S4E15: The Fight to Save Lives on the U.S.-Mexico Border

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

0:00:01 - (Chris Clarke): 90 miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast is made possible by listeners just like you. If you want to help us out, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate or text needles to 53555.

0:00:26 - (Joe Geoffrey): Think the deserts are barren wastelands, Think again. It's time for 90 miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast.

0:00:44 - (Chris Clarke): Thank you, Joe, and welcome to 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Clarke, and in this episode we have what I think is a really interesting and really important interview with Laurie Cantillo, Chair of the Board of Directors of Humane Borders, an organization that is based in Tucson and is saving lives in the Sonoran Desert by putting out water stations for travelers, many of whom are crossing the desert in hopes of coming into the US and making a life here.

0:01:16 - (Chris Clarke): I think that for those of you who've been listening to this podcast for a while, you have gotten a hint that the border is a really important issue to me, and it's given really short shrift by a lot of media organizations. Any accurate reporting on the border is being done by independent outlets such as the Border Chronicle, who we've lauded in the past. There are others as well, mainly in the independent arm of the media.

0:01:42 - (Chris Clarke): You know, podcasts, things like that. Mainstream media, not so much. Both political parties in their run up to the last presidential election, seem to have come to the consensus that there was a crisis at the border, an invasion going on, and that the answer to that was to further harden the border. And nobody really challenged that mindset as we went into the election. And sadly, not only is that mindset rooted in racism and xenophobia and inhumane, it's also factually incorrect.

0:02:16 - (Chris Clarke): There were in a couple years previous, a lot of people showing up at the border and requesting asylum, not an invasion, as some conservative outlets are suggesting. This was people trying to do things the right way, people trying to come into the country legally having been granted asylum was their hope, for the most part, people trying to do things the right way. And that's not at all the narrative that's being paraded around us.

0:02:45 - (Chris Clarke): The rogue agency known as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is instead rounding up moms and dads and deporting kids with cancer, detaining American citizens by mistake, participating enthusiastically in things that I think are actually crimes against humanity, like systematically showing up in unmarked vehicles, plain clothes, with masks, obscuring their faces, not identifying themselves, not showing warrants, just showing up, grabbing people and throwing them into unmarked SUVs and driving away. And sometimes those people can't get in touch with their attorneys or with their family members.

0:03:20 - (Chris Clarke): This is a really horrendous turn in American politics. And in order to justify it, you'll hear supporters of this administration talk about the propensity to commit crimes within immigrant communities, especially violent crimes. And this is despite the fact that studies show exactly the opposite. A study in 2020 done by Michael T. Light Jing he and Jason P. Robie looked at arrest data from the Texas Department of Public Safety. If someone's arrested in Texas, the Texas Department of Public Safety checks and records their immigration status.

0:03:52 - (Chris Clarke): And it's a big enough state with enough of a migrant population, legal or otherwise, that it's a pretty good data set. As of 2020, the study found that native born US citizens are more than twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes as undocumented migrants, two and a half times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and more than four times more likely to be arrested for property crimes.

0:04:16 - (Chris Clarke): It turns out that you'd need significantly more than 11,000 statistically average undocumented migrants before you'd compile as many felonies as have been committed by the person sitting in the Oval Office. The Trump administration is uniquely vindictive and uniquely cruel about this issue. But this isn't just on Trump's watch. This is a bipartisan atrocity in the context in which Humane Borders works. In the Sonoran Desert, people have been dying in significant numbers while crossing the border since 1996, when the Clinton administration hardened the two easiest places to cross from Mexico into the U.S.

0:04:56 - (Chris Clarke): San Diego/Tijuana and El Paso/Juarez, the two largest border cities crossing in the urban setting used to be how a lot of people came in. The Clinton administration gambled that people would be reluctant to cross elsewhere because of the dangers involved in making your way through the desert. And and as Laurie Cantillo describes in our interview, that did not work. People kept coming. It just set people up for misery and death.

