COTILLO — Typically, the frantic calls start arriving in the hot summer months when Jacqueline Arellano and her partner, James Cordero, will either be at home, at their respective workplaces, or even on vacation.

The callers often hail from Latin America or from places throughout the United States. All share a common concern: that their loved ones have gone missing while attempting to cross illegally from Mexico into the U.S. through the desert terrain of western Imperial and eastern San Diego counties.

Arellano and Cordero are co-directors of a humanitarian program that leaves caches of water and other items deep in the region’s mountains and canyons. As such, the San Diego residents are intimately familiar with the danger the landscape poses, especially when temperatures reach triple digits.

And while the water drop program, operated by the nonprofit Border Kindness, doesn’t explicitly advertise itself as conducting search and rescue operations, the callers have an understanding that Arellano and Cordero’s team of volunteers may be able to provide some assistance.

Whether it’s by initiating a search, requesting that authorities do so, or investigating whether the lost person may have been apprehended or, worse, found dead, Arellano and her fellow volunteers standby ready to help.

“Word just got around,” the former Valley resident said. “If somebody’s lost here, we’re the ones most likely to be able to find them.”

The reputation that Arellano alluded to is largely owed to the water drops that the volunteer team has been performing on a weekly basis for the past couple years. As controversial as the activity can be perceived to be, Arellano said she tends to view her team’s efforts as purely humanitarian, a logical response to a pressing need.

“For myself, personally, it just seems like the natural thing to do,” she said in a phone interview. “You know people are dying. Why wouldn’t you do what is in your ability to prevent that and save people’s lives?”

Nor is Border Kindness the only group to think that way.

Like its name suggests, the nonprofit Water Stations has been maintaining caches of water for migrants’ usage in the western desert of the Valley for more than 20 years.

It too was founded on the simple principle that despite what one may think about illegal immigration and border enforcement, wanting to prevent migrants’ heat-related deaths should not be considered controversial or second-guessed.

“What’s important is that we keep them alive,” said Water Stations founder John Hunter. “They’re people, they shouldn’t be dying horrible deaths.”

Hunter, of Escondido, is a retired physicist and lifelong conservative who is also largely responsible for the Imperial Irrigation District’s installation of buoys across the All-American Canal more than 20 years ago.

He was working as a scientist at Livermore labs in the 1990s when he began to hear about the migrants’ deaths in the desert. After inquiring about the troubling trend, Hunter said he discovered that others had considered doing something similar to what Water Stations has been doing, but had balked at the idea because of the time commitment inherent in having to maintain multiple stations in the desert during the summer heat.

“They were correct,” Hunter said about their assessment, with a laugh. “But I have no regrets. It had to be done.”

Similar Goals, Varying Methods

Aside from sharing similar goals, Border Kindness and Water Stations have adopted different approaches to their respective efforts.

For one, volunteers with the Border Kindness’ water drop program typically hike about 10 miles roundtrip to set up and maintain their caches, which number around 100. Its stores include several one-gallon plastic water bottles, pop-top canned food items, socks, hats, bandanas and some first aid supplies.

The volunteers will carry the provisions with them in backpacks, along with their own personal supplies. They also regularly collect trash to haul out.

“We’re the only team that hikes the water in,” Arellano said.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the team had ventured out on a monthly basis to replenish their caches, which are often left in milk crates in strategic locations. But obvious signs of increased consumption prompted them to undertake treks on a weekly basis year-round.

The regions of the desert they focus on are more remote and are generally only accessible by foot, such as Davies and Myer valleys and near the town of Jacumba. The recent installation of the border barrier in the Jacumba Wilderness also appears to be driving migrants westward into even more isolated and treacherous mountain terrain.

“We began to get the scope of how deep into the desert people are moving,” program co-director Arellano said. “It’s been getting more and more traffic.”

With Water Stations, its dozens of stores are generally located near paved and unpaved highways and roads located on public lands administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management or California Department of Parks and Recreation.

Its volunteers will use mostly four-wheeled drive vehicles to set up and maintain its caches, which are strictly limited to water, in accordance with the permits it has obtained from federal and state officials to operate on public lands.

Its trademark blue 50-gallon plastic drums and accompanying colored flags are set up along the roadways and are accessible solely during the hottest months, after which time everything is gathered up and stored until the next summer.

It maintains about 150 water stations along portions of eastbound Interstate 8, southbound State Route 2, Highway 98 east of Ocotillo, and along unpaved roads west of Ocotillo, near Plaster City and in Corrizo Gorge.

“It’s our hardest route to run,” founder Hunter said of Carrizo Gorge’s terrain. “More people have died in that area than in any other sector.”

Both groups rely on migrants’ consumption trends to determine where to locate their respective caches, as well as news reports of heat-related deaths.

The past year recorded the highest number of migrant deaths along the Southwest border, totaling at least 650, the International Organization for Migration reported.

Last summer, four migrants reportedly died between June and September in the desert near Ocotillo, according to information previously provided by the county Sheriff’s Office’s Coroner Division. Only one of those deaths were confirmed to have been heat-related, while the cause of death for the other three was pending as of late last year.

A fifth death was reported in August by the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office in an area near Mortero Wash west of State Route 2, at a location that straddles both counties’ boundaries. That one was heat-related and reported to authorities by Water Stations’ volunteers who discovered the body of 52-year-old Rafael Borromeo-Lopez of Veracruz, Mexico.

“It was a grim reminder of both a major and decades long issue occurring near our border desert,” board member Nikolai Beope stated on the organization’s Instagram account following the incident. “But at the same time it was a reminder of the need of organizations like ours and the inherent goodness of people who volunteer.”

During the summer, a total of four additional deaths were also reported in the open desert near Calexico, Winterhaven and Holtville, though three of those causes of death were pending as well, the coroner division reported.

Even before the migrants set foot in America, it is typical for them to have been walking for either hours or days, sources have said. For that reason, the Border Kindness program’s caches will include socks for those who may be in dire need of them.