Operation Streamline Part Two

Hello again, friends,

My first blog post about Operation Streamline was very heavy. And long. I hope you stuck with me through it, but I understand if it was overwhelming in length and/or emotional weight. If you missed my last post, you should probably at least skim it so you have background for this one - here it is: Operation Streamline Part One

If you think Streamline is unjust and should end...

What can you do? Sign and share this petition: EndStreamline.org. Really. Even if you feel like your 30 seconds is meaningless, for some politicians to see thousands of people care enough about this issue to put their name out there, that can hold serious weight. Your thirty seconds means something. If it moves you, please sign and share.

If you need more information (AKA more of my efforts to convince you Streamline and the criminalization of migration is wrong...): 

If our justice system targeted drug-related and violent crimes separately from immigration violations, we could more effectively prosecute individuals we consider more of a "threat" to society than migrants whose singular offense is crossing a border without proper documentation. Criminal courts should focus on the first class of crimes rather than economic refugees - that's true safety. 

I'm sure many of you have heard the stat that the US prison system houses more prisoners than the rest of the world's developed countries combined. And we call ourselves "the land of the free." Anyways... Criminalizing immigration with an already-overwhelmed court system, federal prisons are now 2/3 immigrants, and Streamline fuels the private prison industry because the government has found it more efficient to contract out prison infrastructure to industry professionals than build more federal prisons.

Florence, AZ is a city in the middle of nowhere whose economy is founded on the prison system. There are several detention facilities in that one city, including one federal and others private. Two private prison industry giants are the Geo Group and CCA, both of which have been accused of less-than-humane conditions inside their facilities' walls. I will not go into that more here, but one defense lawyer quipped, "CCA has built private prisons all over the country and they pay no property taxes - they're like churches!" He further went on, "People have to start going bankrupt for things to change... California is going bankrupt and up there in their budget is prison costs..."

Another related fun fact: Congress demands that every single night, 34,000 beds must be filled in immigration detention facilities with the Detention Bed Mandate (read this for more info), further perpetuating and incentivizing the criminalization of migration and private prison profits.

Is this the society that we want? Is this the economy that we want - our government paying corporations to keep 34,000 economic refugees under lock and key, when we could surely use those resources for the common good - education, jobs, etc.? Not to mention the expenses and environmental impacts of deportations (and that's just the systemic political/economic look... I could go on for days about impacts on our familial and social fabrics).   

I began to mention this at the end of the previous post, but on October 11th, people in Tucson did something about Streamline. A group of activists of mixed documentation statuses intended to make a statement to stop Streamline in Tucson for a day, and they did it!

The planning happened in secret, and they were so well-organized. A couple activists were able to stop the buses taking the 70 people to be Streamlined right by the federal courthouse, and others rushed to circle themselves around the bus wheels and confounded authorities by the materials they used to reinforce their linked arms. They remained there connected for hours, inhaling fumes as the buses were still running (thankfully maintaining the air conditioning for the people aboard! But who really knows what was going through their minds as they saw all these crazy people yelling and chaining themselves to their bus!).

A group of protesters joined those locked around the buses doing the actual obstruction of Streamline, and soon, the street was blocked off. Another group of prepared activists also chained themselves to the gate on the side of the street, referred to later as the "gaters."

And Operation Streamline was stopped for the day. Due to the protest, the defendants were not able to meet with their attorneys in the morning, so they could not be prosecuted in the afternoon. 18 doing civil disobedience were arrested. More on this later. 


Here's a follow-up article including a more comprehensive look at Operation Streamline history and practice: Huffington Post

Here are a few more from the day:
Activists chain themselves to ‘deportation bus’ in Tucson, ask Obama to halt all deportations
Arizona Immigration Protesters Block Court Proceedings
Lying under tires, immigrant rights activists block Operation Streamline bus

If you'd like to check out any video footage, here's a couple options:  
Shutting Down Operation Streamline; Tucson, AZ Oct 11, 2013 
25 minutes of video coverage: ColorLines

And the following is my coverage of the event! Yes, I was there, at least for part. I had to go to the food bank for our program in the morning, but with my arms full of peanut butter jars, Amy Beth called me to get down there as soon as I finished the appointment. So I hustled home, threw the perishable items in the fridge, and called her again to figure out exactly where they were. And I hopped on my bike.

