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NOGALES, SONORA, MEXICO - OTHER CHANGES

2/19/2019

EL COMEDOR/ KINO BORDER INITIATIVE COMMUNITY CENTER: Nogales, Sonora

It's a cold, rainy morning the first Wednesday of February. I along with two other Samaritans are walking through the customs station at Mariposa, Nogales, Arizona on our way to the Comedor right across the border in Mexico.
The Comedor is totally full of people - families with children, a row of tables of men, women and children being served cups of steaming hot chocolate while they wait for breakfast. The Comedor holds about 80 people and it's full this morning. The coordinator explains how food will be served and asks if there are any special diet needs.
Then, all the volunteers go to work - passing plates of scrambled eggs, creamy beans, macaroni and rice and of course, lots of tortillas. There are seconds as well. Once the first group is fed, other families enter and fill two more rows of tables - I estimate about 120 people today.
Once the tables are cleared, the guests organize into a line of dishwashers, scraping food into the garbage and then drying the dishes and cups. The place is humming with activity. The coordinator explains that those seeking to cross and ask for asylum should gather at the back with the lawyers from the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Project - a large group moves to those tables.
The medical center - another table with medical supplies is immediately busy. A Comedor volunteer, Juan, takes down the names of people who are waiting to have a check cashed, to make an international call home or to see the medical assistant. The USA detention centers pay detainees with a U.S. check before they are deported. No More Deaths, a Tucson based NGO, provides cash for the check and then deposits the check into its account.
I am the cell phone person today. I ask for the number and country to which a call is being made. I try not to listen to the conversations to a father in Honduras or a mother in Guatemala. 10 calls today - Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and one to a friend in Colorado. These are calls to reassure loved ones that the person is ok.
One young man is curious about who we are and why we are here. I explain that we are volunteers supporting people waiting to cross or those just deported. He is young, tall and in good shape. In a lowered voice he says, "I'm a policeman from Honduras. The drug cartels killed my younger brother. I am a danger to my family so I fled."
I suggest that he talk with the lawyer about his situation but silently I think as a single young man, his chances for asylum are slim. He talks with the other volunteer cashing checks. Both of us have grey hair and could be his abuela/grandmother. He asks about his chances of crossing the desert. I walk over to a photo pinned to the wall that shows how much water he would have to carry and how many days to reach Tucson.

At the bottom of the poster, it says in Spanish: No Vale la Pena, It's not worth it. Don't go! There's not enough water. The red dots on the map are dead bodies found in the desert.
"But I'm in good shape, I can make it." I look at him sadly. "Mire/look, as your grandmother, I would rather see you held in a detention center for a month or two than Dead." He shakes his head trying to decide what is best to do. HIs mother and sister live in Texas.
The other person that remain in my mind still is a family of father, mother and three young children. They are from Guerrero, Mexico. The mother explains that they had a small business, but the drug cartels asked for money - extorting them in order to keep their business open. When they didn't pay, they threatened to kill her first and then, all the children. Tears form in her eyes, "Will they let me husband cross with me?" I don't reply but urge her to talk to the lawyer.

Medical services to the left and the lawyer consulting with one of the women waiting to cross.

The lawyers explain to me that they cannot offer specific legal advice to the asylum seekers as they are not licensed to practice law in Mexico. They give general advice about how to register for asylum. It is bad news for single men, and for families. The Border Patrol and Customs agents let mothers and children in but usually not the father. Another form of family separation. At least they get advice on what asylum seekers should do.
I talk with an Episcopal deacon, Roger, who is with a new organization, Cruzando Fronteras, that supports about five shelters in Nogales, Sonora that house families and women and children who are waiting for their turn to cross. I ask how many days? He shakes his head. "A week? Sometimes, two weeks." A new caravan has arrived at Agua Prieta across from Douglas, Arizona. There are not enough customs agents there so the people are being bused to Nogales. He heard that only two families were processed yesterday.
Despite the challenges that all the Comedor guests face, it is not a sad place. Children play while they wait for their parents. Fathers keep an eye on their sons. Jokes are made - "oh, he's tall for a Guatemalan, he probably will play basketball in the USA!"

Families waiting for a legal consultation or medical care

I don't know what will happen to any of these families or those just deported. A Kino Border Initiative staff person says that they are working to open a new center where they will provide job training and support for deportees to stay in Nogales so that their USA families can visit them.

This NPR Program is a story from this KBI staff person explaining why people are traveling together and why they are not going to stop traveling north.

REFLECTION: With the recent action by #45 to reallocate funds to build the wall, only time and struggle and resistance from us all will determine the future of the immigrant families and single men and women seeking safety. Join any of the groups that are suing the President over the illegality of his actions. I am proud that my state of Oregon is one of 16 states suing him. RESIST with RESILIENCE.

