From Crosses that Kill to Crosses that Condemn... Have We Learned Nothing?

Apropos of the final days of Holy Week 2026, the darkest moments in the Christian calendar — that still and scary time just before dawn — I wanted to share this piece from the archives: Alvaro Enciso’s Desert Monument to the Dead. I was back in Arizona on my latest speaking tour. I went for the Tucson Festival of Books — a guest of Rita Cantu and the Border Community Alliance. While there, I rode south into the desert three times: * To bear witness to the destruction of the San Rafael Valley by the last several miles of Trump’s boondoggle border wall, * To aid Humane Borders with a water drop run to Warsaw Canyon, * To plant crosses with Alvaro Enciso, Peter, and David, the same team featured in the archival podcast episode you access above — the same story that would become the concluding chapter of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, Buried Dreams. We were joined by a new member to the team, also named David, who was, completely coincidentally, one of my Binghamton, New York, hosts while on tour last fall. My reunion with Alvaro and his team, and their ceaseless attempt to memorialize the suffering of the great unknown, compelled me to dig up and listen to our audio collaboration, published more than four years ago. As I listened, I was taken with how eerily, hauntingly current it feels. And how appropriate to the season this statement is:“The cross is also a historical marker that was used by the Roman Empire to kill people. Remember, they used to hang them on crosses — false prophets, enemies of the empire. And they hung them out there for days in the sun without any water until they died, for everyone to see.“That’s exactly what’s happening here. People die from being exposed to the sun, without any water, on purpose.”—Alvaro Enciso, 2021Since 1994, rather than reimagine a US immigration system that respects human rights, lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have openly leaned on the theory of Prevention through Deterrence, which I prefer to call Deterrence through Cruelty, because all it has ever done is to exact tremendous misery and harm, and to kill. Untold numbers of peace-seeking people, as well as innocent wildlife, have died or disappeared because of it.The policy epitomizes what happens when walls are erected around nations: They go up around human hearts as well. Though originally published in January 2022, the only updates to make to this audio-tale are the numbers contained within:* At least 12,000 people have now died an excruciating death in the Sonoran Desert (up from 10,000), based on the conservative estimate of one person dead per day since the strategy began.* Alvaro, Peter, and David have now planted 2,300 crosses, up from 1,200 at the time this podcast interview was published four years ago.* The then-already explosive FY2021 budget of $17.7 billion for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — part of a $48 billion allocation for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the Biden administration — mushroomed following Trump & Co’s July 2025 passage of the Big Brutal Bill (what I call the MAGA Murder Mandate), which handed DHS $170.7 billion for border militarization and people trafficking, aka immigrant incarceration and expulsion, through September 30, 2029, bequeathing to DHS a purse larger than most national militaries, with* $51.6 billion earmarked for border wall construction, surveillance systems, and Border Patrol prisons;* $45 billion for expanding ICE concentration camp capacity; and* $29.9 billion for kidnapping, imprisoning, and expelling our neighbors, colleagues, family, and friends.What started for Alvaro as a dream “to reveal to the world the US government’s responsibility for turning the Sonoran Desert into a graveyard” has resulted in his transforming the desert into a cemetery, an art installation, and a memorial to the needless suffering of the unknown. It’s a work of monumental art, exposing government-sanctioned crimes against humanity. It’s art intended to lift the memory of those tragically and unnecessarily lost, while informing the living of the atrocities being quietly carried out in our names.It is art without end, apparently, as it parallels the same cruelty exercised by the Romans approximately 1,993 years ago, when one who preached the gospel of love and caring, of welcome and kindness, was forced to wear a crown of thorns that pierced his head and to carry the implement of his coming torture: a cross. Have we really learned nothing, people?Alvaro and I agree: Prevention through Deterrence, aka Deterrence through Cruelty, is exacting a quiet genocide. It is an expression of all that we should not be as a people and a nation. When these dark days are finally behind us, and we have the opportunity to build something new from Trump & Co’s ashes, we must end the policy of Prevention through Deterrence, as we tear down the structures that created it, particularly the Department of Homeland “Security,” which isn’t keeping any of us secure at all.Stay strong, my friends. The only way through this is… Together.✊🏼 SarahDon’t forget to tap the ♡ to like this podcast, and the 🔄 to share it. Tx!Tales of Humanity will always remain free because not enough people understand the human costs of an immigration system that privileges cruelty over kindness and “security” over human rights. If you like what I’m offering here — stories about radical care and mutual aid at a time of increasing fearmongering and hate — please consider becoming a paid subscriber. My gratitude in advance 🙏🏼. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe