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Border Patrol Raids Humanitarian Aid Group Camp in Arizona

Volunteers with the aid group “No More Deaths” distributed water along desert migrant paths in 2013.Credit...Josh Haner/The New York Times

PHOENIX — The Border Patrol raided a humanitarian aid group’s base camp in the Southern Arizona desert on Thursday and arrested four men who had crossed into the United States illegally, officials with Customs and Border Protection said.

Volunteers with the group, No More Deaths, which gives water and first-aid care to migrants, said the men were from Mexico and were receiving emergency medical care at the camp, which had been raided by agents in the past. But this was the first time border agents had used a search warrant to gain entry, the group said in a statement, suggesting a change in strategy by the Border Patrol leadership in the region at a time when temperatures are soaring. Despite a history of tense relations with No More Deaths, the agency had previously abided by an informal, Obama-era agreement allowing migrants to seek medical help at the camp without fear of arrest.

In an interview on Friday, the group’s founder, John Fife, characterized the raid as “clearly a strategy by the border agents to cripple and even make moot the lifesaving mission of a medical facility they had agreed to respect.”

His fear, he said, is that word would get out among migrants seeking help that the No More Deaths camp is no longer safe, because of border agents’ attention on it. Several volunteer groups leave jugs of water and canned food for migrants and provide them with medical aid, but No More Deaths is one of the largest and the only one in Arizona with a permanent base in the desert.

In a statement released after the raid on Thursday, Customs and Border Protection, which is the parent agency of the Border Patrol, said the agents were left with no choice after the volunteers refused to let them in “to question the four suspected illegal aliens as to their citizenship and legal right to be present in the United States.”

“Tucson Sector Border Patrol reached out to No Más Muertes camp representatives to continue a positive working relationship and resolve the situation amicably,” the statement said, referring to the group by its name in Spanish. “The talks, however, were unsuccessful.”

Customs and Border Protection provided some details about the four men on Friday. In a statement, the agency said three of them were arrested in the camp and one was arrested while trying to escape. One of these men was identified as Lucindo Díaz-Hernández, who had a prior felony conviction for drug possession and had spent five years in prison in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, for drug trafficking. He also had been previously deported.

The raid also disrupted the group’s operations as temperatures, already in the triple digits, are expected to reach 120 degrees on Monday, raising the risk of death by dehydration among migrants who increasingly are crossing through desolate corners of the Southern Arizona desert to avoid detection.

It is not the first time No More Deaths and Border Patrol have clashed; volunteers have accused agents of vandalizing the water and food supplies they leave for migrants. In 2011, a motion-activated camera captured an agent kicking five jugs lined up on a rock, dumping the water inside.

Volunteers said that, in recent months, they have noticed more agents roaming the dirt roads around the camp, which is near Arivaca, an unincorporated community in a well-known drug- and human-smuggling route.

Three weeks earlier, a similar situation to Thursday’s raid had resulted in a different outcome. Agents had threatened to go in with a search warrant if a group of migrants did not surrender, which they did.

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The “No More Deaths” campsite in 2013.Credit...Josh Haner/The New York Times

Afterward, Mr. Fife, a retired Presbyterian minister known for his work in the 1980s to provide safe haven to Central Americans escaping civil conflict, said he reached out to the Border Patrol Tucson Sector, a regional division in charge of safeguarding most of the Arizona-Mexico border. He had wanted to make sure the informal agreement, which was brokered in the fall of 2013 with the regional division’s then-chief patrol agent, was still in place.

An unsigned copy of the document, provided by No More Deaths to The New York Times, says volunteers would be protected from threats of arrest or citation, and that the medical aid they provide would be “recognized and respected by government agents, and should be protected from surveillance and interference.” According to Mr. Fife, the “good-faith agreement” was reaffirmed during a meeting in April with Felix Chavez, the Tucson Sector’s interim chief.

But then the agents showed up at the camp earlier this week. They set up a checkpoint at the entrance and stopped every vehicle that came out and asked everyone inside about their citizenship status, said Maryada Vallet, one of the group’s volunteers.

Since 2001, the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office has recovered more than 2,600 remains from unidentified migrants who died in the Arizona desert. Historically, such recoveries peak during the warmer months. According to the office’s annual report, 48 of the 154 remains found last year were discovered in June and July.

Volunteers for No More Deaths and other humanitarian groups locate human remains on average once every three days in the Southern Arizona desert. They argue that border enforcement policies have pushed migrants farther into the desert, away from the camp or any place else where they might be able to seek help.

Mr. Chavez, the interim chief, vehemently disagreed. During a meeting with several of these groups in April, he said it is “the criminal organization, these ruthless smugglers, who these people are turning their lives over to that is putting them into the desert.”

In its statement on Thursday, Customs and Border Protection noted the dangers of illegally crossing the border and encouraged anyone who needs help to “call 911 immediately as delays could result in loss of life.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: Border Patrol Agents Raid Camp in Arizona Desert Run by Aid Organization. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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