Rescuing an Alien

Sharing a happy ending here – so far – to my last post, and I apologize for taking so long to write it.

Early in June, Sofia, the asylum seeker I had attempted to sponsor, was released from detention! Yay! Thanks to the work of Las Americas – an immigrant advocacy nonprofit in El Paso that provides pro bono and low-cost legal services to asylum seekers. I serve on the board of directors of Las Americas, which is how I initially learned about Sofia’s situation.

I hadn’t mentioned it in my last post, more for her protection than anything, but Sofia was being held at Otero County Processing Center. A privately run facility known for its hellish conditions, Otero is located off a New Mexico desert highway about 40 miles northeast of El Paso. Approaching this windowless, concrete building surrounded by high fencing with barbed wire, you’d have to wonder if you’re at a “processing center” or the county prison next door.

No doubt about it. Otero is basically immigration jail.

So it makes sense that, after her nonsensical third denial for parole, Sofia was so distraught, she asked to be deported, willing to risk the death threats she’d received back home in Colombia rather than remain imprisoned and subjected to the hostility of her detention officer. Take that in for a moment. After all she’d been through, facing the threats back home felt no worse than what she was facing in detention.

_{Photo credit: The Otero County Processing Center on Jan. 4. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)}

Fortunately, the immigration judge did not act immediately on her request, and since Sofia is a client of Las Americas’, the nonprofit filed a complaint against this officer on her behalf, which prompted ICE to release her on bond, for a lesser amount than what’s usually requested.

Knowing that applying for bond from a local nonprofit would take several days, I offered to front the money and take her home with me. I’d get reimbursed later. The critical issue was to get Sofia out of there.

But releasing asylum seekers from detention is never quick nor simple.

It took about a day and a half of dealing with crass, curt, and intimidating ICE employees before everything was approved and Sofia was released to me. This included an unnecessary return trip to Otero the second morning to replace my check that ICE had mishandled.

It didn’t matter how inconvenient or unreasonable their request was. I had to comply. To not return would jeopardize Sofia’s freedom. They had all the power. They were in control of the life I wanted to free.

This experience gave me just a tiny taste of what immigration attorneys and paralegals handling asylum cases deal with every day. The terse and offensive responses from those in authority, the steady push upstream against a forceful tide of anti-refugee, anti-asylum decision makers. This is the system social justice and human rights advocates are working against. But no matter the frustration nor the seemingly impossible odds, they do it in exchange for something invaluable – the dignified life of another human being.

Welcoming Sofia into my home was a complete gift. Proof that a special bond can exist, even between two strangers.

During the three days she spent with me before moving on to stay with a relative while awaiting her court hearing, Sofia viewed everything with a child’s exuberance. From the moon and stars in the night sky, which she hadn’t seen for months, to a cheap new pair of shoes that I bought to replace the thin, blister-causing pair that she’d been given in detention. She praised the simple meal I prepared for her first evening and insisted on preparing a Colombian-style dinner for me the next, along with cleaning my floor and acting as my secretaria, wanting to do whatever she could to assist me. I met practically her entire family via FaceTime — husband, daughter, parents, mother-in-law, cousins. Their immense gratitude felt humbling.

Sofia is one of the lucky ones.

More than 80 percent of asylum seekers do not have legal representation and must simply languish in detention until their asylum case is decided. Most likely they’ll be deported. No matter how solid their credible fear case. It’s rare to win asylum without an attorney, especially if your case is decided in a state like Texas. Most asylum seekers are totally ill-prepared to legally represent themselves and they face intimidation from the ICE agent, from the judge, and from the government attorney questioning them as they attempt to defend their case while clad in detention-assigned prison garb.

I think of all the people who flee their country with legitimate fear of violence and death threats, only to be met at our ports of entry with such incredible resistance and dehumanization. Nowadays asylum seekers must be lucky enough to land an appointment through the CBP One app if they want to even be considered. It doesn’t matter what dangers you’re fleeing or what you’re facing while waiting in Mexico.

And then I think of the hundreds who make it here only to be locked up in detention facilities. They remain in the shadows, their voices unheard, their abuses often unnoticed.

(For more explicit information on the conditions in immigration detention, check out this El Paso Matters article on Otero: https://elpasomatters.org/2021/01/05/ice-detainees-at-el-paso-area-immigration-facility-face-systemic-torture-new-report-says/

That’s why being able to help release even one person, one “alien,” from immigration detention was a grace beyond description. And nonprofits like Las Americas are a true blessing.

