THE CRIME OF SAVING LIVES: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF MIGRANT AID GROUPS AND LESSONS FROM THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDERLANDS

Abstract

Thousands of people die annually while migrating to the United States and the European Union. The governments of these countries militarize their borderlands and use the criminalization of migrant aid groups as a method of border enforcement, leading to mass human suffering. So long as governments fail to care for migrants, there will be people who feel morally, civically, and spiritually obligated to provide them with aid. The work of these individuals will exist on the border of legality, and governments will criminalize them in an endless loop of aid and criminalization, as seen in the 1980s Sanctuary Movement, its subsequent trial, the modern day criminal prosecutions of No More Deaths volunteers, and the recent efforts to criminalize search and rescue groups off the coast of Italy. Migrant aid groups play a crucial role in preventing deaths in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, as well as in the Mediterranean Sea, but their effectiveness is limited by criminalization efforts and ever-shifting immigration policies. History provides us insight that can be useful, and oftentimes necessary to understand the present day, especially as we find ourselves at the threshold of further intensified criminalization of migration under the second Trump administration.