Posts
2/28/23
Activist groups are scrambling, trying to line up arguments that might persuade an indifferent Biden administration to change course on how it might handle the end of the xenophobic policy known in shorthand as Title 42….
…Once again from the Trump playbook, and, for those who remember, reminiscent of Catch-22, Biden revives an idea that complicates the already impossible lives of people trying to save themselves.
An Asylum Ban.
2/6/23
Executive Summary, ICE Air Flight Report, January 2023
Over the last 12 months, all under President Biden, there have been a likely 7,913 ICE Air flight legs as compared to 4,845 in 2020, a startling, unexpected, and disappointing increase of 3,068 (63%) over 2020 and up 1,789 (29%) over 2021.
2/3/23
We are watching a new season of the anti-immigrant crowd grinding fresh red meat, this time liberally laced with fentanyl hysteria. Although all signs point to a large business that involves using vehicles to move the drug through our ports of entry, those with skin in this game like to point to men and women and children with naught but the meager goods they carry as the purveyors of a potent drug that is the latest moneymaker for an international consortium.
2/1/23
For the better part of December, I traveled with Witness at the Border, in the Journey for Justice Caravan. We started on Boca Chica Beach at the Gulf of Mexico, gathering before the sun rose to hold a candle light vigil and remembering all our brothers and sisters on both side of the border who have been affected by policies of governments who put economic greed, profits and fear over the lives, dignity and humanity of people. We reached the Pacific Ocean at San Ysidro, CA. on International Migrant Day.
1/19/23
Migrants fleeing their home countries to stand at the gates of ours must stand like beggars. It is the posture we expect and the one, for the most part, they accept. Notwithstanding the lies of those who despise them, they do not not bear arms or malice. They arrive in states of desperation that they are aware might crush them. They dare not raise their voices. They fear the wrath they see before them: armed men wearing uniforms adorned with patches that bespeak authority; and they hear, even if they do not understand the words, the tone of authority and, all too much, derision.
1/18/23
The immigration apparatus of the United States has introduced a smart phone app called CBPOne. It allows the owner of a charged iPhone to register and schedule an appointment with someone at one of a few Ports of Entry along the southern border with Mexico. It collects information about the applicant, like what the basis is for the applicant’s claim of eligibility for entry, typically making a request for asylum, along with information attesting immediate personal vulnerability.
1/13/23
Amen ... For spreading the word and holding our elected officials accountable!"
My Letter To the Editor, holding Abbott's feet to the lump of coal he left at VP Harris's door dropping-off about 100 migrants (including children) in the freezing cold of Christmas Eve 2022, made the January 9th edition of the Brownsville Herald. They are part of My RGV including the Harlingen Valley Morning Star and McAllen Moniter in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. They've also published others, carrying on the tradition established by my dad when my parents were Harlingen residents*, https://myrgv.com/?s=Rev.+Barry+Abraham+Zavah.
Image: John Moore, Getty Images
1/8/23
The debate over how we should respond to the plain fact that there are places in the world that do not offer their inhabitants the things that make life livable—things like safety, food, shelter and hope—that debate seems to force us into dark corners that are premised on the belief that injustice is not only defensible but natural. This narrows the range of our discussions, since they begin from a position that rests on concessions that would lose us the battle, even if we got what we asked for.
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.