So I’ll give Las Americas a plug here and say that the org doesn’t have nearly the funding it needs and is unable to take on more clients. No matter how desperate the person. If you’d like to support people like Sofia and the work of Las Americas, please donate at https://www.las-americas.org/donate

And remember:

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Hebrews 13)

No Separation

I’m waiting in a COVID-friendly line at the Las Cruces post office shifting the weight of the last box of snacks and supplies I’ll be priority mailing to Davis in Nome. Standing on the taped floor marking 6 feet ahead of me is a woman with her own large priority mail box, which she now places on the floor.

“It’s so heavy,” she tells me.

I smile as I look down and see it’s going to El Paso. Thoughts of El Paso always make me smile. But then I notice the addressee and exclaim aloud, “Hey, I know Taylor Levy!”

The woman turns to me for an explanation.

We both know Taylor through Annunciation House. And we both also know her as a devoted immigration attorney, now in her own practice, and an amazing humanitarian who continues to cross over the border to help her clients stuck waiting in Mexico.

This woman, apparently a teacher, tells me she has lots of notebooks and paper, pens and pencils, and bilingual children’s books that she’s donating to the immigrant children. She’s hoping she can contact Taylor to let her know this is coming. I offer a suggestion.

“Good idea,” she says. Then, before turning back around, she adds, “small world.”

Indeed.

Meeting this woman cheers me. She’s turned waiting in a socially-distanced line trailing out the door into something uplifting and gratifying. Gratifying because she reminds me of the goodness and kindness of strangers. Countless people I’ve encountered, not only in this border community, but from all around the country, who donated supplies and came to volunteer with us at our hospitality shelters.

She does indeed remind me how small the world is. And how decent, kind, and caring it can be.

It’s quite a contrast to what I experienced the other night. As I watched the new Netflix documentary, “Immigration Nation,” it induced a different memory. A disturbing one of only two summers ago, when I was standing smack in the middle of something evil.

The separation of families.

And, yes, calling it evil is entirely accurate. And necessary.

Because, to be detached, or worse, take pleasure in causing the pain and suffering of others is evil.

Watching that documentary brought it all back. What we witnessed in the people we accompanied in El Paso. The belittling and cruelty they’d experienced at the hands of CBP. The ways El Paso has been used as a testing ground for our administration’s new and unlawful policies.

I watched and listened to ICE agents’ demeaning sarcasm, to their justification for using family separation as a deterrent. To the dads sobbing for their children. To the young girl who, after being taken from her father, was told by the agent she would “never see him again.” To the Honduran grandmother I recognized who had fled to save her granddaughter’s life and came the legal and “right way” by asking for asylum at the port of entry, only to be separated from her granddaughter and detained for 17 months in the El Paso Processing Center before put on a plane and deported without the ability to notify her attorney or her family.

But as disturbing as it is, I hope many Americans will watch “Immigration Nation” and understand. Keeping your emotions out of doing your job to uphold the law is one thing. Doing that job with demeaning humor and glee, or numbness, while inflicting emotional pain, and worse, on others is quite something else.

Family separation is not over. Unjust cruelty heaped on those who seek refuge is still happening. It’s simply out of the limelight now.

And we as a society pay a dear price for this behavior.

As one former Border Patrol agent expressed in a 2109 article in The American Scholar:

“Where do we draw the line between our right as Americans to protect ourselves and our duty as human beings to treat others as we would hope to be treated in similar circumstances?”

 

It’s an important question to ask.

And he adds: “…all too often our fear of the other is an act of self-defeat more than an act of self-preservation.” (https://theamericanscholar.org/rape-trees-and-rosary-beads/#.XzxdnOhKjIV)

We delude ourselves into thinking that causing pain to others has no negative impact in our lives. That we are somehow separated from our thoughts and actions.

This illusion looms large in our culture today. Dividing ourselves into red and blue states, one political party pitted against the other, liberals vs. conservatives, citizens vs. immigrants, us vs. them…has turned into permission to be rude or hateful, or worse.

Some believe this is acceptable. No skin off their back.

But it is, in fact, an act of self-defeat. Because, in reality, we are not separate beings living in isolation.

As Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical Laudato Si: “Because all creatures are connected, each must be cherished with love and respect, for all of us as living creatures are dependent on one another.”

We are all interconnected in this web of life. And the threads we contribute to this web reverberate, throughout our culture, throughout our world.

In this moment, with so much at stake, Love calls us to reach higher. To dare to contribute loving energetic threads.