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WHAT HAS CHANGED AT THE ARIZONA/MEXICO BORDER? PART 1

2/5/2019

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BORDER CROSSING IN NOGALES, SONORA, MEXICO

CHANGE #1

ONE BIG CHANGE IS THE CONCERTINA WIRE ON TOP OF THE WALL THAT DIVIDES DOWNTOWN NOGALES, ARIZONA FROM NOGALES, SONORA. I TOOK THIS PHOTO WHILE WAITING TO CROSS BACK IN THE UNITED STATES.

Sunday's Arizona Daily Star newspaper had an article about the deployment of more military troups to the border and in particular, their task to install more concertina wire. The Nogales mayor expressed his concern as to the impact of this wire on both communities and in particular, local businesses. A local businessman, Evan Kory, stated:

" The razor wire was way more aggressive than anything we had seen, which scared me. It felt like it was out of our hands as a border community. You feel powerless, like your voices aren't heard."

I was last at this border in the winter of 2017 - there was the wall but not sheets of concertina wire, as many as six rows can be seen in the newspaper photo. An additional 150 miles of concertina wire will be strung. The Mayor of Nogales, Arizona, Arturo Garino, called for the razor wire to be removed, saying it hurts business and sends the wrong message.

WIRE AT MARIPOSA BORDER CROSSING, NOGALES, ARIZONA

Today's Arizona Daily Star announced that the Nogales, Arizona City Council is demanding that the federal government remove the concertina wire or the City will sue them.

San Diego has also expressed its concern over the concertina wire as well. Let's hope that there is an outpouring of border cities who say NO to the Trump Administration creating a war zone at the border along with its already militarization of the border.

CHANGE #2:

Mothers with children or fathers with children are the people turning themselves into the Customs and Border Agents at ports of entry or after they have crossed in the desert. Increasingly it's entire families that are showing up at the border and asking for asylum.

In Tucson a former Benedictine monastery has opened as a temporary shelter organized by Catholic Community Services. The nuns sold the monastery to a developer who in turn offered the enormous church building to be used as a shelter until building plans are approved. Link to news highlighting the monastery.

I walked into the Intake room off this beautiful sanctuary late last Saturday afternoon. The Casa Aletas volunteer coordinator had called asking Spanish speaking volunteers to gather to help with an expected 45 people who were about to arrive - dropped off by ICE.
Another volunteer showed me how to record the interview on a Google docs, I took a deep breath and suddenly a very tired looking mother and her daughter appeared at my table. "Como esta?" I introduced myself and smiled at them. The young woman's name was Dulce or sweet and she was!
Soon there was a cacophony of voices as six of us interviewed the newly arrived immigrants. They looked and were exhausted - most of them coming directly from the hielera, the ice box where the Border and Customs detains immigrants at the border. There is little food and sleeping is difficult.

They patiently answered my questions: Where they were from? Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador were the responses. How many days of travel from their home land? Were there any problems crossing Mexico? Any problems at the border with officials? Finally, who was their sponsor in the USA and where did this person live? Georgia, Florida, New York, Texas, were some of the responses.

A volunteer entered the room carrying donated teddy bears and other soft toys. The children selected the one they liked and held onto it tightly. In the days of turmoil in their young lives, it felt good to have something soft and cuddly to clutch. When the interview was over, the women or men always said, "Gracias."

They had been fed before the interview. Another volunteer appeared to take them to their room and to have a bath before sleeping. There is a clinic where volunteer doctors and nurses examine the families and provide medicine for the many who arrive with coughs or colds after their long journeys.

PERSONAL NOTE: This is my last day in Tucson as I am returning to my home in Portland, Oregon. I will share a few more stories of the traveling guests I've met these past five weeks. Tucson and southwest Arizona are beautiful,but it is a desert. We have had freezing temperatures at night these past few days. I will close with how we open and end each Samaritan meeting with silence and a prayer for those crossing the desert. Peace be with them.

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AT THE ARIZONA/USA BORDER AND IMMIGRANT WORK

1/28/2019

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Grupos Beta office in Nogales. Trucks that drive along Mexican side of border to offer aid to migrants

SAHUARITA, ARIZONA. I am sitting in a large room at the Church of the Good Shepherd UCC with a large group of mostly white, Snowbirds. Grey hair, some people without hair and a scattering of younger adults visiting for the annual Border Issues Fair that this church sponsors. Ray A. Ybarra Maldonado, a Phoenix lawyer, presents us with a challenge from his work with immigrants seeking to stay in the USA.

"Every human being who crosses the U.S. border knows that he/she has an inherent right to migrate." So who is it in our country who doesn't understand or accept that fact? He quotes Stokely Carmichael from a speech given in 1966 at the University of California, Berkeley.

