On a warm Saturday morning in early October, the Desert Chaplains team prayed under the shade of a tall tree in a desert basin in Arivaca, about 11 miles — or two days’ walk — north of Arizona’s border with Mexico.  

Their prayers were asking God for help in finding a young Honduran migrant who got lost among the hills unfolding past the edges of the small town.

Beyond the Chaplains’ view, the desert spread out in all its beauty: hills, valleys and dry streams sprinkled with irregular patches of greenery, but almost no water. The only exception was the one stored inside the cacti plants and their trail-rated truck.       

After praying, the Desert Chaplains climbed inside heavy boots, knee-high snake protections, thick pants and long-sleeve fluorescent shirts, then marched into the unforgiving terrain with one goal in mind: finding the remains of the missing man and relieving his family’s suffering. 

“He’s been missing for over a month,” Óscar Andrade, the pastor who leads the group, said. 

They had looked for him several times already, Óscar Andrade mentioned, but couldn’t find him.

Determined to succeed that time, Óscar Andrade carried a 3-foot-long wooden cross hanging from the right side of his backpack. It swung solidly in a last sign of respect for all the migrants who took their last breaths in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, trying to fulfill their dreams.

Óscar Andrade and his wife, Lupita Andrade, have received a total of 3,800 calls from families in Mexico, Central America and the United States during their five years doing search and rescue in Southern Arizona. Frequently, families call them for help finding relatives abandoned by human smugglers in the wilds of the borderlands.

Since the Chaplains’ inception in 2021, they have spent countless weekends getting up at 4 a.m., driving long distances across desolate landscapes and hiking in unrelenting climates to rescue migrants or recover their remains in what’s been declared “the deadliest north-bound land migration route in the world” by the International Organization for Migration.

“The desert has become such an important part of my life that if there is a weekend in which we don’t go out to search, I miss it,” the Chaplains’ pastor said in Spanish.

Since 2021, the Desert Chaplains’ team of 24 volunteers has contributed to the recovery of 70 bodies from Southern Arizona’s desert lands.  

“This desert is a performance-tuned killer,” Guillermo Jones, a Pascua Yaqui volunteer with Humane Borders said. Human Borders is a Tucson non-profit dedicated to maintaining the water stations scattered along the high-risk routes used by migrants crossing into the United States on foot. 

“Nearly everything in [the desert] is razor sharp, poisonous or otherwise lethal,” Jones said.

Between 2000 and 2025, 4,329 migrants have been found dead in the Sonoran Desert, according to the Humane Borders’ Death Map, created in partnership with the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office.

More than 8,000 people have died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border between 1998 and 2020, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 

These numbers indicate that for the past 27 years, an average of one person per day has lost their life along the 1,300-mile stretch of wall-less wilderness that separates the United States and Mexico.

These statistics do not include the numbers of migrants who disappeared but were never found, including the Honduran man that the Desert Chaplains have been searching for since September 2023. 

Three years later, Óscar and Lupita Andrade still recall with pain the dramatic moment in which, not far from a ranch house, they stumbled upon the decomposing bodies of three migrant children aged 3 through 12, two of them locked in an eternal embrace. 

The infant’s head and the little girl’s ribs had been chewed off by the roaming wildlife.   

“This touches one deeply,” Óscar Andrade said. “Even though they are not your family, you can’t help the feeling of sadness, pain and bewilderment.” 

Another memory Óscar Andrade will never forget is assisting at the desperation of a man crying over the stiff body of his younger brother lying lifeless on the desert floor. 

The pastor explained they had been looking for the man’s brother for more than a week. 

“We saw how the older brother was touching his younger brother’s feet, frantically asking him for forgiveness,” Óscar Andrade said. “It moved me profoundly.” 

The pastor also reminisced about feeling tremendously powerless when he didn’t make it in time to save a young Guatemalan girl whose last cry for help was heard by her mother over the phone just five hours earlier. 

The Desert Chaplains found her at 8 a.m., frozen and shriveled on the cold ground, hardened by the low temperatures of the night. She had been abandoned by the smuggler who was furtively guiding her across the U.S.’s no-man’s-borderland. 

“Border crossing may be illegal, but it shouldn’t be a death sentence”, Stephen Saltonstall, one of the volunteers with Humane Borders, said.

According to the National Immigration Forum, 85% of the 21,370 U.S. Border Patrol Agents are currently controlling the Southwest border with the aid of sensors, lights, drones, planes, air balloons, cameras and other technologies.

This patrol since the application of the U.S. Southern Border strategy “Prevention Through Deterrence” in 1994, has pushed irregular migrants to cross in the most remote terrains along the border, such as rivers, mountains, canyons and deserts, and has also resulted in the growth of the cartels’ human smuggling operations. 

“The mafiosos in Mexico were not involved in human smuggling until the United States made it even more difficult to cross,” Ernesto Portillo Jr., spokesman for the City of Tucson’s Department of Housing and Community Development, said. 

