Activism is a humbling experience. Not only does it remind us of how little we can accomplish in this world, but it throws into doubt the assumptions we make about human nature and the social forces that drive the tides in the affairs of humans.

Many of us—and I am thinking of myself here—construct their political strategy from a notion that in all of us can be found a common substrate of ideas about right and wrong, love and hate, righteousness and shame. But I am beginning to have doubts that these are easily found, and if found, may not provide the best basis for leverage, for persuasion.

And the news comes spilling out of Fort Bliss. Remember Fort Bliss? The place where we put children who we have separated from their families with decades of cruelty and greed? The place where it is hard to see the children, because no one is allowed inside. The place where employees must surrender their phones so no pictures can get out. The place where there are children on suicide watch.

Our statement was released to the press today, with sign-ons from partners listed below.

FT. BLISS AND OTHER DETENTION MEGASITES ARE NO PLACE FOR CHILDREN

Ft. Bliss detention facility must be shut down, immediately

NEW TODAY: "Fired Workers Claim Poor Conditions at Ft. Bliss Migrant Shelter," El Paso Times, 6/2/21

Photo: Allan Mestel

It is said from time to time that history is written by those who hold power. It is only a small step further to infer that the manipulation of our social memory serves the purposes of the powerful. That the story that is chiseled into posterity supports a social order. And it follows that the stories of those without the podia of power are rarely told. They can be seen by those who watch closely, but all too quickly are obscured by the steady flow of time, the greatest wave barely a ripple, mostly gone once the eyes that witnessed them close for the last time. The story then goes untold, and we are left to wonder whether those lives and loves and struggles ever happened. Whether most of us ever existed at all.

FT. BLISS AND OTHER DETENTION MEGASITES ARE NO PLACE FOR CHILDREN

Ft. Bliss detention facility must be shut down, immediately

Witness at the Border/Testigos en la Frontera calls for the megasite migrant youth detention facilities--especially at Ft. Bliss--to be shut down immediately. Recent testimonies from staff and volunteers at the site, together with reports from independent observers as reported in the media provide convergent evidence that the tent facility is operating, in effect, as a prison, and not as a shelter for vulnerable youth.

When people migrate, and they always have, it is because things are not going well where they live. And in a world as fraught with inequality and climate change as ours seems to be, migration will be happening at an accelerated pace. If we could make choices as a species, the choices would be simple. We would address the causes of inequality and climate change, while making space for those dislocated. We would, in a word, cooperate.

TAKE ACTION: Today we joined over 50 organizations in the Welcome With Dignity campaign! We believe in #WelcomeWithDignity. End Title 42. Don't detain children--EVER. Protect children at the border, let people apply for asylum, stop expelling Black migrants to danger under the false pretense of public health orders. WE SUPPORT THE WELCOME WITH DIGNITY CAMPAIGN BECAUSE WE SUPPORT THE RIGHT TO MIGRATE, the abolition of ICE, and so much more. Please take action by signing the pledge on this website! Join us and share.

https://welcomewithdignity.org/ Image: Allan Mestel

I have learned from my friends en la lucha that language matters. That “catch and release” summons images of fish, not humans, and makes a harrowing process sound like a sporting choice. We have watched as the Biden administration has been using its editing pencil to put its lines through “alien,” settling for unaccompanied and illegal and irregular, no doubt recognizing that the old term too easily suggested scaly things with bulbous heads and glowing fingertips.

Here in our Witness at the Border group, Larry Cox lets us know of his anguish when detention centers, prisons, are called shelters. He reminds us, as we all should always remember, that shelters do not need guards to prevent escape.

Here is what we know. BBC reports a case of sexual abuse at the child prison compound at Fort Bliss in West Texas. Other cases are rumored. The entire staff of a company providing what are called youth care workers is fired and replaced by staff of another company whose previous experience seems to be cleaning up floods and mold.

THIS IS WHY WE WITNESS! FORT BLISS IS NO PLACE FOR CHILDREN: All migrant children currently deprived of their freedom at Ft. Bliss should be immediately released to families or sponsors. If the abusive, traumatizing conditions documented by NYT, BBC, and El Paso Matters, including at least 1 alleged case of sexual abuse, are not enough for Biden administration to act, what will it take? JOIN US! FREE THEM! NOW!!

Very, very late tonight, as tomorrow’s sun dawns on the child detention tents at Fort Bliss, all of the so-called youth care workers assigned to that prison in the desert will leave for the last time. Every last one of them is being fired. They will go for the last time to the intake tent and they will turn in the barcoded badges they wear around their necks. The badges that say they can have contact with the thousands of child prisoners.

Bad news, bad news comes to me where I sleep.

We are hiding children in the desert again. In tents, huge tents, on the grounds of a fort that once established dominance over the local indigenous peoples, notably Apaches. Now it holds native children, pried from families long suffering from the war of conquest that is never quite over.

Hiding them. They were not sufficiently hidden in the enclosed, lightless places opened for them in convention centers.

The Buffalo Soldier gate of Fort Bliss faces an exit from the El Paso International Airport. One would need only to keep driving straight ahead from the airport to find oneself at the checkpoint, the guardhouse, that first announces that you are entering the fort, then stops you to challenge your presence before you arrive at a southern corner of the desert base, larger than any other, spanning state lines, lined at its northern extremes with the scars of missiles fired as tests of our power.

This man out of the blue started telling us about the Immigrant Children as he called them and we acted as if we didn't know anything about what was going on with the children. He said some of these kids have tested positive for Covid so as soon as buses arrive they are cleaned and sanitized. In Spanish he said, Lady, these kids that get on these buses have Visas and telephone numbers and I don't know why they are being kept here instead of turning them over to their families!

PRIMO LEVI, A JEWISH ITALIAN SURVIVOR OF AUSCHWITZ, ON THE ETHICAL AND POLITICAL "DUTY OF WITNESSING."

From “Revisiting the Life and Intellectual Legacy of Primo Levi”

BY ENZO TRAVERSO, Jacobin Magazine

Over 1,000 people have used Resistbot to make their voices heard to say that the solution to the influx of asylum-seeking children at our border is NOT to build more detention centers! The solution is to release children to their parents. Children need your help, and it’s as easy as sending a text.

Text GO REUNITE to 50409.

Once more, we are compelled to see, and to believe what we see.

It is all about seeing, and doing battle with those who would prefer that we don’t look. In the last administration, the policy known as MPP, better known as Remain in Mexico, turned migrants back into the streets of border towns and cities so dangerous that few dared to cross and report on the devastating results of the policy.

Next week, on Thursday evening, I will join others in welcoming Martín Espada to the latest in the webinar series presented by Witness at the Border. This is a very special event for me.

Martín gives voice to feelings that rattle around inside me, as I witnessed at Tornillo, as I stood at the cross that marked the bank of the river, the cross that bore the name Valéria.

RSVP: bit.ly/MEspada

Melissa and I were on our way home last night, changing planes in Dallas. My phone started vibrating. It was Amy Cohen, of Every.Last.One., an organization that has dedicated itself to bringing together families that have been torn apart by a country that has vilified the human act of migration.

She told me that just a few miles from where I was sitting and waiting for a plane, there were buses with migrant children aboard. Children who had been on the buses for days. They had been eating and sleeping on the buses. They were not allowed off, forced to use the cramped restrooms. No showers.