Posts
5/22/22
There is an odd quality to waiting for nothing to happen….We don't expect the border to be flung open tomorrow. A judge said it can't be. The border guards will show up for a day of work that is like every other day for the past two years, in which their main job is to make sure no one gets in and nothing unusual happens.
#WitnessAtTheBorder #OpenEveryDoor
5/19/22
A few of us witnesses will journey down to Brownsville, Texas, to join our brothers and sisters to do what we know how to do: watch. To bear witness. While we are there we will visit a place that has never left our hearts, and the people who are the heart and soul of the struggle for the right to migrate, the right to live.
5/13/22
The news we learned that some folks associated with QAnon had set themselves up near the Arizona border with Mexico in order to intercept minors crossing into the U.S. was horrifying for many of us to hear. The details of their little operation, that they were investigating the relatives of these children to make sure they weren’t pedophiles, even going so far as to visit their homes, were chilling.
5/3/22
NEW: Episode 13, “Who Gets Welcomed? Who Gets to Move?”
Watch teaser here: Teaser, Witness Radio Ep. 13
4/7/22
Majorkas has instructed the people who encounter migrants seeking asylum at our southern border that they are to use discretion when they decide whether to use the machinery for immediate expulsion under Title 42, the policy that pretends to be a health order, but is actually a blunt instrument for bypassing actual immigration laws.
4/6/22
The linked document is the report of a whistleblower who worked at the emergency intake shelter that was set up at Fort Bliss to house unaccompanied children who had come across the border.
This was the place that some of us marched to from the Port of Entry in downtown El Paso, to make ourselves symbols of the plight of the children that were and are being transported to be held in tents on the desert while the bureaucracy figures out what to do with them.
Image from La Caminata: Walk for the Children, El Paso 4/30/21
4/1/22
[The Administration has announced that Title 42 will be rescinded as of May 23, 2022.]
The pretense that the policy of mass expulsion of migrants coming to our southern border had something to do with Covid-19 is being maintained even as its termination date is being announced. The policy, known as Title 42 because it relies on a regulation that allows laws that assure the right to request asylum to be suspended in a “health emergency,” will draw its final breath on May 23, and we, with bated breath, will watch to see what substitute obstructions will be placed in the way of the right of human beings to migrate, something they have been doing since the first Homo sapiens made their way out of Southern Africa, and settled in every corner of the world.
3/30/22
The 45,000 Quilt Project Raises Awareness About Immigrant Detention
Contribute to the GoFundMe for the book: 45,000 Quilt Project book.
3/29/22
Haitian Bridge Alliance and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights release a new report unveiling the full scope of human rights abuses against Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Texas.
Read the first-hand testimonies of 43 Haitian and other survivors here: https://rfkhr.imgix.net/asset/Del-Rio-Report.pdf.
3/20/22
Busy and productive days at World Central Kitchen: #ChefsForThePeople…. Preparing thousands of meals for Ukrainians fleeing to safety. Most nights we have then gone to the border crossing at Medyka and passed out candy, hot chocolate, juice, and fruit to those who just arrived in Poland. The huge paella pans the photo (and there are 6 of them), each can cook 250 gallons at a time, and each enough for 2,000 servings of soup, broth, applesauce, stew, etc. As an example, for one day the prepared meal was rice with beef and vegetables, fresh salad, and garlic bread. Broth and hot chocolate for the border as well. And borscht prepared and in the cooler for the next day. 250 gallons of it.
3/18/22
Title 42 ReCast: It's Biden's Legacy Now
Now the reason for the expulsion of more than 1 million people fleeing climate devastation, endemic violence, political repression, and crippling poverty, Title 42 was Trump’s crime against humanity.
Until it became Biden’s.
Sarah Towle recasts Witness Radio EP 1, Title 42: The Invisible Wall, with the 2021 winner of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, Guerline Jozef, and RFKHR President, Kerry Kennedy, to expose the anti-Blackness baked into our US immigration system.
Listen here: Title 42 ReCast: It's Biden's Legacy Now
3/15/22
It isn’t easy. The flood of coverage of the dire situation in Ukraine is driving a wave of refugees that is being seen by millions who have never watched a border before. And those watching are feeling pain and sympathy that are more familiar to those of us who have stood ourselves at the border and at the gates of detention camps.
Painting detail by Melissa Bowen Rubin