Arizona Border Spy Corporations and Human Rights Abusers Exposed in new Global Border Report

Israeli spy tower being constructed by Elbit on the Tohono O'odham Nation. Photo copyright Ofelia Rivas. Wackenhut bus, now owned by G4S, profiting from transporting detained migrants at Three Points, Arizona. Photo by Brenda Norrell.

Arizona Border Spy Corporations and Human Rights Abusers Exposed in new Global Border Report

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News

Censored News investigates the spy contractors and human rights abusers exposed in a new global report, beginning with two companies on the Arizona border that are linked to abuses in Palestine and torture in prisons.

The Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems is now completing spy towers in the remote portion of the western Tohono O'odham Nation.

Stolen Generations: The Native Children Who Never Came Home

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

CARLISLE, Penn. -- Lakota Nick Estes writes in a new article about the generations of Indian children stolen by the United States. Many of those children never came home. They died of starvation, pneumonia, beatings and other abuse. Across North America, Australia and New Zealand, Indigenous children were routinely stolen and forced into residential schools where many died.

In Estes' article, 'The U.S. Stole Generations of Indian Children to Open the West,' at High Country News, he writes, "Nearly 200 Native children lie buried at the entrance of the Carlisle Barracks in the “Indian Cemetery” — the first thing you see when entering one of the United States’ oldest military installations. It is a grisly monument to the country’s most infamous boarding school, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which opened in 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and closed in 1918. Chiseled onto the white granite headstones, arranged in the uniform rows typical of veterans’ cemeteries in the U.S., are the names and tribal affiliations of children who came to Carlisle but never left. Thirteen gravestones list neither name nor tribe; they simply read 'UNKNOWN.'”
Read more here.

Today. President Trump and those who follow his orders are responsible for the incarceration of children in migrant prisons, where they are starved, sexually abused, drugged and beaten. Numerous have died while others suffer without medicine and treatment. Separated from their families, they languish in hopeless jail cells, while other stolen migrant children have been adopted in illegal acts. Many of these children are Indigenous from Mexico and Central America. The abuse and theft of children have been well documented by the media and members of the U.S. Congress.

It is time for Nuremberg style trials, which will prosecute Trump and all those who carried out his orders in the theft, incarceration and abuse of migrant children, as was done with those who followed Hitler's orders.

Estes writes, "Although Luther Standing Bear eventually returned to his home at the Rosebud Agency, many of his peers didn’t. 'The change in clothing, housing, food, and confinement combined with lonesomeness,' Standing Bear reasoned, “was too much.” He estimated that in the first three years at Carlisle, nearly half the Lakota children of his class died. 'In the graveyard at Carlisle most of the graves are those of little ones,' he lamented."

On the Longest Walk 2008, I photographed the cemetery at Carlisle Indian School to share with the families of the Children Who Never Came Home. At Carlisle, there were 10,000 Indian children in the boarding school between 1879 and 1918. There are 186 graves that are marked with a tombstone. An unknown number of children were buried without markers. Many of those who died were Lakotas, Cheyenne and Apache, known as fierce fighters, who no doubt fought for their freedom and justice. The children were stolen from all across the United States.

In the cemetery, names remember the children of Carlisle. Fanny Charging Shield, Sioux, died March 7, 1892; Susia Nach Kea, Apache, died May 14, 1889; Godfrey Blatcha, Apache, died July 1890; Cooking Look, Alaskan, died Jan. 4, 1904; Alice Springer, Omaha, died Nov. 12, 1883; Henry Jones, Iowa, died March 20, 1880; Nannie Little Rose, Cheyenne; Albert Henderson; Giles Hands, died May, 1881, Cheyenne; Maul, daughter of Chief Swift Bear, Sioux, died Dec. 1880; Ernest, son of Chief White Thunder, Sioux, died Dec. 14, 1880; Isabel Kelcusay, Apache, died on Christmas day, Dec. 25, 1884; Pedro Sanchez, Apache, died in May of 1885; Frank Cushing, Pueblo, died July 22, 1881; William Sammers, Cheyenne, died May 21, 1888, Corine Simohtie, Apache, died Feb. 11, 1886; Sibyl Mapko, Apache; Kate Rosskidwitts, Witchita, died Jan. 10, 1882, John Bytzolay and all the others.


Read more here.

