Posts
6/29/21
When a storm rained heavily on Fort Bliss the day before yesterday, the remaining tents leaked. Water puddled on the rubber tiles that fit together a little like jigsaw pieces. The ventilation system that struggles to cool the tents that sit under the desert sun had the added challenge of humidity.
Fewer than 800 migrant children remain in the makeshift encampment that once held well over 4000 children, when the holding facility was by far the largest de facto child prison in the country. Tents have come down as story after story hits the press describing conditions inside.
6/27/21
ICE Air Weekly Activity – Week of 28 June 2021. Photo – Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The last 4 weeks have been very consistent in activity.
8 removal flights this week, 1 less than last week, and what seems to be a new normal. Removals to 7 countries. As has been in most of the recent weeks, the majority of removal flights are on Friday, following the shuffle flights moving people around detention centers and staging people for removal.
6/25/21
Say it out loud -- loud enough for Vice President Kamala Harris to hear:
FORT BLISS IS NO PLACE FOR KIDS!
Listen here: WITNESS RADIO Ep. 2: March for Detained Children
6/24/21
We see things differently. So what we mean when we witness things can be very different depending on our perspectives. Some of us see the suffering of people at the border caused by the barriers we erect to our common humanity. Others see, so they tell us, an earnest attempt to right a ship that nearly capsized into a four year eruption of xenophobia.
6/23/21
“Matamoros Pietá” by Melissa Bowen Rubin
Today we remember Óscar and Valeria.On June 23, 2019, two Salvadoran migrants, father and daughter, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos, drowned crossing the river between Matamoros, Mexico and Brownsville, Texas.
6/20/21
If it were not inflicting terrible pain on desperate humans, it would only seem ridiculous to try to contain the movement of people from places where their homes are gone, where there is no way of working for a living and feeding their families. Telling people they “should not come” in full knowledge of their dire straits would be like a joke of some kind. Like pouring a shaken up beer into a glass and making a fool of yourself trying to keep the foam from overflowing onto the table. Or packing a bigtop full of clowns into a tiny car.
Photo by Allan Mestel
6/18/21
ICE Air Weekly Activity – Week of 14 June 2021.
Photo - Reynosa Mexico Plaza - migrant camp spawned by the Administrations continuation of Trump's illegal Title 42.
9 removal flights this week, just 1 more than last week, and what seems to be a new normal. Removals to 6 countries. As has been in most of the recent weeks, the majority of removal flights are on Friday, following the shuffle flights moving people around detention centers and staging people for removal.
6/12/21
ICE Air Weekly Activity – Week of 7 June 2021.
8 removal flights this week, same as last week, the lowest since 8 the week of 12 April. Removals to 5 countries. As has been in most of the recent weeks, the majority of removal flights are on Friday, following the shuffle flights moving people around detention centers and staging people for removal.
It continues to appears that the only removal flights to the Northern triangle countries and Nicaragua are deportation flights.
98 total flights were the most if 5 weeks driven by 79 shuffle flights, the most in the last 6 weeks.
6/10/21
The wind does not stop at the border. Guns and walls and troops and concertina wire barely ripple the currents of whatever river remains along that line. Although it is drawn on the earth, it disappears from a distance, out of sight from the foothills of the Franklin Mountains, the division of El Paso and Juarez blurring before the eyes.
6/6/21
ICE Air Weekly Activity – Week of 31 May 2021. (photo – the growing migrant camp in Reynosa MX. Migration continues. Close 1 camp in Matamoros and another arises 30 miles away at a Port of Entry.)
8 removal flights this week were the lowest since 8 the week of 12 April. Only 6 countries and to be transparent one to Guyana could have been a fuel stop on the way to Brazil, but we included in the removal count.
65 total flights was the lowest number since the 58 the week of 1 March, the week before the 14 per week lateral flights began.
6/4/21
Activism is a humbling experience. Not only does it remind us of how little we can accomplish in this world, but it throws into doubt the assumptions we make about human nature and the social forces that drive the tides in the affairs of humans.
Many of us—and I am thinking of myself here—construct their political strategy from a notion that in all of us can be found a common substrate of ideas about right and wrong, love and hate, righteousness and shame. But I am beginning to have doubts that these are easily found, and if found, may not provide the best basis for leverage, for persuasion.
6/3/21
And the news comes spilling out of Fort Bliss. Remember Fort Bliss? The place where we put children who we have separated from their families with decades of cruelty and greed? The place where it is hard to see the children, because no one is allowed inside. The place where employees must surrender their phones so no pictures can get out. The place where there are children on suicide watch.
6/3/21
Our statement was released to the press today, with sign-ons from partners listed below.
FT. BLISS AND OTHER DETENTION MEGASITES ARE NO PLACE FOR CHILDREN
Ft. Bliss detention facility must be shut down, immediately
NEW TODAY: "Fired Workers Claim Poor Conditions at Ft. Bliss Migrant Shelter," El Paso Times, 6/2/21
Photo: Allan Mestel
5/31/21
It is said from time to time that history is written by those who hold power. It is only a small step further to infer that the manipulation of our social memory serves the purposes of the powerful. That the story that is chiseled into posterity supports a social order. And it follows that the stories of those without the podia of power are rarely told. They can be seen by those who watch closely, but all too quickly are obscured by the steady flow of time, the greatest wave barely a ripple, mostly gone once the eyes that witnessed them close for the last time. The story then goes untold, and we are left to wonder whether those lives and loves and struggles ever happened. Whether most of us ever existed at all.