"I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people. For example, I am black. I know that. I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn't know that. Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me. So some boys had to write a bill to tell that white man, "He’s a human being; don’t stop him." That bill was for that white man, not for me. I knew it all the time. I knew it all the time."

Ray added. Immigrant rights are similar to the civil rights movement. It is the dominant white culture that does not recognize the rights of humans to migrate. It is President Trump and his allies who keep trying to shut down immigration.

NOGALES, SONORA, MEXICO

A Grupos Beta, Mexican immigration agency spokesperson in Nogales, Mexico, told us that their job is not to stop migrants from crossing to the United States but to provide information about the dangers of crossing the Sonoran desert as well as to patrol the Mexican side of the border looking for people in need of medical assistance. They operate a small shelter for migrants who need to bathe, call their family and make a decision as to whether they will return to their country of origin.

There are showers and bathrooms for those either waiting to cross or who have been deported from the USA.

The Grupos Beta spokesperson told us, a small group of North Americans, that they cannot stop the migrants, because in Mexico "it is not against the law to migrate" or in Spanish, NO es un delito a migrar."

Why does the US government and many U.S. citizens not recognize the right to migrate? Why do we criminalize people who out of desperation migrate to seek safety or to reunite with their family members who live in the United States. And now the Trump administration wants asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their applications are processed.

We visited a shelter for women in Nogales, Sonora - HEPAC, in Spanish it means the house of Peace and Hope. Fifteen women and children were in the space waiting their turn to go to the port of entry to ask for asylum. The shelter is preparing a new space as they expect more women and children to arrive in Nogales from the latest caravan coming north from Central America.

The two photos show the current space with families and the other is the new space waiting to be completed in order to house more families.


TAKE ACTION:

The majority of the American public do not want a wall, especially one that will cost $5 billion dollars. Let's yell and demand that our elected officials find some real solutions. As Dee Mango, the Republican mayor of El Paso, Texas said today on NPR:

"But the biggest problem we've got is the whole immigration system to begin with. I mean, it hasn't been addressed for 30 years. There's been a lack of intestinal fortitude on both sides of the aisle. And it's time for them to step up and do something about it." 1/28/19 NPR

Call your Member of Congress and Senator. Ask them to get together on a bi-partisan basis to pass a humane and just immigration bill that does not separate families and allows people to migrate. A WALL IS NOT AN ANSWER!

HEPAC SHELTER IN NOGALES, SONORA

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GUATEMALAN CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS AND A U.S. BORDER HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

1/14/2019

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Today in Guatemala hundreds if not thousands marched in the streets of the capital demanding the the Guatemalan president, Jimmy Morales, obey the Guatemalan Constitutional Court and not expel the UN International Commission against Corruption and Impunity (CICIG). Since 2007 this Commission has worked with human rights organizations, lawyers and the Constitutional Court of Guatemala to bring military and political officials to trial and convictions for crimes ranging from corruption to genocide.

CICIG has provided evidence of corruption on the part of the current President and some of his appointees. That is why the President wants them out of the country. A recent report from the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission/USA states:

"On Monday, January 7, President Morales unilaterally closed the International Commission Against Impunity, CICIG. When he did that he overstepped his powers; the president does not have the authority to shut down an agency created through a treaty ratified by congress. The Constitutional Court ordered CICIG be reinstated, and his response was to attempt to impeach the Constitutional Court. "

Thus, the people took to the streets over this past weekend and today. Here is a are some photos taken today (1/14/19) by Dania Rodriguez, Human Rights Defender Project in Guatemala City.

Before the danger of a government coup without a state of siege, we defend constitutional guarantees.

CASA ALITAS LAST WEEK IN TUCSCON.

Casa Altias, the shelter for recently released migrants, was crowded and a bit chaotic last week. Seven migrants plus 10 children in a four bedroom house. Two of the migrants left for another shelter. Three out of the five families were from Guatemala, two from the state of Guerrero, Mexico, the scene of drug cartels.

I spoke with one of the women who had lived in the United States for ten years. She was traveling with her two daughters. Her husband had already crossed into the United States and was waiting for her in an eastern state. I asked her if she was seeking asylum. "Yes, I am. We went back to Guatemala four years ago - voluntarily - we weren't deported. We wanted our children to grow up speaking Spanish in their own culture. BUT when we started our small restaurant business, gangs asked us to pay them money to stay in business. We went to the police but they did nothing. After our lives were threatened, we decided to head back to the States."

