Where did you spend the July 4 this year?
I was in San Antonio, Texas, re-greening myself after a week’s volunteer work in Dilley, Texas, with the CARA Pro Bono Project for incarcerated, non-criminal, asylum-seeking women and children at the South Texas Family Residential Center ... aka internment camp.
In December 2014, this 2,400 bed facility was opened by the Department of Homeland Security in cooperation with a private prison for-profit company, the Corrections Corporation of America, which staffs the prison with 700 employees.
The cost to the U.S. taxpayer is approximately $300 per person — per night.
In summer 2014, droves of women, men, and children surged north from Central America. They fled rampant persecution and violence in their own countries caused by U.S. dirty wars that left their countries awash with weapons, disorder, and street gangs. The U.S. government, in spite of its own responsibility for this tragedy and despite international human rights law and our own laws on refugee and asylee rights, decided to lock up asylum seekers to deter others from coming. In fact, imprisonment as a form of deterrence is an issue currently being considered before the courts.
The time in Dilley was awful in both senses of the word — filled with awe, and appalling.
What was appalling: that almost 2,000 women and children under the age of 18 were locked in a 50-acre site — in the middle of the hot, fracked Texas desert — behind 15-foot chain-link fences. Upon entry, every worker and volunteer had to be screened and wanded, and every item searched. One was buzzed in and out of every door. Attorneys were accompanied by guards to the immigration court trailer, or to the asylum office trailer where the temperature was close to 50 degrees — compared to the 90-plus degrees under the hot sun.
The deleterious effects of incarceration in a strange land added to the trauma and stress of displacement from home. Many indigenous speakers knew little or no Spanish or English.
I was amazed at the youth of the women — mostly under 25 years of age. The average age of the children is nine. The week I was there, children were being vaccinated with adult doses of vaccine, without parental permission.
One woman I met decided to sign off to be deported in the hopes of a quick exit. However, she continues to wait for the federal marshal and the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System to contact her embassy for her papers and fill a plane to get her from Dilley to home. She may linger there for months as she and her son continue in increased trauma.
What filled me with awe: the diligence and dedication of the 18 volunteers and two paid staff on the ground who worked 12- to 16-hour days assisting the women and children to take the next step in their cases. Attorneys represented clients before the immigration judge to reduce the bond from $8,000 to $2,500. In the immigration context, a bond is to assure one’s attendance at a future immigration hearing.
Clients were prepped as to how to get bond documents from family and friends. When the attorneys on the ground go to court, the documents are accessible online and have already been electronically dispatched to the judge and government attorney.
Volunteers prepared clients for their credible fear interview or reasonable fear interview before an asylum officer. Volunteers represented clients at interviews when possible. One woman had a 4-hour telephone interview with translation from English to Spanish to an indigenous language, and then the reverse. In most cases, if credible fear is established, the person is released and the case continues in the jurisdiction where she will be living. The strength and courage of the women in telling their stories was awe inspiring.
On July 1, there was an international trial in Dilley, Texas, in which the detained woman and her daughter were present in court with an attorney. The attorney who prepared the case remotely was in Japan; a law student and supervising attorney were in Miami, Fla., with the immigration judge and trial attorney. After three hours of testimony, there was a favorable decision: This mother and daughter were released after three months of incarceration. A local Spanish TV station featured their story on the 10 p.m. news. The next day, many more women signed up for legal assistance — despite the fact that some CCA officers were telling the women that CARA was on the side of ICE and wants to keep them in jail.
When I returned to jail on July 6, I met an indigenous-speaking woman who was released without a bond. She presented a scrap of paper with a street address, an illegible city, and a state with a zip code of the person she hoped to join. We deciphered the name of the city and got her in touch with transportation to the closest town. How she smiled when we said the name of the town!
Our two-fold mission — to get due process, freedom, and human rights for the asylum seekers, and to end family detention — continues as we work and take the next step together. Happy interdependence time!
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