The Border: When the Mohawks came to the Tohono O'odham Nation

Kahentinetha Horn, publisher of Mohawk Nation News, shows her Haudenausaunee passport, while a Mohawk warrior holds the sacred Two Rows Wampum Belt of the Mohawks. Photo by Brenda Norrell, San Xavier, Tohono O'odham Nation.

Mohawks join a delegation of Pueblo, Lakota, Oneida, Dine' and South African on the border on the Tohono O'odham Nation in 2007. Photo by Brenda Norrell

"We were passing some of our strength on to them to fight," Kahentinetha Horn said after Mohawks rushed the US Border Patrol arresting Indigenous women and children on the Tohono O'odham Nation in 2007. Now, 12 years later, as Americans awake from their Walmart shopping induced coma, these words and this action have increased power and importance.

Article and photos by Brenda Norrell
Censored News
Originally published Nov. 8, 2007
Republished July 8, 2019

THE GATE, TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION (Arizona) --Indigenous delegates to the border on Tohono O'odham Nation land were outraged by the federal agents, hovering customs helicopter, profiteering contractors, federal spy tower, federal "cage" detention center and watching the arrest of a group of Indigenous Peoples, mostly women and children, by the US Border Patrol on an Indian Nation.
"We saw it all firsthand in America," said Bill Means, Lakota and cofounder of the International Indian Treaty Council on Nov. 8, when an Indigenous delegation went to the US/Mexico border here, south of Sells, to document human rights abuses for a report to the United Nations.
"Now we are going to take this wall down," Means said, after viewing the construction of a border vehicle barrier by contractors and National Guard on Tohono O'odham land.
Speaking a few hours later to the Indigenous Peoples Border Summit of the Americas II in San Xavier, Means called for solidarity of Indigenous Peoples throughout the world to halt the arrests of Indigenous Peoples who are walking north in search of a better life, and solidarity to bring down the US/Mexico border wall.
"One inch of intrusion into our land is not acceptable!" Mohawk Mark Maracle told the Border Summit. "I became very angry when I saw those guys rounding up our people.
"It is a violation of our Great Law to witness what we did today and do nothing about it."

Howling Tweeter Trump removes tariff threat, after Mexico arrests migrant caravan leaders

Trump howls about agreement reached with Mexico, after Mexico arrests migrant caravan leaders in Mexico City and Sonora

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

TUCSON -- After threatening devastating tariffs on Mexico's goods, Trump announced Friday that the US and Mexico reached an agreement. Trump said Mexico agreed to  buy large quantities of US farm produce -- a move that will be devastating for Indigenous and other farmers. Trump said Mexico agreed to take action to halt migrants from entering the United States.
The howling tweeter Trump -- making no mention of the fact that he is the descendant of migrants, and the First Lady is a migrant -- made the announcement on Friday, after two leading migrant caravan leaders were arrested in Mexico on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Mexico's media reported, "Cristóbal Sánchez and Irineo Mujica were arbitrary detained on June 5 in Mexico City and Sonora, respectively on fabricated charges of human trafficking. Cristóbal Sánchez was detained outside his house in Xochimilco, Mexico City, at gunpoint and without a warrant by 6 men in plain-clothes that identified themselves as judicial police. In Sonoyta, Sonora, Irineo Mujica was detained by three officers in plain-clothes who handcuffed him and took him to Hermosillo, Sonora. The arrests of these Human Rights activists, just minutes apart, comes after several days of threats from Donald Trump to increase tariffs on Mexican goods, if Mexico does not take steps to detain Central American migrants and refugees who are seeking safety in the United States."

"Both Cristóbal and Irineo have been victims of harassment, criminalization and threats by different administrations of the Mexican government, including the current government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as well as by organized crime groups. Only in February this year, prior to a meeting with the former US former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristen Nielsen, Sánchez Cordero publicly attacked the humanitarian work of Sánchez and Mujica, leading to harassment and several death threats against them and other human rights activists." Read more

Trump, continuing his ridiculous pattern of tweeting matters of international crisis, tweeted on Saturday: "MEXICO HAS AGREED TO IMMEDIATELY BEGIN BUYING LARGE QUANTITIES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT FROM OUR GREAT PATRIOT FARMERS!"
CNN reports: 'A declaration amid a crisis'
The United States and Mexico signed onto a joint declaration as a result of the negotiations. The State Department said in a statement that as part of the agreement, Mexico will take "unprecedented steps" to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration, including the deployment of its National Guard throughout the country -- giving priority to Mexico's southern border.
The countries also agreed that individuals caught crossing into the US from Mexico seeking asylum will be "rapidly returned" to Mexico where they will await consideration of their asylum claims. Mexico, the declaration says, will authorize the entrance of all of those individuals. Mexico says it will offer jobs, health care and education to those people. In return, the US must expedite the asylum adjudication process...
Read more in CNN article

However, the New York Times reports that much of the agreement had already been reached, before Trump's boastful screeching tweets. Mexico had already agreed to deploy its National Guard to halt migration, focusing on the southern border.

