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07248 April 26, 2007
Church-backed border workers receive human rights award
Pair faced federal charges for transporting undocumented migrants
by Evan Silverstein
LOUISVILLE - Two volunteers from a faith-based humanitarian group, who were cleared of human-smuggling charges last year, have won a human rights award for their work assisting distressed migrants along the Arizona-Mexico border.
Shanti A. Sellz and Daniel M. Strauss, along with desert-aid group No More Deaths, received the Oscar Romero Award for Human Rights at a ceremony in Houston on April 22.
Presbyterian leaders in Arizona were instrumental in helping to establish the three-year-old Tucson-based No More Deaths, which is led and supported by Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) members and congregations.
The group provides food, water and basic medical care to illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into the United States through Arizona's treacherous desert borderlands.
Founding members include two former PC(USA) General Assembly moderators: the Rev. John Fife, a retired Presbyterian minister and longtime border activist, and elder Rick Ufford-Chase, executive director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, who for 18 years worked along the U.S.-Mexico border as a mission co-worker for the denomination.
Sellz, 24, and Strauss, 25, who are not Presbyterians, were arrested July 9, 2005, while evacuating three sick illegal immigrants from the Arizona desert to a medical clinic at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson. If convicted, the two could have faced a 15-year jail sentence and $500,000 fine.
A federal judge threw out the charges against them on Sept. 1, 2006 because, he said, the government had led the group to believe its members could transport ailing migrants.
"There are many hundreds of people who continue to do this life-saving work," Sellz said in a statement. "The prosecution [of our case] is another example of state-sponsored repression for speaking out. The government is repressing the work of people who choose to help those who are being marginalized and hurt by government policies."
The Oscar Romero Award for Human Rights was established in 1986 to honor the former archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, who had been a vocal opponent of government-sponsored violence and was slain March 24, 1980.
The Houston-based Rothko Chapel, a church that advocates for human rights, presents the award every two years to honor those willing to risk their lives to promote human rights.
No More Deaths said in a statement that the group is "humbled to receive this award, which honors our humanitarian work along the border with the spirit of Oscar Romero."
Strauss said in the same statement: "No More Deaths and others have done a tremendous job in stopping deaths along the border. It's never a crime to save someone's life."
The 261-mile-long stretch of border in the Tucson sector is the nation's main corridor for illegal immigrants entering the United States. A sharp spike in deaths there in recent years has raised the concern of the PC(USA) and others. In 2003, the denomination's 215th General Assembly approved an overture calling for measures to prevent migrant-worker deaths in the borderlands.
"One of the reasons it's important is that it comes right in the middle of this debate about immigration policy in congress," Ufford-Chase told the Presbyterian News Service, referring to No More Deaths winning the award. "I hope that it will be a reminder that our number one criteria must be that (new border) policy must be humane and it must end the deaths in the desert."
Ufford-Chase, who presided over the PC(USA)'s 216th General Assembly in 2004, worships at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, which is where Fife, moderator of the PC(USA)'s 204th Assembly in 1992, was pastor for 35 years before retiring in July 2005.
Previous winners of the Oscar Romero award include Diana Ortiz, an American nun who was tortured by the Guatemalan military during the 1980s and later established an organization to aid torture survivors, and Ishai Menuchin, a soldier in the Israeli army who refused to serve in protest of Israel's occupation of Palestine.
The award comes with a $20,000 prize. Half will go to support the work of No More Deaths, while Sellz and Strauss will each receive $5,000.
Sellz said she plans to donate her share to an organization that combats poverty and other causes of immigration, according to the Tucson Citizen.
This is the first time the award has highlighted a human rights issue in the United States, Jacqueline Andre Schmeal, who led the chapel search committee, told the Tucson newspaper.
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