Wednesday, February 27, 2019

What Do You Need to Know?

Coming back after this trip, we will all try to convey to you - collectively and individually - what we witnessed first-hand....and we'll do our best.  But there is so much...We can only pray to do it justice.

To those of you who helped support this trip, we can't thank you enough.  Your prayers and donations now allow us to share the truth that can only come from "seeing it for yourself".   That is invaluable.

So, if you only have a short time to read, what is most important for you to know?

Those seeking legal asylum in the United States are waiting at the border, with nowhere to sleep or eat.  Local Mexican churches and organizations are doing their best to provide housing and meals.  Everyone we met was cold, tired, hungry, and anxious.  Many had nowhere to sleep.  While we were there, the nighttime temperatures dropped into the 30's.  Some days it absolutely poured rain.  We were drenched and cold - and we had a place to stay!  Many people - if not most - needed medical care to treat the illnesses inherent to living on the streets, some of whom had done so for months while they journeyed north. 

Readers may want to see pictures of these immigrants, but to protect them, we can't show you their faces.  What did they look like?  Like your 3rd grade teacher.  Like the little boy next door playing with his dog.  Like the lady in the checkout line at the grocery.  Like your grandmother.  Like your baby.  Like us. 

The majority of the people seeking asylum came as families: parents, grandparents, children, and babies.  They were doing everything in their power to get across the border to safety - legally - through the myriad of hurdles our government has created.  And a good number of these hurdles are illegal and wholly unconstitutional according to our own laws.


Many of the immigrants we met were from Mexico, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, but there were also large contingencies of asylum seekers that came from Haiti, Cameroon, and Russia. 

The treatment that the immigrants receive after their number is called ("Report from El Chaparral" ) can honestly be likened to a form of torture.  It is heartbreaking to watch parents, after finally hearing their number called in the open square, scramble for permanent markers to write their contact information on their children's arms.  They know they will be separated from each other by our system.  They are doing the only thing they can to ensure that they may see their children again.  Who knows it these temporary tattoos will work to do that?

Because those called are only allowed to keep the layer of clothing closest to their skin, volunteers scramble to help them change into warmer clothes at their base before they are loaded unto a bus.  These clothing donations are needed to fend off the frigid boxes they will be "stored" in while they await their interviews to determine if their situation is dire enough to qualify for more hearings within the United States boundaries.  These ice boxes have already been well-documented.

The border wall itself is a conglomerate of corrugated steel, concertina wire, concrete, floodlights, "no man's land" barren zones traveled by armed border patrols, and amalgamations of all of these put together.  Although it may happen, the entire time we were there we never saw anyone attempt to thwart these barriers.  To build a higher wall would be ridiculous, but from all the construction equipment we saw, they are adding to it constantly.


We also saw beauty:  Wonderful people, just like you and me, hoping only for a safe, stable life.  Grateful for the tiniest of kindnesses. Appreciative smiles when
you commented on how beautiful their children were, or helped them with paperwork, or escorted them to the doctor for free medical care.

We partnered with amazing people as well.  Al Otro Lado has created a system of support that allows volunteers to assist for as little as a day and as long as...well... indefinitely.  This network of non-hierarchical volunteers works tirelessly to help those seeking asylum get their most basic needs met, offering medical care, legal consultations, simple meals, and perhaps most importantly, the warmth, dignity and respect that are due all human beings.

We also partnered with Unified U.S. Deported Veterans and Veterans for Peace: see  "Thank You For Your Service, Now Get Out of My Country".  

So what is it most important for you to know?
That there is injustice and cruelty at our doorstep.  That our tax dollars are paying for it.  And there are wonderful people trying to dismantle that cruelty and injustice.  You all helped us be a part of that, and we are most grateful.

But our work here has just begun.

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

MPT's Winter 2019 Border Team

Team Members (L-R): Mary Hanna, Amy Schneidhorst, Pat Thornburg,
Kim Redigan, Kathleen Hernandez, and Linda Sartor

Monday, February 25, 2019

Thank You For Your Service, Now Get Out of My Country



The MPT Border Team was invited to join Unified U.S. Deported Veterans and Veterans for Peace at a powerful event, “Thank You For Your Service, Now Get Out of My Country” held at Enclave Carocal in Tijuana.
The evening opened with film clips of deported veterans telling their stories as part of a collaborative video project with UC-Davis followed by a panel discussion led by 2 of the more than 50 deported vets in Tijuana and a Gold Star father whose son is currently in the U.S. military. One of the Deported Vets, Hector, said “If I’m dead I can go back (to U.S) like nothing. They’ll ship my ashes home and send a flag to my family.”
Prior to their deportation, these vets were legal permanent residents living in the US between 3 - 48 years with their families on green cards. Some were summoned to appear at immigration hearings while overseas, their  commanders making the false promise that they would handle the situation. Others struggling with PTSD were deported over minor drug offenses. 
The event concluded with representatives from Veterans for Peace, including VFP National President, Jerry Condan, placing the migrant crisis in the context of U.S. foreign policy and militarism, especially in Central America.
MPT was honored to have been invited to this event and to place a peace team the following day at an event co-sponsored by the veterans.  More to follow on how we can help bring these deported vets back to the U.S. where many of them have family waiting for their loved ones to return home.