Publisher's note: Who's the coyote now?
Alternate words for 'howling,' as the Thesaurus tells me, are braying, trumpeting, cackling, screeching, and caterwauling, Since howling refers to coyotes, I've decided on howling for the headline. Then there's braggart, boaster, an exaggerator, bullshitter, blowhard, gasbag, windbag, and crowing, according to Roget's Thesaurus.
By the way, 'caterwauling' means to "make a shrill howling or wailing noise like that of a cat." And braying refers to a donkey or mule, and to speaking or laughing loudly and harshly.

Psychotic Collapse Endangers Life at Border, as U.S Government Bottoms Out

Military vehicles like this one swarmed the Tohono O'odham region today, because of the racist hysteria of the U.S. President.

U.S. soldiers are now used as pawns in psychotic breakdown -- as U S. government bottoms out

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News

LUKEVILLE, Arizona-- Lukeville is just beyond the western edge of the Tohono O'odham Nation. It is a small border crossing vital to locals who need groceries and to go to the hospital.
It is now besieged in a costly, waste of money and military, because of the racist hysteria of an unstable US President.
Today, U.S. military swarm the Tohono O'odham homelands in the border region.
The Tohono O'odham tribal government continues to allow the U.S. Border Patrol to operate on O'odham land. Border Patrol agents continue their longstanding abuse of O'odham in their homeland.
The delusional xenophobia of the U.S. President comes as migrant asylum seekers travel to the U.S. border, fleeing the violence fueled by covert U.S. operations in Central America.

Flagstaff Action -- Sheriff Criminalizing Migrant Families -- Sept. 18, 2018

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Community Responds to Driscoll’s

Criminalization and Separation of Migrant Families

Sheriff Driscoll continues to cooperate with ICE by choice, after lawsuit determines no obligation

What: Day of Action to Expose Sheriff Driscoll, Donald Trump, and Jeff Sessions’s Criminalization Tactics toward Migrant Communities
Who: Repeal Coalition, Flagstaff Community Coalition, Migrant Communities and Allies

When:  Tuesday, September 18, 2018; 5:00PM - 7:00 PM

Where:  City Hall Lawn, Flagstaff, Arizona

Flagstaff, Arizona --  Images of children in prisons at the border and stories of family separation by ICE and Border Patrol agents have become nationwide news in recent months. However, these cases of injustice are not isolated to only the border region; they happen within the city limits of Flagstaff, Arizona. Family separation occurs when our Coconino County Sheriff, Jim Driscoll, collaborates with ICE officials. Even though a recent court ruling declared that Driscoll has no obligation to work with ICE, he is actively choosing to partake in separating immigrant families in our community. Driscoll has a choice, and he is choosing to stand on the side of racist policies and racial profiling. We demand that Driscoll stop facilitating the deportation of Flagstaff community members, and that our city and county officials adopt policies and practices that keep families free and together. We call upon these officials to provide transparency regarding their relationships with ICE and the deportation process, and to open avenues for the public to help create policies that do not racially profile, separate families, or require immigrants to endure a double-punishment system. Every person has the right to live, love and work freely wherever they please.

#ICEoutofflagstaff #ICEfueradeflagstaff #Driscollhasachoice #abolishICEAZ

Join us Tuesday, September 18th at 5:00 p.m. at Flagstaff City Hall as the community rallies to demand the end to Sheriff Driscoll’s cooperation with ICE and FPD’s complicity with ICE, and demand that our City Council and County officials protect our community.

###

www.facebook.com/RepealCoalitionAZ

Repeal Coalition is a community collective that firmly believes every human being

deserves a right to live, love and work wherever and whomever they please.
Our work is done with, not for, the communities directly affected by unjust policies.

https://www.facebook.com/FlagstaffFreedomCity

Flagstaff Community Coalition is a coalition of community members from 

various organizations and communities in Northern Arizona working to cultivate 

an intersectional freedom city/sanctuary city movement in Flagstaff.

