Saturday, February 23, 2019

A Short Video on the History of the Sanctuary Movement

While at the Border, we met with John Fife, one of the seminal pastors in the Sanctuary movement. He's features in this New York Times video on the history of the Sanctuary movement (13 minutes), which compares the movement to the Underground Railroad that shepherded slaves to freedom in the nineteenth century.

Today's Sanctuary movement, which started in the 1980s, has been revived--and the San Jose (California) Presbytery recently declared itself a sanctuary.


Wednesday, February 20, 2019

A Conversation with the Rev. John Fife on Civil Initiative and the Sanctuary Movement by Geoff Browning


The Rev. John Fife says it was all the fault of Jim Corbett, a Quaker and rancher in the Tucson area. In fact, he says, almost all the good trouble he has gotten into in his life is because of those Quakers. It all started one day when Corbett confronted John about two times when the church was challenged to live out the biblical call to welcome the stranger. The first was the abolitionist movement of the 19th century which was empowered by the church. The second was in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s when the church utterly failed to defend the poor and powerless Jews that led to the Holocaust.
Then Corbett said that the Salvadoran refugees fleeing the Salvadoran civil war in the 1980s are the next challenge to the church. John explained that Corbett asked if he was ready to get involved for the purpose of saving lives. John confesses that he tried to dodge the question saying, “I’ll pray about it.” Well, as we all know, the Rev. John Fife did get involved, deeply involved in the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980s. John, Corbett and many others began an “underground railroad” throughout the country to more than 500 sanctuary congregations. This eventually led to many of them, including John, being indicted and convicted of harboring and transporting “illegal aliens.”
John explained that they realized that they should not call their work “civil disobedience” because they didn’t believe they were breaking the law; it was the federal government that was breaking the law by refusing to provide asylum to refugees from the Salvadoran war. The reason the government was unwilling to provide asylum was because the Reagan administration was supporting the dictatorship of El Salvador and providing asylum would force the administration to admit that the Salvadoran government was responsible for gross violations of human rights. Consequently, all requests for asylum from Salvadorans were denied and many were repatriated to the country only to be executed or disappeared.
The alternative description that John and Corbett came up with was “civil initiative” which they define as “the legal right and responsibility of every citizen to protect the victims of human rights violations when the government violates human rights.” The Sanctuary Movement ultimately sued the Attorney General of the United States for failure to uphold US asylum law. With the threat of depositions being exposed to the public, the US Attorney General promised to begin upholding US asylum law and withdraw sentencing for those who had been convicted.
But the question which the church must answer is this, are we ready to welcome the stranger? Are we willing to commit ourselves to “civil initiative” again in order to protect the victims of human rights violations when the government violates human rights?

What Can We Do?


What can we do? First, it's important to educate ourselves and each other.

Then, it depends on where you live.

One way to figure out what's possible in your community is to connect with those in your local community who are working on immigration issues. A good place to start is by plugging in your zip code into the Immigration Advocates Network website.

And we highly recommend a trip to Borderlinks. There's nothing like seeing it for youself.


Migrant Deaths in the Desert - Interactive Map


Because of the violence in Central America and the chaotic immigration system in place in the US,  migrants are crossing the Arizona desert in search of safety and/or asylum.

In partnership with the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office, Humane Borders has created an updated migrant death map, formally known as the Arizona OpenGIS Initiative for Deceased Migrants. The map is searchable. Viewers may see the exact location where each migrant body has been found, along other information, such as the name and gender of the deceased (if known and if the family has been notified), date of discovery, and cause of death.

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Derik's Go-Fund-Me Page


Last night we heard the harrowing story of Derik, a Honduran who got crosswise with the gangs in his country. While he was in the military, he picked up a gang leader and helped to put him in jail, whereupon that gang threatened his life.

