immigrant rights
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I KNEW ALMOST immediately it was bad news.
“Maria was separated at the border from her auntie,” my friend said in a phone call. “We don’t know where she is. Her auntie was sent back to Mexico and we think is being held by a drug cartel. They separated them under Title 42.”
I felt sick. Four-year-old Maria (not her real name) and her aunt were fleeing violent circumstances. They arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border to exercise their legal right — protected by both international and U.S. law — to request asylum, as other members of Maria’s family had done prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March 2020, everything changed. The Trump administration, through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), invoked a rarely used subsection of public health code called Title 42 to close U.S. borders to asylum seekers and unaccompanied children under the guise of preventing the spread of COVID-19. It made that decision against the advice of many public health experts, including some within the CDC, who agreed there was no public health rationale for a ban on asylum seekers as a group. Though the border remained open to truckers, temporary workers, students, and others, border agents turned back asylum seekers to Mexico or their home country.
Children and family members take part in a sit-in following a march to mark “the court-ordered deadline for the Trump Administration to reunify thousands of families separated at the border, in Washington, U.S., July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
According to a report by The Intercept, the agents took Salazar behind an abandoned Walmart where they shackled him and emptied his pockets before transporting him to the South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall. Once there, Salazar says he was taken to a room where the FBI probed him for information and told him his immigration status had been revoked because he was a “bad person.” When he refused to talk to them, he was transferred to the Webb County Detention Center in Laredo, Texas.
Image via Diane Herr / Flickr
The Teamsters' decision to actively protect immigrants stems from one of its members, Eber Garcia Vasquez, 54, was deported in August to Guatemala with no criminal record and two pending green card applications for him and his family.
The badge of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Fugitive Operations team is seen in Santa Ana, California, U.S., May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
The sweep comes in the wake of nationwide ICE raids of nearly 100 7-Eleven stores that resulted in dozens of arrests less than a month ago.
An ICE officer told the Daily Camera that Jurado’s detainment is not related to Encalada Latorre’s immigration status or her taking sanctuary. But some, including Encalada Latorre and Janette Vizguerra, a prominent immigrant rights leader who was previously in sanctuary, believe that this is a tactic to put pressure on Latorre to leave sanctuary.
Image via Yonat Shimron / RNS
Last month, a 10-year-old undocumented girl who was traveling by ambulance to a hospital in Texas was stopped by Border Patrol agents who then trailed her to the hospital, guarded her during gallbladder surgery and then took her into custody. She was released 10 days later after a national outcry.
Today is a day of hope for immigration reform. More than 500 immigration activists and faith leaders have gathered in Washington, D.C. to call on Congress to act on immigration reform. They represent the tens of thousands of you reading SojoMail today who, over the past few years, have taken action on immigration reform.
