Wild hospitality on the deadliest borders of the Americas
Photograph courtesy of Amber Naylor
Amber Naylor
Finishing the journey is usually the best part: reaching the finish line knowing that you gave it your all, set a personal record, or just had a great time. The Migrant Trail ends differently.
There’s an ache to completing the 75-mile Arizona Migrant Trail that has nothing to do with swollen feet, blisters, chafing, sunburn, heat rash, or cracked lips. It’s one thing to know the U.S. government is murdering migrants by driving them into the inhospitable desert with no resources. It’s another thing to walk that death march yourself, carrying their names to a finish line they never crossed.
At the start of the trail, each walker selected from the altar a cross with the name of a person whose remains were found in the Arizona desert, one for each of the 154 people discovered since last year’s walk. I chose a cross with the name of Virginia Mejía Mejía, age 18.[i] As a camp director and youth pastor, it was important to me to honor the young people of the immigration crisis. As I walked, I thought about how in another life, Virginia could’ve been one of my camp counselors, or one of the graduates being recognized at my home church that week.
I joined the walk this year because many of the churches and campers I serve have increased anxiety around going outside. A vital part of my ministry is being in nature alongside others. Sometimes it’s just a few hours away from traffic and concrete. Sometimes it’s a week in the woods, learning to find water and make shelter. Sometimes it’s enjoying flowers in a park.
I can’t do any of that when my community feels unsafe leaving home. It’s hard to teach young people how to enjoy the outdoors and get accustomed to the wilderness when ICE is allowed to snatch people off the streets in unmarked cars, without warrants or due process.
The other reason I chose to walk the Migrant Trail this year is that I used to live on another of the deadliest borders in the Americas: the Darien Gap. For two years, I watched individuals stagger out of the jungle, having walked a very different 75 miles through swampy rainforest, over the continental divide, and through muddy rivers to the indigenous village where I lived as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
The members of that indigenous community, living on $12 a day, took care of each person who emerged. Clothes, food, medicine, transportation–the Emberá-Wounaan people, mostly Christians, would loudly remind each other it was their spiritual duty to take care of those not accustomed to the challenges of the jungle. It was more than a ministry or charity; it was a point of pride; it was a touchstone of their identity. Their lived theology of hospitality wasn’t focused on being nice; it was survival.
It’s one thing to know the U.S. government is murdering migrants by driving them into the inhospitable desert with no resources. It’s another thing to walk that death march yourself, carrying their names to a finish line they never crossed.
The Emberá-Wounaan, especially their young people, treated me with that same abundance of hospitality. They were the ones who taught me to be accustomed to the wilderness. They showed me how to bathe in the river, wash my laundry, cook jungle meat and plantains, avoid bug bites, and travel by dugout canoe.
My time in Darien ended with border violence. The U.S. and Panamanian governments intentionally bottlenecked border traffic away from the coastlines into the inhospitable jungle – weaponizing the land itself – and then militarized the indigenous villages within, knowing the border crossers would seek refuge in communities. The Emberá-Wounaan, especially the young people, were/are the primary victims of that violence.
I wanted to see how these border crossings, 3600 miles apart, compared environmentally, culturally, and politically.
The Migrant Trail is well-organized; it is also the kindest temporary community I’ve encountered. In its 22nd year, they’re experts at guiding over 40 people of every age and ability through the walk. It’s not designed to be a simulation of the migrant experience, but a pilgrimage that honors the dead by curating the community they should’ve had. Allied organizations provided meals, friends cheered along the highway, and Humane Borders hosed us down each afternoon – the best part of the day. We looked after each other’s health, food, safety, sanitation, and logistics.
We started at the border wall, touching the shiny 30-foot-tall pylons installed in 2021. That was a stark difference from Darien. I could just reach my arms through the bars into Mexico and realized any creature larger than a bunny was restricted by the wall, too.
The rest was eerily familiar. Crossings were bottlenecked to the most desolate stretches of desert. The border town of Sasabé was decimated by violence after the installation of the wall and militarization of the area. As we walked past the Tohono O'odham people’s sacred mountain, Baboquivari, we heard fighter jets overhead all day.
Roughly every three miles throughout the journey, we lifted up the names on our crosses in a call-and-response exchange. One person shouted a name, or the signifier Desconocido/a for those whose remains were unidentifiable, understanding that while they’re currently unknown to us, they remain forever known and cherished by their loved ones. In response, everyone answered, “Presente!” I noticed that every time we did this ritual, no matter how hot or tired we were, our pace kicked up a notch.
After walking seven days through the unrelenting Sonoran Desert, it ended with one last round of Presentes as we processed into a city park. We placed our crosses at a new altar, had our feet washed by a local priest, and were treated to food, friends, and music celebrating our arrival. It was the welcome the dead deserved.
After I returned home, after the dust was scrubbed out of my hair and tent, after my feet and clothes were soaked, after my sunburn peeled, as the news from LA blew up my phone, as the protests spread to my hometowns of Omaha and Chicago, I finally mustered the courage to see what I could find online about my cariña Virginia.
Virginia was found alone by the Border Patrol on July 5, 2005, about five miles inside the U.S.-Mexico border. The cause of her death was exposure. In other words, she died due to the lack of hospitality.
Amber Naylor is the program leader for the ABCUSA Creation Justice Network and Outdoor Ministry Coordinator for ABC Metro Chicago. She is a board member of Creation Justice Ministries and a Peace Corps volunteer returned from Panama, where she stayed from 2012 to 2015.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
[i] While the crosses carried during the Migrant Trail, 154, corresponds to the number of human remains recovered in the Arizona desert between last year’s walk and this one, the names written on the crosses may represent any of the more than 3,000 individuals who have died in the desert over the past two decades. The intention is not to offer a one-to-one memorial but to symbolically carry and remember the dead, honoring both the recent victims and the ongoing tragedy.
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