Sunday, February 24, 2019

The Wall: Which Side Are You On? A Team Member’s Reflection

by Kim Redigan

Borders and barbed wire. Separation fences. Spotlights. Guards and guns. And always the walls.

MPT teams are often working in places where walls divide humanity, creating the illusion of “other” who then becomes objectified into "enemy." Walls are always built on a foundation of fear. They serve as monuments to the idols of nationalism, racism, militarism. They say something about the human heart.

Over the past week, we have looked at many walls. We have seen remnants of the old, corrugated wall that separates the U.S. from Mexico, but mostly we stood in the shadows of walls that more accurately reflect this political moment. Towering, slotted rust iron walls separated from large concrete walls topped with concertina wire by a paved “no man’s land” where Border Control and contractors come and go. This means no more kisses, smiles, or communion passed between people who belong together.


We saw serpentine walls that snake over green rural hills, and we saw towering walls that rub up against busy, congested highways in Tijuana.

We saw the bizarre “showcase” of wall prototypes set down with precision like a surreal set in a dystopian film. 
The cost of each of the eight prototypes ranged from $300,000 - $500,000 each. This is the site where Donald Trump staged a speech last month. Now the prototypes are being destroyed. 

A few miles away families, driven by the violence of poverty and war, arrive at the border and run into the wall of cruelty called the U.S. immigration system. They will be criminalized and treated like animals for fleeing the conditions that have, in many cases, been caused by U.S. foreign policy. One wonders what it would take to destroy this wall and replace it with prototypes of compassion and justice.

We also saw the wall that divides the beach at Playas de Tijuana, reaching into the ocean like a long finger pointing toward freedom. It is here where the Unified U.S. Deported Vets and others have resisted through art, color, gardens, and creativity. This is the place where border church services are held each Sunday. The place where Border Angels serve up coffee and support for migrants in a weathered beach shack.

A place where ocean waves roll out and in, out and in, out and in, whispering a mantra that echoes all the way from Mexico to Palestine to the most faraway place of all - the human heart.

These walls must fall! These walls must fall! These walls must fall!



T








Protective Accompaniment for a joint Muslim and Deported U.S. Veterans' Event

On our final day in Tijuana, the MPT Border Team was asked to don  vests and serve on a peace team at a rally and march sponsored by Unified U.S. Deported Veterans and the Latina Muslim Foundation and joined by members of Veterans for Peace and Tijuana Propone.

The day began on the El Chaparral plaza where a “Hands Off Venezuela” rally and prayer service for the people of Venezuela was held. From there, marchers carrying brooms and plastic bags spread out around areas not far from Avenida RevoluciĆ³n. The march and clean-up event, Eco-Project for a Clean Tijuana - One World, Two Communities, One Humanity Without Borders, was lively and included many young people. The march concluded with a big clean-up at a park next to the wall.

MPT accompanied the marchers throughout the streets of Tijuana. At one point, the team encountered a very agitated and inebriated man from the U.S. who was alternately screaming profanities and claiming he was God while letting everyone around him know that he killed James Brown. The team was concerned about the presence of so many children in the vicinity and worried about his safety, given the strong police presence in the area. While two of our affinity teams (subsets of our Team as a whole) stayed with the march, one affinity team stayed back and de-escalated the man by finding areas of common ground. He may have been drunk, mentally ill, and loud, but his humanity shone through when he spoke of his beloved mother.

Although the rest of the march had moved on, the decision was made to stay with this man because of out of concern for his safety. After the two team members accompanied the man to a local dental clinic, the entire Team was available to escort marchers back to their starting point.

After that, we said our farewells to our veteran friends over filtered water and packaged almonds before heading back across the border. 

Serving on this accompaniment team was the perfect way to end our time in Tijuana.

Accompaniment with Al Otro Lado



A major part of MPT’s Border Team assignment in Tijuana involved volunteering with Al Otro Lado (To The Other Side, aka “AOL).  AOL offers bi-national direct legal services


to indigent deportees, refugees, and migrants. AOL is deeply involved in human rights advocacy and litigation work on both sides of the border.

