Tag Archives: Title 42

The legal razor wire on the other side of the wall

The Mission, , , , , ,

I actually fell asleep in the back set of the van yesterday and missed my second visit to Bisbee Arizona!

I was sleepy because I volunteered to help with the 2-5am shift at the Migrant Resource Center, which is right at the exit of the border crossing. It is a project that began in the Church and remains a wonderful place of mercy for tired, scared and often bewildered people. We had sandwiches, coffee, blankets, a place to nap and a few supplied for about 80 people by my count. I helped one young man find a new pair of pants since his had been ripped on the razor wire. I also found him some new outerwear since his coat was full of thorns. Most of the mostly men waited to be retrieved by their smuggler and taken to a cartel “safe house.”

I was glad to be awake enough to meet Noah Schram of the Florence Project out of Tucson, now 120 lawyers and trained people advising and defending people in the immigration process. One of us jokingly told him we were on our learning tour trying to make sense of the U.S. Immigration process. He laughed too, because no one can really do that.

Right now Title 42 is still in place. It was one of Trump’s executive orders that effectively closed the border. In the name of public health no one was allowed in when they went the legal route of presenting themselves at the port of entry and there was no means to appeal. All the lawyers note this is against the international agreement on refugees to which the U.S. is a signer.

People still get in, however. They evade capture when they scale the wall or they manage not to die of thirst or exposure when they cross where the wall ends far out into the desert. Many do die and their remains quickly dry up; no one knows how many.

Those who cross and are captured from certain countries can get through an asylum loophole since Mexico will not take anyone back who is not from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador. Unaccompanied minors get dropped off and get through the port of entry now under Biden’s rules. If a family with a young child is caught in the desert they usually get through.

Getting through and into the legal process of gaining asylum means going to the detention center part of a prison. There 14% of the migrants will get representation to help make their case to the immigration judge. Imagine being in your twenties, fleeing your impossible or violent situation, making it through the longest trip you’ve ever taken under the thumb of the cartel, making it over the wall or around it and through the desert, being caught by the military presence in the United States, taken to a prison, then getting into a bureaucratic and legal fight which is done mainly by English speakers!

That’s where Noah and his people come in, God bless them. The system is not designed to welcome strangers, just repel them. The judges are rarely impartial, taking the side of the unrepresented; many of them function more as another prosecutor. When I read the Bible these days I see how much of it is written with such injustice and lack of compassion in mind.

Further Resources

Noah Schram in making such good use of his law degree! The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project is on of many such projects along the border. Every immigrant needs an advocate to get through a system designed to trick them, detain them, and thwart them even when they are in line with international and U.S. law.

The 1951 Refugee Agreement is still in place.

The United States has long guaranteed the right to seek asylum to individuals who arrive at our southern border and ask for protection. But since March 20, 2020, that fundamental right has been largely suspended. Since that date, both migrants seeking a better life in the United States and those seeking to apply for asylum have been turned away and “expelled” back to Mexico or their home countries. These border expulsions are carried out under a little-known provision of U.S. health law, section 265 of Title 42, which the former Trump administration invoked to achieve its long-desired goal of shutting the border. The Biden administration has continued using this provision, and over 1.2 million expulsions have been carried out since the pandemic began, even though ports of entry remain open with nearly 11 million people crossing the southern border every month and thousands flying into the United States every day. (full article from the American Immigration Council)

The Department of Justice contributes to non-profits like FIRRP through its Legal Orientation Program. Only 14% of people seeking asylum are represented however. We spoke to one of them who somehow connected with people from a Tucson church visiting  Eloy. It took TWO YEARS for her unjust detention to be ended, but she made it. Now she has started a business.

