South Texas Human Rights Center. Search and rescue, water stations, closure.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

South Texas Human Rights Center is the only nonprofit of its kind in Texas. It’s a small, volunteer run organization that operates out of a red brick building in the heart of Brooks County, Texas. The center is usually alive with activity; volunteers load old pick-up trucks with gallons of water to take into the desert, while some stay back at the station to answer distress calls or survey maps of the sprawling ranches that make up the area, trying to pinpoint where a missing person could be calling from.

The Center was founded in 2013 by a man named Eddie Canales (full disclosure, Eddie serves on Sable’s board of directors). To picture Eddie, imagine The Most Interesting Man in the World from the Dos Equis commercials, and you’re most of the way there. Eddie and the other founding members of South Texas Human Rights Center created their nonprofit out of necessity; Brooks County is the most dangerous place to be a migrant in the United States - more migrants die in South Texas than in any other part of the country. 

South Texas Human Rights Center has taken a position that really shouldn't be controversial - that men, women, and children shouldn't die of thirst in search of a better life. Their programs are designed around this philosophy, and their strategy to prevent deaths in the desert is simple, but not easy to execute.

The first program is building and maintaining water stations. Migrants take the water that the Center provides, and they avoid the fate that thousands have already met. Nearly every day, a migrant’s life is saved by their work.

The second program is search and rescue. Local police are overwhelmed and unable to render aid to the thousands of distress calls and missing persons reports that occur in our border communities. The Center conducts search and rescue, helping desperate migrants to surrender themselves, and ultimately survive.

The third program is forensic recovery and identification. The Center works with forensic labs to identify those who have passed away in the desert and return remains to families, so they can have closure and lay their loved ones to rest.

The center reached out to Sable with a simple request: to help them raise more money so they can continue their work. In 2022, Sable worked with South Texas Human Rights Center to raise enough money to maintain 26 water stations for a full year. Our philosophy on fundraising is that it should bring a nonprofit closer to the community they serve. Student organizations were a natural, if overlooked fit for the Center. Students were able to learn more about the struggles migrants face and the real-world effects of border policies, and South Texas Human Rights Center deputized a fundraising force that required minimal oversight and zero expenses. It bears repeating; the cost to raise a dollar in this project was $0.00.

Sable is expanding the work that we’re doing with South Texas Human Rights Center. We’re helping spread the word with Google ads. We’re creating a fundraising collaboration between the Center, Border Angels, and No More Deaths - two other amazing nonprofits. We’re helping to manage their donor database. We’re doing boots on the ground volunteering in South Texas. We’re doing whatever it takes to make sure they’re successful.

If you came to our website to donate to Sable, thanks! If you got sidetracked and wound up on this page, we hope you’ll consider donating to our partner South Texas Human Rights Center. While we know that the work we do for our partners is vital, appreciated, and valuable (their words, not ours) to be completely transparent, right now the Center’s work is more urgent.