Two-Part Series Articles:
Reinstated Remain in Mexico - Policy Remains
& The Ones Who Made It
During the holiday week in December, during one of my many visits to the Rio Grande Valley, I find myself in a familiar position, pulling carts into Mexico with basic necessities and art therapy supplies for families waiting for asylum. As I walk across the border, the Rio Grande ushers in that transition, it’s muddy waters harkening to the danger in its midst, the many people who have waded in its waters, the final obstacle before entering the United States. I walk above it, suspended in air by concrete and steel while others who don’t have the papers to cross this way gamble their fate down below.
I meet Sister Norma of Catholic Charities on this bridge, a local legend. I am representing Casa De Paz SLV, of Crestone, Colorado, whose mission is to provide holistic trauma support for asylum seekers and new immigrants.
As we cross, local cartels watch all those who enter Mexico to see if they could benefit from us, through our influence or money. This could mean kidnapping. My options are to go to the plaza where more scouts await with less people to accompany me or go to a protected outdoor shelter with many staff to ensure safety. I am alone, I need to be smart. I feel a tinge of guilt as I ride in the back of the passenger van on the way to the shelter, knowing that the asylum seekers I will not be visiting weren’t granted the privilege of this choice.
When I arrive at the shelter there is a huddle of kids weaving bracelets that a volunteer group from Mississippi gave them. Next to them is an industrial kitchen used to make meals and provide snacks for asylum seekers. There is a large cement courtyard with an awning over it that’s being used for the living space of the 1,200 people that live there. There are camping tents in neat rows that the asylum seekers are living in. It’s very similar to the de-facto refugee camp that existed in Matamoros only a year ago. Some of the asylum seekers have been there for four months. Though this shelter is more protected than the open air courtyard at the border with Matamoros, the desperation that the migrants face is the same. I imagine that at the courtyard, this desperation coupled with added vulnerability must create an untenable situation that they have to live with for months.
To begin our art therapy exercises, I hand out the art kits that were donated. The children create a line and I give out one item to each child. They are crowded around, coveting a pack of crayons because they haven’t owned something like this in months. It becomes survival of the fittest and we work hard to make sure everyone gets something.
What will always stick out is the moment I circulate hygiene items to adults. They crowd around me in a circle, becoming animated when I bring out underwear and wet wipes, pushing to have access to everyday necessities that have quickly become a luxury for these asylum seekers.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that, an adult woman pleading for a pair of underwear like it’s $100. To them it’s a commodity, like cigarettes in a prison, and this is their own jail. They can’t go back home; gangs there have already put a target on their back due to them refusing to respond to their demands. They can’t get into the U.S.; they have been barred entry or deported from here. So, they’re stuck in this camp, waiting, unsure how long their sentence will be.
If this were a funded refugee camp, they would be given basic provisions. Yes, asylum seekers in this shelter are provided with three meals a day, but they’re living in a tent that was intended for temporary lodging with barely the clothing to manage that feat. Think about how dirty one gets camping, then add to that living near a desert and sharing a bathroom space with over 1,200 people. When the temperature drops, they will face inclimate weather without proper clothing.
It’s the little things that people want, not a new Iphone or a nice piece of jewelry, but a pair of socks, a hat to shade their head from the sun, a mask to protect them from COVID. During social-emotional art therapy with kids, the most coveted item is a mask to decorate. Children ask for one for them, one for their mom, one for their brother. They decorate them with hearts, spiraling flowers and their names. They are adept at this, creating designs that make anything, even an object to protect one from a deadly disease, palatable. I remember these decorations from when I lived in Honduras, they were on their walls with their pictures, in their cards they gave to one another, on their school assignments. There is something about drawing on these masks that connect them to this process, to home. I imagine when displaced in a country that they never intended to go to, where there is unwelcome sentiment towards them, a taste of home, even if it’s on a picnic table in a concrete courtyard with hundreds of other children, can be everything.
Children use animal stamps they are given, filling the page with the animal whose qualities they are to learn from. They write encouraging words on glass stones to help them feel protected during trying times. I could see it, the strain they were feeling, in the pictures they drew of family with houses, the one thing they don’t have right now, the one thing they want. Children push to share with me and the other volunteers what they made, happy to have a distraction from the long days with no school and few toys to play with.
As I leave, they beg me to stay or at least leave the art supplies. They finish their time with me by pulling each other in my carts, overjoyed by the momentary excitement of something new. When the play becomes too rough, teenage boys who are not related to them instruct them to stop and after some crying, the children listen. It’s a demonstration of the greater sense of family that has developed in this camp, despite danger and competition for scarce resources that otherwise would have pitted them against each other. Individualism is dangerous here, there is no place for it.
Here in the U.S. we see the ones who made it, missing all the stories of those whose lives were lost or are indefinitely delayed due to the Remain in Mexico Policy that was recently reinstated as a result of a Texas court case that prevented President Biden from terminating MPP (The Remain in Mexico Policy). In Mexico, we see that hope of a new life diminish as survival is whittled down to finding enough sanitary items in a cramped camp in the midst of a pandemic. The journey is perilous without the increased risks of COVID-19, as migrants on both side of the border can attest to. The high level of need is communicated by the lines of children begging for a mask, showing us that staying in a camp outside of the U.S. will not necessarily stop an outbreak, it will just change the country it’s in.
Let’s think critically about the best way to meet the wave of asylum seekers at the border, knowing that the solution is not packed detention centers just as much as it’s not thousands outside in tents in a dangerous Mexican city. Though focusing on the root cause of this migration is a good long-term goal, we need thoughtful solutions to the immediate need of those at our border. Letting those who seek asylum cross into the U.S and wait for their case to be tried, where they can be seen on a case by case basis rather than a country by country basis is the first step in that process. There are many other steps to be considered. Let’s put the best minds together in solving a problem that persists that many have forgotten, bringing it back into the limelight where it belongs.
