It is said from time to time that history is written by those who hold power. It is only a small step further to infer that the manipulation of our social memory serves the purposes of the powerful. That the story that is chiseled into posterity supports a social order.1/6 It follows that stories of those without the podia of power are rarely told They can be seen by those who watch closely but all too quickly are obscured by steady flow of time, the greatest wave barely a ripple, mostly gone once eyes that witnessed them close for the last time2/6

Casey Revkin Ryan posts-Learn more about our work reuniting families at everylastone.org/get-them-out

This girl had been approved for release two weeks ago–we had helped her mother submit all the necessary paperwork–but HHS hadn’t gotten around to arranging transportation.
1/4 Her mother offered to go to the facility to pick her up, as is allowed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement handbook, but the unlicensed emergency intake detention facility holding her wouldn’t allow it.
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It began as families huddling together at the foot of the bridge across the border river in Matamoros, Mexico. Told at first that they must wait their turn for a chance to plead for asylum, for mercy, they stayed on the plaza, in a pocket of concrete in sight of...1/10 ...the uniformed troops that stood guarding the arched path to the other side, a walkway daily slowly traversed by those clutching the documents that allowed their passage. As the tourniquet at the border tightened, the small colony of hope and defiance grew. 2/10

More than 4,000 children are known to have been separated from their parents before and during the official start of zero tolerance in spring 2018. Under the policy, border agents charged parents en masse with illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border...1/4 ...then placed their children in government facilities. The policy drew condemnation from around the world as stories emerged almost daily about screaming children, some as young as babies, forcibly taken away from parents.
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Michelle Sal posts-BREAKING NEWS ‼️ Cowlitz County Superior Court has notified @ICEgov of its intention to end the county's contract to hold immigrant youth in detention at Cowlitz County Youth Services Center.
1/4 As of last year, facility in Longview, WA was one of only 3 facilities nationwide to hold young people in detention setting for ICE for extended periods of time. Advocates locally & nationally raised serious concerns about living conditions & legal implications of... 2/4

We have learned that a detention camp for teens is opening again in Carrizo Springs, Texas. It is run by Baptist Child and Family Services, the organization that ran the camp along the river in the Borderlands of west Texas at a Port of Entry. It was called Tornillo.1/9 It became a symbol of all that is wrong about immigration policy. A movement grew as people gathered to witness what they could of the children inside. Without witnesses the children would have been invisible. One child later told us that there were times during his...2/9

This group was established to be a forum, a community, and a clearinghouse for those who feel called to be witnesses to what most of us perceive to be abusive and racist policies toward migrants. These repulsive policies are going on right now.1/5 They include the practice of imprisoning migrants, often euphemistically called detention, damaging families, life-threatening deportation & what is called expulsion, built on false narrative that migrants are more of a threat to your health than Super Bowl party next door.2/5

Some details on the @ICEgov hotel detention in McAllen, El Paso, and Arizona. @TXCivilRights discovered children held at Hampton Inn in McAllen. Quoted from Flores report: ICE utilizes contracts with MVM, Inc. (MVM) through Juvenile & Family Residential Management Unit... 1/10 ... (JFRMU) to transport & temporarily house unaccompanied minors & family units pending removal under Title 42. This program is an extension of regular transportation services for aliens between custodial settings instituted in 2014.2/10

On the subject of the comments period open for response to newly proposed asylum rules...

The Trump administration has taken steps that have choked natural flow of migration at the southern border. Before the #COVID19 pandemic, the mechanism they chose was... 1/10 ... distortion of a concept known as asylum which set rules by which a person is judged eligible for entry by demonstrating that their reasons for leaving their homes were dire. That they suffered. Asylum is a policy, a principle in int’l law that arose from the shame felt...2/10

We notice when things change. The last 2 weeks as we watched the flights of #ICEAir, we noticed something different happening. New flights from near the border, to Mexico City.
1/7 What are these flights? They are expulsions of Mexican nationals. Not deportations. A deportation requires a procedure that involves @ICEgov custody. But these folks are never in ICE custody. 2/7

I wish, sometimes, now especially, that I could offer some comfort. But since I have somehow gotten a job as a witness to the treatment of people who come to the borders of the country I live in, I cannot comfort anyone. Not myself or anyone else. Not today.
1/8 It would be impossible to take any comfort from the decrease in numbers of refugees in ICE prisons, because it reflects two vectors of inhumanity. First, the wholesale deportation of refugees to the countries they fled.2/8

