What an abandoned stroller tells us about our broken border with Mexico

We saw the stroller ahead of our vehicle, abandoned in the desert sand along the border wall.

As we approached, we all wondered the same. Was there a child in the stroller?

After 30 years witnessing the humanitarian disaster that is our border with Mexico, we knew a child might have died in that stroller.

We have known for a very long time that far too many children are traveling dangerous journeys with families trying to escape unsustainable lives in countries around the world.

They are delivered to our doorstep by the Mexican drug cartels — and make no mistake, every inch of our border with Mexico is controlled by gangs that now make as much money dealing people as they do dealing drugs.

Politicians make their propaganda tours

The cartels force migrants to cross the border wall in the most dangerous places, where they sometimes wait for days to be picked up by Border Patrol.

Yet still they come, asking for asylum and hoping beyond hope for a chance at a better, safer life.

If it wasn’t such a human tragedy, perhaps we could step back and see the comedy. For as long as I have lived here, there has been a parade of politicians coming for photo ops at the border.

Their tour begins and ends with Border Patrol agents, who give them the standard law enforcement perspective as they share their Christmas List like 3-year-olds: We need walls, cameras, blimps, towers, agents … and the list goes on and on.

After years of these propaganda tours, the Border Patrol seemingly has gotten everything on its list.

Today Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is the largest law enforcement agency in the United States, with a whopping budget of nearly $25 billion.

They say border security is the only fix

Our elected officials, both Republican and Democrat, have swallowed the bait. After listening to just one side of the story, they are united, thinking security is the only answer to the border crisis.

What happens when CBP and Border Patrol become the primary voices Congress hears on U.S. border and immigration policy? We end up with an emboldened cartel controlling the border with a ruthless, iron fist, charging $6,000 or more per person to cross.

Not to mention a massive humanitarian crisis at our border and millions of immigrants unable to legally support themselves in this country. The cartels could not have asked for a more perfect storm of incompetency.

And comically, the so-called “beautiful wall” that cost as much as $46 million a mile to build is useless, as it is regularly breached with a reciprocating saw.

CBP is so overwhelmed that they are now shutting down ports of entry and checkpoints, diverting agents to border stations to process asylum seekers.

America needs a work program instead

It is long past time for our elected officials to recognize that security has never been the main issue. The people crossing the border aren’t dangerous. They are poor, hardworking, family-loving people fleeing violence and unspeakable terror.

I would argue, in fact, that the very people who are crossing our border are the people we desperately need in the United States to fill jobs, build our communities and make our neighborhoods healthy and strong.

Money can’t solve this problem. But policies could.

Trading asylum seekers: For funding is simply wrong

Get people out of the dangerous desert and out of the hands of the cartel. Create a work program to fill the millions of jobs that are open in this country.

And by all means, stop elected officials from touring the border with Border Patrol.

I invite anyone who is interested in seeing what is really happening at our border to join any of the humanitarian groups that routinely visit the border to offer food and assistance to asylum seekers as they wait for Border Patrol agents to find them.

Migrants are weary. We simply try to help

As for the stroller we saw on the rainy Friday before Christmas? It was empty.

We hoped that the parent who carried the child some 10 miles or more on our side of the wall, from their crossing point to the Sasabe Port of Entry, made it.

We saw some 300 migrants that day. One man, who came across our table with burritos and hot cocoa, after walking over the top of one of the hills in the road, leaned against the wall and wept.

He was traveling alone, he said, and we could see how weary he felt. We saw him again as we drove back to Sasabe, close to his finish line, and we cheered for him as we drove by slowly.

When we saw another family we had helped that day and realized that they would not make it to the port of entry before sunset, we fastened one of our tarps against the wall to provide them a bit of shelter for the night.

It seemed a fitting end to our trip to the border that day, just a few days before Christmas.

Rev. Randy J. Mayer is the pastor of The Good Shepherd United Church of Christ in Sahuarita and a longtime humanitarian worker along the border. Reach him at RandyJMayer@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Border Patrol keeps growing, yet immigration remains broken