Posts
3/8/23
Word trickles out to us that the Homeland security folks have a table onto which they are loading tools and schemes to deal with the migration of people in our hemisphere to the frontiers of United States, notably the southern border. They are lining up possible approaches to substitute for the scam called Title 42, which claimed the right to expel migrants, no questions asked, based on the myth that they would carry COVID to us, to one of the most infected nations on the planet.
3/6/23
Have you been to Matamoros?
It is over an international bridge from Brownsville, Texas. As far as I can tell, it is the southernmost spot on the land border between our two countries. It is a place that migrants are drawn to on their journeys, whether from parts of Mexico itself or from the many places people are leaving to find a way for them and their families to survive. Migrants find themselves stranded there, following the changing rules about how to get into the United States. And the rules change often, lately making it harder and harder to cross that fateful river.
3/1/23
A few years ago, those of us who started this group began by planting ourselves outside a fenced-in cluster of tents at a port of entry, east enough from the city of El Paso to feel like the middle of nowhere, an irrigated portion of the Chihuahuan desert, right at the river that forms the border with Mexico. In the camp, we had learned, were children, young teens who one way or another had separated from their families.
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 42โฆ.
โฆOnce 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.
2/7/23
๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐ & ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐
๐๐จ๐ฒ๐๐ฎ๐ฅ ๐ฎ๐ฉ๐๐๐ญ๐ ๐จ๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ณ๐ฎ๐๐ฅ๐๐ง ๐๐๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ฌ๐๐ฉ๐๐ซ๐๐ญ๐๐ ๐๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐จ๐ซ๐๐๐ซ
After many failed attempts to reschedule an appointment- on Saturday the daughter in law and her children were able to cross into the US.
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 applicantโs 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 livableโthings like safety, food, shelter and hopeโthat 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.
