Posts
10/13/20
A MELANGE OF EMOTIONS
Over the past few days Witness at the Border was humbled to work with over 100 amazing advocates to try to stop an Omni International ICE Air deportation flight to Africa. Despite the efforts of this tireless group and some Members of Congress (below), 60 Cameroonians were sent back to a country in the middle of a civil war. 28 Congolese were also deported on this plane to a country extremely ill-equipped to deal with the risk of COVID exportation. We failed to move ICE to a humanitarian place. We may have failed to save some lives.
10/11/20
WHY WE WITNESS – THE MACHINE
To be sure the past month or so has been filled with horrendous events including unaccompanied children held in hotels by transportation specialists, despicable medical conditions and encounters at Irwin Detention Center, detainee deaths reaching an all-time annual high, and ICE Air activity at record in-pandemic levels, just to name a few.
“False Profit,” painting by Mear One
10/7/20
It’s cool this morning here in Brooklyn, and there is a breeze. Breezes are a good thing, because they disperse and dilute the particles that carry Covid. To the south of the neighborhood I live in, schools are being closed. It appears the long-predicted fall surge of the deadly virus has begun.
9/30/20
When those we are against behave as horribly as those we now face, knowing what we are against is easy. We are against racism and xenophobia, and we are against a terrorist government that encourages terrorism by paramilitary groups and more official arms of terror like ICE and CBP, whose persecution of the poor and brown and black make them easy to hate.
9/28/20
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.
9/20/20
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.
9/20/20
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.
9/16/20
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.
9/15/20
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.
9/13/20
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.
9/7/20
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.
8/30/20
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.
8/29/20
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.
