Volunteers with Borderlands Relief Collective found and confronted two Border Patrol agents at the end of the trail and filmed it
Early on a recent Saturday morning, a group of humanitarian volunteers hiked, slipped and scaled steep rocks down an Otay Mountain trail marked by Electrolit bottles and clothing left behind by migrants.
According to Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency to Border Patrol, San Diego Sector leaders have emphasized to agents that they should neither remove nor destroy humanitarian aid left in the Otay Mountain Wilderness. The incident is now under investigation, the agency said. David Greenblatt, 50, chief of surgery at Sharp Coronado Hospital and a long-time volunteer with San Diego water-drop organizations, recalled a time more than five years ago when the volunteers similarly found their water jugs slashed. But by adjusting drop locations and applying social media pressure to Border Patrol, Greenblatt said, the volunteers were able to get the destruction to stop.
“It became very, very obvious there was a pressing need for us to focus on providing and leaving supplies in these areas because there were so many emergencies and so many deaths that have occurred in this area over the last several years,” Greenblatt said. “All of this heated rhetoric, political rhetoric that we hear about that characterize migrants as criminals, as dangerous cartel criminals, it really is not borne out by our direct experiences doing this work,” he said. “The people that we encounter are just regular folks, often not prepared for the incredibly difficult and hazardous journeys that they undertake in the deserts in the mountains.
On the way down the mountain, the group saw a Border Patrol agent surveilling that part of the mountain. While two of the volunteers stayed to document the mess and clean up, a few hiked ahead to try to find those responsible for the destruction. At the trailhead, they found two Border Patrol agents, whom they confronted.Initially, according to Norris, who was one of the first to reach the agents, the two agents admitted to having ransacked the supplies. However, it was only later in the conversation that the volunteers thought to film.
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