My Mission to Deliver Socks to Detention Centers in South Texas
This past week I traveled to southern Texas, near the Mexican-American border. My mission was to bring socks to the ICE detention centers for families awaiting legal border crossing. I was able to visit three ICE detention centers and one county detention center. I also was granted access to visit a respite center for people that typically stay for only 1-2 days once released from the detention center, while they wait for the bus tickets that take them into Texas. But none of that can compare to the saddest place I saw.
In the same area near the border was an organization that operates shelter facilities for unaccompanied immigrant minors and immigrant youth separated from their parents. The facility I was at currently houses about 80 children between the ages of 10-18. One of the directors there told me that many of these children are at this facility because their families sent them 2000+ miles from Central America through Mexico to U.S. soil. The parents can typically only afford to send one family member, usually a teenage child. The plan is to meet up with family already in the United States for a life void of danger. I was astounded at the courage it must take to travel alone at such a young, vulnerable age.
The last leg of my journey, I visited a detention center in Nuevo Laredo Mexico (they are called las casas de migraciones internacionales). Getting inside that facility was such a blessing because I got in and was able to pass out socks to the people there. The New York Times arrived as I was leaving and they were turned away. I counted my lucky stars and continued to hand out socks to everyone I could. While there, I met a boy named, Sebastian (name has been changed for protection). He is a young man from Venezuela who is in the process of seeking political asylum in the U.S. I sat down with him and learned his story. The first thing he told me was that, unlike some, he is not just trying to escape poverty, or to avoid gang violence, or even just to make a better life for himself in the US. He is there to try and escape political persecution. Immediately after hearing his story, I knew that if there was anyone worthy of it, he is a valid candidate for asylum in the United States.
Here is his story:
Sebastian’s parents have been politicians in Venezuela for more than 13 years. They fought hard to see Maduro’s government fall and in turn, Maduro tried to kill his family. He and his sister are musicians and he said that they played in every political protest aimed against Maduro. Sebastian said, “You may say, ‘oh you’re young and you shouldn’t get involved in politics’, but in my country it affects everyone whether you’re underage or not.” He later went on to say, “The majority of my country lives on 10 U.S. Dollars a month, and they are starving.”
In May of this year, at the age of 16 years old, Sebastian and his family of four fled Venezuela to seek asylum in the United States. They traveled throughout the Mexican terrain, hiding from dangerous criminal and corrupt police. After a long journey, the whole family made it to the shelter and asked the facility to put their names on the list. The facility did, but Sebastian told me that some are not so lucky. When the shelter is full, they may wait days outside and according to Sebastian “it is bloody dangerous.” A Mexican government official openly talked to me about how over the past six weeks since people can’t reach asylum in the United States, they are laying people on the floor at the border crossing inside the Mexican crossing office. They fill the entire room. The Mexicans are such warm hearted people. Every single one of them I have met. The people in the community of Nuevo Laredo are likely going to start opening their homes to disperse these people amongst them. All the while, the people of this community have barely any money or means to take care of themselves.
It is still a long road ahead as Sebastian waits with his mother, step-father and sister at the migration facility in Mexico due to the new Migration Deal. They are waiting for an interview with American ICE officers. If they can find a lawyer in time and make their case, they will be granted asylum in the U.S. I was honored to be told his story and lucky to meet such a brave young man…my new friend “Sebastian” from Venezuela.
And just yesterday morning, at the respite center, I met many other people who were released from detention facilities in the past 24 hours. I was able to take time and interview some of the people about the conditions inside the center. Most of them are so terrified by their country’s government that they were scared to talk about it. I was however given permission to interview the respite Director herself. She told me that many people said their children and babies made the 2000+ mile journey perfectly healthy but became sick in CBP (Customs & Border Protection) care. She said this has become a common issue under the Zero Tolerance Policy, which causes longer detention times. She sees children show up with diaper rash, colds, diarrhea and the parents say that the children were fine until they entered CBP and entered what they all call “the ice box” in Spanish. She told me that the temperatures in these rooms are around 60 degrees (operating rooms are 66-68 degrees, and no one in CBP could confirm for me what the actual temperatures are inside the rooms).
The problem is that the temperatures are set very low to keep the germs out, but it is lowering the immune systems of the children and this causes them to become sick much more easily. The detainees are given their mylar blankets and sleep on cement tile floors. The Director confirmed that the lights are on 24/7. They wake everyone in the center up every 2 hours for roll call. They are in a locked room with no windows. The room has 2 toilets and there is a four foot wall that separates the toilets from all the people. These poor living conditions have been going on much longer than the current Trump administration has held power. What makes all of this worse, however, is that the longer hold times and extreme overcrowding-both results of the Zero Tolerance Policy, which is in fact under the new administration. So while President Trump did not create these issues, he is making them worse and causing families to suffer even longer.
