Lukeville border closure: Asylum seekers forced to spend days and nights in Arizona desert

ORGAN PIPE CACTUS NATIONAL MONUMENT — Enrique González Sandoval tugged on his sweatshirt sleeve to reveal the number 208 etched onto his wrist in blue ink. That's his place in line.

González Sandoval sat on his backpack that was nestled above silver thermal blankets and the rugged terrain of the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument Monday. Coarse white hair spilled out of his baseball cap and gave way to his face, which resembled worn leather.

González Sandoval was only a mile from his home in Sonoyta, Sonora, the city across the border from Lukeville. Escalating cartel violence in the area and personal threats to his life pushed him to leave town and seek asylum near Lukeville.

Victor Navor Rojas, an asylum seeker from Culiacán, Sinaloa, sat across from González Sandoval. Navor Rojas slipped a blue pen from his backpack, smudged off the number from González Sandoval’s wrist and wrote 168 directly above.

González Sandoval had moved up in line.

Cheers and applause erupt from the group when empty U.S. Customs and Border Protection transport vans arrive and handfuls of people are taken aboard. If new arrivals try to cut the line, they are met with shouts and waving fingers telling them to go to the end.

As he sat, González Sandoval took a long breath from a short cigarette. It was the afternoon and the line showed no signs of moving further.

The two companions sat in a semi-circle amid a crowd of nearly 1,000 other asylum seekers who were waiting to be processed and taken to a Border Patrol station. The group was mostly composed of single adult men as arriving women and children were taken directly to the front of the line and separated into another group.

The group was composed of people from around the globe. Asylum seekers from Senegal, Ecuador, Haiti, Mauritania, Afghanistan, India and Mexico gathered together in three separate lines.

Hundreds of asylum seekers have been crossing the border through the remote desert area and waiting for agents to process them. The number of asylum seekers in the area has strained Border Patrol operations and forced CBP to temporarily shutter the Lukeville Port of Entry so port officers can help process people.

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As CBP struggles to transport and process the ever growing group, hundreds of people have been relegated to spend days unsheltered in the rugged and remote terrain. Despite humanitarian efforts, food and water is scarce.

The Border Patrol rarely allows humanitarian volunteers to hand out food to the crowd. Agents allow people to get water from the nearby Humane Borders water tanks after they're refilled.

A group of men from India had been waiting for six days while a man from Afghanistan had waited for four. There were several separate accounts of people needing medical attention and passing out among the group.

One asylum seeker in the group experienced seizures and was transported by EMS to a local hospital for treatment, according to CBP. There have not yet been any deaths in the area, according to CBP.

“One comes fleeing their country for security from everything that’s happening and to come and die over here,” said Marco Mejia, an asylum seeker from Ecuador.

“Imagine sleeping on the floor there with nothing, only with the clothes that you have.”

People in Mexico have begun to come up to the wall and sell bread, soda and sandwiches to the group. The inflated prices, however, are far too expensive for many who have run out of money or been robbed along their journey to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“They don’t give us water. They don’t give us food,” Navor Rojas said.

While the days bring hunger and thirst, the nights are worse.

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Asylum seekers build campfires to endure the frigid nighttime temperatures. Many have two to three layers of clothes on to keep warm.

Agents sometimes force them to put the fires out.

The situation is similar to one in Jacumba Hot Springs, California, where asylum seekers have had to live in open-air desert camps after crossing the border. Border Patrol agents watch over them but many are left to brace the elements unsheltered for days.

People near Lukeville have been able to cross the border wall because smugglers have been continuously cutting the steel wall bollards to file people through. Government welders go along the wall and seal the holes, but it’s not enough.

“They close one and the mafia opens 10,” González Sandoval said.

The Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector recorded 17,500 migrant encounters in the last week of November, according to John Modlin, chief patrol agent of the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector.

The numbers equate to 2,500 average migrant encounters per day in the sector. The Tucson sector has remained the busiest corridor for migrant encounters for four months straight.

Agents have set up a staging tent north of where the group is in order to hold asylum seekers while they’re taken to Border Patrol stations in Ajo or Yuma.

“The U.S. is continuing to see ebbs and flows of migrants arriving fueled by seasonal trends and the efforts of smugglers to use disinformation to prey on vulnerable migrants and encourage migration,” according to a written statement from a CBP spokesperson.

“As we respond with additional resources and apply consequences for unlawful entry, the migration trends shift as well.”

The decision to close the crossing has garnered nearly unanimous backlash from advocates, residents and state, tribal and congressional leaders. The closed port will hinder people’s ability to study, shop, work, visit family and receive medical care on both sides of the border.

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Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., sent a letter Tuesday to President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas urging them to reopen the Lukeville crossing while asking the administration to deploy the Federal Emergency Management Agency to surge resources at the border.

“We require an immediate surge in resources and staffing in southern Arizona but recent actions including closing the Lukeville Port of Entry (POE) are unnecessary and inclusively force migrants to even more dangerous areas as they attempt to exercise their international right to seek asylum,” Grijalva wrote in the letter.

Grijalva described the situation as “unsustainable and a dereliction of federal responsibility.”

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs expressed worries Monday that CBP may decide to close more ports along the Arizona-Mexico border. Still, Hobbs said that there are no plans to deploy the National Guard to Lukeville.

As the afternoon stretched into night, people began gathering firewood from the brush nearby. Asylum seekers carried sticks, branches and sometimes the bones of a dead saguaro back toward the wall in preparation for the cold night.

Wind gusts kicked dirt and thermal blanket shards into the air, forming a small dust devil behind González Sandoval and Navor Rojas. One asylum seeker quickly sat down on the remaining thermal blankets in his spot before the wind took them away.

A pair of transport vans pulled into the area in front of the group, ready to take more people.

A cheer soon rose from the group.

Have a news tip or story idea about the border and its communities? Contact the reporter at josecastaneda@arizonarepublic.com or connect with him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @joseicastaneda.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Lukeville border closure: Hundreds wait for days in Arizona desert