It was 1:53 a.m., and Peter Fink was on a barren mountain plateau near Campo, Calif., passing out blankets to people from four continents who had arrived there under cover of night.
It’s a nightly ritual for the 22-year-old, wearing a ball cap and a wool overshirt, whose perch — just over 300 yards up a rocky incline from the United States-Mexico border wall — has been round-the- clock boarding space for people who have crossed illegally into American soil.
With the armed National Guard of Mexico now stationed at the most popular crossings along southeastern San Diego County, migrant routes have moved further into the remote wilderness, where people face harsher terrain and temperatures with little or no infrastructure to keep them alive.
For migrants who intend to be caught by US Border Patrol agents and start applying to stay in the country, Mr. Fink, a dirt under the lattices of a high-voltage tower, became a first stop, where the moderate ration. of donated food, water and firewood helped the migrants survive as they waited for agents to cross the scene and stop them before their health deteriorated dangerously.
At this site and others along the border, migrants have waited hours or sometimes days to be detained, and a Federal District Court judge ruled last week that the Border Patrol must move “quickly” to get children into safe and clean shelters. But unlike outdoor areas waiting to pop up with more population, Mr. Fink has no aid tents or medical volunteers, no dumpsters or port-a-potties – just a hole he dug as a communal toilet, and Mr. Fink himself.
In the morning, there are Indians, Brazilians, Georgians, Uzbeks and Chinese.
Officials say federal funding and personnel are too limited to keep up with the influx of border crossings in the region, and operations like this have been a source of great tension in San Diego County.
Asked if he was concerned that his humanitarian aid could encourage more people to break the law, Mr. Fink.
“People don’t spend their life savings and risk their children’s lives so they can taste this peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” he said.
Peter Fink is blond and fresh-faced, 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. Captivated by the immigration crisis of 2020, he spent several months in Arizona, walking across the border to volunteer at a Sonora migrant shelter during the day and, at night, earning an international studies degree online, using free Wi-Fi in a local McDonalds.
He did not create the camp on the mountain top; he found it. A local man noticed the fires burning on the plateau every night, and Mr. Fink, a wildland firefighter and avid camper who travels the region, volunteered to spend the night on the plot in a tent to see what happened. Within hours, more than 200 migrants walked – among them pregnant women, children and the elderly – who huddled in the air.
Word spread to the southern communities of the so-called Mountain Empire, an area so isolated that the small desert town of Jacumba Hot Springs (population 857), 30 miles away, became the headquarters of operations. Volunteers gathered firewood from the dumps of an ax throwing site and a live-edge table maker. An abandoned youth center was used to sort non-perishable donations. A shipping container in someone’s yard became a depot of sorts for crates of water and tarps.
After that first night in early March, Mr. Fink spent another, then another. He pitched a series of four-person tents in a neat line, cramming 10 people into each when the wind became particularly unbearable. She used white paint to label the drawers of old office filing cabinets in four languages, indicating rations of applesauce for children and formula for babies. He established rules for his campsite: one snack per person; No littering; store fuel; women and children receive priority in tents.
On this day, the sun was almost directly overhead when Mr. Fink with his binoculars and saw a couple dropped off by an unmarked car on a dirt road in Mexico and walking through dry brush to the United States. The woman began to slow down. She was obviously pregnant.
Mr. Fink grabbed two bottles of water and began descending into the canyon below, waiting for the two at a safe distance back from the boundary wall so they wouldn’t be enticed. Once on US soil, the woman gasped and dropped herself to the ground. His wife knelt before him and held his face in her hands.
“Is that okay?” he whispered while wiping sweat from his forehead. He nodded.
A moment of silence prevailed. Then asked Mr. Fink in Spanish where they’re from (San Salvador), how soon the baby is due (a month) and if the two extorted money from Mexican authorities on their way to the border wall. The couple said they had none.
“Good luck,” he said.
He led them up the camp, passing abandoned bags and clothes, and using footholds he had carved into the ground using a technique he learned fighting wildfires. As soon as they reached the camp, he turned and started running back down the valley. He saw a girl in polka-dot pants and a ponytail wandering with her mother, and saw that they had taken a wrong turn.
When the girl, Briana Lopez, 5, arrived at camp, she ate Welch’s fruit snacks from Mr. Fink, and spoke on the phone with his father, still on his way home to Guatemala.
“How are you, my son? Are you happy?” he asked in Spanish.
“Fine!” he says. “Yes!” Well done! Yes!
His parents discussed how he and his mother could navigate immigration detention once they were apprehended. Briana nodded, excited — she believed they were going to Disneyland.
The last group of migrants was picked up by dusk, and Mr. Fink is hunched over in his tent, eating a piece of pita bread and arranging donation drop-offs via his cellphone.
It was around the time he usually slept, hoping for a few hours before the first overnight wave arrived. But in the distance he heard angry breaths, and a woman appeared alone, falling into his arms, crying.
His traveling companions left him, he said, following an underground railroad and far to the west, disappearing into the wilderness. Now they are missing.
Mr. Fink climbed to the highest point on the rock, clamped his hands over his mouth, and shouted in Spanish: “Here, we have water and food! Don’t be afraid — come here!” his voice echoes in the valley. “Hey, welcome to the United States!”
He wrapped the girl in a blanket while waiting. “God bless you,” he said. God bless you.
Finally, his two lost companions climbed to the top from the other side of the cliff, sobbing and hugging him. Mr. Fink packed a bag for each of them as they obeyed Border Patrol orders to strip down to one layer of clothing and board a government van.
At 8:13 pm, the site is quiet again, except for power lines buzzing overhead and dogs barking their evening songs on the Mexican side. In the dark, Mr. cleaned and arranged. Fink the tents, then light the garden lights and glow sticks on the trail up to the camp for the night arrivals.
Within a week, Mr. Fink heads to the Northwest, where the sorghum and amaranth planting season begins, and where landscaping and construction jobs await him. But his tarps, firewood and filing cabinets atop the mountain remain, and supplies are periodically restocked by volunteers.
When a group of Colombians were released from Border Patrol custody in the United States the following week, an aid worker overheard them discussing “an angel” who kept them alive and won their hearts. – “un güerito” who speaks very good Spanish, they say, and who they find hanging out in a tent.