There is a direct connection between what is happening today in Guatemala and the numbers of Guatemalans asking for asylum in the United States. GHRC's report adds:If President Trump is really concerned about stopping migration, he needs to adopt policies that help Guatemalan’s who are struggling to make their communities livable and sanction those that are helping organized crime to tighten its grasp on the government.

Two members of the US Congress, Reps. Jim McGovern and Norma Torres, are circulating a letter to President Trump and the US State Department asking them to condemn the illegal actions of President Morales in Guatemala. Of course, the President may be about to act without consultation of the U.S. Congress to fund the wall at the border - such a decision will be immediately challenged by our Supreme Court.

I hope that you will take action - call your member of Congress and ask him to sign onto the letter. Follow what is happening in Guatemala because our lives are interconnected. Look at resources from GHRC/USA. org or WOLA.org for an update on the Guatemalan situation. We are following it from a distance but Guatemalans who flee are living this reality.

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BORDER PRESENCE IN TUCSON, ARIZONA - WEEK 1

1/11/2019

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IMMIGRANT WELCOMING WORK IN ARIZONA

I am now in Tucson, Arizona volunteering with various humanitarian organizations that support and welcome immigrants. Casa Alitas,  www.facebook.com/Alitasprogram, was organized in 2014 to respond to the large numbers of unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America. I volunteered with them in 2015-17 and some of the stories of those experiences are in my book, CHOICES: DEATH, LIFE AND MIGRATION, www.amazon.com/Patricia-Rumer/e/B001KDJ2EG.

The situation in Arizona is different than the San Diego/Tijuana border crossing. At the Samaritans meeting this week, I learned that people stay in about five shelters in Nogales, Sonora while they await their turn for an asylum "credible fear interview." One woman at the Comedor at the Mexican border said that she had number 349 and hoped that she would be interviewed in three weeks. The Samaritans are the humanitarian organization that does daily trips to the desert providing water, food and basic medical supplies for migrants.

I worked at two shelters this week. Shelters provide a safe place to stay until bus transport can be arranged to the traveler's destination. Volunteers welcome the families (almost all are a mother or father with children). They can shower, wash their clothes, pick up donated clothing, eat and talk with their families either in Central America or their new home in the United States. All of the guests/immigrants have a court date within two weeks with Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE) or immigration courts. Usually they have permission to stay in the United States for six months pending the court's decisions. Some immigrants are given ankle bracelets so that ICE can monitor their movements, a less expensive alternative than keeping them in detention centers.

Casa Alitas is supporting "pop-up" shelters at various churches in the area based on need. Trinity Presbyterian Church near the University of Arizona provides two bedrooms and living area for two families at a time. The church is a rose-colored stucco building with a courtyard below the apartment. A young man and his son from Guatemala were the guests. His story was a familiar one - economic necessity. He kept saying, "Yo voy a llegar en el nombre de Dios." Roughly translated it means, "I am going to make it to the United States with the help of God." He had no problems crossing the border with his son. He has an ankle bracelet, the electronic monitoring program, and a court date in two weeks at his destination with a friend in the Midwest. He came with his teenage son and left a wife and another son in Guatemala. He was near tears at one point when he said that he couldn't believe that he was in the United States and that he was being so warmly welcomed by strangers, myself and the other volunteers. He kept repeating, "You are angels."

His son after a shower burst into the dining area, "Papi, I didn't want to leave the shower, it was so warm." After six days of bus travel and two days in detention at the border, both of them were ready for a hot shower and clean clothes. Another volunteer washed their discarded clothes so they would be ready for the next day's journey.

They had no trouble at the border. I am not sure why they were released so quickly. In Arizona the Border Patrol and ICE use the "seize and release" approach to refugees. There is no family detention center in Arizona which is good news for those who cross the border into Arizona. The closest family detention center is in Texas.

The question remains with me: Are those of us who host the shelters, really angels? I don't feel particularly angelic. I am here because we were there, Jorge Antonio Vargas, a famous undocumented journalist put it several years ago. The United States has had many interventions in Central America which has destabilized Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as well as Nicaragua during the 1980's contra war. What we do as shelter hosts is greet the traveler with the words, WeIcome and Bienvenida.

More Stories to follow:  If any of you reading this blog have questions, please post them in the comments section. I will try to find the answers. For excellent information about the U.S. role in Central America, listen to this NPR broadcast of this past week:  the1a.org/shows/2019-01-10/why-are-migrants-from-central-america-coming-to-the-u-s

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NOGALES, SONORA, MEXICO - OTHER CHANGES

WHAT HAS CHANGED AT THE ARIZONA/MEXICO BORDER? PART 1

AT THE ARIZONA/USA BORDER AND IMMIGRANT WORK

GUATEMALAN CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS AND A U.S. BORDER HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

BORDER PRESENCE IN TUCSON, ARIZONA - WEEK 1

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