Geographer to Discuss Land Use, Interdiction, Smuggling and Humanitarian Aid at the Arizona Border

Cultural geographer Dr. Scott Warren will discuss "Land Use, Interdiction, Smuggling and Humanitarian Aid at the Arizona-Mexican Border."

This talk is sponsored by the Liberal Studies Program and the Center for Western Lands & Peoples, along with the Departments of Earth Sciences, History & Philosophy, Modern Languages & Literatures and the American Studies Program.

Southwestern Arizona is a patchwork of land uses and federal jurisdictions. In this desert borderland region Mexico, the United States, and O’odham nations come together and break apart into a landscape of native reservations, wildlife refuges, national parks, bombing ranges, and international boundaries. Every day, undocumented migrants attempt to cross this fractured landscape on foot, and thousands have died in its rugged mountains and canyons. Local residents, NGOs, and others provide humanitarian aid to these migrants and search for the lost. Meanwhile, the coupled interdiction-smuggling industry exploits migrant bodies with increasing intensity. The promised expansion of this industry offers no security, only increasing burdens on land and life in the border region and beyond.

Dr. Warren is a cultural geographer living in Ajo, Arizona, a former copper mining town located near the Mexico border. Dr. Warren moved to Ajo to write his dissertation but became enamored with the town and decided to stay. There, he works alongside local residents and various groups to provide humanitarian aid to undocumented migrants crossing the Sonoran Desert. In January 2018 he was arrested by Border Patrol while providing humanitarian aid to two men from Central America, and he now faces federal misdemeanor and felony charges related to this humanitarian work.

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