We were told at our orientation that AOL organizers and volunteers receive death threats on an almost daily basis from organized crime, gangs, and abusive domestic partners. They are also harrassed by the U.S. and Mexican governments. Recently, two of AOL’s co-directors who are U.S. citizens have been denied entry into Mexico, a testament to the organization’s good work on behalf of humanity.

One of MPT’s “four pillars” is partnering with and working alongside other justice-oriented groups and organizations. Our team was honored to work with AOL volunteers at El Chaparral in the morning and at the AOL site where people attend daily charlas (in English, a “chat”) in the afternoon. This is where legal issues related to immigration and asylum are discussed and asylum seekers can consult with volunteer attorneys and legal workers. There is also a volunteer medical clinic on site. 

As we interacted with those waiting to register to enter the building, we met children with terrible coughs, babies wrapped and shivering in thin blankets, and a young Salvadoran woman who asked for a pregnancy test. Many of those lined up to see lawyers and doctors were people we had met that morning at El Chaparral where they received information about AOL’s services via flyers distributed by volunteers.

This is a tense time of the day when people who are cold, tired, and worn down  are especially vulnerable. Many asylum seekers are fleeing state violence, domestic violence, and gangs - violence which sometimes pursues them all the way to the border...and potentially to the doors of AOL. Many have cause to be scared. Others, especially women and children, are susceptible to the myriad types of violence on the city streets near the border, including muggings, assault, kidnapping and human trafficking.


Our job was to create a peaceful space where people could feel safe and secure as they checked in for charla and the clinic while monitoring the street near AOL’s unmarked back door where a lot of activity takes place. Once people were registered, we accompanied them into the building, introducing them to the legal volunteers and doctors waiting to receive them.Although it was difficult, we embraced the AOL protocol of staying focused on the task at hand without succumbing to tears, rage, or anxiety that would only exacerbate the trauma that everyone carries with them to the border. 

One of the highlights for the team was a meeting held with AOL to discuss how elements of our MPT de-escalation skills training could be integrated into AOL’s orientation. The team discussed strategies that could be employed, along with the techniques highlighted in our training manual, with a resulting commitment to hold a teleconference with AOL to help with this piece of their work.

The MPT Border Team was impressed by AOL’s practice of starting each morning with a centering exercise and ending each afternoon in a closing circle where each volunteer was given the opportunity to name the joys and heartbreaks of the day’s work. The intensity of life on the border - the horror of the stories - the anger and grief that is inevitable - means that self-care in a loving community is imperative. It was good to collaborate with a group that recognizes the degree to which “our roots are all connected,” a key tenet of MPT’s belief in the sacred interconnectedness of all life.  AOL's work is nothing short of heroic, and we were honored to partner with them.

- Kim Redigan

Report from El Chaparral

by Kim Redigan

Part of MPT’s third-party nonviolence intervention work includes human rights monitoring. On most of the days that the MPT Border Team was in Tijuana, we were asked to work at El Chaparral, the small plaza that is just outside Ped West, the busy pedestrian point of entry between the U.S. and Mexico. 

This is the place where two groups of people - all asylum seekers - gather early each morning. The first group waits in line to receive a six-digit number on a tiny piece of paper from two young women who record names, numbers, and country or origin into a worn composition book. The U.S. and Mexico have abdicated responsibility for this “metering” process, placing the responsibility on asylum seekers themselves who hope that accepting this task will expedite their own journey through this absurd system.

This process is not only inefficient and backward, it is illegal under international and domestic law, which allows anyone to appear at a port of entry and make an asylum claim, whether or not that person has documentation. Yet, minors and those without paperwork are not allowed to have their names entered in the book. This is probably why the process has been delegated to those awaiting asylum.

The second group gathers in the hope that the number they received weeks earlier will be called that day. Many travel hours to get there each morning, hauling suitcases and children. Each day, approximately 40 names are called, although the number may range from 0 - 100. The daily quota is determined by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in coordination with the orange-vested Groupos Beta, who are part of Mexico’s National Institute of Migration.

Those whose numbers are called will line up to board a bus that will take them to Ped East where they will be taken to an underground holding area and then placed in hieleras, the notorious “ice boxes” that have been written about in the news.  At this point, families are often separated, and clothing is taken, with the exception of the single layer of clothing that touches the skin.

Part of  MPT's work each morning at El Chaparral involved human rights monitoring near the small tent where the numbers are both given and called. The team witnessed asylum seekers from around the globe, especially Honduras, Mexico, and El Salvador, line up each day for the coveted number that is seen as a passport to the future.

MPT observed large families, single men, pregnant women, and many babies and children gathered on the plaza. It was bitterly cold on the mornings our team was in Tijuana. We observed children wrapped in layers of clothing yet shivering and elderly women waiting in line with bare legs. On days when it appeared a family would be called to board the bus, we saw parents, dark magic markers in hand, hurriedly writing names and contact info on the arms of their children.