Derik took off on a difficult 2-month trek through Mexico--sometimes via La Bestia, sometimes walking, all the while dodging Mexican immigration.  At the US border, he decided to cross through the desert. He ended up on the doorstep of a woman in Arivaca, where he burst into tears. She fed him and put him in touch with No More Deaths. They gave him support and allowed him to rest, and then sent him toward Tucson. But on the walk there, he was apprehended by Border Patrol and thrown into detention to await his asylum hearing After 4 months, he was given a bond hearing, where bond was set at $12,000. With the help of Tucson friends, he posted bond but was shackled with an ankle monitor. He's currently being charged $425 plus interest/month to cover the monitor.

While he now has a construction job, he wants to raise enough money to have the ankle monitor (and its fee) removed while he waits for his asylum case to be heard.

Friends have set up a Go Fund Me page for him. If you'd like to add your support, go here.

An Intro to Homeland Security, the Florence Project

Our busy day continued with a meeting with Chad Plantz, the Deputy Special Agent in Tucson for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). HSI is one of three directorates within US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and they are separate from the directorate that we are most familiar with, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). HSI is the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security; their role is to investigate cross-border criminal activity. In Arizona, their main areas of focus are human trafficking and smuggling, narcotics and weapons trafficking, and money laundering and financial crimes. Many of us were surprised to learn that weapons are trafficked from the US to Mexico, mainly for use by the cartels, because Mexico possesses strict gun laws.

We returned to Borderlinks for a presentation from Leah Bishop, the Community Engagement Coordinator for the Florence Project. The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project is the only organization in Arizona that provides free legal and social services to detained men, women, and children under threat of deportation. On any given day, over 5,000 immigrant men, women, and unaccompanied minors are detained in Arizona. Detainees include asylum seekers, children who have been abused or abandoned, adults facing threats or persecution, victims of domestic or gang violence, and LGBTQ individuals. Detained immigrants do not have the right to representation. 90-95% of detainees represent themselves in Arizona, and only 6% of detainees are successful in their asylum requests. The Florence Project provides education so that adults can better represent themselves and pro bono representation for some.

Operation Streamline Proceedings

We spent the first half of our afternoon in the court of the Hon. Jacqueline Bateau on the 2nd floor of the Tucson Federal Courthouse. All of the immigrants had been picked up crossing the border within the last week. They shuffled in in groups of 7, shackled and chained. Most of them were young men, but there were a few older men and three women. All were charged with the misdemeanor, 'improper entry or attempted improper entry by an alien,' and most were also charged with a felony of 'illegal reentry after removal.' For each group, the judge asked them if they understood the charges, and if they had agreed to plead guilty to the misdemeanor in exchange for dropping the felony charge and waiving their right to appeal. Those who were charged with reentry were sentenced to between 30 days and 180 days in federal prison. Each group of 7 individuals took less than 10 minutes to process. As described in an ACLU Fact Sheet, "In Streamline proceedings, judges typically combine the initial appearance, arraignment, plea, and sentencing into a single hearing, sometimes taking as little as 25 seconds per defendant."

Most of the defendants said nothing other than 'yes' or 'guilty,' but one case showed briefly that many individual stories were not being told. The attorney for one of the immigrants stated that he had requested asylum, but had chosen to withdraw his request to be considered for asylum. The attorney said that the migrant's family's safety in his home country was threatened, and he needed to pay an extortion fee every month in order to protect them. (We have learned that requesting asylum would mean months to years of detention, would take years to resolve, and would likely not succeed.)

Mother Jones article on Operation Streamline

The End Streamline Coalition

Our second session of the morning was with Nancy Myers, a volunteer with the End Streamline Coalition. The coalition is a group of organizations, community groups, and individuals who are working to end the mass criminalization and deportation of our immigrant sisters and brothers. End Streamline documents the prosecutions of asylum seekers in the Tucson Operation Streamline court proceedings. Its volunteers attend the Operation Streamline court proceedings that take place most weekdays at the Tucson Federal Courthouse.