When I got there, the buses were already blocked off. I innocuously asked police officers what was going on, and they said something cryptic, not that they were closing the street because of a protest. So I biked around the side of the federal courthouse, parked my bike in their bike rack, and strolled through the parking lot, around to the side to find the "gaters" and their supporters.

 

By this time, the protest was in full force, with chants, and signs, and the whole shebang.

One chant: "What do we do when our community's under attack? Stand up fight back!"

A peek of the "gaters" from the side. They linked themselves to each other with PVC pipe, and the people anchoring on the ends locked their necks to the gate with bike locks.

Another chant: "CCA go away!"

My fellow chanters - Ali (Tucson YAV alum and now our steering committee president) and Amy Beth - one of my current YAV housemates!

Female demonstrators who had performed something earlier in the day before we got there.

The other side of the street: members of the media, other onlookers, and some people getting some shade.

This issue connects a couple generations. The woman to the left in the left photo is Southside pastor Alison Harrington. And the woman to the right in the right photo is Margo Cowan, Pima County Public Defender. Both are inspiring and very active in the community.

"We pay 17 million a month to CCA. The Post Office costs 14 million a year."

Different chanters took turns to keep the energy alive.

 Here's the side where I was with Ali and Amy Beth most of the time.

"TUSD (Tucson Unified School District) closed 11 schools for budget cuts. $17 mil a month for Streamline."

Officials unsure of what to do about the human chain.

Marshalls begin closing the gate - no Streamline buses today!

"Up up with liberation, down down with deportation!"

Marshalls start to move in from across the street.

Keeping the "gaters" well-hydrated from hours in the sun.

Awaiting news.

Chanting "Undocumented and unafraid; Sin papeles y sin miedo!"

Housemate Steph! Rock it.

And then...... the announcement came! "The judge has gone home for today."

Streamline has been shut down by the people.

What a glorious moment, "Streamline shutdown by the people," placed there by dearest activist and Southside Worker Center coordinator, Raul Alcaraz-Ochoa.

Mission accomplished.

"Why can't we live together?"

Official message at 12:35pm: Operation Streamline has officially been shut down for the day - the judge that runs the courts went home, so there would be no deportations through Streamline today.

The human chain stood up to start removing their reinforcing equipment following an agreement with the marshals, hoping to save the equipment for future actions...

And then police and marshals moved in on the crowd to make everyone disperse, taking away the chained people after they unlinked themselves.

The crowd swarmed in to get pictures, and some were shoved back by police.

Police took away the civilly disobedient, and supporters followed.

Law enforcement and a protester talking it out.

"La lucha no será en vano" - "The fight will not be in vain."

The scene through the fence behind the federal courthouse.

Accessibility to technology makes it so easy these days for people with access to their pocket-sized camera or smartphone to grab shots and be their own media to spread the word in addition to the pro cameras behind them.

And here's proof that I was here!

No doubt, I am excited to have been a part of this historic day. It feels good to do something. But I also must challenge myself about what I am doing in response to the injustice I have witnessed. I went to a protest where several people took radical action for what they believed, and I stood with them. I was one part of keeping them energized with my voice. I was educating myself. I am now writing about it to whomever feels like reading this.

I am the first one to admit I am still in the midst of discernment about the concept of doing civil disobedience, of intentionally breaking a law to make a point. As much as I have heard my amazing home church community talk about and value getting arrested to stand up for justice, this is still a very abstract concept to me. I am one to value the social contract, where at the most simplistic basis of political science, we enter into a pact as a collective of individuals because it is a more effective way to get resources and protection than fending for ourselves.

