"The Case for Open Borders": 911 calls in the desert

Desert. Image source.

I recently published my review of the book "The Case for Open Borders" by John Washington. I also want to share some quotes from the book. Here's a section from pages 7-8:

In Southern Arizona, humanitarian organizations have extensively documented emergency services' consistently disparate responses between presumed citizens and noncitizens who make 9-1-1 calls when they are lost in the borderland wilderness. When those calling are presumed to be citizens, rescue teams across multiple agencies are summoned, mobilized, and deployed, with a nearly 100 percent rescue success rate. With just a couple vague landmarks to guide their search, helicopters, quads, and the cavalry will come out to search for distressed citizens. When presumed noncitizens call, they get transferred from the sheriff's office to the Border Patrol, who might patch them to the next county over, which then patches them back to the sheriff in a potentially deadly cycle of telephonic handwashing. No summoning, no mobilization, no deployment. No rescue.

In Arizona, it is illegal to drive a distressed border crosser to the hospital. A recently proposed bill in Florida would make driving an undocumented immigrant anywhere punishable by up to five years in prison.

These are just a few examples of how migrants are marginalized into the corners of rightlessness and lawlessness: fewer rights, no vote, little safety, no home. Borders in full effect.

A political system that implements different laws for different groups of people is, by definition, a system of apartheid.

I'm trying to find a source for the claim "In Arizona, it is illegal to drive a distressed border crosser to the hospital" - there's a law called 13-2929 which is related to this but doesn't quite spell it out that explicitly. I'm guessing that this is a matter of how it gets interpreted- maybe there are cases where people have actually gotten in legal trouble for giving undocumented immigrants a ride somewhere, because of this law. But also, maybe the law could be interpreted to say that's not what it meant.

At any rate, though, I believe we have a moral obligation to help people who need help, and it's ridiculous that there are laws that restrict this normal human behavior of helping people who need help, because of some imaginary lines.

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EDIT: Here's an insightful comment from venatrixlunaris on Pillowfort:

Afaik (I am in Arizona) it’s not so much that driving an undocumented immigrant to the hospital is illegal, more that having an undocumented immigrant in your car when you pass a checkpoint is illegal because that makes you human trafficking and/or aiding and abetting unlawful entry. “I’m not helping them cross the border, they already crossed the border, I’m just driving them to the hospital” was the argument of some No More Deaths volunteers, which is an organization that provides water and medical aid to undocumented immigrants in the desert. Border Patrol did not accept that argument and arrested them for transporting migrants. There was a huge outcry and the judge in the trial ultimately dismissed the charges, though. So they didn’t actually end up going to jail for it. I bet that’s what the book is referring to though.

But yeah, it’s unbelievably fucked up what they’ll do to people who are trying to help undocumented immigrants.