0:05:25 - (Chris Clarke): More than 4,000 deaths in the last couple decades of people crossing the border, and that's just based on who we found. The actual toll is likely significantly higher. The group Border Angels, which works to bring families news about the fate of their missing loved ones, estimates that since 1994, more than 10,000 people have died crossing from Mexico into the U.S. humane Borders is doing really important work trying to keep those numbers down.

0:05:53 - (Chris Clarke): And I'm thrilled to bring you an interview with their board chair, Laurie Cantillo. But first, this is where I usually thank the people who've become new donors since the Last episode, we don't have any. Possibly everybody's distracted by the goings on. You can get your name in an episode of this podcast. Just go to 90miles from needles.com. donate as little as a dollar a month really helps us out. In the last episode, I asked how people were doing and I got two responses.

0:06:24 - (Chris Clarke): Both of them were really lovely. I'm still curious about the rest of.

0:06:27 - (Chris Clarke): Our listeners, so if both of you.

0:06:28 - (Chris Clarke): Want to get in touch with me and let me know how you're doing. 7603921996 or chris@90miles from needles.com and with that, let's go to our chat with Laurie Cantillo of Humane Borders. Sam.

0:07:45 - (Chris Clarke): Laurie, it's an honor to have you here with us.

0:07:48 - (Chris Clarke): Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what Humane Borders does?

0:07:51 - (Laurie Cantillo): Well, thank you so much for this opportunity. I'm a big fan of your podcast and all your work on the environmental side of things. I am the board chair for Humane Borders. As you mentioned, we are now observing our 25th year of providing water in Southern Arizona. In the borderlands, our water is for everyone. It started as for migrants, but now we notice that it's being used by hikers and hunters, RVers who might run out of water. Border Patrol agents have told us that they've used the water recently. We've been doing some water drops for wildlife because we're in a drought situation here.

0:08:33 - (Laurie Cantillo): My background was as a journalist. I later went to work for NASA doing communications. And when I retired in Southern Arizona, I was shocked to hear about the number of migrant deaths that were happening in my own backyard. And I signed up. I said, can't unknow this fact. There have been 4,377 deaths in the last 25 years. One death every two days. And I said, I need to do something about this. So I volunteered as a driver.

0:09:04 - (Laurie Cantillo): And here I am four years later, and we're still going strong.

0:09:10 - (Chris Clarke): That's an inspiring story. You know, it's really, really hard to unknow certain things once you learn them. And I guess the test of who we are is how we respond to that. What are conditions like on the border right now? I mean, we hear that there's this onslaught of people. We've in previous episodes challenged that contention a bit. But I haven't been down to the border in about a year. What's going on down there?

0:09:38 - (Laurie Cantillo): It's rapidly changing. Just yesterday, a couple of volunteers with another humanitarian organization got photos of two US Army Stryker vehicles right along The Border Wall road. And that was quite a shocking sight for us. Again, we've been doing this work for 25 years, seeing a military presence in the borderlands. I can't think of a time when that has occurred. Normally, when we go out in the desert, we operate from the border north as far as 50, 60 miles, because this is as far as some people will get, and they're running out of water, and this is where they're dying.

0:10:16 - (Laurie Cantillo): And most days we don't see anyone. We might see a Border Patrol truck or two, but we don't generally see migrants. On rare occasions when we do, they're in distress and want us to contact Border Patrol because they're giving up. So we will give them water, food, and wait with them for Border Patrol to arrive. During 2023 and 2024, when more refugees were coming to the United States, there were days when we would see anywhere from 60 to a few hundred people from all over the world crossing.

0:10:49 - (Laurie Cantillo): And it was termed by some an invasion. But it was refugees exercising their right to claim asylum, not people to be fearful of. They were men, women and children. About 70% were families coming to seek asylum because of challenges they were facing in their home country, oppression, violence, and economic challenges. Now it's a much quieter situation at the border in terms of asylum seekers, because there is no more asylum in our country, unfortunately, no way for people to lawfully come in. Even those who came in lawfully are now being deported, unfortunately. And the legal way to come, the CBPOne app, as it was known, is no longer available to them.