When we enter into the pact, that means the collective sets the rules. How those rules are determined is also set by the collective. Everyone should play by the rules, and if an individual or group does not agree with the rules set by the collective, it is their responsibility as a member still to work within the rules to change the one they disagree with or suck it up (to put it bluntly).

But if the game, or the system itself is unjust, does it then follow that it is always right to work outside the system? Or is there still value in working with and even working within existing structures to change minds and practices for the long haul? 

My issue is when we pick and choose what rules we want to play by when we are enjoying the rights and privileges of the social contract. The social contract does not mean we have to agree with everything set by the system, but if we don't, we either accept it or do something about it with your fellow people within the system you all have agreed to. Granted, that assumes all individuals still believe that system as a whole makes them better off, otherwise you all scrap it and make something new, or you take your leave from the proverbial island. 

I am nowhere near the first person to be asking these questions, but when injustice is systemic, I still have to ask myself "What is my role in the struggle?" My first instinct is always to work with the system in place, with intentionally disobeying the law as the last resort. I still have more processing to do, though, and I am going to leave it up to the individual to figure out if/when they find breaking the law the best course of action to work for the arc of history to bend towards justice.

In this specific case, what was the goal of the protest and the action, and through that action, was the goal achieved? The direct action was to stop two buses and to close a gate with the larger intention of shutting down the judicial process that is Operation Streamline. On that single day in Tucson, Operation Streamline was shut down. And these actions in fact started a ripple of protests around the country to shut down local ICE offices to prevent deportations.
 
There is give and take, and we all have to look at if we want our strategy to follow Machiavellian's "ends justify the means." We disrupted the lives of government officials probably just trying to get through the day and believing they were doing the right thing. And the 70 people who would have been streamlined were apparently deported more swiftly than typical cases because of the action. Attorney says border-crossers at center of Tucson protest were deported.

Did we do the right thing for those 70 individuals in the midst of the broader quest for an end to Streamline? For me personally, we were on such a high from actually shutting down Streamline for the day but the wind was taken out of my sails when I read those 70 people were quickly deported. They were not criminally prosecuted, and without but their deportations were expedited. Deportations keep happening, and so it goes.

 

All is not lost with those 70 individuals, however. October 24th, there was a press conference as the Pima County public defenders' office starts to make its case against felony charges for the 18 activists who blocked the two Streamline buses.

 The view from the 21st floor in downtown Tucson!

Defendants gather. 18 activists were charged with felonies in helping 70 people avoid criminal immigration charges.

Part of the defense strategy is putting a call out to find those 70 individuals from the buses to tell their stories, attorney Margo Cowan explains here. "They were deported quicker than we have ever seen... But we know those on the buses. We know their stories." The public defenders' office is committed to finding the humanity in this situation, contacting organizations and shelters along the border.

 

She added, "There is some incredibly pressing human condition to make you decide to cross the desert. Your removal instead of prosecution probably ranks pretty high in your life. They're talking to others about what happened - their lives have been changed and we're confident they'll call us... If they're in Mexico and it's necessary for them to come to Tucson [for the trial], we'll ask for them to be paroled in."

In their defense, several of the activists shared testimonies of undocumented individuals and friends they have been affected by. This man talked about a father named Claudio who was active in his daughter's education. Claudio was deported and picked up in the desert on his way back to his family. His daughter dropped out of school one month from graduation. They were not on the bus, but they are community members, just like those individuals who were about to be Streamlined. On those buses were mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandparents and grandchildren, children and friends, just like the people we know in our own communities.

The aftermath of Shutdown Streamline: Tucson Edition:
When I took my Carpe Diem delegation down to Nogales in late November, on our visit to the Kino Border Initiatives' comedor, a cafeteria run by the Catholic organization that provides free meals to migrants, I noticed the sign on the wall saying if you were one of the 70 stopped Streamline deportations, to call a certain number. West, our contact there, said they were indeed doing what they could on their end to find the individuals who were deported that day. 

As for the activist defendants, felony charges have been dropped, but the cases are still in process.