The Director told me that people who get restless in these facilities are reminded often that they can sign the paperwork and leave right away and go back to their country. She said one recent detainee released to her care told her about a woman who got so upset that she signed the papers, and everybody with her group was released that day from that particular room, and then they told her “oh it will take a month for you to actually get released because it takes that long to get all the paperwork together.” To add salt in the wound the detainees do not bathe or brush their teeth in CPB. The Director informed me that they are given bologna sandwiches with stale bread with a bottle of water for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And maybe, if they are lucky, a piece of fruit.
She said the majority of those that come to these harsh facilities haved saved up money for years and make the long, thousand mile journey to get here. “That’s no picnic,” said the Director. Many of which were either personally attacked, or their families were attacked. They arrive with scars on their faces, missing fingers or some sort of other abuse to their body because they were ambushed in their country. Or, worse yet, they had family members who were seriously injured, their houses burned down, and even murdered.
She said that with the abrupt policy changes now in place, the kids are more traumatized by their experiences entering this country. Even the ones not separated from their parents have been traumatized. The journeys alone are traumatizing, not to mention sleeping in a different place every night.
Most of the immigrants flooding into our country do not know all of the ins and outs of US immigration laws; they do not know whether they have a good shot at being allowed in, but it is so horrible in their homelands, that they are willing to take their chances.
I also met and interviewed two different families from Honduras yesterday that were in the respite center (they had been released from the detention center that morning). After listening to their stories, I am terrified that they won’t be granted asylum once the judge hears their cases. They told me that they saved money for years to leave their countries. They traveled with their young children (one family consisted of a wife and husband and three year old daughter; the other was a family with two daughters, three and seven years old).
Here are their stories:
They left Honduras 20 days ago. A bus came and picked them up. They rode a while in that and then were dropped off. They had to walk for two days over bumpy conditions. They slept on the sides of streets and they went on to explain to me in more details the different places they had stopped along the way. They said they were willing to risk their lives and the lives of their children because their country is “in a critical state,” where the children can no longer study and they can not get proper medicine for their children. All hospitals have become privatised and, because of this, they said they do not have the access they need for medicine. The two families did not know each other until the journey began. They met up at a point where a truck picked them up. Because of the new migration law with Mexico and the United States, they hid for three days from Mexican immigration and in the middle of the night when the river wasn’t full and it only went to their waist, they crossed the Rio Grande and then they walked for 1.5 hours and U.S. immigration took them in.
Here is an article on asylum that helps explain what it is and who can seek it: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/us/politics/asylum-facts-seekers-laws.html
I was also able to speak to Border Patrol, ICE, and Homeland Security officials. I interviewed men and women who simply bring food in and out of the centers, drive medical vans, or work security at these detention facilities. I have also interviewed women whose husbands are currently in the centers from raids. I interviewed two immigration attorneys, different levels of government officials in Mexico, workers at las casas de migraciones internacionales in Mexico, and of course I interviewed every local person I came in contact with amongst the local citizens along the border, in both the United States and Mexico, from all walks of life.
Not one detention center was able to accept my socks. One supervisor really tried though. He made tons of phone calls and came back out to the lobby at one point and told me that he was working on it. He ultimately came back and said he was so sorry that he couldn’t take the items. I thanked him for his service and he said “We are just doing the best we can with the situation we are in.” One BP official confirmed for me that the BP officers buy items for the people in the centers since so much is needed for the people and nothing from outside can be accepted. But, most every other government official I spoke with was very scripted, their lips sealed. One BP official, although he wouldn’t speak to me, encouraged me to keep trying because someone would speak eventually, just not him.
I began thinking to myself, isn’t this a free country? Why can’t the press go inside detention centers and why can’t BP officials talk about their jobs? I still have so many questions that remain unanswered. But I now know first hand that every single person that I interviewed on my travels is upset with the current administration changes, and they are all the ones living through it everyday, I know that what I have been reading has been truthful and my dark suspicions have been confirmed.
I spoke with an immigration attorney in Texas. His client was recently profiled and picked up as he was getting mail from his mailbox. The client is married to an American who is on disability and he is the main breadwinner. The attorney told me that because the American taxpayers have to spend over $700 a day per person in a detention facility, the American taxpayers have now spent around $20,000 for this man to be detained. The raids that happened under Obama were raids in corporations and I can take a guess as to why that doesn’t work well with Trump’s agenda. Profile raids didn’t happen under Obama.
Come to find out, the private detention facility that I met this gentleman at has board members who are supporting the Trump administration’s reelection campaign. In fact, they have removed the board members pictures from the wall and just have pictures of the president and administration hanging up, creating the facade of this being a federal detention center when it is not. The private prisons are heavily padding their pockets right now while they give to Trump’s re-election and stay in his hotels in New York.