0:11:37 - (Laurie Cantillo): Our concern is that the wall can easily be defeated. It's been an environmental catastrophe. And as you take away lawful pathways to asylum, more people will make that difficult and very dangerous decision to cross the desert. We are concerned that there will be more migrant deaths this year.

0:11:58 - (Chris Clarke): There's nothing inherent in the nature of the US Mexico border that says people have to cross in the Sonoran Desert. It's an outgrowth of policy that's. And sort of a bipartisan thing since 1996 or so.

0:12:15 - (Laurie Cantillo): That's right. Last fall was about the 30th anniversary of what's called prevention through deterrence. And the idea was that if we put border walls and militarized areas around San Diego and El Paso, where more people were entering the country, that they would never be crazy enough to try to cross in the middle of the desert, where temperatures can be as high as 120 degrees and you have thorn scrub and cactus and snakes and scorpions in very Remote areas with no services like water and shelter and food.

0:12:48 - (Laurie Cantillo): The government knew at the time that people would die, but did not expect it to occur at the scale that's happening. They figured if people die, that will discourage people from coming after them. But it didn't. Because people found that all the risks they faced entering the country through the desert, in their minds, were lower risk than what they would face back home if your partner had been decapitated, your daughter had been raped or forced to join a gang or that kind of thing.

0:13:19 - (Laurie Cantillo): So whatever obstacles our country has thrown in the way of people seeking asylum, they still come. They defeat the border wall by cutting through the steel bollards using a metal saw that you can find at a Home Depot. They tunnel under, they climb over. They find ways because they're desperate.

0:13:40 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah, it's struck me for a long time, actually since around 2006 when I was working at Earth Island Journal, editing that publication, and did a story on the border which was significantly different than it is now. Did a ride along with a border Patrol agent around Yuma and another one with some National Park Service staff in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It was in the summer, and I was there at the southern beginning of the trek to Interstate 8 or wherever people were heading.

0:14:15 - (Chris Clarke): There was no way that I, as a desert rat, could have been confident about making it the 60 miles from the border to the freeway. It struck me that if people are willing to brave that kind of peril to join us in this society, that seems like the kind of people we want.

0:14:36 - (Laurie Cantillo): That's right. They risk it all for what we as US Citizens take for granted. Rather than being criminals or sponging off our government, it's quite the reverse. The of criminal activity is much lower than us born residents. If you're an immigrant, you're more likely to be an entrepreneur, a small businessperson. You are the engine of our economy. And people are paying into the system without getting any services back. There's been a lot of false information about these people. I would much rather have as my neighbor someone who would cross the desert to become a U.S. citizen than someone who just wants to slam the door shut on people in need.

0:15:15 - (Laurie Cantillo): Particularly deporting people who have built lives here, who are contributing to our community, to our economy, following all the laws, doing all the right things. It breaks my heart that this is happening. That area that you talk about is one of the deadliest in all of the borderlands. Because of this funnel effect. We're going to see this magnify with demilitarization of the border where now that we're militarizing to the west and to the east, it's all going to be funneled through Arizona.

0:15:49 - (Laurie Cantillo): That is where we operate. I'll tell you a quick story. We have a board member named Dora Rodriguez who was fleeing violence in El Salvador as a teenager. She was with a group of 26 El Salvadorans who were crossing and 13 of her colleagues perished in the desert north of Oregon. Pipe she survived, but there is an iconic image of her being carried out of the desert near death by a border patrol agent.

0:16:19 - (Laurie Cantillo): She lost three dear friends. These were people simply trying to come into the country not to have a better life, but to have a life.

0:16:28 - (Chris Clarke): Right.

0:16:29 - (Laurie Cantillo): And we need to consider that and show compassion for these individuals and have a system that is fair and allows them to adjudicate their claims in a timely manner.

0:16:41 - (Chris Clarke): Absolutely.

