24 hours in a makeshift migrant shelter in the California wilderness
It was 1:53 a.m. and Peter Fink was on a barren mountain plateau near Campo, California, handing out blankets to people from four continents who had arrived there under cover of the night. .
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It was a nightly ritual for the 22-year-old, dressed in a cap and wool overshirt, whose perch — just over 300 meters on top of a rock the slope of the US-Mexico border wall — had become a 24-hour boarding zone for people who crossed the border illegally onto US soil.
With Mexico's Armed National Guard now stationed at the most popular crossing sites in southeastern San Diego County, migrant routes have shifted farther into isolated wilderness areas, where people face more extreme terrain and temperatures with little or no infrastructure to keep them alive.
For migrants who sought to be apprehended by patrol officers American border and asking to stay in the country, Mr. Fink's makeshift camp, a corner of land under the lattices of a high-voltage tower, had become a first stop, where modest rations of food, Water and firewood helped the migrants survive as they waited for agents to cross the landscape and arrest them before their health languished dangerously.
On At this site and others along the border, migrants waited hours or even days before being taken into custody, and a federal district court judge ruled last week that the patrol border had to move “quickly” to bring the children to safe and hygienic shelters. But unlike the outdoor waiting areas that had been created in more populated areas, Mr. Fink's site had no aid tents, no volunteer medical staff, no dumpsters or port-a-potties - just a hole he dug as a communal toilet, and Mr. Fink himself.
It was 1:53 a.m. and Peter Fink was on a barren mountain plateau near Campo, California, handing out blankets to people from four continents who had arrived there under cover of the night. .
Open this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.
Open this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.< /p> Open this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.
It was a nightly ritual for the 22-year-old, dressed in a cap and wool overshirt, whose perch — just over 300 meters on top of a rock the slope of the US-Mexico border wall — had become a 24-hour boarding zone for people who crossed the border illegally onto US soil.
With Mexico's Armed National Guard now stationed at the most popular crossing sites in southeastern San Diego County, migrant routes have shifted farther into isolated wilderness areas, where people face more extreme terrain and temperatures with little or no infrastructure to keep them alive.
For migrants who sought to be apprehended by patrol officers American border and asking to stay in the country, Mr. Fink's makeshift camp, a corner of land under the lattices of a high-voltage tower, had become a first stop, where modest rations of food, Water and firewood helped the migrants survive as they waited for agents to cross the landscape and arrest them before their health languished dangerously.
On At this site and others along the border, migrants waited hours or even days before being taken into custody, and a federal district court judge ruled last week that the patrol border had to move “quickly” to bring the children to safe and hygienic shelters. But unlike the outdoor waiting areas that had been created in more populated areas, Mr. Fink's site had no aid tents, no volunteer medical staff, no dumpsters or port-a-potties - just a hole he dug as a communal toilet, and Mr. Fink himself.
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