Why do the authorities release people without their shoelaces? What in the impact of the Migrant Protection Policy (MPP)? (Anchorage Daily News)

Immigration court judges are not impartial. The system in broken. (NYTimes)

On this day we also visited the brick-making neighborhood of Agua Prieta, Sonora, to see DouglaPrieta. It is a project begun by women seeking more dignity to make their own way in the world. It is a mutual teaching center for backyard farming, sewing, carpentry and other skills. What we witnessed was how good a training center it was for disempowered women to become leaders and builders. They even made their own adobe bricks to make one of their buildings! I bought some of their work to take home.

Twentysomething migrants out in a cruel world

The Mission, , , ,

One of my travel companions looked at my concerned face today and said, “But people are doing good things everywhere!” I had to agree, since I met them all day. But they are certainly not doing good things without opposition.

Let me concentrate on one of the several organizations we learned from today south of the border in Sonora, Mexico.

A memorial at the migrant welcome center in honor of people who died crossing the border.

I won’t tell you the name of the migrant shelter we visited. They are scared of the “criminal organization” that threatens them. Any undo publicity could prove dangerous. The director was recently threatened with death after a new security chief took over that spot in local gang by killing his rival. The director’s crime? He went to pick up refugees from India who strangely ended up on the train to Agua Prieta.

The “mafia’s” business is drugs and human trafficking. The shelter does not fit its business model, which is based on deception and control. If shelter volunteers help a migrant retrieve money from Western Union that deprives the gang of its tax. If they pick people up they can’t be wandering around confused and easier to kidnap for ransom. If they help people file police reports that’s obviously inhibiting business.

The director leads a ministry that was born in his Catholic Church 21 years ago. A small group took over a part of the church to care for men trying to get into the U.S. to work. They could house 16 people. They found money to expand to 44. The new building they just finished added 88 spots. It also includes new rooms for families. During the pandemic and under the ongoing Title 42 rule in the U.S., most refugees and asylum seekers from Central America are not even processed, just returned to Mexico. Those are the main people leaving their homes and the main group who wanders, confused and destitute, into the shelter. New realities mean some people have been in a waiting pattern in the shelter for a long time when the shelter’s idea was to provide a short term stay.

Peering through the border wall

We ate dinner with the people staying in the shelter. The couple with us at our table were from Honduras. They and their 1 1/2 year old had lived in a farm village in the mountains where there were no jobs except farming, no schooling and no hope. Plus they feared the increasing violence from rival gangs and threats from the long arms of various criminal organizations looking for people to lure into migration for $10-15K a person. The smugglers told them people with children were getting asylum and once in the U.S. a family would not be returned. That is not so.

They asked for asylum in Reynosa TX. They thought they were being taken for processing. Instead they were bussed to the airport and put on a plane for Tucson where they were transported to the border at Agua Prieta. To get another of the three tries for entry their smuggler promised, they need to get back to Reynosa, 18 hours away by car. Mexico has put a check point not far from Monterrey where they can catch migrants on the bus and stop their progress. I looked at that sweet couple and their son and could not imagine what awaited them in this cruel world.

The government will fly people across the country to discourage them from trying to enter it again? The “mafia” can walk into your shelter and tell you what you can’t do that might inhibit their illegal trade? Kamala Harris goes to Guatemala to tell people our border is closed to almost everyone and expects people poor enough to intend to walk to Reynosa to hear her?

Lord have mercy.

Further resources

I hope you will order your coffee Christmas presents from Cafe Justo. We heard a presentation about coffee growers in Chiapas eliminating the middleman and creating their own cooperative to roast and distribute the work of their hands.  It raised their standard of living, sent children to school and stabilized their valley. (also Facebook)

It is hard to decide how much to say about C.A.M. E. (Centro de Atención al Migrante Exodus). They feel threatened. But they do have a Facebook page to garner support.

There is a technique under Biden for discouraging repeated attempts at illegal entry we ran into as we met migrants. The CBP (Customs and Border Protection) has been flying people from one port of entry to another to release them. Most of them think they are being taken to detention to work out asylum processes, but they find themselves in an unfamiliar new town in Mexico. (article)