---

Frankie Beesley

Field Organizer, Puente Arizona 

Organizer, Repeal Coalition Arizona 

franks.beesley1104@gmail.com

PHOENIX -- Transporter of Stolen Migrant Children was 'Black Contract' Operator in Iraq and Afghanistan

(Top photo) MVM's secret black contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan were exposed when MVM was sued by an employee. Now in Phoenix, MVM was caught on video stashing migrant children in an abandoned office building. (Photos 2 and 3) MVM advertised for youth care workers in Phoenix in June. In the photos, Native youths can be seen taking young migrant children into the black site in midtown Phoenix, including one under three years old.

Security contractor manned 'black site' prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, protecting the torturers, and now has U.S. contracts to transport migrant children

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

PHOENIX -- The security contractor MVM was caught on video stashing children stolen from their migrant parents in a midtown Phoenix office building in June. MVM was a secret "black contract" operator in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Wall Street Journal.

MVM's secret contracts protecting the CIA and NSA, and manning secret black site prisons, became public in 2004 when MVM was sued in Colorado for sloppy work by an employee.

Today, MVM holds U.S. government contracts for the transport of migrant children.

MVM was caught on video in June stashing migrant children, as young as toddlers, at 2030 E. Osborn St. in Phoenix. MVM had just leased the office building and it was not licensed to hold children for days and weeks.

A neighbor's cellphone captured the video of the children being taken from white vans to inside the building, where neighbors said dozens of children were held up to 3 weeks.

A Phoenix police report reveals that one of the children, a 17-year-old boy, escaped and ran away.

Meanwhile, an ad in San Antonio reveals MVM is also hiring the staff at Southwest Key, where migrant children stolen from their parents at the borders are jailed, according to the directives of the Trump administration.

Southwest Key is now incarcerating migrant children throughout the Southwest.

After Trump began his "zero tolerance" plan, migrant children were photographed being held in cages in detention facilities. Lawsuits now expose extensive sexual and physical abuse of migrant children, and extensive neglect of babies, stolen by the U.S. government from their parents at the borders.

MVM currently has an $8 million U.S. contract to transport migrant children, and another $162 million U.S. contract to transport unaccompanied minors.

Read the article in the Wall Street Journal on MVM's black contracts, and the lawsuit against MVM:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121485921602717113

View video of MVM taking migrant children inside an abandoned office building in Phoenix:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2018/07/video-migrant-children-being-taken.html?m=1

Article copyright Brenda Norrell, Censored News

U.S. lost 1,500 migrant children, repeating horror of stolen Native American children

Vice.com "Trump's inhumane border policies are tearing families apart and traumatizing children."
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43539q/what-separating-migrant-families-at-the-border-actually-looks-like

U.S. lost 1,500 migrant children, repeating horror of stolen Native American children

Article by Brenda Norrell
Censored News

The New York Times reports that the Department of Health and Human Services told members of Congress on Thursday that the agency "had lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children it placed with sponsors in the United States, raising concerns they could end up in the hands of human traffickers or be used as laborers by people posing as relatives."
Native Americans point out that this horrific abuse follows the pattern of the United States stealing Native children.
Linda Black Elk said, "Native people know what it is like to have their children stolen. Thousands of Native children were taken to boarding schools and never heard from again. Many of them now lay in unmarked graves outside the walls of Carlisle, Anadarko, Cantonment, Chilocco, and so many other institutions. Imagine the babies who were stolen off their streets and taken thousands of miles away, where they contracted severe illnesses or were abused to the point of death. "What were they thinking as they were dying? "Were they wondering where their parents were?
"Is that what happened to the 1,500 Indigenous immigrant children that were 'lost' by the United States government? What kinds of horrors did they experience at the hands of sex traffickers, rapists, pedophiles, and abusers? How many of them cried for their mothers? "How many of them are still alive?
"Why is this still happening?" asks Black Elk, who is well remembered at Standing Rock Water Protectors Healing and Medic Tent and continues to share knowledge about healing plants.
Standing Rock Water Protectors point out that even the metal cages imprisoning migrant children, shown above, are the same inhumane, degrading cages Native Americans were imprisoned in at Standing Rock, when they were arrested praying for the water, as Dakota Access Pipeline tore through their ancestral lands.
New York Times reports that Steven Wagner, the acting assistant secretary of the agency’s Administration for Children and Families, disclosed during testimony before a Senate homeland security subcommittee that the agency had learned of the missing children after placing calls to the people who took responsibility for them when they were released from government custody.