The Tucson court prosecutes 75 individuals per day for illegal entry or illegal reentry by conducting group hearings. The process criminalizes the immigrant rather than processing them through the civil immigration enforcement system. Volunteers from the End Streamline Coalition serve as witnesses and try to help those detained with paperwork if they might be eligible to apply for asylum.

Nancy informed us that once convicted, first time offenders are returned to their home countries; those who are sentenced are sent back to their countries after serving their sentence.

An ACLU fact sheet on Operation Streamline is available here.

Legal Immigration Simulation

The simulation is a workshop that turns participants into potential immigrants navigating the US immigration system. We were provided with 13 scenarios. There was the professional soccer player from England with a multi-million dollar salary (first name David...); despite a DUI record in the US and charges of tax evasion in the UK, he was allowed to immigrate without problem. The 22-year-old agricultural worker from Haiti whose father recently died of cancer and who needed to support her family had virtually no chance of entering the US legally. In my case, I was a 28-year-old Chinese pharmaceutical researcher with a job offer from a company in Virginia. Since my employer was not willing to help with the legal fees or paperwork, I also would have great difficulty gaining entry.
We learned that the system for legal entry is confusing, complicated, and difficult, with multiple factors entering into the equation - country of origin, race, education, presence of family in the US, etc.


State Department Visa Bulletin Feb 2019
Characters for Legal Immigration Simulation

Monday, February 18, 2019

No More Deaths - Videos and Report




We were unable to hear from La Coalicion de Derechos Humanos and No More Deaths due to speaker illness. However, they sent over some materials they hoped would help educate us on their work.

Here's a two-part video:
Part I: Deadly Apprehension Methods (5:17 minutes)
Part II: Interference with Humanitarian Aid (5:08 minutes)

And here's the full report on The Disappeared.

Desert Walk and Wall Protest - by Karen Peterson-Iyer



Today we headed out—to the desert. Our aim was to get a better idea of the terrain that is routinely crossed by migrants seeking to escape desperate poverty, violence, persecution, and fear in their home countries. Migrants seeking to provide for their families and themselves. Migrants seeking LIFE.

The Sonoran Desert near Tucson is certainly harsh—dry, disorienting, and seemingly endless as it stretches to distant mountains. But it was far from barren; in fact it was teeming with cacti, in all their needly splendor. Beautiful—but dangerous and painful, as Margaret soon discovered:






Our guide on the walk was Larry, a former U.S. Marine and now a volunteer with Samaritans. Samaritans is a dedicated group who hikes the desert carrying water, food, and medical supplies for desperate migrants, often leaving the water at various points on the trail where those migrants are known to travel.



At a few spots not far from the path, we encountered weather-beaten backpacks, evidently discarded by migrants at some point on their journeys—maybe when they were picked up by Border Patrol? Maybe as they approached civilization, and thus tried to disguise where they had come from? We had no way of knowing. These served as sobering reminders of the dangerous and sometimes deadly nature of those journeys.



The packs also left many of us wondering about what they had once contained—meager provisions to sustain a person through the harsh crossing...religious ornaments with which to pray during times of fear...small mementos of a life left behind...or perhaps small trinkets to help connect that past life to the hope for a brighter life ahead.

Not far into our walk we came across a wooden yellow cross, built by Tucson artist Alvaro Enciso. Enciso erects many such crosses in the desert, in places where migrants are known to have died while attempting to make it to safety. In this case, the cross commemorated Jose Luis Cruz Cruz, age 41, whose remains were found on April 10, 2011. Jose was one of so many who attempted but did not survive this perilous journey.



Together we formed a circle and shared a quiet and tearful prayer for those whose lives had been lost in this desert, on this pilgrimage of hope and pain. The words of the late Oscar Romero, martyred archbishop of El Salvador, reflect the moment well for me: “There are things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.”



