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Follow live: Updates from AP’s coverage of the presidential election.

JACUMBA HOT SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) — As dawn breaks through low clouds over the high desert, Sam Schultz drives along the knotted dirt roads near the U.S.-Mexico border, looking for migrants to help.

For more than a year now, Schultz, 69, has been been bringing food, water, warm blankets and more to the thousands of migrants he’s found huddled in makeshift camps, waiting to be processed for asylum.

He got involved when the camps showed up just a few miles from his home, Jacumba Hot Springs, California, a sparsely populated area where the rugged terrain makes it hard for people to find sustenance or shelter. As a Christian and a Quaker, he believes he has a responsibility to care for the people around him, and he felt compelled to keep people from suffering.

“I’m just not going to stand for that,” Schultz said. “If it’s a place where I can do something about it. It’s really that simple.”

Starting in late October of 2023, Schultz figures he fed more than 400 people a day for 90 days straight. Since he started, Schultz said the effort has ballooned, with many volunteers and donations.

While he sees that the border is at the epicenter of one of hottest topics dividing Republicans and Democrats in this year’s presidential elections - immigration - Schultz doesn’t plan to vote for either candidate. He doesn’t think either will make a difference. Schultz believes the heart of the issue is that the wealthy benefit from mass migration, though it is rarely mentioned.

So, instead of entering into the debate, Schultz, a lifelong relief-worker who helped in humanitarian relief efforts in Indonesia in the early 2000s, prefers to focus entirely on helping those he encounters in the desert.

The number of migrants crossing has slowed along his stretch of the border, which he attributes to a pre-election pause, as well as efforts from by Mexico to stop migrants here.

But he is preparing for what may come next, safeguarding the stockpiles of supplies painstakingly accumulated through donations and help from others.

“I don’t know, how do you stop?” he said. “That’s the thing. Once you start doing something like this. I really don’t know how you have an off switch.”

The Americans photo essay series Visually-led storytelling featuring U.S. voters and the issues that matter most to them in the upcoming U.S. election.

AP has photo and video journalists in every region of the U.S. In the run up to the U.S. election, the team is collaborating on a series of visual stories about U.S. voters in their local communities.
 

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