And since this epic day in Tucson, there has been a wave of "Shutdown ICE" protests around the country - starting in Phoenix and heading to California, New Mexico, New Jersey... Monday, December 16th, there were actually protests simultaneously in DC and LA!

Maybe civil disobedience isn't your thing. Maybe it is. I will leave that decision up to you. What every single person who wants Streamline to end can do though, is sign and share this petition: EndStreamline.org. Really.

Tucson Mom Detained! Help Keep Her Family Together!

A hardworking mom of the Tucson community has been detained by Border Patrol - please consider calling for her release to keep this family together!

I just heard about this as I sit in the Phoenix airport waiting to be reunited with my family back in Minnesota for the holidays. What irony. Dario and Danilo, two wonderful young men I have gotten to know from ScholarshipsAZ (partner organization of BorderLinks) were hoping to just got home and hang out with their family after finishing college exams today, but they met hardship instead of celebration. I don't know the full story, but their mom was pulled over while driving, and she has been detained by Border Patrol.

Dario wrote: "I was looking forward to today, but i walked out of my exam to find out that my mom had been pulled over as she was driving and is now being held by border patrol. To think that she is gonna spend nights in jail and is in risk of being separated from us is so unfair. For the next few days i will need the support from every one of you. My family has already been separated in the past and i'm not gonna let that happen again, I need you! I need you to call border patrol to the following number and demand her immediate release by reading the following script. I need you to call multiple times and to share with your friends and family. Do it for her, do it for what is right, she doesn't deserve this! No one deserves to be separated from their mother!"

And from Danilo: "My Mother Got Detained! Please help me and my family stay together for the holidays by calling the Tucson Border Patrol Station at (520) 514-4700 and (520) 748-3000. Please help us! We want to be together with our mom. It will not take more than a minute of your time and it will be greatly appreciated. We don't want to be separated from our mother!!! Please Help Us!!" 

Please, if you have the time, make a quick call. The info is all there. Community support does help prevent detentions and deportations! Help keep an amazing family together! 

Operation Streamline Part One

Dear friends,

This is something I have been wanting to write about for so long but kept putting off. It is without a doubt the hardest part of my job. Not balancing planning and organizing delegations with staying on top of immigration news, getting out BorderLinks' monthly email in a timely fashion, driving a 15-passenger van, or looking to native Spanish speakers for help with simultaneous interpretation when an animated maquiladora worker excitedly tells a five-minute long story about organizing a union in the factory without pausing to breathe and wanting to get every last detail communicated in English. (Respira, respira - breathe, breathe).

I love my work, and I love that every day is different. I love that I get to learn and experience and be challenged by so many different things and help make it possible for others to do that as well. But I'd rather not experience this. I'd rather them not experience this. But as long as it goes on, we have to because we have to end it.

This is the hardest part because it is emotionally hard. And I will have to do it, have my heart broken, endure, and endure, and endure countless times throughout the year with every delegation I lead. 

I have been a witness to Operation Streamline four times. I have been once as an assistant delegation leader as a part of my BorderLinks training, once on our YAV border delegation with YAVs from Tucson, Austin, and Denver, and I have since been twice as a part of my own delegations that I am leading. There are times to be objective, systematic, and academic, but in these cases I do not want to be cold. I do not want to become calloused. I don't want it to stop bothering me.

I started writing about Operation Streamline in my previous blog post, Immigration 101. The basic gist that I wrote is this: "The government's intent was to make it so hard for people to cross that they wouldn't try anymore, but since people are still coming. In [2005 in Del Rio, Texas] they started criminalizing immigration violations and detaining people for months instead of simply deporting them. This program called Operation Streamline exists in several cities, and at least in the Tucson sector, 70 people are arbitrarily chosen to get streamlined and criminally processed every single day within a span of a half hour to 1.5 hours. Sentences range from 30 days to 6 months in detention."