As I write this, I have never been so happy and so sad all at the same time in my entire life. I was so happy and fulfilled because my mission there to bring socks to people was successful and their appreciation was intoxicating. However, I was deeply saddened from hearing of all of their stories, of the lives they felt they had to leave. It is devastating to hear what their countries have become. These brave men and women put their children through a very difficult and traumatizing journey in hopes for a better life. I was also saddened by the situation at our border and the policy changes that have made things worse and caused more suffering.
Much of the violence and extreme poverty in other South and Central American countries is also driven by crooked governments who profit off of narcotics, violence, and corruption. The gangs, for example, are often an offshoot of anti-democratic and corrupt governments. It does not help that we have brought big business into these countries (like the banana farms in Honduras) which gives the United States a hand in bringing down these economies.
The Trump administration is appealing to the idea that the ends justify the means, that “illegals” should stop coming if they don’t want to be treated inhumanely. And there’s a lot of propaganda being churned out, leading us to believe that what’s happening to these people in US custody isn’t that bad anyway. Well, it is. Once these people are here, they are not being processed effectively. The newly enacted policies are ratcheting up tensions and making the humanitarian crisis at the border even worse.
One thing I really noticed is how the churches have rallied around these people in need who are entering our country. It is absolutely incredible to see the people who have rallied around these folks and how fulfilled they are by helping others. I did some digging and, according to the Annual Flow Report Refugees and Asylees: 2017, March 2019 from the United States, there were 53,691 refugee admissions in 2017, which was lower than where it was right around 80,000 in 2016. In 1975 we granted just under 150,000 individuals asylum in the United States. I have confirmed that this is because of the Zero Tolerance Policy.
To get this straight:
1) We have had more people showing up at our door to enter our country.
2) Less have been allowed in under Trump than Obama
3) We need more low skilled laborers in this country
Am I wrong or just confused?
I think we all want to stop illegal immigration and the inhumane treatment of human beings. If we stand together maybe we can force our legislators to listen to us instead of listening to Big Money. Maybe then, they would be willing to work toward real solutions. They could use diplomacy, sanctions, and foreign aid. Sometimes it works. It is their job to come up with better solutions. Just capturing and torturing those who try out of pure desperation to get to the U.S. will not work. We need to help stabilize their homelands.
Border security officers as well as government officials with the instituto nacional de migracion for Mexico were all more than willing to speak to me freely about the situation at hand with the deal Trump forced on Mexico in the beginning of June. I won’t say much about it yet, but since they are such a poor and desolate country as it is, they do not have nearly the resources we have to help these people out. Even the local churches have turned into migration centers. That should tell you just how much people care for other people, despite how little the corporations and governments do. While President Trump plays golf, grown men his age sleep on cement floors and eat bologna sandwiches.
Now, believe me, I understand that we are a sovereign country and it is our right to stop illegal immigration. And it is tough to stop people from coming here illegally and that fast tracking a legal pathway for more immigrants is very scary. There are lots of variables, dozens of questions. How many? How much will it cost? How can we pay for those who are already here? Etc. These are all real concerns. I know that. However, I am convinced that I am here at this time in history to be a voice for men, women, and children. For the Sebastians of the world. I am fueled by the flooding of private messages, calls and texts of those thanking me for speaking out for them and their people who are desperate for help.
Oh, one last thing, as I am sure you have seen all over the news, Trump is threatening more ICE raids. They should be coming soon. Be aware. I read today that they are likely happening this Sunday. Many detention centers are full, yet sadly still the raids are coming.
I have tagged everyone who has liked or posted on my comments speaking out against Trump. If you liked it and didn’t mean to or don’t want this tag you can simply remove it. Thank you all for being brave and taking a stand with me. I know it isn’t easy. At least for me it isn’t, especially as a business owner where tensions over these controversial issues run so high. But I am proud to be doing what God is calling me to do.
I feel that this crisis reaches far beyond politics. It does not have anything to do with being Republican or Democrat. This is about treating people with decency and respect. I am a de facto mandated reporter by what I have seen. That is why I have taken the time to report on my findings. When you look back at history, as a free nation we are supposed to be better than this, but when you take a deep look at history, we really are so far from it.
I am teaching my children to have a voice, and to be a voice. I bring my kids to animal rights protests and to the slums of Mexico to help the poor. I want to instill in them to be a voice for those who do not have one. When my kids learn about what happened at our border in school they will not be asking me, “What were you doing during this time?” At least I can say that I tried to do something. I want to be on the right side of history. I am instilling values in my four children to be a voice if horrific times like this arrive in their adulthood.
So, am I acting out of emotion? Yes, I am. But were all of my fears confirmed? Yes, they sadly were. Everyone has a different perspective. My perspective comes from “walking two moons in their moccasins.”