After returning to the BorderLinks office and a quick lunch, some in our group then made our way to downtown Tucson, to join a small but mighty protest against the “national emergency” on the border declared by Trump last Friday.

 




The protest felt like a fitting follow-on to a morning of sorrow—sorrow for the victims of a dysfunctional U.S. immigration policy, one that unjustly and inhumanely vilifies the poor and the desperate for seeking a livable existence for themselves and their families. And ultimately, our prayer of protest was also one of hope—hope that we may eventually have a border where there truly can be no more deaths, and for a desert that may exist as a place simply of beauty, and not one of sorrow and pain.




Sunday, February 17, 2019

Hearing Migrant Stories



Sunday took us to services at Southside Presbyterian Church, known for its activism in sanctuary and immigrant issues. The service was joyful and inspiring—from the drums that ushered us in and out of the sanctuary to the gospel music reverberating through the native American kiva, complete with hole in the roof for smoke. Allison Harrington—Southside’s pastor—spent lunch with us discussing what she has learned by offering sanctuary in all its forms to migrants over the past several years.





During the afternoon, we visited Casa Alitas, a volunteer-run center housed in a Benedictine monastery that takes in women and children who’ve just crossed the border. The Center offers medical screening, food, clothing, shelter and help with transportation via bus or plane to places within the US. While we were there, a volunteer driver returned to the shelter with a mother and daughter in tears; they had missed their flight to Akron, Ohio, because TSA could not process their papers quickly enough. Casa Alitas hopes to set up a database to track the migrants who come through their center--and perhaps to share that database with other shelters around the country. If you have magic hands when it comes to building or adapting databases, please step forward.




We came back to Borderlinks for a workshop in making pupusas, taught by Yesenia Palencia, director of Casa Mariposa, another migrant group focusing help on the immigrant LGBTQ community. Yesenia described her trip from El Salvador through Mexico on La Bestia and across the border where she was picked up by Border Patrol. She spent a full year in detention at Eloy--locked in a cell for much of each day--before her asylum case was adjudicated. She was released on a $15,000 bond (covered by Casa Mariposa). Her dream is to open a pupusa restaurant. From sampling her wares, we are sure she will someday succeed.

Saturday, February 16, 2019

The Case of Jose Antonio by Geoff Browning

One thing is clear, on October 10, 2012, US Border Patrol Agent Lonnie Swartz reached through border fence separating Nogales, AZ  from Nogales, Sonora and shot and killed 16 year old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez. Also undisputed is the number of shots he fired, 3 in the initial burst that struck Jose Antonio in the back and head, 10 more while he was face down on the sidewalk, and 3 more after he had reloaded. Everything else is muddled and disputed.

I have heard about this case off and on for several years. As I heard the case described on the radio, I imagined a level or near level landscape on both sides of the border. And as the Border Patrol claimed that Jose Antonio was throwing rocks, I imagined a fence that was easy to surmount with the high quality stones that are readily available throughout the desert. And, having thrown more than my share of stones in my youth, I consider myself something of an expert on the subject. But what we found when we visited the site of this killing was like nothing I had imagined.

The first thing that is striking is the height of the border fence bifurcating Nogales, AZ from Nogales, Sonora. It is approximately 18 feet of steel bollards. But at the location of the killing, the 18 foot fence sits on top of a 20 cliff or cut with the street below. If you know anything about military strategy, or even shooting water pistols, you know that those on the high ground have a huge advantage while those on the low ground have a huge disadvantage. Such was the case that night at 11pm, in the dark. If Jose Antonio was throwing stones, he would have to overcome this 40ft disadvantage.

But there is one other factor that the court proceedings seem not to have taken seriously. Not only did Jose Antonio have a height disadvantage in relation to the officer that shot him, but he was also across the street and approximately 50 yards down the line of the fence from Swartz, the Border Patrol Officer. 

