Editor’s note: This story is a collaboration between the Texas Observer and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.
It was late afternoon when a small group traveling in a white Ford F-150 approached a humanitarian aid camp near Sasabe, a remote Arizona community along the U.S.-Mexico border. The visitors walked among tents, blue tarps, and nonperishable food—surveying the camp and filming its occupants. The uninvited guests, who appeared to have left their firearms in the pickup, aimed cameras at immigrants who dotted the cluttered encampment; some had traveled thousands of miles to reach the United States.
Humanitarian workers with the Arizona-based advocacy group No More Deaths immediately confronted them: “This man is filming. He’s refused to stop,” one volunteer told migrants clustered nearby. The camera continued to pan across the camp. Only when an aid worker again implored them to leave did the group begin to move. As he left, the leader—a 27-year-old man by the name of Cade Lamb—audibly accused volunteers of “aiding and abetting false asylum-seekers.”