"The children were taken into government care after they showed up alone at the Southwest border. Most of the children are from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, and were fleeing drug cartels, gang violence and domestic abuse, government data shows."

The Trump administration is now seizing migrants children at the border.

The Washington Post reports that this is torture.

"In two speeches last week in the border states of Arizona and California, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that as a matter of enforcement, if an unauthorized migrant brings a child across the United States-Mexico border without documentation, “we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.," writes Jaana Juvonen and Jennifer Silvers.

Read article: 'Separating children from their parents is not just cruel. It is torture.'
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/05/15/separating-children-from-parents-at-the-border-isnt-just-cruel-its-torture/?utm_term=.1e4b1c80394b

The horrific testimony exposing the United States reckless handking of migrant children came one day after a Mayan woman hiding in the bushes was shot in the head and executed by the U.S. Border Patrol on the Texas border.

The Guardian reports, "A Guatemalan woman shot dead by a border patrol agent in Texas has been named as Claudia Patricia Gómez Gonzáles by local media outlets which reported that she travelled to the US in the hope of finding work to pay for her education.

"Gómez, a 20-year-old Maya-Mam indigenous woman, died on Wednesday after she was shot in the head by an agent in the border town Rio Bravo,Texas.

Read Claudia's story, say her name:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/25/woman-shot-dead-border-patrol-rio-bravo-texas-identified?CMP=fb_us

                                                                     Migrant Children

New York Times article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/us/politics/migrant-children-missing.html

Notes:

The snakes on the border have been profiting from migrant misery for a long time. The buses to transport detainees on the Arizona border were operated by Wackenhut, who also had a security contract for Peabody Coal on Big Mountain. Wackenhut split into two companies for maximum profiteering from misery and abuse. Wackenhut Transportation was acquired by G4S in London, and GEO became one of the notorious private prison contractors in the Southwest. The Israeli defense contractor carrying out Apartheid in Palestine, Elbit Systems, was given the U.S. contract for the spy towers, integrated fixed towers, now targeting traditional communities on the Tohono O'odham Nation. G4S in London still has the transporation contract. 
.

Photo Wackenhut bus, with US Border contact, waiting to load up migrants on the Arizona border, next to Tohono O'odham Nation at Three Points. Photo copyright Brenda Norrell 2007.

On this same day, when temperatures were over 112, and we had no air conditioning, we drove around the border, and documented the US Border Patrol agents sitting in their air conditioned vehicles, talking on their cell phones most of the time, throwing their Starbucks cups on the ground, spending a lot of time at the Three Points store buying snacks, and driving too fast in the fragile desert tearing up the earth. We also saw some frightening men in regular clothes with out-of-state licenses with hunting rifles patrolling the border on a migrant trail near Arivaca. We photographed the first set of spy towers, which did not work, Border Patrol says, and that was a billion dollar boondoggle, money in the pockets of Boeing. The bus, operated by the snakes, was lurking there at the Three Points store.

The Cage on Tohono O'odham Nation -- U.S. 'Dog Kennels' Imprison Migrants and Water Protectors

Photo copyright Ofelia Rivas, O'odham, March 22, 2006, south of Sells on Tohono O'odham Nation.

Cages used to imprison migrants and water protectors in the United States

Article by Brenda Norrell
Photo by Ofelia Rivas
Censored News

This photo is of The Cage, the sweltering inhumane outside detention center used by the US Border Patrol on the Tohono O'odham Nation in the Sonoran Desert, where temperatures can surpass 115 degrees in summer.
When Mohawks came here in 2007, they were joined by Lenny Foster, Dineh, who said this was no more than a "dog cage."
This cage was not operating the last time we were there, but these cages are still used, to cage migrants, as they were used by Morton County, North Dakota, Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier to cage Standing Rock Water Protectors who were jailed for praying for the water.
The Mohawk Warriors found it hard to believe that the Tohono O'odham tribal government allowed the US Border Patrol to be present on their land, and to carry out horrific abuses against migrants and Tohono O'odham.
Today, the cages are used in private prisons to cage migrants, including children, and the US Border Patrol is considered an "occupying army" by many O'odham, as agents carry out horrific abuses on the Tohono O'odham Nation.