0:16:42 - (Chris Clarke): It's always been interesting to me and have worked with undocumented people over the years a lot. And it's just the mischaracterization of the kind of people that make up the bulk of migrants. It's just infuriating that people are being described this way basically for reasons of racism, but also, you know, geopolitical maneuvering, things like that.

0:17:08 - (Laurie Cantillo): They're very careful with the propaganda to refer to these individuals as military aged men. I've seen them at work on the border. They'll show up for a day or two. We're out there every day, but they'll come for a couple days. As the border patrol was getting ready to process asylum seekers, they would line up the men in one line and the women and kids in another line. The far-right media would show only the men, generally men of color. Men from Africa.

0:17:36 - (Laurie Cantillo): They have a fetish about showing tattoos that somehow having a tattoo equates to being a criminal and referring to them as military aged men when they're working aged men. You know, vast, vast majority of these individuals are coming to work in our fields to pick the vegetables that we are enjoying this winter and our winter lettuce. They are working as landscaping crews, building our homes, working on our highways, many of them going on to become college educated.

0:18:10 - (Laurie Cantillo): When I was at NASA, we were the United Nations of scientists and engineers. And it was that diversity that made us better. But what really breaks my heart is seeing all the kids that are caught up in this. When we go in the desert and I find a baby shoe or a stroller or a baby food jar or a spoon, dolls we have found, it just breaks my heart because they are the innocent victims of all of this. No child should be in the middle of nowhere in the desert in these kinds of conditions, without food, water or shelter. And kids are dying out there too.

0:18:49 - (Laurie Cantillo): So I always like to say I look for common ground in our country. And can't we all at least agree that all human beings deserve water and that men, women and kids should not be dying in the desert because they don't have water? This should not be controversial. I was raised in rural Colorado in a Christian family. My father was a US Marine and I was taught to love thy neighbor and show kindness to the stranger.

0:19:17 - (Laurie Cantillo): What we do I have had face to face encounters with asylum seekers, hundreds of them over the last several years, and I have only felt a feeling of love and gratitude from them, appreciation. They want to help us put the water out, whatever they can do. The only fear I ever have at the border is from far-right militia and vigilante groups. And now I'm nervous about US Military, frankly, what that's going to look like in the months and perhaps years ahead.

0:19:49 - (Laurie Cantillo): Time will tell.

0:19:51 - (Chris Clarke): So, speaking of burgeoning fears, I know that the history of the relationship between the Border Patrol and Homeland Security on the one side and people that are working to save lives in the desert by putting out water and other necessary items, it's not always been the most collegial relationship, although there's variation, as you mentioned, with the Border Patrol agents who took advantage of the water that you put out.

0:20:23 - (Chris Clarke): But I'm wondering, given the context of the last few weeks in which we're seeing things like judges in Wisconsin being arrested for allegedly hindering the capture of migrants, whether that has shown up on your end of things, whether you've noticed a difference in the relationship between you and ICE and the Border Patrol.

0:20:46 - (Laurie Cantillo): Our philosophy is to try to get along with everyone. Water is the common denominator. So if we come across a Border Patrol agent somewhere in the desert, might roll down the window and wave and say, how you doing? Do you need some water? That's always a good way to start a conversation. And we can get a read pretty quickly. Whether they're friendly or not, I think it depends on the person. We have volunteers in a small town called Ajo in Arizona on the western side, where Border Patrol agents are neighbors of humanitarians, their kids play together on the same baseball team and everyone gets along.

0:21:23 - (Laurie Cantillo): We worked arm in arm with them when asylum seekers were coming through and received much appreciation from most of them for helping them do their job, keeping people cool and giving them Water and snacks. Border Patrol doesn't want to have to deal with medical emergencies or people dying out there either. It's incredibly traumatic for Border Patrol agents to find human remains, and that's part of the reason why they have a very high rate of suicide.

