Wednesday, September 7, 2005

County OKs $25K for water stations in desert

Administrator Chuck Huckelberry notes it costs Pima $300,000 yearly to store migrants' bodies.

GARRY DUFFY

Tucson Citizen

Pima County supervisors voted yesterday to again support water stations that help illegal immigrants survive treks across the desert, after hearing that it costs the county more to recover and deal with bodies than to fund the lifesaving program.

It costs about $300,000 annually to recover and store the bodies of illegal immigrants who die in Pima County, Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said.

The supervisors voted 4-1 to provide $25,000 for another year to Humane Borders, the Tucson faith-based agency whose members have provided more than 65,000 gallons of water to immigrants who have crossed into Arizona's deadly deserts over the past five years.

"It is a humanitarian issue where you have to draw on your own religious beliefs to try to prevent death," Supervisor Richard Elías said.

It also is about taxpayer money, he said.

"It costs the county about $1,500 for an autopsy," Elías said, "and that is without going out and dragging bodies out of the desert."

Supervisor Ann Day voted against the allocation, as she has each year.

"We really don't know if this is saving lives or costing lives," Day said.

Day said she believes providing water to illegal immigrants could be considered abetting in a crime and could violate federal law.

The belief that there will be life-saving water available in remote regions of the desert favored by immigrants may spur more to try to come into this country, she said.

If they fail to find the water stations, they often die, Day noted.

Critics of the Humane Borders water program echoed Day's concerns.

"No person can argue that making water available to illegal aliens - criminals - is not encouraging, aiding, and abetting those aliens committing that illegal act," Wes Bramhall, president of Arizonans for Immigration Control, told the supervisors. "The knowledge that there are approximately 50 or more water stations in the desert is a factor in these illegals deciding to attempt the invasion of our nation."

More than 225 probable illegal immigrants have died in the Arizona desert this year, according to combined reports from the Pima County medical examiner and the U.S. Border Patrol.

Without significant increases in federal and state aid to border counties including Pima, the cost of illegal immigration to local governments in southern Arizona is bound to escalate, Huckelberry said.

The county last year expanded storage for the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office to provide storage for 120 bodies, Huckelberry said.

"We expect to need to double capacity again next year" to hold 240 bodies, he said.

There is no federal or state reimbursement for the medical examiner's costs to store bodies or the incarceration of those arrested after crossing illegally, Huckelberry said.

NEXT PAGE» 1, 2