Photos: Paul Ingram's picks for TucsonSentinel.com's best pictures of 2022

2022 often felt like one of the most violent years in recent memory, with many of our stories about the immediate and longterm consequences of crime, but there were also moments of genuine hope and beauty reflected in the Sentinel's coverage throughout the year.

The January 8th Memorial is striking commemoration of the shooting that took the lives of six people and wounded 13 more. During the 11th anniversary of the attack, former U.S. Rep. Ron Barber led a tour of the memorial following a ceremony, and there was a quiet moment when he separated from the crowd and stood by a pool of water.

Because the federal court allows cellphones, but does not allow cameras inside, our photographs at the courthouse have often been from an iPhone. And, our shot of Amber Ortega speaking to supporters outside the Evo A. DeConcini Courthouse was no exception.

Ortega faced two federal charges stemming from her arrest during a protest against border wall construction in September 2020, however, ruling from the bench U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie A. Bowman rule the federal government had imposed a "substantial burden" on Ortega's exercise of her religious faith by closing access to the border road that runs just south of Quitobaquito Springs — an area that remains central to the spiritual practices of the Hia C-ed O'odham.

In February, more than 80 people protested outside the Pima County Jail, demanding answers from the Sheriff's Department after two people died in the jail in just a few weeks. The protest followed a spate of deaths at the jail, when someone died nearly every month through 2021, and the situation continued through the year as men at the jail died from suicide, a brutal use of tasers still under investigation, and from drug overdoses.

In this photo, Frances Guzman fired off fireworks to mark the birthday of her son, Cruz Patino Jr. who died at the jail in August 2021.

From an AS350 A-Star helicopter, much of Southern Arizona's desert is a quilt of scalded mesquites and dusty ocotillos, and there's so much terrain for a single person to disappear. And, yet, Adolfo Hernandez, a pilot for Air and Marine Operations, spends his days searching for people, keeping his head cocked down as he examines spots of shade for a woman who may be missing in the desert.

In this photo, Hernandez flies over a ranch and a cattle pond where another agent looks for the missing woman in the Altar Valley, about 54 miles southwest of Tucson.

By late March, a group of migrants in Nogales, Sonora pushed against Title 42—a Trump-era order intended to mitigate COVID-19 cases that has remained even as the emergency that required it has fallen away. Title 42 has meant hundreds of migrants, largely from southern Mexico, have been blocked from seeking asylum in the U.S., while border officials used the order to quickly expel people back to Mexico.

Weeks before Easter, some migrants carried a heavy wooden cross three miles from the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales, Sonora, to the Dennis DeConcini border crossing in downtown Nogales. As the crowd moved along the road, the group would stop at "stations" and speak about their experiences and terrors as they waited in limbo while the policy remains in place. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to keep the policy in place until 2023 after Republican governors from 19 states demanded Title 42 remain in place.

A few days later, researchers from the University of Arizona released hundreds of diminutive fish, known as the longfin dace, into a one-mile section of the Santa Cruz River just west of Downtown Tucson, as part of an effort to reinvigorate the river's historic reach.

In May, Linda Ronstadt was celebrated at the Tucson Music Hall, which will now be named for "the daughter of Tucson" following a ceremony.

As the summer heated up, thousands crowded into Downtown to protest the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade—the 1973 decision that made abortion legal in the U.S. The court's decision ignited a major debate over abortion in the state, especially after outgoing Attorney General Mark Brnovich argued the court's decision resurrected a Civil War-era statute outlawing the practice in its entirety.

There was also a citizenship ceremony at Saguaro National West and a two-alarm fire at Salpointe Catholic High School that involved dozens of firefighters.

In August, Pima County Constable Deborah Martinez-Garibay was shot and killed as she went to process an eviction at a midtown apartment complex, and a photo of fellow Constable Bill Lake walking into the scene carrying a bulletproof vest was the most poignant image from an awful day.

Just after the Thanksgiving weekend, a small group of nearby residents and environmentalists attempted to halt construction of a border wall made from cargo containers stacked two high.

Earlier this year, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced the construction of a barrier near Yuma to stymie asylum seekers, and he followed that effort with a similar wall in the federally protected Coronado National Forest. As contractors broke through oak trees and drove through grasslands, a small band of people established a camp near the staging grounds, forcing a halt to the work. While contractors were slated to build 10 miles of the barrier, involving nearly 2,800 of the 40-foot-long containers, topped with concertina or "razor" wire, the protest held them to just over 3 miles.

The federal government sued, and Ducey sounded a retreat, telling a federal court the containers would be gone by January 4, 2023.

As Christmas approached, migrants in Nogales, Sonora celebrated the story of Mary and Joseph searching for a place to stay with a "posada" part of an annual, bi-national tradition involving migrants and the Kino Border Initiative. The event came as a decision over Title 42 loomed, and migrants hoped for an opportunity to seek refuge inside the U.S.