This is a photo from the place where Jose Antonio was shot. As we look up at the fence, imagine a Border Patrol agent standing on the other side of that fence. And then imagine trying to throw a rock, any rock, far enough to cross the street, high enough to achieve a trajectory that would carry it over the fence. It was a fantasy of a defense because there was so little to work with, but it worked. Lonnie Swartz was found innocent by the jury. This case is all too familiar to police shootings of people of color throughout our nation. The use of excessive force is often rationalized by those with power and weapons. The reality is that Jose Antonio did not pose an imminent threat to the officer and his killing was an act of murder ... the murder of a child.



Separating Families at the Border ... a PBS Frontline Video



We started our day watching Separated: Children At the Border, a harrowing PBS/Frontline documentary that tells the stories of particular families separated at the border. The documentary first aired in late summer 2018.

It's 54 mesmerizing minutes that sear your eyes. Highly recommended.

Nogales: A Divided City by Margaret Rosenbloom



Our first outing was to Nogales.  It is about 60 miles South of Tucson, on Route 19 through desert lands with saguaro cactus, snow bird retirement communities and diversions such as the Titan Missile Museum, rimmed by dramatic jagged peaks.  Our first sight of The Wall was from the Arizona side where we saw it surging and falling through a densely housed hilly residential area.  Crossing the border into Mexico was a breeze and we were joined by our local guide Manuel Morales who took us to the Mexico side of The Wall, where it surmounts a steep cliff, overlooking a busy street alley Calle Internacional. 

Jose Antonio image on building where he died.

We went to the site where Jose Antonio, a 16 year old school boy was shot from above by Lonnie Ray Swartz’s US Border Patrol Agent, on October 10, 2012.  There is now a monument in his memory on the wall as well as a poignant life size drawing of his figure on the wall of the building at the place he was shot.  We heard Manuel’s outrage and anger at this incident and the frustrations over foot dragging in bringing this case to court and the fact that the Agent was found not guilty of murder, and subsequently acquitted of manslaughter.
 

Walking further up the road we followed the path of TheWall and saw the defiant decorations on it as well as wooden crosses named for children and others who have died in efforts to cross into America.  We learned how Nogales AZ and NogalesSonora used to be one place with nominal attention to border definition.  Families would live on either side and come and go frequently.  Even after the current wall, a series of thick metal slats some 18 feet high was installed in 2014, families would meet and hold hands through the barrier.  Then the Americans installed a fine metal grill to prevent physical contact, and finally brutal concertina barbed wire from top to bottom. We looked through into the American side and imagined what an intrusion this was to the people living on that side as well, as well as a tragedy for those on the Mexican side.

Nogales Mexico has a population of around 250,000, ten times that of Nogales, AZ.  The border is lined with Maquilas, the mainly American owned factories that receive duty-free imported raw materials for assembly into finished goods by Mexican workers.  We drove past some of these to a large supermarket to do field research on the price of goods for a normal families weekly shopping list.
Part of our Market Basket Survey
The place was massive, like a Costco and packed with families doing their Saturday shop.  Comparing these prices relative to a daily wage of a Maquiladora worker showed us how much higher the cost of living is in Mexico for people working here.  As tourists, we may find the prices reasonable, but wages are so much greater in America.  Many Mexicans find it worth while to drive into AZ to do their grocery shopping, and it is possible for certain people to get a Visa to cross.  These special visas are good only for a distance of 60 miles from the border.

Waiting in Line to Cross the Border
We learned more about the life of a Maquiladora worker from Maria Morales’s, the daughter of Manuel.
Schedules are structured to allow husbands and wives to work separate shifts so they can share child care and household chores.  Shorter shifts are available for older children so they can work after school to help pay their school fees.  Though school is nominally free, parents have to pay a share and also cover all the incidental costs and supplies. A large portion of take home pay is structured as bonuses which are forgone if a person is late or misses a day of work.  One good thing is that the new President of Mexico has recently increased wages for all workers in Northern Mexican states.

