by Heather Vickery | May 13, 2016 | Congregational Trip, Immigration
Kim Duncan is a CSJ program leader from Portland Oregon. She led a delegation from two churches in Oregon, including her own.
Last October, a group from three UU congregations in Oregon went on CSJ’s Border Justice tour on the Arizona – Mexico border. On April 19th, we presented our experiences following the service at the First Unitarian Church of Portland. It was a rousing success!
Homemade Mexican tamales made by our friend, whose husband many of us have supported while he was in sanctuary in Portland – as well as an interest in US immigration policy and border conditions – drew nearly 40 people at Portland’s First Unitarian Church on Sunday.
What they heard, and what we were privileged to report on, were the experiences both wrenching and uplifting, that confronted us during our six day journey with CSJ partner, BorderLinks, in Tucson, Arizona.
We confronted a wall that was ugly, high and forbidding along our border. We saw altars along the desert migrant trails, commemorating the deaths of those who tried to cross but failed. We met migrants in Mexico who said they would continue to cross, in spite of the risks, because the danger they fled in Central America is worse, or because there are jobs waiting for them in the US. We saw the cast-off belongings left behind in the desert as immigrants made their way north. We witnessed 50 shackled migrants appear together in a courtroom and within a half-hour be mustered out and deported back to the border or to jail. We learned that private prison companies are making profits out of our border policies.
We were appalled.
We didn’t get clear answers about how to remedy this mess, but we met many heroic individuals trying to relieve the day-to-day suffering and angst in their communities. We met with people and organizations providing hidden way-stations in the desert that supply water and medical care to migrants; we talked with advocates trying to change the court processing; we visited with a woman named Rosa who was in sanctuary for over a year in Tucson, whose faith was inspiring. We were relieved to hear that her faith was rewarded a month later when she was free to go home.
We were humbled and touched by these experiences.
We presented this and more on the 19th. We replicated the cross planting ceremony that we performed with Frontera de Cristo in Douglas – honoring those who gave their lives for a better life. We invited speakers knowledgeable on US border policy and the violence that is pushing people to leave their homes and risk everything to come to the US.
Today, many in our group are at work in Portland helping where we can with individuals and families affected by our country’s immigration policies. We are advocating for Congressional action to fix this nightmare and we are endorsing efforts to divest funds in organizations invested in private prisons.
There aren’t any simple answers, we know that. But we saw our nation’s current policies in action – which waste lives, build terrible resentments, and punish desperate people who, like some of our own forebearers, are seeking better futures.
We can do so much better for them and for us.
by Heather Vickery | Jan 29, 2016 | Congregational Trip, Immigration
Tucson, Arizona – November 2015
“Sentencing” by Lawrence Gipe, ca. 2012-2014
Sixty two detainees, migrants from Mexico and Central America caught crossing the border illegally, sit in the large courtroom facing the judge. On his right is an interpreter. Our BorderLinks contingent sits in back to witness the proceedings, to keep the system “honest.”
The judge asks the group, “Do you understand why you are here?” “Do you understand the charges against you?” “Have you had an opportunity to talk with your attorney?” The defendants are instructed to stand if they don’t comprehend. No one stands.
The judge calls out names, stumbling over pronunciations. Five men, one woman, and their lawyers stand before him. Each is charged with a felony and has the option to plea to a misdemeanor and waive trial. One by one, the judge recites a litany to this effect. One by one, they plead guilty to the misdemeanor, waiving their right to trial, and are given sentences of up to 180 days.
“Shackled” by Lawrence Gipe ca. 2012-2014
I’m struck by the politeness between the judge and the accused. Many answer his questions, “Si, senior.” The judge always finishes with, “Thank you for your time, and good luc.” The convicted often reply, “Gracias.”
Six human beings processed in less than ten minutes: First Appearance, Arraignment, Plea Bargaining, Sentencing. Very streamlined, very efficient. Is this American justice?
The convicted pass by us as they’re taken from the courtroom, looking resigned. Do they see empathy in our faces? Or only a sea of white faces, curious and judgmental?