Photo copyright Ofelia Rivas, O'odham
Article copyright Brenda Norrell

On the Arizona Border, We Know Who the Monsters Are

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
French translation by Christine Prat at:
http://www.chrisp.lautre.net/wpblog/?p=4408

It is sad to hear that the volunteers who leave water for migrants are being arrested on the Arizona border.
A few years ago, my friend took me to these same places, showing me the trails. It was about 116 degrees, and her car had no air conditioning. We wrapped ourselves in wet towels to keep going.
We watched the Border Patrol agents sit in their air-conditioned vehicles and throw their Starbucks cups on the ground, and buy junk food at Three Points.
They lounged around and yakked on their cellphones, all in the same area where volunteers putting out life-saving water are now being arrested.
If the timing was different, I could have been one of those arrested.
The volunteers who do this year after year are the heroes.
Another day, with temperatures over 116, my friends asked me to help them search for the body of a migrant. The heat knocked me out immediately, in minutes. They hiked in that scorching sun and found someone's loved one.
Others for years have provided shelter, a drink of water, a sandwich, or a ride to the hospital and saved a life. Sometimes the life saved is an Indigenous person who walked across countries, from Guatemala or El Salvador, in hopes of finding a way to feed their families at home.
The tiny graves in the desert sometimes have a string of Mayan beads across them. These volunteers are heroes.
We know who the monsters are.

Brenda Norrell, journalist in Indian country for 36 years, is publisher of Censored News.

Images: A grave on the Arizona border.
Shoes left behind by migrants. Photo by Brenda Norrell.
Border Patrol agent destroying life saving water, captured on hidden video.

Notes: Nine volunteers with No More Deaths have been arrested and face federal charges charges for leaving water for migrants in the Sonoran Desert on the Arizona border.
This region has one of the highest death rates for migrants.
An ASU instructor and No More Deaths volunteer was arrested this week for rendering aid to migrants at Ajo, Arizona, after No More Deaths released a report exposing Border Patrol agents destroying life saving water in the desert.6
No More Deaths is one of several organizations rendering humanitarian aid. Many individuals, including Tohono O'odham, quietly ignore the tribal and federal laws prohibiting giving aid, and save the lives of migrants.

More at Censored News:
'No More Deaths' 2018 Report, and links to arrest articles:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2018/01/us-border-patrol-continues-destroying.html?m=1


Copyright Brenda Norrell, Censored News

Arizona -- Border Patrol attacked No More Deaths humanitarian camp

  America's War on the Voiceless

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Above: Border Patrol agents at No More Deaths Camp entrance in Arivaca, south of Tucson, on Thursday before arresting four migrants in need of emergency medical aid. Below: Agents from the Nogales Border Patrol station stalking the humanitarian aid camp on Wednesday and Thursday.

Border Patol Agents attack medical aid camp for migrants at Arivaca. On Thursday, 30 armed agents entered camp with at least 15 trucks, two quads and a helicopter overhead and arrested  four migrants receiving emergency medical aid, as deadly heat wave approaches with southern Arizona temperatures to reach 120 degrees.

Border Patrol Raids Humanitarian Aid Camp in Targeted Attack

By No More Deaths

Censored News

Contact: media@nomoredeaths.org
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Dutch translation by Alice Holemans at:
.https://www.denaisgazet.be/nieuws/2017/arizona-grenspatrouille-voert-aanval-uit-op-humanitair-kamp
French translation by Christine Prat
.http://www.chrisp.lautre.net/wpblog/?p=4094