I dare to imagine what is possible if we did. As of yet, this remains mysterious to most of us. And may seem impossible to many.

But I consciously choose to contribute loving thoughts and actions to this web of life. And to be aware whenever I am offering anything that goes against this intention.

Remembering that, as Dorothy Day said, “Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up….If we love each other enough, we are going to light the fire in the hearts of others. And it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much.”

 

(For a review of the Netflix documentary “Immigration Nation” from the UK:  https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/immigration-nation-netflix-documentary-donald-trump-ice-572147)

 

 

 

Out Here on Our Own

The press has gone.

Photographers no longer shadow us down the hallways as we tend to our guests. No more wanna-be volunteers show up at our door unannounced after having driven for hours from places like Denver or Phoenix. No more “angry moms” spend their mornings preparing breakfast and lunch for our migrant families as a positive response to their outrage.

Not anymore.

Gone are the headlines about crying toddlers torn from the arms of their mothers and fathers. Gone are the news reports about abuses at detention centers.

Our lives are back to normal. Whatever “normal” is these days.

For those of us on the border, it may feel like we’re on our own again. It may seem as though people don’t care.

But I know that’s not true. I know you are listening, dear reader. I know that you do care. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.

So, I’d like to make you aware.  Better inform you about the “norm” for so many who do feel as if no one cares. About the maltreatment asylum seekers face, especially when they hail from African countries. About the abuses that occur. About the loneliness and isolation.

Once you know, my hope is that you will not forget. And that you will take some small, positive action from where you are. Make a difference in at least one other lonely or abused person’s life that will add to the growing wave of merciful acts done in the name of humanity.

So that others will know they are not alone.

As you may know, I have been visiting asylum seekers detained at the ICE El Paso Processing Center through a nonprofit called CIVIC. CIVIC stands for Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement, and Jan, our local program administrator, has done a super job of connecting volunteer visitors with lonely people holed up in these prisons.

Some detainees have not had a visitor in over a year. They wait for Jan to connect them with an available volunteer. They feel so alone. Forgotten. Powerless.

Until last month when African asylum seekers at our detention facility became empowered.

They risked creating and signing a petition against the El Paso DHS ICE Field Office for “improperly and impartially” denying their parole and treating them unfairly. They claim they escaped persecution in their home countries and came here for safety, only to be persecuted at the hands of ICE officers and detention guards.

The majority of them have been in ICE custody for more than a year.  They all arrived legally as asylum seekers at one of our EP ports of entry and had positive credible fear interviews, yet they remain in “immigration proceedings.” Proceedings that seem to have no end to them.

They have a right to parole through the Damus decision. And they have watched as parole is granted to Latin American detainees, especially to Cubans, awaiting their hearing, while their parole is unjustifiably denied.

At an alarming number.

A little background on the Damus decision. A teacher from Haiti, Ansly Damus has been confined in Ohio for more than a year-and-a-half. He fled his homeland fearing violence and political persecution and asked for asylum. An immigration judge granted him asylum not just once, but twice. But the government appealed those decisions and Damus remains locked up indefinitely even though he poses no threat and is eligible for parole. The judge has ruled that ICE violated its own procedures by not granting Damus release under what’s known as humanitarian parole.

That’s what our African detainees are petitioning for. Humanitarian parole.

On a personal note, I’ve been seeing my young Ethiopian friend, whom I call Mathias, for nearly nine months now. He’s been locked up for over a year. His birthday is coming up in early October. He’s told me he doesn’t want to spend another birthday behind these walls. Celebrate another year of his young life on hold.

It feels like such a small thing. To visit someone only once a week or a few times a month. It never feels like enough.  And then he sends a letter saying how I make him strong and comfort him, how he is happy to have someone “on the outside” who cares. He says it’s not easy to be in detention, but he is “learning about life” and learning that there are “good-hearted people in this world like CIVIC.”

He is learning…and so am I.

I am learning that sometimes it feels like our hands are tied. That it feels like we are alone to face the wall or the tempest before us. But we are not.

Sometimes God shows up as the person accompanying us. Or the one accompanied.

Don’t forget this. Be the one who cares.

.NOTE: I am creating a new blog – same theme, different look. I hope to link it to this one, and I hope you will continue to follow me on this journey.

Spreading Hope

Hope.

This post is dedicated to spreading hope.

It may seem like there’s not much of it around. Especially with all the disheartening and discouraging news out there. But good things are happening, too. People are mobilizing for positive change.