0:21:49 - (Laurie Cantillo): So if we can have a more compassionate border, it benefits everyone. I will say. Since the 2024 election, the relationship has chilled somewhat with agents. While some remain friendly who know us and work with us on a regular basis, there have been incidents just in the last week or so of agents pulling over humanitarians. In one case where they had several cases of water in the back of a pickup truck. Most of us who know the desert think that's really smart. You have water in your truck in case you break down or in case you come across someone who needs water. It should not be viewed as a threat. But this particular agent said, you look kind of sketchy to me because you have water, and that we could expect that people carrying water might fall under additional scrutiny in the months ahead.

0:22:42 - (Laurie Cantillo): We feel like this is starting to shift somewhat. I hope that is not the case. We used to enjoy annual meetings with the Border Patrol because if we can get along and all work together, it's best for migrants and migrant safety. I will reserve judgment, but in my experience, it has been on a case by case basis.

0:23:02 - (Chris Clarke): And for listeners who might be wondering whether or not they're going to get in trouble for taking water in the desert, take the water anyway.

0:23:09 - (Laurie Cantillo): Take it. We all need water. And when vigilantes vandalize our water stations, which unfortunately has become more common since November, I say just take. You know, the water could save your life. So take what you need, but leave the rest for everyone else. It's sad to me to come across a station that's been shot. They'll shoot holes in the barrels, stab them, write graffiti like MAGA on the sites, take the barrels, drain the barrels. It's become more brazen where they'll do it and post it on social media of themselves committing a crime. It's a misdemeanor, but it is a crime.

0:23:46 - (Laurie Cantillo): We have had success in the past with prosecuting people who do this.

0:23:51 - (Chris Clarke): It's just beyond me how people could.

0:23:53 - (Laurie Cantillo): Do something like that, take away water. You could be an accomplice to someone's death. I wouldn't want that on my conscience. Hope people will consider the ramifications that humanitarian aid is not a crime. It should not be political. Here's an example that I use. If you're walking down the street in Your neighborhood and someone collapses in front of you, would you ask them for proof of citizenship before rendering aid? Of course not.

0:24:20 - (Laurie Cantillo): It doesn't matter. We're all human. We all need water.

0:24:24 - (Chris Clarke): I'm intrigued to hear that you're putting out water for wildlife.

0:24:28 - (Chris Clarke): How is that going?

0:24:30 - (Chris Clarke): When did that start and how did. Does that differ from putting water out for folks? I mean, obviously people know how to use taps and animals don't necessarily.

0:24:39 - (Laurie Cantillo): Yeah, well, as you know, we're in a drought situation here. We had blessedly rain yesterday morning, but it was the first rain we'd had since August. So we didn't get the winter rains that we need. In southern Arizona we have incidental water use from wildlife. If we're refilling a barrel and draining some of the water out of the old barrel, boy, does that attract the butterflies and the bees. We have some game cameras on a few of our stations where we see jackrabbits.

0:25:09 - (Laurie Cantillo): I've seen cattle come over, take a drink or do that little back rub against the barrel, which is a lot of fun to see. We also see people who look like construction workers or ranchers coming to use the water, which is cool. Recently there was an organization in the state that asked if we would help replenish a catchment basin that wildlife use. That has been a temporary situation. I hope that we'll get to do more of that kind of thing. But going out Weekly with our 300 gallon tanks and adding water to the basin and then sure enough, seeing all the hoof prints and paw prints around that catchment, knowing that wildlife have come to drink from that water.

0:25:50 - (Laurie Cantillo): We also provide water for search and rescue and search and recovery experts in southern Arizona. There's some really heroic organization like Angels of the Desert that go out and when there are reports of missing migrants, they will try to find them, work with family, work with local property managers and hopefully have a positive outcome. We will provide them with water for drinking and showering.

0:26:15 - (Chris Clarke): We will have a link to Angels in our show notes. They do some really striking and important work. I was fortunate enough to go, let's just say, to a large national park on the border in Texas last year. There is a spot where the Rio Grande was flowing and there was no border crossing infrastructure other than a port of entry. But people were wandering back and forth across the river. It was very calm. The people coming in from Mexico were there to basically sell pastries and souvenirs to people who were visiting the national park and had some good conversations with people that lived across the river. The thing I thought of was that it was.

