It was 1:53 am. and Peter Fink was on a barren plateau near Cabo, California, handing out blankets to people from four continents who had arrived there under cover of night.
This was a nightly ritual for the cap-and-wool-shirt-clad 22-year-old, whose perch — just over 300 yards up a rocky slope from the U.S.-Mexico border wall — had become a corner. watch boarding area for persons who had crossed illegally into US territory.
With the armed National Guard of Mexico Now stationed at the most popular crossing points along southeast San Diego County, migrant routes have shifted further into the remote desert, where people face more extreme terrain and temperatures with little to no infrastructure to sustain them.
For immigrants who intended to be apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents and begin applying to stay in the country, Mr. Fink’s makeshift camp, a dirt pit beneath the grids of a power tower, had become the first station, where modest rations of donated food, water and firewood helped the migrants survive while they waited for agents to cross the landscape and detain them before their health dangerously withered.
At that point and others along the border, immigrants have waited for hours or sometimes days to be taken into custody, and a Federal District Court judge ruled last week that the Border Patrol must move “quickly” to move the children in safe and sanitary shelters. But unlike the open-air waiting areas that had sprung up in more densely populated areas, Mr. Fink’s site had no aid tents or volunteer doctors, no garbage cans or urinals — just a hole he had dug as a communal toilet, and Mr. Fink the own.
By morning, there were Indians, Brazilians, Georgians, Uzbeks and Chinese.
Officials say federal funding and staffing are too limited to keep up with the influx of border crossings in the area, and such operations have become a source of great tension in San Diego County.
Asked if he was concerned that his humanitarian aid might encourage more people to come illegally, Mr Fink shook his head.
“People aren’t spending their life savings and risking their children’s lives so they can try these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” he said.
Peter Fink is blond and fresh, and grows a beard just to look his age. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest and learned Spanish working a summer job picking cherries. Buoyed by the immigration crisis in 2020, he spent months in Arizona, walking across the border to volunteer at a Sonora migrant shelter by day and, by night, earning an international studies degree online, using free Wi-Fi at one local McDonalds.
He did not set up this camp on top of the mountain. he found it. A local man had noticed fires burning on the plateau every night, and Mr. Fink, a wildland firefighter and avid camper who traveled the area, offered to spend the night on the property in a tent to see what happened. Within hours, more than 200 migrants came on foot – among them pregnant women, children and the elderly – huddled in the biting air.
Word spread through the southern communities of what is known as the Mountain Empire, an area so isolated that the small desert town of Jacumba Hot Springs (population 857) 30 miles away, became the headquarters of the operation. Volunteers collected firewood from the debris of an ax throwing site and a tabletop. An abandoned youth center was used to sort non-perishable donations. A container in someone’s yard became a kind of warehouse for boxes of water and tarps.
After that first night in early March, Mr. Fink spent another, then another. He set up a series of four-man tents in a neat line, cramming 10 people into each when the wind became particularly unbearable. He used white paint to label the drawers of old office filing cabinets in four languages, declaring portions of applesauce for children and formula for infants. He set his camping guidelines: one snack per person. No trash? firewood preservation; women and children have priority in tents.
On this day, the sun was almost directly overhead when Mr. Fink looked out of his binoculars and saw a couple who are swept away by an unmarked vehicle on a dirt road in Mexico and trek through the arid brush toward the United States. The woman began to slow down. She was obviously pregnant.
Mr. Fink grabbed two bottles of water and began his descent into the canyon below, waiting for the two at a safe distance behind the boundary wall so as not to encourage them. Once on US soil, the woman panted heavily and dropped to the ground. Her husband squatted in front of her and took her face in his hands.
“Está bien?” she whispered wiping the sweat from her brow. She nodded.
For a moment there was silence. Mr. Fink then asked in Spanish where they were from (San Salvador), how soon the baby was due (a month), and whether the Mexican authorities had extorted cash as they headed for the border wall. The couple said they had not.
“Buena suerte,” he said.
He led them up the camp, past abandoned bags and clothing, and using footholds he had carved into the earth with a technique he had learned fighting fires. As soon as they reached the camp, he turned and started running down the valley again. He had spotted a young lady in polka dot pants and a ponytail wandering around with her mother and could see they were about to take a wrong turn.
Once the girl, Briana Lopez, 5, arrived at the camp, she ate Welch’s fruit snacks from Mr. Fink and spoke on the phone to her father, who was still at home in Guatemala.
“How are you my child? Are you happy?” he asked in Spanish.
“Good!” he said. “Si!” Good! Yes!
Her parents discussed how she and her mother could cope with immigration detention once they were arrested. Brianna yelled, excited—she thought they were going to Disneyland.
The last group of migrants was picked up at dusk, and Mr. Fink hunched over his tent, munching on a piece of pita bread and arranging donation shipments on his cellphone.
This was about the time he usually went to bed, hoping for a few hours before the first wave of nightfall arrived. But in the distance he heard angry gasps and a woman appeared alone, collapsed in his arms and crying.
Her fellow travelers had left her behind, she said, following an underground railroad line and bearing far west, disappearing into the desert. Now they were missing.
Mr. Fink climbed to the highest point of the rocky ledge, clamped his hands around his mouth, and shouted in Spanish, “Here, we have water and food! Don’t be afraid – come from here!’ his voice echoed through the valley. “Hey, welcome to the United States!”
He wrapped the woman in a blanket as he waited. “Dios te bendiga,” he said. God bless you.
Finally, her two lost companions climbed to the top from the other side of the plateau, crying and wrapping their arms around her. Mr. Fink made a bag for each of them as they followed Border Patrol orders to strip down to a layer of clothing and board a government van.
At 8:13 p.m., the site was silent again, except for power lines buzzing overhead and dogs barking their evening songs on the Mexican side. In the dark, Mr. Fink disinfected and set up the tents, then lit garden lights and glow sticks along the trail to the camp for those who would arrive at night.
Within a week, Mr. Fink would depart for the Northwest, where the planting season for sorghum and amaranth would begin, and where landscaping and construction work awaited him. However, his mountaintop tarps, firewood and filing cabinets remain, and supplies are periodically replenished by volunteers.
When a group of Colombians were released from Border Patrol custody in the United States the following week, a humanitarian overheard them discussing “an angel” who had kept them alive and won their hearts — “un güerito” who spoke very good Spanish. he said, and who had found themselves hanging out in a tent.