While two MPT team members engaged in human rights monitoring at the site where the metering process was taking place, the other team members provided a peaceful presence at El Chaparral where the exhaustion, the fear, the hope, and the love was palpable. AOL volunteers distributed flyers inviting those on the plaza to afternoon charla, while others distributed warm clothes and held up blankets so those expecting to be called that day could have a moment of privacy as they swapped out tee shirts for fleeces that would make time in the hielera a bit more tolerable.


 As a peace team, MPT is aware that what we witnessed at the border is a manufactured humanitarian crisis, the inevitable result of war and the trauma-induced violence that follows in the wake arrmed conflict.

Below is a more personal reflection on the illegal metering process that takes place each morning at the border.
Murals painted on the border wall by those hoping to cross someday

Border Reflection: As Cold As ice

They come from Honduras, Haiti, El Salvador, Cameroon, Turkey, Russia, Mexico - everywhere. This is one of the busiest borders in the world.

A little girl is weighed down by a pink backpack, while another hugs a stuffed animal half her size. Innocent of what lies ahead, they wrap tiny arms around the waists of exhausted mothers holding plastic envelopes containing wrinkled documents that have weathered journeys few could imagine. Weary-eyed fathers hold the hands of tired children. Young men looking resolute but scared. Babes swaddled tightly to fend off the cold morning air.

I wonder where they slept last night.

Desperation wrapped in paper-thin hope. I’ve never seen such courage.

The scene at El Chaparral here in Tijuana is surreal. A ten-minute walk separates the U.S. from Mexico at the Ped West crossing that connects San Diego and Tijuana, but the distance between the horror of this system and anything human is incalculable.

A small plastic tent sits in the square. It is here where life and death decisions are made each day through a process called metering. Today, two young women - asylum seekers themselves - are in charge of a composition book like the ones my students use in class. The book’s “list manager” is another young woman who is also hoping to be granted asylum. Groupos Beta, described by some as Mexico’s “humanitarian” ICE, yet an entity complicit in this illegal process, oversees the process, taking the book home each night.

The book contains the names and assigned numbers of those who are here to turn themselves over to U.S. Custom and Border Protection on the slim chance that they will be given asylum.

Those without documents are not allowed to get on the list. Neither are unaccompanied minors. This practice is illegal under international law. Those whose names are entered in the book are given numbers on slips of paper that are about the size of a piece of Trident gum that they must must carry with them on the streets and in shelters for the next several weeks.

The next step involves packing up babies and bags and returning to El Chaparral early in the morning in the days and weeks that follow in order to be present when names and numbers are shouted out by the list managers. Some are staying in shelters three hours away. Those who are not present on the day when their numbers are called, must start the process over.

Those who are the day’s “chosen” ones line up to board a vehicle which will then transport them to the notorious hieleras, the frigid “ice boxes” where they will be allowed only the layer of clothing that touches the skin. This cruel policy is mitigated by volunteers from Al Otro Lado who distribute warm clothing in the plaza. There are between 0 and 100 people per day - on average 40 - who turn themselves over to an unknown future that can go wrong in a million different ways. It is at this point that families are separated - perhaps for the last time.

These are the so-called criminals, the dangerous horde, the ones we are told threaten national security. We need a wall and a harsh immigration policy to protect us from a little girl hugging a stuffed animal.

Those who pass their credible fear interviews, which means they may go forward in the asylum process, are either incarcerated in immigration jails around the country or released with GPS-monitored tethers to await a process that can months . . . or years. The outcomes vary wildly from one jurisdiction to another. Recently, many who are waiting to make their case have been sent back across the border under Trump’s dangerous and reckless Remain in Mexico policy.

For most, the prospect of success is minuscule. The process is arbitrary - a sort of cruel lottery, a desperate gamble that leaves human lives dangling as if they were disposable.

 In the eyes of many, they are.

The trauma, the torture of a system that would rip a baby from her mother’s arms. That would send a teen about the age of my own students to his near-certain death in violence-torn countries - the legacy of US foreign policy paid for with your tax dollars and mine. The trauma and torture of a system that would allow little ones and pregnant women and old men to shiver in cells wrapped in foil blankets that reflect back the ugliness of our nation’s inhumane policies. The ugliness of the human heart.

I look at the child with the little pink backpack as she and her family wait to board a bus bound for hell. Who knows what awaits her and so many others whose numbers have been called today. Who knows how she - and how we - will sleep tonight given the cold.





Tuesday, February 19, 2019

El Chaparral

We began our day at a plaza that could be any bus or taxi drop-off in an city, except we were instructed to meet there to greet and observe the process for refugees lining up numbers....Numbers that hope for entry;  numbers that more likely offer more uncertainty and trauma. A drama of violence in plain sight.