0:26:59 - (Chris Clarke): It was more like an ecotone, you know, border between two different environmental or ecological settings. The biodiversity in those borders is generally higher than it is in the places that the border runs between. And it just struck me that having a national border be more like an ecotone between two cultures where there's sharing and diversity and hopefully increased understanding as an opportunity rather than just mistrust and physical danger.

0:27:31 - (Chris Clarke): It's been good to have that in my mind as an alternative as we see the increased demonization of migrants and militarization of the border.

0:27:40 - (Laurie Cantillo): You remind me of a time when I used to own property along the border. And I remember how easy it was to go back and forth. I would walk across to Nogales, Mexico and do some shopping for the day, have lunch and enjoy a great day. And people from Mexico would cross over and shop at the Walmart in Nogales, Arizona. It was friendly. And we continue to have families that live on both sides of the border.

0:28:06 - (Laurie Cantillo): So people who actually live in the borderlands don't view the border as being this demarcation of, well, here's America, here's Mexico. You keep out. It's always been historically a place of culture and collaboration and people respecting and embracing people from different backgrounds. There isn't this kind of fear that went with militarization. I've certainly would never call it an invasion. In fact, the invasion that's happening is what we're seeing now with the US military presence. To your point about the environment, I am heartbroken because here in Southern Arizona, one of our treasured areas, the San Rafael Valley, is now being targeted for 25 more miles of border wall. This is a natural grassland. It's where the movie Oklahoma was filmed. John Wayne has hung out in this area.

0:28:59 - (Laurie Cantillo): You can find antelope, deer. The biodiversity diversity is off the charts in the sky island region of Arizona. Because of our two rainy seasons and all these biomes from low to high, we have peaks that are 10,000 ft in this area. We have jaguars coming across the border from northern Mexico, ocelots. I also volunteer for an environmental group that's been fighting a mine near the community of Patagonia. Now they're going to have this double whammy of the water being extracted.

0:29:31 - (Laurie Cantillo): 6 million gallons a day for the mine, in addition to water needed to create cement for the border wall. I am just devastated to think of all of these enormous trucks carrying materials to build a wall in an area with very few migrant crossings yet. Wildlife depend on crossing back and forth.

0:29:53 - (Chris Clarke): For their very survival is maddening, absolutely maddening.

0:29:58 - (Laurie Cantillo): It's heartbreaking.

0:30:00 - (Chris Clarke): The one good thing I can think of is that this wall will fall down of its own accord. Probably before I do. We had an interview with Myles Traphagen about a year ago talking about exactly this.

0:30:11 - (Laurie Cantillo): I know Myles.

0:30:12 - (Chris Clarke): He's doing some amazing work and I'm hoping to get him on again soon. There's no reason for this, obviously.

0:30:18 - (Laurie Cantillo): No, it's. It's a political prop. It's border theater. There's already been parts of the border wall that have fallen down due to erosion because they can't really take into account what happens when you build a wall through a river or a seasonal wash or arroyo. The wall requires constant maintenance as well. I've already seen sections of the wall where it's rusting badly. And these are parts of the wall that were only built a few years ago.

0:30:46 - (Laurie Cantillo): You can see where the erosion, it just erodes right underneath the walls, making it easy for humans to CR A fool's errand. I come from the generation that remembers when the Berlin Wall came down and how America celebrated and how Ronald Reagan celebrated immigrants as being the lifeblood of our country. I'm not sure exactly how we got to where we are today. I think it had a lot to do with fear mongering and disinformation.

0:31:15 - (Laurie Cantillo): So our goal is to be a nonpartisan boots on the ground firsthand, bearing witness to what's really happening at the border and sharing with the American and the world what is really happening here. We're not some of these propagandists who show up for a day or two. They're live streaming and then they leave. We're here day in and day out. This is our home. This is where we live, and this is the community and the wildlife that we care deeply about.

0:31:44 - (Chris Clarke): How can people find out more about humane borders?

