Posts
2/11/21
I am at a loss every time I see this. Someone points out, as witnesses are asked to do, that policies are causing suffering among migrants. That the Biden administration is expelling people by the thousands. That people, often people we know, remain in squalor along the muddy banks of the river. People who send us messages pleading with us not to forget them. As if we could ever forget them.
2/8/21
Let’s look at consequences. In this case the consequences of the Biden administration trying to thread a needle.
They have been slow-walking any decision about Title 42. What’s Title 42? It is a little determination that was arm-twisted out of the CDC, an order that allows the US (contrary to international law) to immediately, with no legal recourse or a ruling of any kind, expel anyone who comes to our border. Doesn’t matter where they come from. In practice, we are expelling lots of Mexicans to Mexico. But we are also expelling Central Americans to Mexico. Haitians to Mexico.
2/6/21
We have learned that a detention camp for teens is opening again in Carrizo Springs, Texas. It is run by Baptist Child and Family Services, the organization that ran the camp along the river in the Borderlands of west Texas at a Port of Entry. It was called Tornillo. It became a symbol of all that is wrong about immigration policy. A movement grew as people gathered to witness what they could of the children inside. Without witnesses the children would have been invisible. One child later told us that there were times during his confinement when he could not remember his own name.
2/4/21
This group was established to be a forum, a community, and a clearinghouse for those who feel called to be witnesses to what most of us perceive to be abusive and racist policies toward migrants. These repulsive policies are going on right now. They include the practice of imprisoning migrants, often euphemistically called detention, damaging families, life-threatening deportation, and what is now called expulsion, built on the false narrative that migrants are more of a threat to your health than the Super Bowl party next door.
1/31/21
If you have been following this group for long, you will have noticed that the word “witness” in the group’s name gets repeated quite a bit in posts. I certainly mention it a lot.
It may leave you with the impression that I think that witnessing is the answer to the monumental problems of forced migration and racism, and the tragic and staggering inequality in human society. But I want to clarify this a bit. It seems to me that witnessing presents us with more of a question than an answer. And the question is this: Can we look straight into the face of this injustice, see it in not just an intellectual way, but a visceral one, without something shifting? Without a transformation of ourselves, and then of more than just ourselves?
1/28/21
STATEMENT ON FORCED MIGRATION:
MIGRANT MASSACRE AND REPRESSION OF MIGRANT CARAVAN SPOTLIGHT MORTAL DANGERS FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS HEADING NORTH
January 28, 2021, Brooklyn NY -- On the occasion of the two-year anniversary of the Trump administration’s implementation of the notorious Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), or Remain in Mexico, and on the eve of additional immigration measures to be announced by the Biden administration, Witness at the Border issues the following statement.
Image: Border Report
1/22/21
A squabble has broken out somewhere in this group, in this strange place called FaceBook...
Someone believed that people who come to read here, and to write here, should feel as she does, that people should celebrate the new president and refrain from criticism. Others have pointed out that that voice comes from the luxury of privilege.
I speak from privilege. White privilege.
1/17/21
We have been to the border. We have seen people on both sides of the border. Many of generous spirit and intellect will admit that on both sides the people are worthy of sympathy. Others, like us, who have stood on both sides of that line of guns and uniforms and rusted steel, have had our natural sympathies heightened, and it has become for us that thing which most enrages those less generous: a deep revulsion for the institutions that block the flow of suffering humanity toward the light, toward life.
1/8/21
Are we better than this?
Ask black children who learn when they are young to keep their hands out of their pockets when police are near. Ask children who lose their connection to the world inside of prison tents on the border, never to be found again. Ask parents of those children if their hearts will ever heal.
12/23/20
We all have our jobs. And we all decide what our jobs are.
I know that many people who visit this page are feeling hopeful about what will happen to people who have come to our border as migrants. But some of us have been among these pilgrims. We have seen the squalor that US policy decisions have imposed upon them. We have heard about kidnappings and rapes. We have watched as bodies floated in the river. We have watched as busloads of men, women and children are transferred to planes in chains, for deportation.
