Our Hands

It is 7 am. I am at the Brownsville-South Padre Airport at the southernmost tip of the US border with Mexico. I came to witness a flight on World Atlantic, leaving this morning for Guatemala. They have moved the plane so that it is mostly shielded from view. But sneaking around I was able to see four buses full of humanity, the intended cargo for this boxcar in the sky.

Now we witness at Matamoros, and at the airport. Why are there Witnesses at the tiny Brownsville airport? Because people, mostly people who look like teenagers in shackles are put onto planes, deported and dumped like garbage in a third country. The Witness group had heard that deportation flights were leaving Brownsville for quite some time, although the information wasn't open to the public. Debbie Nathan who organized a group in El Paso to monitor deportation flights encouraged the #WitnessAtTheBorder group to go to the Brownsville airport and Witness there.

Prompt Asylum Claim Review (PACR)
The new policy of cruelty that loads families on planes and sends them to third countries, after their long journey to our border. Flight bound for Guatemala. Witnessing this morning at Brownsville Airport.

Just got back. We went to the airport at Brownsville in the dark, to find four bus loads of what appeared to be very young men and women, many looking like teens, frisked in their five-point restraints, on their way to the SwiftAir plane, destined this morning for Guatemala.

“Border agents detain migrants, many of them seeking asylum, along the Texas border last year. The Trump administration has started a pilot program this year to take DNA from detained immigrants as young as 14 and put it in an FBI database. The plan has sparked privacy concerns. “(AP/Eric Gay), The Center for Public Integrity

And at least once each day, an ambulance pulls up to those steps to rescue someone who has succumbed on the long wait forced on those that don’t have the neat blue passport that I have, who are on the long line that may take hours, that often extends down the other side, reaching back to the streets of Matamoros.

Julie Swift, Karla Barber and Josh Rubin welcome witnesses

We will head for Brownsville airport in a few minutes, to witness planes being loaded with humanity, bound for Central America. The planes will drop off hundreds in a country they do not know, and ask them, in their disorientation, whether they want to take the next step and return to the country they fled. Many will say yes, frightened of the unknown

This #HistoryHero has proven that even just one person can make a positive difference.

Joshua Rubin was outraged when Trump & Co. started ripping children out of the arms of parents in spring 2018, criminalizing asylum seekers on the US/Mex border.

By the Waters of Babylon

Yesterday, encouraged by Mexican authorities and agreed to by the relief workers that are a lifeline to the refugees forced to remain in Mexico as they pursue their vanishingly slim hope of asylum, the pocket of tents nearest the bridge and the people in them moved over to the other side of the levee, behind the fence topped with concertina wire.

Take a look at the map sometime.

Matamoros, in Mexico, and Brownsville, in the US, twin cities divided by the weeping, open wound of a river, armed guardians of our privilege on the bridges, are almost as far south as you can go in this country. Further south by far than any other place on the border.