Part 2: The Ones Who Made It
When taking a shift with Team Brownsville at the Brownsville bus station, all looked the same as my previous visits. I still saw hundreds of men and women sit in the same seven rows of chairs, documents and soiled clothes their sole possessions. I still saw men bathing themselves in the sink of the public restroom with the soap they were gifted. I still saw long lines of families seeking assistance booking transportation to their destinations in the U.S. So, my assumption was that the border was functioning in a similar way that it had when I visited in March of 2021 doing holistic trauma support with the same organization.
But I was wrong.
Because when I was asked to help the asylum seekers check in with their country of origin, the three countries that represented the majority of migrants to this region (El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala) were not written down. Instead, the most prevalent nationalities were Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba. Though percentages of those from the Northern Triangle had decreased in recent months, they still made up the majority of those seeking asylum.
The Migrant Protection Protocols is a Trump era policy that required those who came to the U.S. border with Mexico who were from a country not adjacent to the U.S. to await their asylum court hearing in a country that is next to the US: Mexico. It was just recently reinstated in December of 2021. Title 42 is a policy that limits migration during the coronavirus epidemic to decrease the spread of disease. It has been used as a tool to keep out immigrants since the Trump presidency.
A man from Nicaragua who I will call Saul approached me, brave enough to ask what the others were thinking, “How do I get a bus ticket if I don’t have money? Where can I stay for the night if my journey is tomorrow?”
I informed him of a local hotel he could stay in. He arranged for his cousin to pay for the night. His travel buddies, who I will call Ernesto and Omar decided to room with him to help cover the cost.
As I drove them to their hotel, they answered the burning question I didn’t feel appropriate to ask: why no one from the Northern Triangle was welcomed at the bus station that day.
“All those from El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala were deported and sent back into Mexico. They were told to wait for their asylum trial there,” He told me.
Due to the political situation in Nicaragua which included police brutality against its citizens, and dictatorial actions by the government, Nicaraguans are given special permission to seek asylum. These three men expressed fear regarding the police attacking any citizens opposing the government. In addition, Venezuelans and Cubans are given a similar permission for entry due to the US’s stance on socialism and communism and the humanitarian crises that currently exists there.
At their hotel, once showered and rested, I brought the three men dinner. They commented on how hungry they were as they were given only small sandwiches during the day in the Border Patrol facility where they were detained. They called the quarters they stayed in the hielera, ice box in English, due to how cold it was. The air conditioning was put on high and they were only given a Mylar blanket to sleep with that they referenced as a piece of aluminum. Migrants slept in a room with over fifty people. The cells themselves were made for forty people, making them crowd next to one another when they needed sleep. The detention center where they stayed in McAllen, TX was one of the largest in the area. They were there for eight days, five days longer than the 72 hours they were supposed to be detained.
Omar described this as part of the sacrifice he had to make for his own freedom, a sign of the desperation he felt while living in unrest in Nicaragua. This wasn’t the only moment in his journey where he withstood horrific conditions. He traveled for a majority of his journey with the two men rooming with him at the hotel. On one leg of the journey, they rode in the back of a truck with 400 other people! There were no windows with little ventilation. It was tepid and suffocating. Another truck was behind them with the same amount of people. Initially, the bus drivers told them to go in that second truck, but at the last minute they changed their minds and directed them to the first one. Along the journey the second truck got into an accident and toppled over. Sixty asylum seekers died that day stuck in a crowded car, their last memory the inside of a dark caddie away from the family they held dear.
The significance was not lost on Omar. He knew deeply that this could have been his last day. Instead, in the process of a week, he found himself on American soil ready to reunite with his family. He didn’t want to call it blessed, because that did not bode well for those that didn’t make it, he didn’t want to call it lucky, because he didn’t believe in that, he called it a miracle because he couldn’t comprehend it and that was the word reserved for those things beyond our understanding.
It amazes me that this was the best-case scenario for asylum seekers coming into our country, so close to death it hung in the dust of the truck with which they crossed the border. Thousands from Central America risk this fate every day in Mexico, and yet the U.S mandates they stay there as they await their case. National rhetoric around immigration remains antiquated; focusing on deportations and restricting access rather than reforming a system that doesn’t work for both sides of the political aisle. Emotions are high without even considering the state of those whose only option is to make the journey up north. Let’s make our decisions based on the stories, then the data, rather than looking at each face as another number crossing our border.
Author: Rae Reed, LCSW from Chicago and Casa de Paz SLV Board Chair has been working with refugees and asylum seekers for many years in government and private agencies. Rae’s hope is that one day soon asylum seekers will be able to safely await their asylum cases in the US.
Sources:
Chishti, Muzaffar, and Jessica Bolter. “Court-Ordered Relaunch of Remain in Mexico Policy Tweaks Predecessor Program, but Faces Similar Challenges.” Policy Beat, 2 Dec. 2021.
Soboroff, Jacob, and Julia Ainsley. “McAllen, Texas, Immigration Processing Center Is Largest in U.S.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 20 June 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mcallen-texas-immigration-processing-center-largest-u-s-n884126.
VILLAREAL, MIREYA, et al. “Inside a Border Patrol Facility Holding 16 Times More Migrants than Its Capacity.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 31 Mar. 2021, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-border-patrol-migrant-holding-facility-over-capacity/.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/02/04/biden-mpp-mexico/