Students take a break in the shade of a Myers Creek culvert

“Here,” says Hugo Castro. “Put it under the branches, in shade, but where they can see it.”

A gecko darts out. I lean over. I’m expected to dash off a little note on the bottle to the guy or gal or child who finds it, who may be dizzy and dry with heatstroke and fatigue. After less than an hour walking down this arroyo in the Anza-Borrego desert, 100 miles east of San Diego, I’m starting to feel the same.

Kevin Nguyen

I’m here on this Border Angels water drop expedition partly because the caravan from Honduras makes you imagine 5000 desperate people scattering through the desert in search of the Promised Land, and partly because of Enrique Morones’ words this morning back in San Diego. “More than 11,000 migrants have died out there since they first built the wall in 1996.”

Today I’m with a bunch of students, all wearing new blue tee shirts saying “UCSD Volunteer.” “I wanted to learn about immigration,” says Kevin Lai. He’s 4th year. “Just being so close to the border, it’s a hot topic on campus. And I am studying cognitive ethnography.”

Miguel’s bottle messages

“My parents are immigrants,” says Kevin Nguyen. “They were boat people. But they never want to talk about it. They can’t communicate that experience to me. They don’t even want me to go back to Vietnam. The only difference between their experience and migrants here is language and time.”

He says the group went to the border this morning to hear the Border Patrol’s point of view. “They stressed their concern about the safety and health of the migrants at first,” he says, “but they used the word ‘alien’ a lot. It just felt derogatory.”

The talking fades as the reality of carrying 16 pounds of water — two gallon-size bottles each — sets in. With uneven rocks, sudden drops, and fatigue coming on, everybody concentrates.

Trek down to Myers Creek bed

I fall in with Miguel (not his real name). Back at the beginning, he was the guy I saw writing long messages on his two bottles to the migrants who might find them. “Go and be well,” he wrote in Spanish. “Go with God. Your suffering will be rewarded. I wish you the best.”

And on the other, “You are the victim of a system which abuses and has no consideration for you. We all have the right to a prosperous life.”

“I am also undocumented,” he tells me. “My parents crossed in the 90s. I’m a Dreamer. And we’re privileged, because I can study, while others like us get demonized. I’ve worked under the table as I studied international economics, and I’ve paid taxes. This state needs all the workers it can get. But there’s more and more uncertainty for us DACA students. You just can’t get on with your life.”

In the end, I’m so thankful to be told to drop my last bottle, under a wizened little bush. I realize I haven’t written a message. I hold the Sharpie. Here in the heat and the wind and the silence, things are strangely intimate. This is about one human to another. But all I can think to write is “Good luck.”