Arizona farmer provides food and water to migrants at the border with Sonora, Mexico

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Luis Ames, a local agricultural worker who drops off food and water for migrants and asylum seekers waiting to be picked up by Border Patrol agents, stands along the U.S.-Mexico border in San Luis, Ariz., on May 12, 2023.

SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, SONORA.- Standing in front of his white truck, a man with a goatee and straw hat had an easy smile, and bore the lines and tan of someone who looked like he worked in the fields his whole life.

On the other side of the approximately 6-inch-wide, rust-colored steel posts, two children ran around while their parents, looking exhausted, waited for U.S. Border Patrol agents to return and process them early Friday morning in a remote area of San Luis.

They were sitting in a square dirt lot surrounded on three sides by thick steel posts with the vast Mexican desert on one side and Yuma’s agricultural fields on the other.

Luis Ames, 66, is well-known in that corner of San Luis for distributing food and water to migrants waiting to be processed for custody who could wait for hours or days, according to some migrants.

He works on the land that borders the wall overseeing the irrigation of Lee Farms fields.

Luis Ames, a local agricultural worker who drops off food and water for migrants and asylum seekers waiting to be picked up by Border Patrol agents, stands along the U.S.-Mexico border in San Luis, Ariz., on May 12, 2023.

He will never forget the first day he started bringing food and water to migrants waiting to be processed by the U.S. Border Patrol.

On Dec. 1, 2021, Ames was checking the fields as he usually does.

As he approached the border wall, he saw hundreds of migrants sitting in the square dirt lot.

“When I was passing by, I saw a lot of hands coming out through (the slats of) the wall,” Ames said.

With hands reaching out of the slats, people were crying out for help. He recalled hearing the desperation in their voices. They had been waiting there for some time without food or water.

He saw many children, women, pregnant women, and elderly people among the anguished crowd.

Ames sped away, rushing to the nearest store and bringing back truckloads of bread, sandwich ingredients, water, Gatorade, soda, and anything else he could get quickly. He made a few other trips, rushing back and forth, to get enough food and drink for everyone.

Once they were fed, tranquility blanketed the group.

“That made me realize a lot of things, everything these people suffer when they leave their country. They travel through corrupt countries where they get robbed of their money and everything they own,” Ames said. “Most people arrive without anything.”

Source: AZ Central

The Sonora Post