Tohono O'odham - Border Issues

Border Issues

Most of the 25,000 Tohono O'odham today live in southern Arizona, but there is also a population of several thousand in northern Sonora, Mexico. Unlike aboriginal groups along the U.S.-Canada border, the Tohono O'odham were not given dual citizenship when a border was drawn across their lands in 1853 by the Gadsden Purchase. Even so, members of the nation moved freely across the current international boundary for decades – with the blessing of the U.S. government – to work, participate in religious ceremonies, keep medical appointments in Sells, and visit relatives. Even today, many tribal members make an annual pilgrimage to Magdalena, Sonora, during St. Francis festivities. (Interestingly, the St. Francis festivities in Magdalena are held in the beginning of October (the anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi), and not at the time of St. Francis Xavier, who was a Jesuit.) But since the mid-1980s, stricter border enforcement has restricted this movement, and tribal members born in Mexico or who have insufficient documentation to prove U.S. birth or residency, have found themselves trapped in a remote corner of Mexico, with no access to the tribal centers only tens of miles away. Since 2001, bills have repeatedly been introduced in Congress to solve the "one people-two country" problem by granting U.S. citizenship to all enrolled members of the Tohono O'odham, but have so far been unsuccessful. Reasons that have been advanced in opposition to granting U.S. citizenship to all enrolled members of the Nation include the fact that births on the reservation have been for a large part informally recorded and the records are susceptible to easy alteration or falsification.

The proximity of the U.S.-Mexico border incurs further costs to the tribal government and breeds many social problems.

Many of the thousands of people crossing the Sonoran desert to work in U.S. agriculture or to smuggle controlled substances seek emergency assistance from the Tohono O'odham Police Department when they become dehydrated or get stranded. On the ground, Border Patrol emergency rescue and tribal EMT coordinate and communicate. The tribe and the State of Arizona pay a large proportion of the bills for border-related law enforcement and emergency services. The former governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano, (now Secretary of Homeland Security) and Tohono O'odham government leaders have repeatedly requested that the Federal government repay the state and the tribe for the costs of border-related emergencies. Tribe Chairman Ned Norris Jr. has complained about the lack of reimbursement for border enforcement.