All are handcuffed and shackled. What threat do these Mexican peasants pose? They’re accused of illegal border crossings, not dangerous crimes. All wear clothes they were arrested in, some cleaner than others, depending on how long they’d been in the desert and in jail.
The scene repeats itself. One man on crutches, legs shackled, is handcuffed to his crutches. Did he walked through the desert on crutches? Stories abound of Border Patrol officers abusing migrants, sometimes getting away with murder. Other stories tell of Border Patrol humanitarians who save lives.
“Caught visiting his newly-born daughter”, by Lawrence Gipe ca. 2012-2014
A few migrants decline the plea bargain and the judge refers them back to their attorneys. After further conference, most return “willing” to plea. One man with a head injury is sent twice to chat with his lawyer but remains unwilling. The judge tells him to come back another day after he gets medical attention. In other words, be willing to plea.
In an hour and a half, the last defendant has been processed and sent to a private prison. These prisons are profitable. Their lobbyists have successfully convinced lawmakers to increase charges and sentences. What was once no more serious than a traffic ticket is now a felony. Mexicans have been cros
sing the border for years to harvest crops. Many don’t understand the laws have changed. Some are fleeing from starvation or violence in their homeland or only want to rejoin their families.
You’d think a country that put a man on the moon could find a better solution.
Pat Caren is a member of the UU Fellowship of Gainesville, FL, where she volunteers on the Social Justice Committee and is a key coordinator for Family Promise, a program to help homeless and low-income families achieve sustainable independence.
by Heather Vickery | Jan 26, 2016 | Immigration
By Janey Skinner, guest commentary © 2016 Bay Area News Group
While much of the world’s attention is focused on Syria’s refugees, there is another refugee crisis that no one is talking about: Central Americans fleeing the worst violence in the world outside of an active war zone.
With the recent controversial detention of 121 Central American women and children by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), this refugee crisis is gaining notice.
Why are these families facing deportation? Without legal representation, many legitimate claims for asylum go ignored. Whether a person receives legal representation or not is the single greatest factor in whether they attain asylum, according to the American Immigration Council — not whether their circumstances warrant the protection of asylum, but whether they are able to explain those circumstances in the format the courts require. Less than 2 percent of asylum seekers without a lawyer obtain asylum, while more than 25 percent of those with lawyers prevail. All asylum seekers should have a fair chance to make their case.
Instead of removing vulnerable families, the Obama administration should ensure a complete and fair process for each asylum seeker, including legal counsel.
The highest immigration court in the U.S. just affirmed the importance of a complete and fair process for asylum seekers two weeks ago. The Board of Immigration Appeals halted the deportation of 12 of the 121 women and children, because the appeal process in their cases was not finished.
Immigration attorneys with the CARA Pro Bono Family Detention project say that many of the women, not only these 12, have been denied the right to legal counsel and a full hearing of their cases.
Last summer, I volunteered with Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, in Texas, assisting women and children in detention. Their stories echo in my mind as I hear of the families detained by ICE in recent days, the largest enforcement action yet to specifically target Central American families.
One woman, I recall, fled because a jailed gang leader required her to present herself at the prison for his sexual use. If she did not comply with this “conjugal visit,” he said his men would kill her son in front of her, and then rape her and kill her, too.
A relative helped her borrow money, and she fled. While she was on her way to the United States — the only place she had family to receive her — she learned that the gang had come to her house, and not finding her there, had killed her younger cousin, instead. What will happen to her, if she is deported?
Under both United States law and international law, it is wrong to send a refugee or an asylum seeker back to their persecutors. That’s not the kind of country we are.
My own mother came to the United States fleeing tyranny — she and her Jewish father and her Christian mother escaped Nazi Germany in 1938. Many others were turned away.
In retrospect, it is easy to see the shame of turning away Jews fleeing Nazism. Yet what about today’s refugees? Do we only have 20/20 vision in hindsight?
Some will say that these women and children are economic migrants, not true refugees. Yet there is poverty in many parts of Latin America, without producing the numbers of migrants now fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
Nicaragua, Honduras’ neighbor, is just as poor, yet not as violent — and so we have not seen a surge in the numbers of Nicaraguan families and unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the United States.
