Posts
4/6/22
The linked document is the report of a whistleblower who worked at the emergency intake shelter that was set up at Fort Bliss to house unaccompanied children who had come across the border.
This was the place that some of us marched to from the Port of Entry in downtown El Paso, to make ourselves symbols of the plight of the children that were and are being transported to be held in tents on the desert while the bureaucracy figures out what to do with them.
Image from La Caminata: Walk for the Children, El Paso 4/30/21
4/1/22
[The Administration has announced that Title 42 will be rescinded as of May 23, 2022.]
The pretense that the policy of mass expulsion of migrants coming to our southern border had something to do with Covid-19 is being maintained even as its termination date is being announced. The policy, known as Title 42 because it relies on a regulation that allows laws that assure the right to request asylum to be suspended in a “health emergency,” will draw its final breath on May 23, and we, with bated breath, will watch to see what substitute obstructions will be placed in the way of the right of human beings to migrate, something they have been doing since the first Homo sapiens made their way out of Southern Africa, and settled in every corner of the world.
3/30/22
The 45,000 Quilt Project Raises Awareness About Immigrant Detention
Contribute to the GoFundMe for the book: 45,000 Quilt Project book.
3/29/22
Haitian Bridge Alliance and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights release a new report unveiling the full scope of human rights abuses against Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Texas.
Read the first-hand testimonies of 43 Haitian and other survivors here: https://rfkhr.imgix.net/asset/Del-Rio-Report.pdf.
3/20/22
Busy and productive days at World Central Kitchen: #ChefsForThePeople…. Preparing thousands of meals for Ukrainians fleeing to safety. Most nights we have then gone to the border crossing at Medyka and passed out candy, hot chocolate, juice, and fruit to those who just arrived in Poland. The huge paella pans the photo (and there are 6 of them), each can cook 250 gallons at a time, and each enough for 2,000 servings of soup, broth, applesauce, stew, etc. As an example, for one day the prepared meal was rice with beef and vegetables, fresh salad, and garlic bread. Broth and hot chocolate for the border as well. And borscht prepared and in the cooler for the next day. 250 gallons of it.
3/18/22
Title 42 ReCast: It's Biden's Legacy Now
Now the reason for the expulsion of more than 1 million people fleeing climate devastation, endemic violence, political repression, and crippling poverty, Title 42 was Trump’s crime against humanity.
Until it became Biden’s.
Sarah Towle recasts Witness Radio EP 1, Title 42: The Invisible Wall, with the 2021 winner of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, Guerline Jozef, and RFKHR President, Kerry Kennedy, to expose the anti-Blackness baked into our US immigration system.
Listen here: Title 42 ReCast: It's Biden's Legacy Now
3/15/22
It isn’t easy. The flood of coverage of the dire situation in Ukraine is driving a wave of refugees that is being seen by millions who have never watched a border before. And those watching are feeling pain and sympathy that are more familiar to those of us who have stood ourselves at the border and at the gates of detention camps.
Painting detail by Melissa Bowen Rubin
2/28/22
WITNESS RADIO: Episode 11
A Tale of Two Presidencies: Proof that #ImmigrationISaBlackIssue
This episode's featured guest is Thomas Cartwright, a member of the leadership team of Witness at the Border. Tom dedicated his time during the past 24 months of the global pandemic to collecting, compiling, and communicating data that the US government would prefer you did not know about: the US Deportation Machine.
2/4/22
Been researching for a Mexican-American Studies lesson on how our country transitioned from open borders in 1840, to the current militarization of our border community.
It is evident there is a continued affinity for inhumane practices such as bathing our immigrant ancestors in gasoline, to the recent incarceration of immigrant children.
1/27/22
The Lone Star state, Texas, carved from a clash of manifest destinies competing for possession of land once settled by indigenous folk, pre-European migrants, a state that once defended its right to keep slaves, now defends its rights to decide who belongs there and who does not. It is filling jails with people it calls trespassers, many of them numbering among those much earlier peoples, some of them descendants of slaves.