Volunteers fight arrests for aiding illegals

TUCSON, Ariz. — Emil Hidalgo-Solis couldn't stop throwing up. His diarrhea was bloody. His feet blistered. He had staggered through the desert, stumbled across the border, gulped contaminated water from a slimy cattle trough.

On this scorching day — in the hottest July in local history — Hidalgo-Solis seemed doomed to be among hundreds who died trying to enter the United States from Mexico last year.

He collapsed in a ditch. He and two others among the 10 immigrants could go no farther.

Then, from nowhere, a truck appeared. On its side, in big letters, was the word "Samaritan." Inside were members of a faith-based group called No More Deaths, offering water, food and a ride to a doctor. They took the three to a makeshift camp, and then set out for a church where a doctor and a nurse would meet them.

Daniel Strauss was at the wheel of the old Subaru GL wagon, with Shanti Sellz beside him. The air conditioner cooled the car as they rode in silence. One of the men offered to hide.

"We told them no, please sit up straight and buckle your seat belt," Sellz recalls.

But then, Strauss looked back and saw that they were being followed by a Border Patrol vehicle. The officers trailed them for maybe 13 miles before pulling them over; they stopped, shutting down their engine and letting the heat outside creep in.

Strauss gazed at his three passengers, cowering in the tattered black clothes they had hoped would help them evade detection.

There was nothing we can do for you, the volunteers said — you are going to be arrested. "We had warned them before they got evacuated what the rules were, and that we couldn't hide them in any way," Strauss says. "We did our best to try to tell them it was going to be all right, but we didn't know if it would."

The officer asked, "Are your three passengers illegal?"

"I don't know," Strauss said.

Then, Sellz recalls, the officer poked his head into the car and asked the passengers: "Do you guys speak English?"

No one answered.

"The officer turned to us and said, 'Those guys are illegal and you know it.' "

Two more Border Patrol vehicles arrived. They arrested Hidalgo-Solis and his companions.

But they also arrested Strauss and Sellz.