I Helped Thousands of Migrants at the U.S. Border

On a hot September afternoon in 2023, my cousin called me with urgent instructions: "Load up your truck with water and bring your bag of tricks," she said. "There are hundreds out here."

My "bag of tricks" was my first-aid kit. And the "hundreds" were migrants who'd crossed a well-known gap in the border fence, hoping to claim asylum in the United States. I live near Jacumba, a high desert outpost on the Mexican border, about 70 miles east of San Diego.

In recent months, we'd heard about migrants paying smugglers to drop them at this spot. I'd even seen one of the camps myself after I encountered a panicked Turkish woman on the road. She'd lost track of her teenage son and daughter after being sent to the hospital, most likely suffering from dehydration or just sheer exhaustion.

This woman, like so many others, couldn't get an appointment at the official border crossing in Tijuana and had heard that Jacumba was a good Plan B. They didn't realize they might have to spend days in the desert without shelter, waiting for border patrol to take them into custody.

At 61, I was supposed to be settling into retirement. I was also recovering from a severe case of Covid and grieving the deaths of two close relatives from the virus. After a few years of living in Phoenix, I craved putting my feet down on the land I'd known for most of my life.

I returned to California and settled into an adorable home with a balcony, where I could watch the sunset over the mountains and the stars twinkle at night. I hoped the quiet beauty and isolation might heal me. Then my cousin called.

I had no medical training beyond basic first aid. But I'd raised three adventurous boys in this backcountry, an hour away from the nearest hospital. You figure things out.

The first order of business was to collect supplies for these newcomers—sometimes up to 500 people a day. On Facebook, I implored friends to empty their medicine chests.

Soon, goods began to arrive: bags of cold medicine, tents, blankets, sun hats, and even a mysterious case of Spaghettios. As fall turned to winter—and I saw more families waiting longer to be picked up—I started asking for diapers, formula, and warmer clothing.

If we didn't have supplies, we improvised. I turned bedsheets into bandages to cover the deep skin sores afflicting people who'd been bitten by parasitic flies in the Panamanian jungle. I discovered that tampons and maxi pads worked well on lacerations from razor wire.

I treated scorpion bites, infected cuts, sprained ankles, dehydration and hypothermia. When ambulances wouldn't come to the camps, I'd drive people suffering from heart attacks, seizures, head injuries, broken arms, and rattlesnake bites to a pick-up point on the highway.

Occasionally, I got pushback from border patrol agents who questioned my qualifications—and why I was there.

"Well, I'm all you got right now," I'd fire back. "I'm passing out feminine hygiene products, and I found this guy. His foot is in bad shape. There's also a woman who looks like she's about to go into labor." So I stayed.

After working mostly by myself for two months, I organized volunteer shifts with medical students and coordinated donations with local nonprofits. Some nights, I was so tired I'd crash on my couch and fall asleep in my clothes—my ankles swollen and my arthritis flaring up. But by morning, I wanted to get back to the camps to make sure people had made it through the night in freezing temperatures and piercing winds.

The people I was helping came from across the globe: India, Sudan, China, Brazil, Venezuela, and so many other places. I often relied on my phone's translation app to communicate.

Still, it always surprised me how natural it felt to connect with these strangers. They'd smile and greet me each morning, their children emerging from makeshift shelters to play with my overly friendly terrier mix "Lilli."

The teens among them would ask me for "selfies." Sometimes I'd let the unaccompanied minors hang out in the backseat of my truck and let them watch YouTube on my phone.

I also learned some of their stories: The Turkish woman's house had collapsed on her during the 7.8 magnitude earthquake last year. A young Russian man said he refused to fight "Putin's war." I met so many beautiful and brave people who had survived horrific circumstances and who had walked into an unknown country with nothing more than a small backpack.

They were so vulnerable and dependent on us volunteers. But their energy was contagious. As the months passed, I started to feel stronger and more hopeful about my own life.

I also started building new connections in my community. Moving back to Jacumba, it had been hard to make new friends. Now I was working with a team, learning about the medical students' personal lives and chatting with local elementary school kids whose parents had brought them out to make peanut butter sandwiches.

By March, I noticed that fewer people were arriving at our location. They were still coming, but border patrol started picking them up sooner, so they weren't stranded overnight. We also heard about people crossing through the mountains or other places west of us. I no longer needed to wake at dawn and hurry out the door.

Truthfully, I missed the connection and purpose I'd found. The experience of those five months—organizing donations, chopping vegetables for a big vat of soup, loading trucks, serving people, and working side-by-side with others—provided an unexpected kind of healing. For that, I'm forever grateful.

I haven't given up my work entirely. During the recent downpours, I drove over to the camps to find a group getting utterly soaked. I organized them in a circle, with the kids in the middle, and put a big tarp over their heads.

I still maintain a storeroom of supplies in my house. I know that the volunteers who kept so many people alive through the winter will return when they're needed. Helping people in need is just what you do—no matter who they are or where they're from. I hope we can all take that to heart. In the meantime, I'm saving the cases of Spaghettios that still arrive at my door every week.

Karen Parker is a retired social worker who lives in Jacumba, California, and volunteers with the nonprofit organization Border Kindness.

All views expressed are the author's own.

Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? See our Reader Submissions Guide and then email the My Turn team at myturn@newsweek.com.