THE MORNING LIGHT

In 1853, the Gadsden Purchase divided the ancestral Tohono O’odham homeland: the ha:ṣan bearing land between the San Pedro and Colorado Rivers, the Gila River and the Sea of Cortez.

“We do not own the land, we care for it. Every stick and stone is sacred.”

“For one hundred seventy years, to this day, we see no borders.”

The United States government agreed to maintain Tribal right of movement across the boundary.

The O’odham to the south became Mexican citizens, without land title.The O’odham to the north saw their land continually claimed and taken, by ranchers, settlers and miners, until autonomous reservation land was federally designated, in separate tracts, between 1874 and 1918.

The resulting 2.8 million acre Tohono O’odham Nation is a fragment of the aboriginal lands on which O’odham ancestors are buried.

The Tribal Constitution was enacted in 1937. Equal Tribal constitutional privileges were extended to the Sonoran O’odham in 1979.

The United States / Mexico boundary at once established a gradient for migration and crime.

Thousands relocated north, leaving political and religious persecution for greater safety and opportunity / freedom in the United States.

Generational Mexican cartels arose, defending their drug and human trafficking routes and territories to the lucrative markets of the north.

The Tohono O’odham Nation includes sixty two miles of the international boundary, fifty two in the Chukut Kuk District (CKD).

Mexican land to the south is controlled by the cartels. The O’odham land on the north is protected by the Chukut Kuk District and the Tohono O’odham Nation. Tohono O’odham Cultural and Natural Resource Monitors collaborate with the Tohono O’odham Police; together with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, in uneasy partnership.

No border wall is permitted on the Tohono O’odham Nation.

In 2003, the CKD Council approved a vehicle barrier to protect the remote communities and the land from armed criminal traffickers driving across the barbed wire border fence. Wildlife cross freely. The then Chairwoman of CKD walked the boundary line with the resource monitors to assure that construction spared all trees, cacti and cultural objects.

Three traditional crossings were preserved, including the Wo’oṣan Gate. These allow Tribal members continuity in access to land, family, cultural and religious sites, community events, water sources and medical care; independent of the distant international ports of entry.

In 2016, a private Mexican landowner locked the Mexican gate, at the Wo’oṣan crossing. The Tohono O’odham Nation retains a gate permitting all terrain vehicle and foot passage for Tribal members, with CBP oversight.

Asylum

Asylum is an internationally recognized human right, respected by the United States: “an inviolable place of refuge”.

The process by which to be granted asylum in the United States is clear, but gravely backlogged.

Those seeking asylum must file an application and attend an asylum court hearing. If denied, they may appeal, before facing deportation. This process may take years.

The asylum seekers flee violence in their homelands: murder, rape, kidnapping, extortion.

They pay traffickers of the Mexican drug cartels thousands of dollars, to guide their route.

They travel by bus, train, in unventilated trailers or on foot. They risk personal violence, extortion, injury and the exacting desert: severe summer heat, rare water, freezing winter temperatures. Hundreds die yearly, seeking passage.

In the summer of 2023, the traffickers began routing the asylum seekers to border areas remote from the Arizona international ports of entry; including the Wo’oṣan Gate.

At the ports of entry, only asylum seekers possessing a CBP One app appointment for screening were permitted entry. Wait times required months. Instead, migrants crossing the border remotely surrender to CBP agents; often waiting hours or days, for the agents to reach them. After processing by the border agents they continue to their sponsors, throughout the United States. Massive humanitarian efforts by the CBP, the Tohono O’odham Nation, border communities and volunteer aid groups assist thousands of individuals weekly.

Now, the acrid, sweet scent of burning mesquite drifts, at the Wo’oṣan Gate.