Migrant Trails, Trials and Travails, Arizona and California by Lezak Shallat published on 2014-04-27T05:56:53Z A litany in sound of the travails of migrants as they cross our southern border, suffer the Sonoran desert, face deportation hearings and are "voluntarily" sent home. The audio walks through the Stations of the Migrant with families at the doors of the Contra Costa (California) jail where scores of migrants are currently detained . ____________ NOTES: In March, I volunteered at No More Deaths in the southwestern Arizona desert; attended an Operation Streamline hearing in Tucson; walked across the border to Nogales, Sonora (Mexico) to visit a soup kitchen/shelter for destitute border-crossers, In California, I joined the April 4 No More Deportations rally at the San Francisco immigration court and attended the Stations of the Migrant Lenten Vigil of East Bay faith groups at the doors of the West County Detention Facility (Richmond) jail where scores are detained. Audios: 1) Interview with journalist Charles Bowden; 2) Excerpts from"Offended Turf," read by author Margaret Randall and accompanied by musician Glenn Weyant using the border wall itself as an instrument; 3) "Voluntary Return," written/performed by Robert Neustadt; 4) "Tenebrae Facte Sunt" by Chilean compositor Carlos Zamora, performed by Coro Bellas Artes; 5) "Whose the Criminal? written/performed by by Ted Warmbrand. Audios 1,2,3 and 5 come from Border Songs, a CD produced by No More Deaths: www.nomoredeaths.org 6) "If You Are Calling About An Alien.....": Telephone message of the Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations office in San Francisco. Texts: 1) "Stations of the Migrant" was adapted from a litany written by Daniel Pinell, Silvia Brandon-Perez and Deborah Lee and celebrated on April 5 by the East Bay Interfaith Immigration Coalition at its monthly vigil in front of the Richmond County jail. See version with slideshow on My YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOw61knTmdc Credits for slideshow: Photos: No More Deaths humanitarian aid desert camp near Arivaca, Arizona in the Sonora desert ; Mariposas border entry station on the US side of Nogales; Centro de Atención al Migrante Deportado, a church-run shelter on the Mexican side of Nogales, where people who have been dumped across the border by the US can sleep, eat and plan their next move, to try again or go home; April 4, protest in front of the federal Immigration Court in San Francisco. Art: The reconfigurations of the stars are excerpted from Constellation vimeo.com/90596256 by video artist artist Jodi Darby at a Signal Fire Outpost residency on the border. "Militarization and surveillance can turn the most beautiful landscape into a terrifying one," she writes. Genre documentary