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On Sunday, Nov. 23, about 4:30 p.m., Border Patrol agents arrived at the entrance to No More Death's humanitarian camp, which provides medical aid, food and shelter to migrants who pass through the Southern Arizona area, about seven miles north of the U.S. border with Mexico.

At the camp entrance agents called out, "United States Border Patrol! Come out!" and asked for permission to enter the property, according to No More Deaths volunteers, who said they refused to let agents enter without a warrant.

About an hour later the agents entered the camp anyway, claiming they were in "hot pursuit" and didn't need a warrant, volunteers said.

Volunteers still refused to grant the agents access to the camp's trailers without a warrant, but at about 6 p.m., "agents started breaking into structures and detaining people who were receiving medical attention there," No More Deaths volunteer Aryanna Tischler told the ����Ӱ��AV on Monday.

Volunteers said the fact that agents waited an hour before entering the camp, known as Byrd Camp, demonstrates they were not in "hot pursuit," and so were violating the 4th Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure, Tischler said.

"If they were in hot pursuit, they would have just entered," Tischler said. 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not responded to the Star's request Monday for comment and for an explanation of the warrantless arrests.

Video of the incident shared with the Star shows agents shining flashlights around the camp's trailers and appearing to force their way inside.

Tischler said the border agents arrested three men whom No More Deaths is not identifying at this time. Volunteers have been trying to locate the men using U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement's online "detainee locator," but have not been able to find them, Tischler said.

"We're working hard on trying to get in contact with the people who were arrested," she said. "There's this intentional black hole that's been created in ICE, where they intentionally made people disappear."

Human rights advocate Isabel García, an attorney and co-founder of Tucson's Coalición de Derechos Humanos, said the argument that agents were in hot pursuit doesn't appear credible.

Hot pursuit involves "exigent," urgent circumstances, when law enforcement is in the act of chasing someone, but border agents' hourlong wait before entering the camp rules that out, García said.

"It's outrageous. This is not 'hot pursuit,'" she said. "None of it makes sense, but they’re lawless right now. Let's face it, Trump and his administration has allowed them to be lawless."

No More Deaths established the Byrd Camp in 2004, and the camp was also raided during the first Trump administration, in 2017 and twice in 2020. Heightened surveillance and militarization around the aid station preceded all of those raids, Tischler said.

While agents have previously entered the camp without a warrant, this is the first time they've entered enclosed structures on the site without a warrant, the volunteer group said.

"Past raids ... have been accompanied by a federal search warrant and a BORTAC (Border Patrol Tactical Unit) team. This marks the first time agents have entered buildings without a warrant, marking a new escalation for the agency," the group said in a news release.

In the most recent raid, "they were acting with impunity, as if they would face no repercussions for their actions," Tischler said.

The raid on Byrd Camp comes as the Border Patrol's aggressive operations in the U.S. interior have surged, with federal agents arresting hundreds of immigrants without warrants in Chicago alone, prompting public protests and a legal challenge.

In October, a federal judge the ACLU and the National Immigrant Justice Center, which alleged the warrantless arrests in Chicago since June violated a 2022 settlement agreement.

No More Deaths also pointed to the of a U.S. citizen in Charlotte, North Carolina, after border agents broke his vehicle's window.

"We're seeing this in Chicago, in Charlotte, and now in New Orleans," Tischler said. "We're witnessing this increase in constitutionally illegitimate state violence against U.S. citizens, but also undocumented people."

Migrant arrivals at the southern border have dropped precipitously since early 2024, but people are still crossing there, Tischler said.

Border agents arrested 1,741 migrants in the Tucson Sector in the month of October, the most recent CBP data show. For comparison, in December 2023, Tucson Sector agents were arresting 1,800 people in the southern Arizona borderlands daily, amid an international boom in migration.

But now, instead of surrendering to border agents, more migrants are traveling through dangerously remote areas of the desert, due to heightened militarization and restrictions on access to asylum, beginning under the former Biden administration and escalating under the Trump administration, Tischler said.

"No More Deaths firmly denounces this continued pattern of impunity and attacks on immigrants all over the country," the group said in a news release. "We affirm the right of all people — regardless of migration status — to receive humanitarian aid. In accordance with this vision, Byrd camp has always operated in accordance with protocols set by international humanitarian law."