WP: El Paso's Paisanos al Rescate pilots drop water to border immigrants

[DeepModem Mom]

Drops of Water in the Desert Help Immigrants on Their Way
Tales of Dehydration and Death Motivate Volunteer Fliers
By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 27, 2006; Page A03


Armando Alarcon, who works for an El Paso trucking company, was the driving force behind Paisanos al Rescate, or Countrymen to the Rescue. (Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)

SANTA TERESA, N.M. -- Flying 500 feet above the simple barbed-wire fence that marks the U.S.-Mexico border, Armando Alarcon scans the desert below not just for a sign of life. He's also looking for a signal of distress.

On this day, he sees only creosote bushes and ATV tracks in the dirt. He sees a big buck loping through the brush and a Border Patrol truck parked north of the border. He sees a cluster of cattle, a large field of black volcanic ash and the huge crater formed when the volcano collapsed. Finally, Alarcon's single-engine Cessna buzzes past the open arms of the Cristo Rey (Christ the King) statue built on a mountainside that straddles the end of the United States and the beginning of Mexico.

It is down below where illegal immigrants take their first steps onto U.S. soil and where many collapse to their deaths in the brutal desert heat.

Alarcon's goal is to try to prevent that, a quixotic project he calls Paisanos al Rescate, or Countrymen to the Rescue. On summer weekends, this small group of volunteer pilots and spotters take turns flying a 30-year-old refurbished aircraft in search of migrants who need to be rescued or who just need a few bottles of water parachuted their way.

"It's, basically, like looking for a needle in a haystack," said Alarcon, a 38-year-old customer service representative of an El Paso trucking company. "We've got 2,000 miles of border, and what we're covering is like a speck of sand on a beach. But we're just trying to help out our little corner of world."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/26/AR2006082600673.html

[Tom Joad]

1. People should not have to die to find work. He is doing a good

thing.