An endless stream of very bad dreams has turned into a violent nightmare for thousands awaiting on our southern border as our government implements its“Remain in Mexico” policy. This is happening in our name and on our watch.
Last week I went to El Paso with a group from Upstate New York and New Hampshire (which included Rosemary Weidner from Dublin and Bill Whyte and Katie Schwerin from Gilsum) to participate in a fact-finding trip, Annunciation House’s Border Awareness Experience (BAE). This was my second trip to El Paso, having volunteered there with one of Annunciation House’s temporary shelters last January, serving migrants brought there by ICE once they were released from detention centers, known as heleras (ice boxes).
During the Border Awareness Experience, we crossed the border into Juarez where we visited a shelter and spoke with Mexicans encamped there, as well as immigration attorneys, advocates, public defenders, community organizers and Annunciation House Director Ruben Garcia. As hard as it is to imagine, things are far worse than they were last year.
The inhumane conditions of detention centers remain, but Annunciation House is almost empty. Detention is no longer the lowest level of hell; its horror has been surpassed by the borderland of Mexico due to the White House policy euphemistically called Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) or Remain in Mexico. Under this policy, asylum seekers must remain on the Mexican side of the border while waiting for their applications to be processed, which can take years.
Another new policy called Safe Third Country forces asylum seekers to apply for asylum in the first country they enter. Guatemala is not a safe place, and the Mexican National Guard is now stationed along that border. The conditions from which they are fleeing have not changed, but we don’t know their current situation.
The Remain in Mexico policy impacts all Spanish speakers except Mexicans because they are seeking asylum from Mexico, the country administering this program. While it is illegal for the US to prevent asylum seekers from entering, it is not illegal to say, "No room, take a number" and block crossing. This practice is known as metering. Asylum seekers under MPP are blocked from entry and instead are put on a waiting list; Mexicans are on a separate list.
Because they are not given a date by US Customs and Border Patrol, all asylum seekers must wait by the bridges in order to be present when their number is called, and there they remain for months in cities considered by the US State Department as some of the world’s most dangerous.
Juarez, El Paso’s sister city, is a horror show. Murders are daily occurrences and the city is littered with burnt out vehicles. The Cartel controls everything; though they have allowed no other immigrant group to live under the bridge, the Mexicans to have tent cities there.
Most alarming to me this week is that the Central Americans have seemed to have disappeared.
Kidnapping has become so common that lawyers and advocates we met say Central Americans are not even safe staying in shelters in Juarez. One attorney, Taylor Levy, told us of an incident on the Bridge of the Americas itself. While consulting with a Honduran couple on opposite sides of the border gate, a Mexican approached the migrants and forced the couple to come away with him. Taylor told us that the going extortion rate for kidnapped Central Americans is $10,000, negotiable.
Once forcefully detained, the Cartel video chats with their victims’ families back in Honduras, inflicting whatever level of violence necessary to compel the families to pay up. As the word gets out through apps like What’s App the migrants from the Central America’s Northern Triangle are nowhere to be seen at the border. We wonder where they have gone.
Equally distressing, all of the advocates and lawyers we meet during the BAE — even Ruben Garcia, Annunciation House Director — believe it is safest for parents to send their children over the border unaccompanied. Can you imagine?
They believe the child detention centers are safer than the Mexican borderlands. Unlike detention centers, children centers are run by Health and Human Services, under the Office of Refugee and Resettlement. They are licensed by each state and must meet the standards of that state. Still, the militaristic protocol with prohibitions against human contact of any kind can only add to the trauma of these children.
The single adults and families permitted in through metering must go through detention; however, because of the deaths of six children in detention, CPB is releasing anyone who looks sick or obviously pregnant. Families are usually released within 72 hours. We were told that there are single adults who have been kept there for over three years.
The most recent guests at Annunciation House are mostly Brazilians, not under the auspices of MPP because they don’t speak Spanish, and Mexicans from the three most dangerous states controlled by the Cartel: Guerrero, Zacatecas, and Michoacan. Each day we were there, an ICE bus would drop off around 80 people just released from the heleras. That left Annunciation House with 420 vacant beds due to this administration’s heartless policies of metering and remain in Mexico.
So here is my first-hand update from my two weeks at the border:
*the lucky few are families allowed to cross and endure 72 hours of being caged in an helera
* desperate trapped parents are choosing to send their children across the border unaccompanied to the uncertain cruelty of detention camps rather than risk kidnapping, death and disease in Mexico
*thousands and thousands of Central Americans have disappeared
Marjorie Margolis is a retired Conant High School teacher living in Sharon. After volunteering at Annunciation House last winter, she organized a group to join an 11/9 – 11/22 trip to the border, including a fact-finding Border Awareness Experience facilitated by Annunciation House. To learn more: tune in Nov. 17 National Public Radio interviews with Immigration agents and migrants on This American Life, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-american-life/id201671138?i=1000457072763
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