I went to Tornillo yesterday. I had spent well-remembered time outside the gates of what was then a prison camp for what we call unaccompanied minors, better thought of as migrant children. I was there forever. Or for three months.

It was a thousand years ago. Or three years.

I traced the route of the Walk for the Children/Caminata por la Niñez. First I went down to the bridge, the Paso del Norte. It was very early this morning, Sunday, so there were only a few cars coming from Ciudad Juarez, pausing for inspection and creeping out into the under-construction egress to the sleeping and shuttered El Paso streets.

And I, too, pausing, look at the iconic mural of the twin sisters, JRZ and ELP, indigenous girls, I suppose Raramuri, on a wall on Father Rahm Avenue, practically in the shadow of the bridge. The sister cities.

Today community youth and youth from Temple Beth Shalom gathered outside the Homestead Child Detention Center to say Keep Homestead Closed and to remind us that it is next to several toxic superfund sites. Thanks to AFSC for making it happen.

Photos and video by Anna Mulea Greene .

ICE Air Weekly Activity – Week of 19 April 2021: RECORD WEEK.

Highest number of weekly flights over past 12 months at 126 (tied week of 10/25/2020).

Record High number of weekly shuffle flights since recording 1/1/2020 at 104.

Removal flights remain low at 9, which is becoming the new normal now. The prior 6-week average is now 9. In February it was about 16 and in January closer to 20.

I’m sitting at Gate B27 at LaGuardia, waiting for the flight to Dallas, connecting to a flight to El Paso, to begin boarding. El Paso, for those not familiar, is the US part of a larger city, Ciudad Juárez, which is just across a concrete-channeled section of the Río, called Grande on this side, Bravo on the other.

As of 21 April there were 2,175 kids in CBP custody, down significantly from yesterday by 543 as 972 kids were transferred to HHS. We heard about 500 kids were going to Dallas EIS and we witnessed 4 likely flights with kids to Dallas last night and 1 mid day today. Long Beach EIS opens today with 150 kids. The 972 transfers was the largest number since 29 March. Apprehensions were 419, a little lower than the past week.

It is so much harder, so much more painful, to protect our privilege by building walls and carrying guns, than it is to open our hearts and hands, to stop cleaving to our fear. Our border, the one we maintain to keep out migrants, is not our strength, but our weakness.

So many live in the fear that we will lose what we have. We celebrate free markets and a flimsy sense of social safety, and so few of us are free. Who are we protecting against the “invaders”? The poor and hungry that live in our shadows? The beggars with open hands along the city streets and at stoplights and under bridges everywhere in this land of the free?

NEW STATEMENT from WITNESS AT THE BORDER: Walk for the Children: Caminata por la Niñez

Sign On to the statement.

Art: “Children in Cages,” by Sonya Fe

What’s Next? Postcard Campaign

To Mail: April 23-30

Walk for the Children / Caminata por la Niñez

Whether or not you can join us in El Paso on April 30 for this event, you can write to the Biden Administration using these cards!

“Chinche a el agua,” by Victor “Mask” Casas

Have you ever wondered what it means to Witness, to be a Witness, and the relationship between witnessing and activism?

If so, you're gonna love our Witness Radio Podcast trailer. Find it here:

https://www.patreon.com/witnessradio

Episode #1, all about Title 42, launches THIS THURSDAY! April 22, 2021.

This week I was humbled to be back in Brownsville volunteering with Team Brownsville. Today, on my last day, I had the immense pleasure to help our friends Andrea Morris Rudnik and Sergio Cordova welcome new asylum seekers, primarily families with small children, with dignity. Michael Benavides delivered a bunch of supplies so I got my workout for the day too.

THIS IS WHY WE WITNESS: NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE! Racist police continue to kill while 20,000 migrant children are warehoused in settings that produce potentially irreparable trauma in custody of Border Patrol and ICE, at Ft. Bliss and convention centers in Dallas, San Antonio and San Diego. NO PLACE FOR CHILDREN! JOIN US IN EL PASO ON APRIL 30 AT 9 AM, IN LOVING MEMORY OF DAUNTE WRIGHT AND ADAM TOLEDO: LET OUR CHILDREN GO!!

Just leaving Brownsville TX airport this morning. These 3 busses queued up to board an ICE Air flight to San Diego 1,500 miles away. Only to expel 100 families with small children into Tijuana because of Title 42 that has destroyed any opportunity for asylum.

Many of us are daily urged to tread lightly. We don’t want to empower that dozing beast of fascism by speaking clearly and forthrightly about the rights of people to migrate, we are warned. We are told we should take our cues from the current administration, who are making a show of closed borders and meager refugee numbers, not because they believe in the policies that they are maintaining, but so as not to arouse the xenophobic electorate. They are only lying about poor migrants being a contagion threat because they have to. I mean, you can’t just let desperate people in.

A mother, in the company of an advocate, went to one of the “shelters” where young children were locked inside. Among those children was the mother’s son.

Her son was being kept there under a policy that is now keeping about 20,000 children in lockup, most of whom have family here in the US. New locked facilities are opening nearly every day, on military bases, in convention centers...

This is my personal witness in Brownsville. This is the result of title 42. This is wrong. Period.

Abandon hope.

This is our immigration policy for Mexico and Central America. It does not matter how bad things are. How hungry, frightened, homeless, poor. Stay right where you are. And here is what we will do to convince you.

Art by Victor Mask Casas

Our voices are not enough.

Here is what we say. We say that if you deny the right to migrate to people whose lives depend on it, but tell them that we will take their children in, you will separate children from their families.

WHY WE WITNESS: STAND WITH US FOR RIGHTS AND DIGNITY OF MIGRANT CHILDREN IN EL PASO ON APR 30. Our sister Jen LaValley Hurley reminds us that we build on legacies of struggle including crucial examples such as IDA B. WELLS (1862-1931), African-American journalist, educator, anti-lynching activist, and women's rights pioneer, born into slavery in Mississippi, and co-founder of the NAACP. JOIN US IN HER MEMORY, AGAINST RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA AT THE BORDER!

**ICE Air Weekly Activity – Week of 5 April 2021. **

Removal flights remain low at 10, which is becoming the new normal now. The prior 6-week average is now 11. The last 6 weeks have been significantly lower than the prior typical week of 18-20 removal flights.

If someone knows who made this image, please let us know. Hauntingly beautiful.