A helicopter, 15 trucks and 30 armed agents descended on the medical aid station to apprehend 4 people receiving medical care in deadly summer heat
Thursday, June 15th, 6:00 pm, Arivaca, Arizona: In temperatures surging over 100℉, US Border Patrol raided the medical aid camp of humanitarian organization No More Deaths, and detained four individuals receiving medical care. Obstruction of humanitarian aid is an egregious abuse by the law enforcement agency, a clear violation of international humanitarian law and a violation of the organization’s written agreement with the Tucson Sector Border Patrol.
Agents from the Border Patrol began surveilling the No More Deaths’ camp on Tuesday, June 13th at around 4:30 PM. Agents in vehicles, on foot and ATV’s surrounded the aid facility and set up a temporary checkpoint at the property-line to search and interrogate those leaving about their citizenship status. The heavy presence of law enforcement has deterred people from accessing critical humanitarian assistance in this period of hot and deadly weather. These events also follow a pattern of increasing surveillance of humanitarian aid over the past few months under the Trump administration.
This afternoon, in an unprecedented show of force, approximately 30 armed agents raided the camp with at least 15 trucks, 2 quads and a helicopter to apprehend four patients receiving medical care.
For the past 13 years, No More Deaths has provided food, water, and medical care for people crossing the Sonoran desert on foot. The ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by border enforcement policy has claimed the lives of over 7000 people since 1998. Human remains are found on average once every three days in the desert of Southern Arizona.
Kate Morgan, Abuse Documentation & Advocacy Coordinator for the organization said, “No More Deaths has documented the deaths and disappearances of hundreds of migrants in the Arivaca corridor of the border. Today’s raid on the medical aid station is unacceptable and a break in our good faith agreements with Border Patrol to respect the critical work of No More Deaths”.
John Fife, one of the founders of No More Deaths, commented that, “Since 2013 the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol has had a written agreement with No More Deaths (NMD) that they will respect the NMD camp as a medical facility under the international Red Cross standards, which prohibit government interference with humanitarian aid centers. That agreement now has been violated by the Border Patrol under the most suspicious circumstances. The Border Patrol acknowledged that they tracked a group for 18 miles, but only after the migrants sought medical treatment did the Border Patrol seek to arrest them. The choice to interdict these people only after they entered the No More Deaths’ camp is direct evidence that this was a direct attack on humanitarian aid. At the same time, the weather forecast is for record setting deadly temperatures”.
People crossing the deadly and remote regions of the US Mexico border often avoid seeking urgent medical care for fear of deportation and incarceration. For this reason, a humanitarian focused aid station in the desert is an essential tool for preserving life. The targeting of this critical medical aid is a shameful reflection of the current administration’s disregard for the lives of migrants and refugees, making an already dangerous journey even more deadly.
In spite of this, No More Deaths remains committed to our mission to end death and suffering in the desert and will continue to provide humanitarian aid, as we have for the past 13 years.

Also see The UK Guardian's coverage:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/16/us-mexico-border-aid-camp-raid?CMP=share_btn_fb

The Intercept coverage:
https://theintercept.com/2017/06/17/arizona-border-patrol-raid-surveillance-no-more-deaths-humanitarian-immigration/

America's War on the Voiceless
No More Deaths Camp was attacked by Border Patrol agents who arrested four migrants receiving emergency medical aid at Arivaca, south of Tucson, late Thursday. This photo shows America's current violent attacks being carried by heavily armed police and agents targeting dying migrants crossing the desert on foot; the voiceless; the desperate and Indigenous Peoples, as was done by militarized police at Standing Rock. The weather forecast in southern Arizona is for deadly heat, with temperatures to reach  120 degrees. Attacking emergency medical aid is an humanitarian crime. 

-- Brenda Norrell, Censored News
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2017/06/arizona-border-patrol-attacked-no-more.html

Below: Border Patrol agents vandalize life saving water for migrants in 2012

In the early morning of May 14, 2012 Border Patrol agents destroy water left for migrants in distress along a desert trail near the town of Arivaca, Arizona. More than 178 people died while crossing the Arizona desert during Fiscal Year 2012. [note: the time stamp on this video is incorrect]

New Report: Israeli Arms Dealer Profits from Migrant Misery on Tohono O'odham Nation

Arms Dealers profit from the wars they fuel and then again with border surveillance and migrant misery

Israeli arms dealer Elbit, protested in UK and around the world, is now targeting
Tohono O'odham burial grounds with Israeli/US spy towers. Elbit is responsible
for Apartheid security and drones in Palestine.

This inhumane 'cage' was used for migrant detention in 2007 on the Tohono O'odham Nation, where temperatures can exceed 115 degrees. An Indigenous delegation, including Mohawks, were shocked by the cage in use by the Tohono O'odham Nation and US Border Patrol. Lenny Foster, Navajo, said, "It is no more than a dog cage." Photo Ofelia Rivas, O'odham.

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News copyright

A new report exposes the arms dealers profiting from migrant misery and border surveillance, including the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems which is now targeting the Tohono O’odham Nation with Israeli/US spy towers.

On the western Tohono O’odham Nation, Gu-Vo District has said, ‘No!’ to the integrated fixed towers. "These U.S. proposed towers also are not on the border but in our communities and on the border of the Tohono O'odham Nation reiterating discrimination and deliberate attack on the O'odham," said O’odham’s Gu-Vo District.