Since 2008, there has been a fivefold increase in asylum petitions from northern Central America in the U.S., and an astonishing thirteen-fold increase in asylum petitions within Central America and Mexico. This would not happen for purely economic reasons.
It is not illegal to seek asylum. It is not illegal to flee for your life, whether from the horror that is Syria or the violence of transnational gangs south of the border. The San Francisco Bay Area has a tradition of providing sanctuary to those who need it.
Asylum seekers deserve a meaningful chance, with legal representation, to demonstrate the dangers that they fled. If we don’t provide that, we may be deporting them to their deaths.
Janey Skinner is a Richmond resident. Before becoming a community college teacher, she worked for several years in Latin America, supporting human rights.
Janey Skinner volunteered with RAICES through the UU College of Social Justice in the summer of 2015.
by Heather Vickery | Dec 8, 2015 | Congregational Trip, Immigration
This post was written by Pat Caren from the UU Fellowship of Marion County Borderlinks trip in November 2015.
To cross a desert on foot is to risk your life. In Cochise County, Arizona, more than 260 people have perished this way since 2009. Every Tuesday evening in the border town of Douglas, the Healing Our Borders Prayer Vigil is held in remembrance of those and thousands of others who have died. In November, I participated in this moving experience, one of a delegation of fifteen from the Unitarian Universalist College of Social Justice.
Presbyterian minister Mark Adams led the vigil. Other participants included a group of Presbyterian Youth and other human rights workers and concerned individuals. We loaded 260 or so white wooden crosses into a shopping cart. Each took three and we lined up along the street that leads to the Mexican border. Most crosses bore a name and dates of birth and death.
Beginning with Pastor Mark, each held up a cross and spoke the name on it. Everyone else said, “Presente!” Then the cross was laid against the curb and its holder moved to the end of the line. Down the street we progressed. When my turn came, I did my best to pronounce the name. Everyone echoed, “Presente!” As we set down our last cross, we took another from the cart and continued, announcing names, “Presente,” laying them down.
One of mine had no name, only “Mujer no identificada.” Who was she? Certainly someone’s daughter, probably someone’s sister. If married, where was her husband? Represented by another cross? Or did he survive to go on, unable to report her death or claim her body? Did she have children? Were they waiting for her to join them in the US or did she leave them behind to find work so she could feed them?
And why, oh why, do we not know her name? Were her remains so scattered that no clothing, papers, or possessions could be traced to her?
After the last cross, save three, had been laid down, we gathered in a circle. One by one, Pastor Mark announced two more names and another unknown, “Presente!” and he laid each cross in the center of our circle.
Standing in the night, listening to prayers for the families of the fallen and for both of our countries, remembering the dead and praying for a peaceful solution, I was struck by the tragedy of so many hopeful lives cut short.
Whatever you may think of those who were lost, about their motivations, their judgment—they were living, breathing souls, like you and me, with hopes and dreams, struggles and sorrows. Some died alone, some in the company of friends or loved ones. And even the unknowns, the No identificada, were loved and mourned by someone.
We returned to the parking lot, picking up the crosses as we went, mourning for our brothers and sisters, those children of God, whom we never met on this side of the border between life and death, but who had become real to our hearts.
Pat Caren is a member of the UU Fellowship of Gainesville, FL, where she volunteers on the Social Justice Committee and is a key coordinator for Family Promise, a program to help homeless and low-income families achieve sustainable independence.
by Deva Jones | Sep 28, 2015 | Immigration, Youth
This post was written by Jack Spector-Bishop and originally posted on Blue Boat.
“What do you do when you come head to head with the very evil you are working against?”
“The ants crawl under it, the birds fly around it, the sky connects over it.” This is what I wrote in my journal while I sat in the shade of the US-Mexico border wall, near Douglas, Arizona. The wall loomed behind me, constructed of massive, two story high rusty metal beams and stretching as far as I could see. Poles with floodlights and cameras were everywhere, along with trenches, barbed wire, and fences. All of it seemed so arbitrary. It was weird a place to be — it was just an inanimate, sterile wall and yet I felt a suffocating atmosphere of pain. Even though we were in an empty desert, it felt like a place of violence.