At the end of a long day we headed back to Nogales, AZ. We spent 2.5 hours waiting to get through the Border crossing.  Vendors were busy offering wares and food to the patient drivers.  Nogales is certainly a town divided. 

Friday, February 15, 2019

First Day in Tucson: A Lesson in Immigration History


Our group arrived in Tucson today--including several teachers, a physician, a physical therapist, an ethics professors, an editor, several pastors, a financial environmentalist, a director of a day worker center, a therapist, and several others--all with eyes wide open.

We settled into the Borderlinks facilities (bunk beds and tasty vegetarian food...)




And we were guided by our leader Ana Rodriguez in a discussion about the history of immigration in the US. Ana put together a detailed timeline of immigration history in the US illustrated with fabulous political cartoons from each era. 


If you'd like to review the timeline, you can find it here.  (Thanks, Ana!) We learned: America has been trying to keep out the "other" for a very long time.




Thursday, February 14, 2019

Anticipating ... but Not Knowing

As 20 of us from 6 churches in the San Francisco Peninsula and South Bay pack this evening, we hear that a national emergency has just been declared over the situation at the US/Mexican border.

Tomorrow we head to Nogales, Arizona, where rolls of concertina wire have been added to the border wall over the past several weeks, covering the metal slats from top to earth.

We don't know what we'll discover over the next five days--but we hope to be eyes and ears for others who can't be with us. We hope to post photos at the end of each day.

Chris Hayes on the Border

I thought you might find this of interest....
Chris Hayes: For Trump the wall was never really the issue
The Wall was never really the issue

Why Are We Going to the Border?

Dear Friends,
One of the many reasons that we are going on this trip is to speak out and prevent in some small way the separation of families. The Trump administration is not only separating families at the border, but they are also tearing fathers and mothers away from their children in the heart of our country. In our own small way we are attempting to bear witness to the travesty of family separation.

One of the wonderful coordinators for the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity is Lourdes Barraza. Her husband, Fernando, was in detention for several months and was finally released, but now there is a risk that ICE will detain and/or even deport him very soon. This is devastating for Fernando and his family. Fernando and his many supporters and community members will attend an ICE hearing next week. His fate is uncertain and we will not learn the outcome of that hearing until we return from our trip to the border.

Lourdes tells their story below and I think it appropriate that we carry Fernando and his family in our hearts as we make this journey to the border to better understand the injustices that have become US immigration policy. Please keep this family in your thoughts and prayers and, if you can, join them in SF as they go in for their hearing.

With prayers for justice and a joyful resolution,
Geoff

Sadly, last week our attorney contacted us to let us know that the Board of Immigration Appeals had reversed the Judge’s decision in my husband Fernando’s case. What this means is that as of right now, his protection against deportation has been revoked and ICE has the “right” to re-detain him at any time. This hit our family extremely hard because just when we thought that we could be heading towards some sense of normalcy, this cruel system continues trying to destroy families like ours.
Fernando and Lourdes Barraza Family

Since Fernando has been home, we have struggled tremendously to get our lives back on track, both mentally and financially because we had the appeal lingering over our heads. Now that we know the decision, we are scared, yet hopeful that with your support, prayers, and love, we will win this, once and for all. 

With that being said, I personally invite you to come out and support us next week at a hearing that is scheduled for Fernando. On Wednesday, February 20th at 9:00am, Fernando has to appear in court at 630 Sansome St., SF. An ideal outcome for this hearing, would be that another hearing is scheduled so that our attorney has the opportunity to present new evidence to support Fernando’s case. However, in current times, there is a high risk that ICE could try and detain him until the appeal case is finalized. 

Time and time again, I have shared opportunities of accompaniment for others because we know that your support makes a difference. Today, I ask that you join us in showing this system that we will not give up and that we will fight until our family can live in peace and without fear, as we deserve to live. Please come and support our family as we continue to fight to stay together, we need it now more than ever. 

Warmly,
Lourdes