Aid group says Border Patrol entered Southern Arizona camp without warrant, arresting three

No More Deaths, a humanitarian aid group based in Southern Arizona, said Border Patrol agents entered a humanitarian aid station without a warrant and arrested three people Nov. 23, according to a Monday news release.

The aid station, known as Byrd Camp, provides medical assistance, food and shelter to people crossing the U.S.-México border under dangerous conditions. 

Volunteers with No More Deaths reported that in the late afternoon, federal agents were parked at the entrance to the camp and shouted “United States Border Patrol! Come out, come out!” over loudspeakers. The agents requested permission to enter the property. When volunteers refused to let them in without a warrant, the agents returned to their vehicles and waited. Roughly an hour later, they returned and claimed an exception that they said justified entry without a warrant because they were in “hot pursuit.” 

“On Tuesday, we were able to get in touch with our point person in the agency and he confirmed that the agents on the ground had not been in hot pursuit and that they were working to address the issue and retrain their agents,” a spokesperson for the organization told Arizona Luminaria. 

Aid workers recorded a video of the incident that they say shows agents using force to break into several trailers and structures at the camp, smashing doors and windows.

Video provided by No More Deaths

When volunteers asked for a legal reason, they say agents told them it was a hot pursuit exception. But volunteers said the agents were waiting outside the property for about an hour before entering.

“We reached out to a lawyer after this incident and passed along a timeline of events. They confirmed that this case did not qualify as ‘hot pursuit’ and that the search was illegal. They also said we had very little legal recourse,” a spokesperson for No More Deaths told Arizona Luminaria over email. 

The organization said they have not filed a formal complaint but are exploring the possibility. Additionally, they’ve been unable to locate the individuals detained by Border Patrol.

“The raid upset many of our volunteers,” the organization spokesperson said. “However, we continue to provide aid in this space and plan on continuing to do so.”

Border Patrol has not responded to Arizona Luminaria’s request for comment on the incident. 

Though there have been previous raids on Byrd Camp, notably in 2017 and twice in 2020, those earlier operations reportedly involved federal search warrants and deployments from the specialized tactical unit Border Patrol Tactical Unit. 

According to the organization, the Nov. 23 entry into enclosed structures without a warrant represents a significant escalation. They said this incident is part of a broader pattern of increasingly aggressive and potentially unlawful tactics by immigration enforcement agencies, a pattern that critics say undermines the right to humanitarian aid, due process and basic care for migrants. No More Deaths condemned the incident, calling it a violation of human rights and an attack on humanitarian aid.

Since No More Deaths founded the Byrd Camp in 2004, the humanitarian group has accused the Border Patrol of pushing migrants to more remote areas of the Sonoran Desert and of tampering with their water drops along the border.

Tensions boiled over during the first Trump administration, when the Border Patrol previously raided the Byrd Camp in Arivaca and federal attorneys attempted to prosecute volunteers.  

The first raid took place in 2017. There were no arrests at the time, but it signaled a shift in the border agency’s already rocky relationship with No More Deaths. Then in 2020, border agents raided the Byrd Camp twice in two months and detained more than 40 people, according to No More Deaths. 

On the legal front, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona charged volunteer Scott Warren with harboring charges stemming from a 2018 raid of an Ajo property used by No More Deaths to stage water drops in the surrounding desert. Over two separate trials, a jury acquitted Warren on some of the more serious charges and was unable to reach a decision in the lesser charges, ending in a hung jury. 

In 2019, a federal judge convicted four No More Deaths volunteers for entering and driving on the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge without a permit, and dropping off water and canned food. But the following year, another federal judge in Tucson overturned their conviction on religious freedom grounds.

“When humanitarian aid in the borderlands is targeted, those who seek care are the ones that face the brunt of these violent escalations,” Warren said in response to the first of two raids at Byrd Camp in 2020.

The U.S. Department of the Interior, through the Bureau of Land Management, recently announced a coordinated border-security operation across Southern Arizona public lands, including the Sonoran Desert National Monument and the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, under a broader effort to curb illegal border crossings, drug smuggling and resource-site trafficking.

The operation, dubbed a “major border operation,” took place from Oct. 31 through Nov. 9 and reportedly resulted in the apprehension of 48 individuals, arrests of suspected smugglers, multiple traffic stops, seizure of vehicles and confiscation of significant amounts of methamphetamine and cocaine, according to a bureau press release.

This article first appeared on AZ Luminaria and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.