People like you and me.

And today you have an opportunity to join me in spreading hope.

In fact, I can’t do it without you.

That’s what this story is about. An opportunity to make a positive change in the life of one special mother and son. A mother who has already suffered so much.

Blanca is an asylum seeker who came to one of our ports of entry with her 12-year-old son, Luis, to save his life. After her husband, a military officer, in El Salvador, was assassinated, Blanca tried to stay in her country. She and her two sons moved 15 times in four years, hoping to stave off the gangs threatening them.

But without police protection, it was impossible to keep her family safe.

Her older son finally fled on his own. Eventually, Blanca and her youngest son also had to leave. And in October 2017, they arrived in El Paso, asking for asylum.

That’s when the unthinkable happened.

Rather than place them in a family detention center or release them on bond, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) separated Blanca and her child, putting her in detention and Luis in foster care.

This is a practice we never allowed before now. Until the Trump administration decided to use separation of parents from their children as a deterrent.

As you can imagine, it is heartbreaking to witness. Seeing a mother who has been separated from her child.

Blanca and her son Luis

If you’re a parent, you can especially understand the unimaginable pain.

But here’s where you come in. With your dose of hope.

ALDEA – the People’s Justice Center, a non-profit committed to representing separated families, decided to take on Blanca’s case pro bono. And they’re located in Reading, PA!

They had to fly to El Paso to visit Blanca, research their case, and attend her hearing. And on the day of Blanca’s hearing, something amazing happened. The judge ruled she had “credible fear” and ordered her released on bond of $7,500!

This doesn’t happen often with El Paso judges. And he set her bond at a reasonable amount, to boot. Believe it or not, the average is $20,000 or more.

But Blanca has no money.  So, ALDEA set up a GoFundMe account for her.

In little over a week, we have raised nearly three-fourths of the money we need.

This gives me hope.

So many good-hearted people who want to do the right thing by a mom desperately wanting to be with her son again.

So many people who believe in what is possible.

Will you join us in spreading this wave of hope for Blanca and Luis? Any amount you donate is greatly appreciated.

And it adds to the flow of positive energy to counter and balance all that negativity out there.

Blanca in detention (photo taken from Houston Chronicle article)

Here’s the link to the GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/FamilyReunificationBondFund

 

If you’re interested, here’s Blanca’s full story, as reported in the Houston Chronicle: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Her-husband-murdered-her-son-taken-away-a-12462658.php

Her husband murdered, her son taken away, a mother seeking asylum tells a judge, ‘I have lost everything’

 

Thank you for spreading hope.

 

Where Have All the People Gone?

Fear. Uncertainty. Sadness. Deep Concern.

These are just some of the feelings I and many others have been experiencing lately.

Yesterday ICE conducted immigration raids in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the town right next to El Paso. We’ve heard such raids will be happening here next.

At the Nazareth migrant and refugee hospitality center, our numbers have dropped dramatically over the past few weeks. ICE brought us only seven people yesterday. This afternoon we closed down for the rest of the weekend. Where have all the people gone?

Although I can only speculate as to what’s happening, I can tell you for certain that it’s not because the violence has decreased in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Are those who are presenting themselves to Border Patrol at the bridge asking for asylum being turned away? If so, it’s a certain death sentence for many if they return to their country.

Or are they possibly being sent directly to detention facilities?

Hoping to get some answers, I attended a meeting of the Borderland Immigration Council last night. Instead, my eyes were opened to the increase in blatant cases of denial of fundamental human rights and dignity that is happening right here in El Paso.

Family separation. Due process violations. Unaccountable and arbitrary denial of attorneys’ requests for migrants’ stays of removal. Even for a person with the most urgent humanitarian claims.

In some cases, mothers have even been separated from their children and put in detention. That’s not something I’d heard of happening before.

Yet, sadly, it is.

One woman who had been separated from her five-year-old daughter suffered so much stress, she gave up her case for asylum after being detained for five months with no contact with her daughter. The child had been placed in foster care, and at some point, grown so distraught, she had stopped eating. As a mother, that’s heartbreaking to me.

A Mexican woman who had been beaten and tortured by her boyfriend in her country and then threatened by the Mexican government for exposing their ineptness in helping her, came to the U.S. seeking asylum. Instead she was thrown in detention and treated like a criminal. “I was living in hell there, and I came to another hell here,” she said in an interview.

Case after case I heard of people being treated inhumanely.

It seems we have turned immigrants into “the other.” Criminals. Job stealers. Leeches.

