Desert Witness: A Quaker Responds to the Border Crisis

Sam Schultz:
I’ve never seen it open.

A year ago, a year and a half ago, people would get out of the van of the truck and the transporters would line them up and take a picture of them, I guess, to prove that they actually had delivered X number of people. And then they go run and everybody run around here, just run around to the end of the fence and come back down this way.

And it was nonstop day and night. People coming across.

I was there witnessing this incredible hope that these people had, to witness this attempt to destroy their hope.

It’s very emotionally debilitating.

That’s part of the deal of being a Quaker. We’re supposed to be fearless witnesses in the face of everything.

Dogs. Come on now. Come on now.

If you have heat—no, I mean, there’s eight dog shits out there somewhere every day. Right, team?

I was born in San Diego, in 1955. My parents were at that time attendees in La Jolla Monthly Meeting.

I was exposed very young to Quakers who said, “Treat everyone as if they are your friend, everyone that you have any interaction with, whether they’re really your friend or not.”

And so I thought, okay, if my friends are in trouble in any way, then I must respond.

And that’s difficult sometimes.

The drive into town from here is about seven miles, and there really is almost no one living between us. So seeing anyone, any group of people out by the side of the road is very unusual in and of itself.

And then, seeing a large group of foreigners sitting basically just by the side of the road, stranded with kind of a lost-looking Border Patrol agent looking at them, was quite a shock.

So we filled up all the water we could. And then I went back out there and saw that these 20 people were just the very beginning of a long line of people that was walking out from the border gap to the paved road. So we got everything we could for just water.

That was just the first day, and then it didn’t stop.

Right here is when they thought, okay, we finally made it. And then they were instructed to walk through the desert.

There was a good road out there. There was no reason that they couldn’t have been picked up right there at the break in the fence.

They’re sending families with kids and forcing them to walk through the desert when they can just walk through the port of entry in Tijuana.

It’s just stupid. And the worst part—if I had picked up those moms and babies to give them a ride—it’s a felony.

More than three times, two times the people’s legs were actually broken. And the third time, family struggling in the sand, everybody’s hurt.

We were inside of the camp, and I was inside of Border Patrol agents the whole time. But I put them back in my truck and drove them over there. And, oh my God, they flipped out.

Border Patrol at that point was just completely overwhelmed. When we said, “You need to bring food, you need to bring water, you need to bring medical care,” they would say, “For what? As far as we’re concerned, these people don’t exist yet.”

The fiction that they use: “We’re not holding them here, so therefore we’re not responsible for any of their welfare.” And we’re talking hundreds and hundreds of people.

So it kind of all dropped on myself and my family, and it exploded.

It’s difficult to explain to people the amount of work that it takes to feed 400 people. It was just morning till night, every day, making food, getting water.

I would say the vast majority of the work was done by people who just spontaneously volunteered to come out and do it. And I basically stood behind the stove and made beans and rice a lot for 90 days straight, and had the support of many wonderful people, including my family.

Matthew 25:16 through 41. It’s called the verse “The Sheep from the Goats.”

And he said, when the Son of Man returns—and we remember, Jesus always referred to himself as the Son of Man, which I consider means that he is everybody’s brother and son—he’s going to come back and judge us.

And the criteria he’s judging on is: when my family was in need—and remember, this family is everybody—were you there or not?

If somebody judges me, I want it to be as clear as possible: I always tried.

You know, a lot of people are really good. They want to do good things. They just don’t know how. And they feel like they’re powerless, but they’re not. And sometimes all it takes is—just do it.

Yeah. And if you do, and you’re seen to be doing it, people will help you.

That’s what, in a lot of ways, being a Quaker is all about. We’re supposed to be an example. And if we do it, people will follow. And I’ve found that always to be true.

I’m tired of being angry, and I just wish a lot of other people would operate less out of anger—which is a lot of politics and all that stuff—it’s just anger. Be more friendly.

The light is really, truly in everyone. You see that by people coming from all over the world who have the spark in them.