10/13/20

By Tom Cartwright

A MELANGE OF EMOTIONS

Over the past few days Witness at the Border was humbled to work with over 100 amazing advocates to try to stop an Omni International ICE Air deportation flight to Africa. Despite the efforts of this tireless group and some Members of Congress (below), 60 Cameroonians were sent back to a country in the middle of a civil war. 28 Congolese were also deported on this plane to a country extremely ill-equipped to deal with the risk of COVID exportation. We failed to move ICE to a humanitarian place. We may have failed to save some lives.

That said, we did what we do as witnesses, we made the doers understand that there were watchers. And that the watchers would not give up. We would find the flight details, even when they hide them from us. We provided our allies with information on where and when to be at the detention center to interrupt the flow of the busses in the road and at the airport to witness. They confirmed to us with their eyes that our assumptions on flight details were correct.

We participated in strongly encouraging Members of Congress to engage and to show ICE they too were willing to witnesses these crimes against humanity. And, in doing so, we also showed the Members of Congress that we were here to witness their advocacy for our brothers and sisters that were being deported.

But maybe most important of all, we will continue to use our insights to witness for the highest purpose of all. So that there might be people on the other end of this deportation to perhaps provide some love and safety to those the US tossed aside.

Over the next 2 days we will monitor this flight from Dallas to Dakar (Senegal), to Douala (Cameroon), to Kinshasa (Congo) and to Nairobi (Kenya). We will communicate with the selfless advocates arranging for help in the home countries. We will simply do what we have to do. What we would want others to do for us. It is just being and feeling human.

We give our thanks to several Members on Congress including Representatives Bennie Thompson (Chair, House Homeland Security Committee), Karen Bass (Co- Chair Congressional Black Caucus), Joaquin Castro (Chair Congressional Hispanic Caucus), Ilhan Omar, and Cedric Richmond who all offered support with letters to DHS today.

Thank you all for standing with us.