Encounters with G4S Drivers

My encounters with two bus drivers of G4S, the private company that Border Patrol contracts to transport migrants from the desert to Tucson, to prison, and from prison to Mexico. Most every time I pass the buses I stop to offer food and water to the migrants on the bus.

Bus Driver 1:

I wonder if he believed what he said referring to the Mexican and Central American migrants that he drives as “Indians” or if he was just trying to upset me. I wonder where he got his sense of power, waving me away without looking me in the eye. I wonder where he lost his sense of compassion, saying the migrants would be so hungry that they would eat any food I gave them even if they were allergic to it. I wonder if he spoke Spanish, or even knew the reasons that people filled his bus.

Bus Driver 2:

I wonder how it felt for him to actively assist his own people being transported to prison. I wonder what it is like for him, being from Nogales Mexico, where many of those migrants who sat on his bus had crossed into the United States. There is little doubt he had experienced police stopping him on the street in Tucson when he was out of uniform to ask him for his ID. I wonder what he was thinking when he told me I could not enter the bus to give food and water to the 18 people on board. I wonder whether he regretted not allowing me to say a few simple words of encouragement, of testimony that not everyone in this country thinks it is right to detain them in prisons, and to deport them to some of the most dangerous cities in the world. I wonder what he was thinking about when he told us we would go to heaven for what we were doing -- or when we replied that we hoped we would all go to heaven. I wonder what those 18 migrants on the bus thought as they waved and smiled at us through the tinted windows. I hope they knew we considered them strong, and brave, and beautiful -- as equals, as brothers and sisters. It was hard to see them so -- through the tinted window waving and smiling. It was hard, but I also felt hope in their strength to smile and wave despite their situation, their courage, despite their coming future in prison for who knows how long. I could learn something from that.

Here is a New York Times article with more information about G4S and private prison companies in general worldwide:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/world/asia/getting-tough-on-immigrants-to-turn-a-profit.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Here is a quote from the article about G4S: "In 2007, Western Australia’s Human Rights Commission found that G4S drivers had ignored the cries of detainees locked in a scorching van, leaving them so dehydrated that one drank his own urine. The company was ordered to pay $500,000 for inhumane treatment, but three of the five victims already had been deported. Immigration officials, relying on company misinformation, had dismissed their complaints without investigation, the commission found."

-Berit