I traveled to the wall during the UUCSJ’s Activate Southwest Border program, in which around 20 youth (mostly Unitarian Universalsists) from around the country met in Tucson, Arizona for 10 days to learn about immigration issues in the borderlands, and receive training in social justice organizing. I and my fellow travelers had countless moving and informative experiences (including witnessing Operation Streamline, and working with the We Stand with Rosa campaign), but our visit to the border wall still sticks in my mind as the most memorable. As our group began trudging up a hill, we saw a fast approaching cloud of red dust in the distance take shape as a U.S. Border Patrol squad car. We had no reason to be afraid — the public does have access to the pathways along the border, but it still made us a little anxious. This anxiety only increased as the car pulled up alongside us, parked, and the Border Patrol agent began getting out and talking to us. Part of me, deep down, hoped that he would be one of the “good ones”. That this was just a job to him. That he was a decent guy trying to bring dignity to a cruel institution. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. As he chatted with us and asked us what questions we had for him, it became clear that he fit exactly the stereotypes of his profession. I’m not going to repeat what he said — just turn on Fox News or watch the GOP Presidential debates and you’ll hear the same things. It was ugly, hateful racism, spoken in the most casually self-righteous manner you can imagine. What do you do in that situation? What do you do when you come head to head with the very evil you are working against? As I pondered these questions over the following days, scripture came to mind, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers” (Ephesians 6:12). That border patrol agent was not the enemy — he was just flesh and blood. It became clear to me that the enemies we are fighting are the institutions he stood for. We are fighting Border Patrol, we are fighting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and we are fighting the legislation that makes the persecution of undocumented citizens legal.
Jack Spector-Bishop is 17 and attends the Countryside UU Church in Palatine, Illinois. He is currently serving on the Midwest district’s Northern Area Youth Council and this is the second UUCSJ program he has attended. He is passionate about art and social justice, and hopes to someday work for the Unitarian Universalist Service Commitee (UUSC).
by Deva Jones | Jul 13, 2015 | Immigration, RAICES, Volunteering
The following post was written by Melanie Poeling, a participant in UUCSJ’s RAICES volunteer program.
Imagine that you are a mother with small children and you have traveled over a thousand miles from Honduras, Guatemala, or El Salvador because of extreme violence against you and your family, only to be detained after requesting asylum at the U.S. Port-of-entry. You imagine being safe and free in the U.S.; instead you are imprisoned indefinitely in a family detention center with your children anywhere from weeks to almost a year. When you finally get out, you are released at a bus station in a strange city in the middle of the night with little money, no clothes, and not even a change of diapers for your baby. This is the reality for many families from Central America fleeing violence.
Volunteering through the UU College of Social Justice and RAICES allowed me to see firsthand the mental, physical, and emotional toll that mandatory detention has on refugee families. I saw children famished due to inadequate food in the centers, not eating and losing weight. I saw mothers and children who were very ill but feared seeking help because the medical unit at the Karnes detention center was being used for solitary confinement and punishment for mothers that protested.
The stories I heard from refugee mothers were heartbreaking, but their strength, love, and determination outweighed the pain. We heard stories of women witnessing their children being murdered in front of them; stories of years of domestic violence; stories of sex trafficking and the kidnapping of teenage girls; stories about extortion and extreme gang violence. And then, once in the U.S., indeterminate detention in family detention centers. These families are refugees. How can we not see this as a humanitarian crisis?
Witnessing all of this firsthand deeply impacted me as a Unitarian Universalist and as a mother. As a UU, I believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all people. In the detention centers, women and children are stripped of all dignity and treated as worthless. Profits are valued over people. As a mother, I am deeply disturbed that as a nation, we are detaining infants, toddlers, and pre-schoolers with their mothers in detention centers that are no better than a prison.
I am so glad that through our work with the UU College of Social Justice and RAICES we were able to provide information, assist with court preparations, provide temporary housing and transportation, and support these mothers in their fight for the safety and well-being of their families.
As a UU, I am called to action to end the detention of mothers and children. This is a humanitarian crisis and family detention centers are not the answer. They should be immediately shut down.