Although it made 1 DHS agent pretty angry, 3 of us were there to watch as 5 buses, likely full of deportees, got onto a @FlySwiftAir jet at Brownsville Airport, and likely were transported to somewhere in Central America.1/5 This is the promised ramp up of the PACR (Prompt Asylum Claim Review) program, designed to send asylum seekers as far away as possible without giving them time or the means to make their case.
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A reprint from November, asking for your support-I am writing today to ask for your support for our action at the border to oppose the murderous policy of MPP, or Remain in Mexico.
1/ We have scheduled our Witness action to begin on 1/12. We plan a sustained effort which will protest the tent courts in Brownsville, TX, where injustice is handed out every day, dashing the hopes of desperate, vulnerable people encamped across the international bridge...2/

Mano Amiga posts-San Anto City Council Denies VisionQuest’s Zoning Request for New Child Detention Facility!

Coalition of 26 Local Advocacy Groups Stopped VisionQuest’s Detention Growth. 1/14 SAN ANTONIO-Members of the SA Stands coalition testified in opposition to zoning request that would allow VisionQuest, a 4-profit detention company, to open a new facility on the Eastside. Earlier this year VisionQuest signed a lease with Second Baptist Church...2/14

We need political action. Join us in Brownsville Jan. 12. Witness. Jodi needs our help.

A post from Jodi Goodwin-Tales from MPP

NRIs are a joke. Talk about a time suck...non-refoulement interviews are a waste of time & do nothing but give lipservice... 1/15 ...to giving asylum applicants an opportunity to explain their fears of remaining in Mexico.

Yesterday, myself & a colleague (who can choose to identify herself if she wants) spent collectively 16 hours in those stupid tents so we could be present for our clients' NRIs. 2/15

Suzanne Conti Martin posts-It has been 11 days since I returned from border. I would be lying if I didn't say that I am having a tough time processing what I witnessed. It will take some time. Many people have been asking me "so, what was it like at the border?" 1/12 I was at a fundraiser the other night. A woman kept asking me "come on! what was it like?? I want to hear about it".. but I find myself brushing off the question, giving a 1 sentence answer like "oh, it was a great experience" and then I swallow hard and change the subject.2/12

Jonathan Hayes, Dir of Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency that farms out its child prison functions to profiteers like Caliburn & Comprehensive Health Services & Baptist Child & Family Services, so they can warehouse refugee children for months upon months...1/ ... had a chat with Amnesty International. He contended that the camps run by ORR & their cronies are not governed by Flores settlement at all! It is not just a matter of cruel incompetence & greed. No. Flores, the settlement that requires minimum standards...2/

Suzanne Conti Martin shares- Last night, we crossed into Matamoros, Mexico with a team of women from Alabama who needed help hauling & serving out dinner. I was nervous-- Matamoros is considered to be a Level 4 Security zone which is as dangerous as like walking into Syria.1/8 I pictured chaos & pushing & shoving for the food. We each walked across the bridge with a wagon full of food. About 12 of us & about 2,000 asylum seekers living on the bridge. Things could have EASILY gotten out of control.2/8

And the pretense that some agencies of our government then use, the pretense that we care, and protect the precious fragments of those shattered families from the people they love, by putting them in “shelters,” is grotesque.
1/ In places like Tornillo, like Homestead, like Carrizo Springs, remote places where they hope we won’t find them. On federal land, so they hope we won’t notice that regulations that protect children don’t apply.2/

Comprehensive health Services in Canaveral is the focus of an investigation. Their facility in homestead has become the focus of demonstrations and congressional visits. Now they are evacuating the facility perhaps permanently. What is going on? 1/ And where are they taking these kids. This move has the effect of creating bureaucratic chaos in a process already fraught with challenges, and it makes transparency and accountability even more difficult.

miaminewtimes.com/news/house-ove…
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WITNESS JOSHUA RUBIN posts-We have questions.

If so many children have left, as they tell us, why are so many of the so-called youth care workers still being dropped off on the north side of the prison, which, according to leaked documents, is no longer housing children? 1/6 Why do we see new employees, paperwork clutched in their hands, expectant looks on their faces, marching through the newly erected fence tunnels, for training?

Is the facility being repurposed for detention of others? 2/6