Posts
12/27/22
“Titulo 42”
Standing with migrants in the Mexican border cities, I heard it a lot. It was the thing that those with dwindling funds and cold hands and hungry children hinged their hopes on: the end of Título 42. The policy that libels darker skinned people with the vilest lie: that they carry a disease that justifies suspending human rights.
12/10/22
He is from Venezuela. We are on the flat-scraped bank of the cement-channeled Río Bravo, watching around fifty people who have crossed to the US side wait patiently in a line to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol up a slope on the opposite bank.
Where we stand had been a small town of tents set up by mostly Venezuelans who got caught in the ever-shifting sands of the US policy of deterrence. The last shift was a collaboration with Mexico that created that small settlement, then wiped it away when considered an eyesore, bulldozed down, scraped clean.
He traveled for three months to get here.
12/19/22
#Journey4Justice2022
We set out on a journey to bring attention to the cruelty of the way we as a nation, indeed as a civilization, respond to people who must take to their feet to escape poverty and violence and despair. Our trip lasted only a few weeks, but gave us a glimpse at the enormity of their journeys, which they tell us, take months, sometimes years.
12/17/22
We come to a pause in our Journey. People we have traveled with begin to scatter, back to their families. There are none that did not weep often, and while our minds are intact, we will not unsee what we have seen. Our efforts were humble, and my head is bowed before the immensity of the injustice of the border, which has been thrown into such high relief in these last days of our Journey of witness.
#Journey4Justice2022
12/13/22
We are on a journey. We call it a Journey for Justice, but it might have been better to call it a journey of discovery. Although many on our journey think we speak some of the the same languages as those we have come to see, most of us are still strangers. There is a lot to learn.
We have encountered places where golfers play along a line marked by ancient containers reinforcing a fence topped by concertina wire, bordering a river patrolled by armed men in boats as another species of pilgrim contemplates crossing that river and throwing themselves upon the mercy of strangers. Asking for help. For shelter in a storm-ripped world. Pidiendo posada. Is there room for them, for their children?
12/15/22
Some of the people migrating to the United States are routed through the deserts of the Southwest by agents of the criminal cartels. This is a very profitable sideline for the sindicatos whose main business is cashing in on the fentanyl traffic through the very ports of entry denied to asylum seekers.
Pay your money and while Title 42 is in force get several chances to get past the border control checkpoints along the road to survival. Get caught and you will return to cartel warehouses to rest until your next try through the desert.
12/14/22
Our eyes are seeing more things than our hearts and minds can absorb. I find myself perched in an unfamiliar place, on the edge of tears. This trip along the border is no easy trek, even for one hovering above the tragedy such as myself, with a home to go back to, with a life free of privation.
12/9/22
TORNILLO
It is a place that haunts me. It was chosen to hold captive thousands of children, away from the sight of a nation horrified by what they had heard on a recording smuggled out of a detention center on the other end of the Texas border, in the east. A child crying for its mother.
In this place were congregated children stranded by border policies that incentivized separation, that took children in if they presented themselves without their parents. Desperation did the rest. The policies have different names now, but the desperation is still there today. Children, crossing, alone. Kept from family.
12/6/22
On the Mexican banks near the shadow of International Bridge 2 in Eagle Pass, Texas, a man contemplates crossing. His shoes and socks are off, and he has waded out into the river and stands on a rock shelf, still much closer to Mexico than to the the US side.
There is a cast on one wrist and hand, an ace bandage on his elbow. He looks up and down the river. Closer to the bridge, there are National Guard troops in military camo and personal armor floating in two inflated boats, their automatic weapons slung on their shoulders, four to a boat. On the US side, directly under the bridge, other troops are finishing loading just-crossed migrants onto an unmarked bus, and sent it off, likely toward detention.
12/8/22
We left Marathon and found the fog that rested in a dense bank, like snow, on the horizon. It was miles and miles to the banks of the river that divides the two nations. Miles through patches of fog, and towering peaks and desert desert desert. Some caught glimpses of javelina and deer. I saw only an animal I didn’t have time to identify, that scurried across the road furtively and furrily.
12/8/22
Yesterday we drove two hours to Boquillas Crossing in Big Bend National Park that sits within 801,163 acres of protected land. The feel of this post is different-it looks like we are on a tourist adventure. That’s because this port of entry is different.
This is a port B entry not normally manned with CBP. Although, aware our group was coming, there was a CBP officer on-site for our crossing.
12/5/22
We turn a corner, and fragments of remembered images that I didn’t know I had open an abyss, and it feels like I am on its edge, about to fall. Crosses like shrubs planted in front of a sign placed diagonally on the corner. Robb Elementary. We have come to Uvalde, where half a divided town wants to remember, to never let go of their slaughtered children and teachers, and others want it to go away. A star-crossed town, close enough to the border between the US and Mexico that it teems with immigration police, the border patrol, the Texas Rangers.
12/5/22
It's difficult to share this day we spent in Uvalde on the Journey for Justice. It was a heartbreaking, emotional day visiting the tributes at the school and park. The photos and faded flowers and momentos reduced me to tears. When will life be valued over the right to own such lethal toys. When will the lives of all children be valued equally. Several family members bravely spoke of their pain and resolve to change the laws. I know that I can't come close to imagining their pain.
