Posts
2/15/21
ICE Air Weekly Activity – Week of 8 Feb 2021.
Business As Usual Continues. Average Weekly Removal Flights Last 3 months: 20.5. Average Weekly after Inauguration (last 3 weeks): 22.0.
21 Removal flights to 6 different countries, 1 over the prior 6-week average.
95 total ICE Air legs, 11 over the prior 6-week average.
7 Removal flights to Haiti, bringing February already up to 11 removal flights, just 1 under the record month of 12.
2/11/21
I am at a loss every time I see this. Someone points out, as witnesses are asked to do, that policies are causing suffering among migrants. That the Biden administration is expelling people by the thousands. That people, often people we know, remain in squalor along the muddy banks of the river. People who send us messages pleading with us not to forget them. As if we could ever forget them.
2/8/21
Let’s look at consequences. In this case the consequences of the Biden administration trying to thread a needle.
They have been slow-walking any decision about Title 42. What’s Title 42? It is a little determination that was arm-twisted out of the CDC, an order that allows the US (contrary to international law) to immediately, with no legal recourse or a ruling of any kind, expel anyone who comes to our border. Doesn’t matter where they come from. In practice, we are expelling lots of Mexicans to Mexico. But we are also expelling Central Americans to Mexico. Haitians to Mexico.
2/7/21
ICE Air Weekly Activity – Week of 1 Feb 2021. 25 Removal flights to 8 different countries, the most since the week of 26 October, and 7 higher than the prior 6-week average (includes 2 holidays).
103 total ICE Air legs, also the most since week of 26 October, and 24 higher than prior 6-week average.
Cancellation of a flight to Africa (Cameroon, DR Congo and Angola) one hour before flight time (see notes below).
“Suspension” of flights to Haiti in the near term, after a very unusual 4 flights this week.
2/6/21
We have learned that a detention camp for teens is opening again in Carrizo Springs, Texas. It is run by Baptist Child and Family Services, the organization that ran the camp along the river in the Borderlands of west Texas at a Port of Entry. It was called Tornillo. It became a symbol of all that is wrong about immigration policy. A movement grew as people gathered to witness what they could of the children inside. Without witnesses the children would have been invisible. One child later told us that there were times during his confinement when he could not remember his own name.
2/4/21
This group was established to be a forum, a community, and a clearinghouse for those who feel called to be witnesses to what most of us perceive to be abusive and racist policies toward migrants. These repulsive policies are going on right now. They include the practice of imprisoning migrants, often euphemistically called detention, damaging families, life-threatening deportation, and what is now called expulsion, built on the false narrative that migrants are more of a threat to your health than the Super Bowl party next door.
2/1/21
ICE Air is a little more active than most Mondays with most likely 4 removal flights rather than the typical 3. It is still early and not all is clear. Removals to Haiti, Honduras done or in the air and anticipate 2 to MX. Today is the first day of Black history month….The day finished with 14 ICE Air legs, on the high side of typical for Monday. Removals to Haiti, Honduras, Morelia MX and Villahermosa MX.
1/31/21
If you have been following this group for long, you will have noticed that the word “witness” in the group’s name gets repeated quite a bit in posts. I certainly mention it a lot.
It may leave you with the impression that I think that witnessing is the answer to the monumental problems of forced migration and racism, and the tragic and staggering inequality in human society. But I want to clarify this a bit. It seems to me that witnessing presents us with more of a question than an answer. And the question is this: Can we look straight into the face of this injustice, see it in not just an intellectual way, but a visceral one, without something shifting? Without a transformation of ourselves, and then of more than just ourselves?