Israel’s Elbit Systems, awarded the US border contract by Homeland Security, is exposed in a new report “Border Wars: The Arms Dealers Profiting from Europe’s Refugee Tragedy.”

Arms dealers and border surveillance profiteers are exposed as benefiting from the wars that they fuel, and the migrant misery they create, states the report released jointly by the European Stop Wapenhandel and Transnational Institute on Monday.

The new report states:

Most perverse of all, it shows that some of the beneficiaries of border security contracts are some of the biggest arms sellers to the Middle-East and North-African region, fuelling the conflicts that are the cause of many of the refugees. In other words, the companies creating the crisis are then profiting from it.

While exposing the arms dealers in Europe profiteering from the refugee tragedy, the new report also exposes Elbit’s role in Palestine and on the Arizona border.

The new report states:

Israel's Elbit has already constructed
US/Israeli spy towers this year on the Arizona
border in the Nogales area. The Tohono
O'odham Nation is now targeted.

Major, and often controversial, deals in the border security field include the Finmecannica-deal with Libya, as well as the US Secure Borders Initiative. This initiative included a billion-dollar contract with Boeing, to build a border security network along the northern and southern borders of the United States. The project was plagued by severe (technological and legal) problems and was finally cancelled. It was partially replaced by a smaller project ($145 million), for which Israeli arms producer Elbit built a network of surveillance towers on the border between Mexico and Arizona. As in Europe, the militarisation of the US border with Mexico has been criticised by human rights organisations because of its negative impacts on refugees rights and the way it forces refugees to use more dangerous routes to avoid border enforcement.

The report also exposes how Elbit drones are used by Israel to attack Palestinians. This comes as Native Americans are speaking out in support of Palestinians and speaking out in opposition to Israel and Border Apartheid.

The report states:

In 2015, Switzerland ordered six UAVs from Elbit for surveillance missions by border guards, for approximately 230 million euros. The deal was criticised because the same model, the Hermes 900, is used by Israel for attacking Palestinians. Without naming specific countries, Elbit writes it also performs “programs relating to border security projects, coastal surveillance systems and integrated airport security systems for European and other governments.”

The new report also exposes another Israeli company responsible Gaza border wall surveillance It is Israeil’s BTec.

Israeli companies are the only non-European receivers of research funding (thanks to a 1996 agreement between Israel and the EU) and also have played a role in fortifying the borders of Bulgaria and Hungary, and promote their expertise based on the West Bank separation wall and the Gaza border with Egypt. Israeli firm BTec Electronic Security Systems, selected by Frontex to participate in its April 2014 workshop on ‘Border Surveillance Sensors and Platforms’, boasted in its application mail that its “technologies, solutions and products are installed on [the] Israeli-Palestinian border.”

The report states, "There is one group of interests that have only benefited from the refugee crisis, and in particular from the European Union's investment in 'securing' its borders.”

“They are the military and security companies that provide the equipment to border guards, the surveillance technology to monitor frontiers, and the IT infrastructure to track population movements."

Elbit Systems is currently targeting the most traditional O'odham communities.

The Gu-Vo District opposes this proposal. Gu-Vo is in the western most district of the Tohono O'odham Nation.

The Gu-Vo District said in a statement, "The Gu-Vo District opposes these proposed tower sites to protect cultural sites on the holy mountain now called the Ajo Mountain Range. The mountain holds human remains of our people and also places of our cultural practices (medicine bundles) home and home of the ceremonial deer and bighorn sheep and mountain tortoises that are protected under the Endangered Species Act."

"The United States government military forces, the border patrol, have not been forthcoming with impact information, such as health effects and have deliberately misinformed the people regarding the immediate environmental impacts such as the roads they will build on the mountain and installation of electrical power lines to the sites as well as that these proposed tower sites will have a 25-year or longer impact on the mountain, the animal and plant life and the O'odham lives."

"The Gu-Vo District communities landscape have already been greatly impacted by numerous unauthorized roads and destruction of our mountains and hills of great significance to the O'odham way of life. Our future generations will face more restriction to live on our original lands as our rights as original Indigenous peoples continue to deteriorate."

"These U.S. proposed towers also are not on the border but in our communities and on the border of the Tohono O'odham Nation reiterating discrimination and deliberate attack on the O'odham," said Gu-Vo District.

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Copyright Brenda Norrell, Censored News