0:31:48 - (Laurie Cantillo): You can go to humaneborders.org we're also on most social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook threads and TikTok. And that'll tell you all you need to know about us. We are a 501C3. We do not receive any federal funding. All of our donations are from private individuals and groups like church groups. We are almost exclusively volunteer driven. It's people like me who are retirees. We have students, we have people who are working and going out on the weekends with us.

0:32:22 - (Laurie Cantillo): I like to say that people come for the mission but stay for the the camaraderie and the amazing people. So we love volunteers. We lose a lot of our Snowbirds in the summertime. So if you're available in the summer, come out and join us. You'll learn a lot about what's happening in the borderlands. You'll see some beautiful country with wildlife. And I saw a crested caracara the other day, which made my heart seeing there's a net in a saguaro on one of our water runs that we check on periodically. And you'll enjoy great camaraderie.

0:32:55 - (Laurie Cantillo): It's not like you're out there fearing for your life in the middle of a war zone. It's quite to the contrary. It's a beautiful outing in the desert with friends.

0:33:04 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah.

0:33:05 - (Chris Clarke): So is there anything I should have asked you that I have not?

0:33:10 - (Laurie Cantillo): Wow, you've been very thorough. I would just ask people to go to a lot of different sources for your news. Don't just believe everything you see on the Internet because a lot of this is being shared for political gain at the expense of border communities that are really being impacted by what's happening. And I do feel strongly that everyone should come to the border and see with their own eyes what the reality is here.

0:33:37 - (Laurie Cantillo): Don't you know they're playing clips from two years ago about asylum seekers trying to imply that people are still streaming through here and that is absolutely not the case. So all of those strikers that look like tanks, right, that are going up and down the border wall road, I think they're going to be very bored, frankly. And it is kind of a shocking sight to see in our peaceful deserts here.

0:34:00 - (Chris Clarke): Just more people for you to offer water.

0:34:02 - (Laurie Cantillo): That was our plan. We wanted to keep barrels out there. So if US Military need them, they're not going to be heat conditioned to the conditions that we have out here. It's very rugged. I think they're going to be in for an awakening. And yes, our water is for them as well.

0:34:18 - (Chris Clarke): Laurie Cantillo, thank you so much for joining us and for the crucial work you're doing with Humane Borders.

0:34:24 - (Laurie Cantillo): We deeply respect what you're doing as well. All right.

0:35:02 - (Chris Clarke): And that's it for this.

0:35:03 - (Chris Clarke): Episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection podcast. Thank you for listening. I especially want to thank Lori Cantillo of Humane Borders for talking to us. It was just a very illuminating conversation. You can find humane borders@humaneborders.org you can.

0:35:20 - (Chris Clarke): Also look in our show notes for more info.

0:35:25 - (Chris Clarke): Thanks as always to our voiceover guy, Joe Geoffrey and the fellow who came up with our podcast artwork, Martín Mancha. Our theme song, Moody Western, is by Brightside Studio. Other music in this episode is by Eddie Honcho. This is a seasonally appropriate topic for this podcast. It is getting warm in the desert, which may sound like a statement about the religious beliefs of the pontiff or the gastrointestinal whereabouts of bears, but nonetheless, it's worth reminding ourselves that as beautiful and valuable and irreplaceable as the desert is, it really doesn't care all that much whether we live or die.

0:36:08 - (Chris Clarke): And so that's up to us. We need to take care of ourselves. Be sure you let people know where you're going when you go for a hike, especially when it's warm. Take more water than you think you'll need. If possible, make sure you have something that will allow you to get help. I have a spot locator beacon, which I would have thought was a complete extravagance 10 years ago or so, and the age creeps up, the knees give out and we have a lot of work to do. So we need to live through the summer.

0:36:37 - (Chris Clarke): So when you're hiking and you realize half your water is gone, it's time to turn around. Live to hike another day and I will see you at the next watering hole. Bye now.

0:36:52 - (Joe Geoffrey): 90 miles for needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Media Network.