Covid on the rise in our country, and likely in Mexico, too. The hurricane season has not ended, and along the banks of that fortified river that defends the unjust portion of the world’s wealth against the poor and hungry, people who have seen all of the seasons through wait to see what an empire does in what appears to be decline and fall.

DEATH FLIGHTS - WEEK OF 21 September – please share for transparency

Ø 22 DEPORTATIONS

Ø FIRST DEPORTATION FLIGHTS OBSERVED THIS YEAR TO BELIZE AND GUYANA

Ø 8 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES

DEATH FLIGHTS - WEEK OF 14 September – please share for transparency

Ø 24 DEPORTATIONS

Ø 1 FLIGHT ROUTE TO AFRICA. 4 DEPORTATION DESTINATIONS IN AFRICA THAT PROVIDED trump WITH A BRAGGING OPPORTUNITY

Ø 10 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES

WEEKLY SUMMARY

- 84 Total Flights. Down 12 from last week, and 9 below the last 6-week average of 93.

- 24 Deportations – up 3 from last week, and 3 over prior 6-week average. To 10 different countries, of which 4 were in Africa.

We do some mental maneuvering to keep our balance. It is not easy to have perspective on the times we are now living through. No one I know was alive during the flu pandemic or the Black Plague. Nobody to advise us how to emotionally navigate these waters. And for those of us, many in this group, we have had our eyes on the borders that defend the unequal share of the world’s wealth, and have seen for ourselves the eyes of those who wait on the other side, or in camps that imprison, eyes that haunt us even when ours close for the night, at the end of long days of bombardment with the horror of the present.

How do we think about the revelation that there are women in an ICE prison saying that they were subjected to surgeries that will prevent them from having children?

Some people have told me that I should be measured and cautious in my reaction to this. That an investigation has not happened. But doesn’t that ignore lessons we should have learned by now? Women have said these things. To the brave nurse who came forward and from whom we learned about this. Now, to lawyers who represent them. To volunteers who have heard them.

This morning many of us are trying to come to grips with the news out of an ICE prison for migrants in southern Georgia. A nurse working there seems to have run afoul of the privately run prison’s administration over health practices. She tells of neglect and cruelty in the handling of the COVID-19 scourge. This part leaves us sad but unsurprised.

DEATH FLIGHTS - WEEK OF 7 September – please share for transparency

- NO HOLIDAY FOR HATE ON LABOR DAY FOR ICE AIR

- 96 TOTAL ICE AIR FLIGHTS WITH 21 DEPORTATION FLIGHTS, both above prior 6-week average.

It’s been a hard week

We have learned that nearly nine thousand children were sent out of the country, expelled summarily, sent to the countries they fled. We have heard about ICE Air, that miserable operation that carries the bodies—boxcars in the sky—reminding us of yet another episode of genocide, by transporting COVID to a Virginia prison, infecting hundreds.

NEW REPORT: ICE Air Flights August 2020 and YTD

DEATH FLIGHTS - WEEK OF 31 August – please share for transparency

- MORE ICE AIR FLIGHTS AND DEPORTATIONS THIS WEEK THAN SINCE PRE-PANDEMIC WEEKS.

- ICE Air flights totaled 115, including 24 deportations to 9 different countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Panama deportation flight witnessed the first time this year – coupled with an Ecuador deportation flight.

In about two weeks’ time, seven bodies have turned up floating on the river known on the south bank as the Río Bravo and on the north bank as the Río Grande.

The deaths were not accidental.

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.