How the US-Mexico border brought trouble to the Tohono O’odham Nation
CNNSan Miguel Gate, Tohono O’odham Nation CNN — The thermometer hit 111 Fahrenheit as we rolled up to a battered tent deep in the Tohono O’odham Nation reservation in Arizona. “If you decide to go out into the mountains for the day, if you want to pick the cactus fruit or get materials from the desert, Border Patrol will be out there, and they will be on you: ‘What are you doing here, why are you out here?’,” Annette Mattia told CNN. In May, one unidentified man found close to the border was found “fully fleshed” – he had died from heat exposure within a day of being found, according to the county medical examiner’s report. In a recently published memoir, “What Side Are You On?” Wilson blames a US border policy of deterrence – blocking irregular migration at urban crossing points – for driving asylum seekers into Tohono O’odham lands and the most perilous parts of the desert. CNN Security vs. sovereignty Frustrations over the border here came to a head last year, when Annette’s brother Raymond Mattia was shot and killed by a group of Border Patrol agents at his home.
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Smugglers are steering migrants into the remote Arizona desert, posing new Border Patrol challenges
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