Despair.

Bodies turn up on the Matamoros banks. The worst leader since Hitler—I say that without hesitation—gins up a frenzy of hatred to distract us from the sea change in our lives brought on by his failure to respect a scourge of nature and the science that would have saved so many of us. And his minions work furiously to expel the tired and poor across the border to their wretched fates.

DEATH FLIGHTS - WEEK OF 24 August – please share for transparency

- LAST WEEK: ICE AIR FLIGHTS TO GUATEMALA (5) AND TO MEXICO (8) INCREASE. 8 UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN DEPORTED TO GUATEMALA TEST POSITIVE FOR COVID THERE.

- FLIGHTS TO GUATEMALA IN 9 OF THE LAST 9 ICE AIR FLIGHT DAYS. FIRST WEEK SINCE 9 MARCH THAT THERE HAS BEEN A FLIGHT EVERY DAY.

- 8 FLIGHTS TO MEXICO – THE MOST OF ANY WEEK THIS YEAR. RARE SATURDAY FLIGHT TO A NEW DESTINATION, PUEBLA.

DEATH FLIGHTS - WEEK OF 17 August – please share for transparency

LAST WEEK’S QUESTION ANSWERED. NO SLOW DOWN IN DEATH FLIGHTS.

- This week’s 97 flights were 11 (13%) above the prior 6-week average, and was tied with the week of 5 July for the highest week since the week of 17 May.

Word comes to us, from the edge of that river, of the death of Edwin Rodrigo Castro de la Parra. He leaves a family behind on those banks. We are told he may have plunged into the river to save someone whose desperation had pushed them over that edge, someone who saw hope on the other side and lost all hope behind.

DEATH FLIGHTS - WEEK OF 10 August – please share for transparency

67 UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN ALONE ON ONE PLANE TO GUATEMALA THIS WEEK. WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THEM? WILL THEY FIND THEIR FAMILIES? WE DON’T KNOW.

SAME NUMBER OF FLIGHTS AS LAST WEEK (81) AND 5 BELOW THE LAST 6-WEEK AVERAGE.

A few things to think about.

Things are getting worse. Our country is expelling people, denying them even the farce of a legal proceeding. It is justified by the claim that foreigners, at least the ones that come to our southern border, carry the disease that we have in higher numbers than almost any other country.

Witnessing the atrocity of the Homestead detention center, summer 2019

DEATH FLIGHTS - WEEK OF 3 August – please share for transparency

THIS WEEK WAS A BIT BELOW THE LAST 6-WEEK AVERAGE, AND FOLLOWED ANOTHER WEEK THAT WAS SLIGHTLY BELOW AVERAGE. … THIS WEEK THERE WERE 17 DEPORTATION FLIGHTS TO 6 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. 81 Total Flights.

Photo: El Heraldo De Tabasco

As Hurricane Hanna fed the swelling Río Bravo, as its banks overflowed into the lives of the Matamoros encampment of refugees, and as now swarms of mosquitos, zancudos as they are known, bring still more misery and perhaps illness, we cannot help but reflect on the predicament just faced and still faced by these friends of ours forced to perch precariously on the very edge of Northern Mexico, eyes toward the United States.

COALITION DEMANDS RELEASE OF TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DOCUMENTS REGARDING THE DETENTION OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.

In the midst of the global pandemic ICE Air continues to initiate and facilitate the seeding, spreading, and exporting of COVID within the US web of 200 detention centers and to other countries through a total of 2,808 likely ICE Air flights including 1,760 domestic flights, and 536 deportation flights to 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

DEATH FLIGHTS - WEEK OF 27 July – please share for transparency

THIS WEEK WAS A BIT BELOW THE LAST 6-WEEK AVERAGE, BUT FOLLOWED A SIGNIFICANTLY ABOVE AVERAGE WEEK

- 83 TOTAL FLIGHTS THIS WEEK. THERE WERE 14 DEPORTATION FLIGHTS TO 5 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.

Latest update: Good news. Weather service reduces its estimated crest by 1.5 feet. Should begin subsiding soon.

Update: Weather Service has revised downward its prediction of a crest. We are only an inch or two from it, now. Soon the waters will begin to recede.

Photo by Josué Rolando Cornejo Sabillon

I am posting this on behalf of your Witness at the Border team and we are asking those that can to help the volunteer groups in Matamoros. Josh posted a thoughtful update on what we know, and do not know, about what is to come for our brothers and sisters in the camp at Matamoros. None of us know what is yet to come over the next few days with the Rio Grande.

What we know about the situation in the Matamoros encampment for asylum seekers.

The river has risen. We do not believe it has risen over its banks.

Update: we have heard that most of the people in the camp resisted evacuation and are still there.

UPDATE: They are still at that damn Hampton Inn in McAllen. Can anyone follow them?

Some thoughts this morning.

The Hilton chain backed down and will no longer allow themselves to be used as a prison. We need not wonder that greed, and a little desperation in these hard times for hotels, led them down this hellish path in the first place. And we need not wonder that those same motivations led them to disown the practice after the heroic actions of the Texas Civil Rights Project uncovered this, and allowed us all to spread the outrage all over social media and television.

DEATH FLIGHTS - WEEK OF 20 July – DEPORTATION FLIGHTS AT RECORD LEVEL SINCE COVID SHUT DOWN IN MARCH

- THIS WEEK THERE WERE 21 DEPORTATION FLIGHTS TO 9 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES, TIED WITH THE HIGHEST VOLUME WEEK SINCE THE MARCH 15 SHUT DOWN. COVID SEEDED AND SPREAD TO THE WORLD COMPLIMENTS OF ICE AIR.

In McAllen, Texas, not many miles from Brownsville and the bridges that cross the river into Mexico, along a highway, there’s a Hampton Inn. Hampton Inn is a motel chain run by Hilton Hotels. I stayed at that Hampton Inn the day after I was released from Hidalgo County jail, after my arrest at the detention center at Ursula Road, the detention center made famous for the cages that held children who had been separated from their parents.

Photo by Texas Civil Rights Project

I have never liked rollercoasters. I haven’t ridden many and even those few times I spent the ride wishing fervently for it to end and wondering, after that first time, what possessed me to try it again.

But the one we are on right now is not one that I could have avoided. And it is lasting a long time. And we are climbing higher and higher, ready for a harrowing plunge into the abyss.

Witness stands proudly in the tradition of nuestro hermano John Lewis and the struggles for the "beloved community", at the heart of the African-American liberation and civil rights movements.

Photo: John Lewis with witnesses at Homestead FL Detention Center, July 2, 2019