Easily labeled as “bad.” “Wrong.”

Even worse, we have made them disposable, invisible, valueless.

And allowed ourselves to believe that their lives don’t matter. Or somehow matter less than ours.

Compassionate leadership. American values. Humane treatment of other human beings. Wise and thoughtful decision-making.

This is what I seek from my elected officials. And if not, then they need to be held accountable. No matter what their political affiliation.

Creating greater division among people based on politics, religion, race, country of origin, even differences of opinion, will not heal us. It will not make America great again.

Nabbing undocumented people who have no criminal record and are positively contributing to our society will not make us safer or richer. It will only instill greater fear in our society.

It already has.

As people on this planet we share a common humanity. A oneness with the divine Creator. Knowing that divine spark lives in each of us enables me to have faith in what is possible.

And to hope that the people will come back. Both those who seek safe refuge and those who allow themselves to “see” the other.

The Risk of Being a Family

Michoacan panorama

 

A home on the coast of Michoacán, Mexico. Views of the ocean. Sea breezes waft through the windows as a loving family with three handsome teenaged sons gathers for dinner. This characterized the life of one of the families I met this week at the Nazareth hospitality center.

A life that no longer exists.

Threatened by the drug cartel’s out-of-control violence in the state of Michoacán, the entire family fled their idyllic life and presented themselves at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking political asylum. Unfortunately, only four members of their family made it to our center. Immigration and Customs Enforcement decided to detain their husband and father.

It’s something I’ve been noticing more lately. Males 18 years and older being detained indiscriminately. Sometimes there is a reason. Maybe they tried to enter the country previously. Maybe there’s something questionable on their record. But often it seems to be a random decision, depending on the ICE agent handling their case.

Some suggest ICE is attempting to send a message back to Latin America: if you come, your family will be separated. This disturbs and infuriates me. Are we really using separation of family as a deterrent? Is there justification to cause such pain to a family that has already endured so much?

I think of this family. They did not want to come to the U.S. They told us of their beautiful home. How they hated to leave. And that they hope to return some day.

A street in the center of Michoacan

For now, that’s not possible. At least not without putting their sons in danger.

Other volunteers have heard alarming stories from those who’ve fled Michoacán. How the cartels force people off land that has been in their family for generations. How they threaten to kill or “disappear” their sons. How they instill fear in the community by hanging corpses from bridges. The people can’t trust the police. Often they’re involved themselves. Some communities have tried to set up their own vigilante groups. Others, like this family, flee.

Repulsive image of a pregnant woman and others hung from a welcome sign, but a common occurrence in Michoacan

Fortunately, all the sons in this family are under 18. Otherwise, ICE could have detained one of them as well.

That happened to another mom who showed up this week with only two of her three children. Her 18-year-old son had been detained. They’d made it all the way from Guatemala, crossing treacherous Mexico, only to be separated in the U.S.

So, what’s next for these families?

Now they must make the agonizing decision of moving on to their designated relative’s home without their brother, husband, or son, who will remain in detention and be processed separately. Possibly he will remain here a year or more. Most likely, he will be deported.

I see the anxiety in this mother’s face when she comes to the office to ask when she can see her son. One of our volunteers will drive her to the detention facility on her designated visiting night.

I feel my heart for this woman. I know the joy of giving birth to a son. And the sorrow of being separated from him.

But this is what I cannot imagine: leaving my son behind in a detention facility in a foreign country not knowing when I will see him again. If he is deported, what will he do when he arrives back in the country alone? Will he be safe?

I feel helpless in what I have to offer her. Yet I want to offer something.

Later I go retrieve blankets for our new arrivals. I pass the room of the family from Michoacán. The mom is seated on her bed facing the doorway. The boys perch on the edge of a cot, their backs to me, fully attentive to their mother. Her face is somber. But her eyes are soft with something I easily recognize — her deep love for her sons, right alongside the pain of what she has to tell them.

Tonight, they will visit their father in detention. Tomorrow they will head for their relatives on the west coast as originally planned. Without their dad.

There are more stories like this. More ways my heart has been tested. I’ve come to see that the more I open my heart to strangers, the more I risk. Because there’s a definite risk when you look into the face of another.

You see yourself.

And you realize that we truly are connected as one family. We share the same feelings. The same sorrows and joys. The same desires for ourselves and our children. The same Spirit.

I can no longer NOT care. That’s the risk of being a family. What about you? Will you join us?

Logo from the nonprofit One Family