When news about President Trump flickers across their television, Laura and John Hunter know that one of them needs to leave the room. John believes in Trump. Laura is a Mexican immigrant who dismisses Trump as a “despicable human being.”
When news about President Trump flickers across their television, Laura and John Hunter know that one of them needs to leave the room.
John believes in Trump. Laura is a Mexican immigrant who dismisses Trump as a “despicable human being.”About once a month, they travel into the desert east of San Diego with a handful of volunteers who are focused on one of the grimmest aspects of U.S. immigration policy — the deaths of those who are trying to cross the border illegally. The volunteers fill and maintain more than 100 water stations scattered along the sun-bleached California borderlands.
Laura Hunter and Brett Stalbaum in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, where they and others replenish water stations.John said he doesn’t see a conflict between his desire to save the lives of people who are trying to cross the border illegally and his support for a president who has described the same people as rapists, criminals and gang members. “People were dying during the Clinton era, in the Bush era, in the Barack era,” he said. “They are still dying in the Trump era.
John, 63, who is lanky and wears muted, buttoned-down shirts, has a voice with just a hint of Jimmy Stewart’s Midwestern accent. Laura, 72, favors bright clothing, red lipstick and proudly embraces the plume of silver-and-black wavy hair that frames her chiseled face. They’ve been a couple for many years, with established routines. Sometimes he cooks crepes for her on the weekend. She serves him iced tea on hot days. Their children — from different marriages — are grown, and they dote on Fifi, their Maltese poodle.In their own way, the Hunters reflect the diversity of the Water Station group, which consists of about 10 core volunteers who come together twice a month in Ocotillo, a tiny community in Imperial County. A few are apolitical.
When John first launched his project, migrant deaths were on the rise, hitting a peak of 96 in the El Centro Sector — a 70-mile stretch of border in the Imperial Valley — in fiscal year 2001, according to Border Patrol data. For a time, fatalities declined in the area, but last year, 17 people trying to cross illegally died, and that had the Hunters worried.
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