Activists face trial for leaving water on refuge

Border activists who want to put water bottles on a Southern Arizona wildlife refuge have gotten to the negotiating table with federal officials this summer, but it hasn’t been easy getting there.

Agents in the Fish and Wildlife Department have ticketed 15 activists for putting water out on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge west of Arivaca, a location where many illegal immigrants cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

Two members of the No More Deaths and Samaritans organizations already have been tried and convicted of federal littering charges. On Wednesday, 13 activists declined plea bargains on their littering citations and face trial Nov. 10 in U.S. District Court.

The 13 were arrested in July, the month after activist Walt Staton was convicted, and the mass arrest seems to have upped the ante. The groups won a meeting in Washington, D.C., with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar later that month and have met two more times since with local officials, and have a third meeting scheduled for Thursday.

Refuge manager Mike Hawkes said, “we’re going to work with them to come up with a permit to (put water out) in an environmentally friendly way, without leaving plastic bottles all over the place.”

The problem is that the refuge, which covers five miles of the Mexico border and is about 25 miles north and south along migrant trails, is traversed by an estimated 30,000 illegal immigrants a year. That is down from the estimated annual traffic of 300,000 several years ago, but still averages at least 80 a day.

Hawkes said the plastic bottles left by humanitarians are picked up by migrants along the trails, which are well-known. Then they are dropped, often in remote locations, and can threaten already endangered animal species because plastic breaks into shards and animals can eat or step on the plastic. He said if the activists could lock water containers to trees, for examples, migrants would refill their own empty jugs rather then throw them away, and activists could refill the containers along the trails.

In a press conference after the court hearing, defendant Leesa Jacobson said the charge of littering was “bogus” because the activists remove bags of litter whenever they visit the refuge and only leave jugs of water.

The other defendants are Ed McCullough, Joseph David Hill, Jeff Millsap, Paula McPheeters, Jimmy McPherson, the Rev. John Fife, the Rev. Gene Lefebvre, Corinne Bancroft, Charles Rooney, Maureen Marx, Louis Martin and the Rev. Jerome Zawada.

The activists do not dispute putting the water jugs on the land, but said they were only leaving clean water for illegal immigrants as a humanitarian action because nearly 200 immigrants have died this year in the Southern Arizona desert. They say federal immigration policy has funneled immigrants into the dangerous Arizona desert and that government agencies are allowing migrants to die for lack of water.

However, Hawkes said the refuge has allowed the church-based group Humane Borders to set up three stations containing 55-gallon drums of water and there are several Border Patrol emergency rescue stations on the refuge. He said no migrants have died on the refuge this year and there is plenty of state, federal and private land around the refuge where activists can put water.

During the press conference, activists said Fish and Wildlife officials gave them a list of locations on the refuge where migrants could obtain water, but said they investigated and found nearly all were dry or contained contaminated water. Martin held a picture of a livestock water tank with a dead squirrel floating in the water.

Hawkes said that was a tank that had been damaged, apparently by migrants, and that it was on the list for repairs. He said stock tank water “will keep you alive, but it’ll make you sick.” He said it was “disingenuous” of the activists to show the photo publicly when they are negotiating water protocols with Fish and Wildlife.

Eleven of the defendants were present in court, along with attorney Jeffrey Rogers, and they entered not guilty pleas before U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Ferraro after declining to undertake plea negotiations with Assistant U.S. Attorney Lawrence Lee.

Ferraro told the defendants that the case is a petty offense, meaning there would be no jail time.

Before the mass ticketing in July, Dan Millis was the first to be ticketed and convicted of littering for leaving water in Buenos Aires. His sentence was suspended.

The court came down more heavily on Staton, who was convicted by a federal jury in June, and in August was ordered to spend 300 hours picking up trash and to stay away from the refuge and was given one year of unsupervised probation. The tickets that Millis and Staton refused to pay were for $175.

The activists meeting with Fish and Wildlife on Thursday hope to reach an agreement that will enable them to avoid future tickets and hold out hope that if they reach agreement, the U.S. Attorney’s office will drop the charges.

pfranchine@sahuarita.com| 547-9738