“The harder it is for migrants to enter the United States, the more profitable it becomes for organized crime,” Pedro De Velasco, the director of education and advocacy at Kino Border Initiative in Nogales, said.

Nowadays, this dynamic of conflict between the Mexican cartel and U.S. border policies continues to force migrants who cannot fit the requirements for legal entry into the United States into the dangerous underworld of human smuggling.   

“Gone are the days when somebody could come from Guatemala to the U.S. Border and cross by themselves,” Tucson CBP Agent Gustavo Soto said. “Who wants to cross now has to pay for a human smuggling infrastructure to support that request, or otherwise they will be killed.”

This criminal infrastructure is intercepting South and Central American migrants long before they reach Mexico, and charges them up to $28,000 per person with the promise that they will arrive safely in the United States, according to De Velasco. 

“The cartel realized that the exploitation of migrants’ desperation was another very productive source of revenue,” De Velasco said. “It is now making the deal of a lifetime.” 

Investigations released by The New York Times and Washington Post reveal that the cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco are making roughly $13 billion a year through smuggling of migrants across the Southwest Border. 

“Migrants are now the largest flow of money in Mexico and Central America,” Óscar Andrade said.  

Óscar Andrade blames the cartels’ smugglers for demanding staggering amounts of money from them, from $15,000 to $30,000 per person, for lying to them about the struggles of crossing the treacherous landscapes on foot and for often abusing, selling, kidnapping, abandoning or even killing them along the way. 

Some tribal members residing in the villages of the Tohono O’odham Nation scattered along the international divide between Arizona and Sonora have suffered firsthand the cartels’ smugglers’ rage too.   

“It happened to our people, too, that our elders were robbed and assaulted,” Tohono O’odham marine veteran Wynona P. Larson Yazzie said. “The coyotes, or whoever’s guiding the migrants across, would sometimes assault the elders and take their vehicle.” 

Larson Yazzie mentioned that it would most often happen in the chilly wintertime mornings, when tribal members would ignite their trucks to warm their engines. 

“We then began locking our vehicles while running them outside of our homes, because otherwise they’d come and take them,” Yazzie said. “And sometimes they’d take them anyway by breaking into them.” 

That’s how Yazzie explains that the Tohono O’odham people gave birth to a body of indigenous rangers within the Tohono O’odham Police Department to secure their own villages against cartel raids.

Some tribal members even lost their homes south of the fence line to Mexican cartels. 

“My dad’s ranch, situated at the end of the Baboquivari Mountains, just 11 miles from the San Miguel Gate, was taken over by gunned cartel members and I can’t go there anymore,” Tohono O’odham human rights’ activist Michael Steven Wilson said.      

Many cartel smugglers are indifferent to the lives they damage in Arizona-Sonora’s borderlands once they obtain what they want. 

“Most smugglers don’t care to leave a migrant behind, either,” Soto said. “Because they have already been paid at least half, or more.” 

Some, therefore, abandon the migrants when their health worsens and continue the journey with the ones who can make it.  

“The people that make it to the end will have their families in the United States pay the rest of the sum they owe to the smuggler,” Miguel López, a Desert Chaplains volunteer, said. “If any of them die, the coyotes don’t care, as they only care about bringing the rest of the group to the point where they can get paid.” 

The leader of the Chaplains mentioned the migrants who cannot afford to pay the cartels’ smugglers are often forced into transporting drugs across the border.

“After the drugs get picked up on the north side of the border, the smugglers will either kill the migrants or leave them at their fate into the desert,” Óscar Andrade said. “For them, there was neither a reward for transporting the drugs, and neither the American dream.”

These are the reasons for the Desert Chaplains bushwhacking through the Mesquites, Ocotillos and Creosote bushes that sprawl in the Sonoran Desert. 

Families who lose communication with their migrating loved ones often call the Desert Chaplains for help in finding them. 

Upon call, they drive off from South Tucson by night’s end and wind up waist-deep in the vegetation by dawn. 

When they are lucky, they are guided by more than just the picture of the missing migrant and the vague description of their route.

 “When we go out into the desert, we always hope to find the people still alive,” the pastor said. 

Since 2021, the Desert Chaplains have been able to rescue 127 migrants from an otherwise agonizing death in the Sonoran Desert.

Óscar and Lupita Andrade’s team is made up of volunteers trained in first aid, orientation, social service, U.S. law, hiking techniques and environmental hazards.

“As volunteers, we don’t expect any payment for what we do,” Óscar Andrade said. “We do it willingly, and we do it passionately.”

As far as the migrants’ death crisis at the Southern Border goes, Óscar Andrade is sure of one thing: if there were more just governments in each country, people would not risk their lives and dreams to perish on such deadly journeys.

“We all have to demand a radical change from our governments,” Óscar Andrade said. “It’s the only solution.”

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