in clumps. More infrequently there are also lacy white blooms and occasionally a burst of yellow or fiery flowers. But I’m still wearing all my layers. About 10 minutes in we come to a cache of water jugs.
This is the first of a three part series on hiking in southern Arizona with humanitarian volunteers: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & photo gallery
A few days before I was scheduled to hike with Samaritans, I walked into the parking lot and winced – not just because the heat was hitting me at that moment but because I knew that hiking in this heat with only limited shade would be even worse. But the desert in Arizona is far from predictable. I woke up that Saturday shivering and piled on the layers before starting the drive south. The car shook in winds that swept the highway before we even left Phoenix and the digital bulletin boards warned of possible haboob conditions on the I10. I shuddered, remembering coverage of an accident caused by haboob conditions near Picaco Peak in September 2011.