The following is more of my take, but if you'd like to see a video rundown en ingles y español, click here: Operation Streamline: The Mass Incarceration of Migrants. Or if you're more of an academic journal person, try this: 2010 Review of Operation Streamline 

With BorderLinks, our typical delegation framework when we take groups to Streamline (which happens every day Monday to Friday, 1:30pm to whenever it's done, in the specially built special proceedings room) is that we have lunch at BorderLinks and head out around 1pm, stay however long it takes, do a short debrief, and then talk with a public defense lawyer who will help answer all the technical legal questions. Therefore, my writing about Streamline is grounded in four times witnessing, four times conversing with public defenders, and four times feeling confused and helpless.

This special proceeding is open to the public, as long as everyone fits in the seven to eight pews in the rightmost section of the room. No cameras are allowed into the federal courthouse building, and technology that can be brought into the courtroom must be turned off. So we have no record, or at least I don't (some people out there I'm sure have sneakily taken photos or recorded on their smartphones), about the spectacle of, to generalize, 70 brown people shackled at their hands, waist, and ankles, guarded and represented by majority pale people, in what is the most elegant room perhaps the majority of the defendants have ever set foot in.

The original idea was to create a zero-tolerance policy towards illegal immigration and to process every illegal entry criminally instead of just civilly by way of immigration enforcement (aka just deporting someone right across the border or back to their country of origin). If it were truly zero-tolerance, the estimates are that 600-700 people would have to be processed criminally per day. Instead, the Tucson sector only has the infrastructure to process 70, so it is effectively about a 90-percent-tolerance policy.
 
With the courts already backlogged, how do we stick a whole bunch of people with the same criminal charge in a lot less time than it takes to process each individual case through a trial? Streamline.  
Defendants are effectively signing a deal to plead guilty to a misdemeanor of illegal entry, and the federal government will waive the charge of felony illegal re-entry. Then, based on number of prior deportations and if there are other crimes associated with illegal entry defendants are given sentences between the parameters of 30 and 180 days, with time already served in detention credited towards their sentence, thank goodness. However, because it is an en masse hearing, judges do not say out loud in court the reasoning for each individual's sentence length, which leaves us witnesses speculating. 

An additional factor in the confusion is that in Tucson there are seven or eight magistrates who sit on the bench for Streamline, and every time I go for the next few times I could see a new judge. And because there is so much judicial variation, in how the Streamline process is carried out, I should probably do a better job of bring a notepad into the courtroom instead of almost completely covering the back of my hand with all the differences I noticed like I did during my most recent Harvard Divinity delegation.

The part of the court proceedings the public does not get to see is the time where defendants meet with their lawyers earlier in the day. Thanks to Gideon v. Wainwright, every defendant in a criminal case that cannot afford a lawyer will be appointed one, so everyone is assigned either a public defender, or, because the federal public defenders office's budget has been slashed, a contract lawyer working for about $110/hour. Each lawyer in Streamline for the day will receive 4-5 cases and a limited time to meet with all of them, so each defendant ends up with about 20-40 minutes with their lawyer to explain the terms of their case, their rights, and the plea deal, as well as look for any possible defense to take the case to trial or make an asylum claim.
 
At least the system recognizes the vast majority of the defendants in Streamline are Spanish speakers, and therefore there is a court interpreter and lawyers have to be bilingual in English and Spanish. Many of the lawyers themselves are Latin@, but as someone with a college degree in the U.S., legalese is still wonderfully complicated in my primary language. Think defendants understand what their rights are and what they are agreeing to with one or even two language barriers if their primary tongue is neither English nor Spanish but perhaps an indigenous language? If it is determined that a defendant is not at a level of understanding due to mental competency or language barrier, the case is often either given more time or thrown out.



A few more of the basics based on what I have seen and been told:
- Border Patrol has a lot of discretion over who out of the 600-700 daily illegal entries gets streamlined.
- Most Streamline cases are processed within a week of when a person was picked up by Border Patrol.
- When we the public see them, defendants are seated in the courtroom in the clothes in which they were arrested. 
- Out of the 70, usually 2-5 of them are women. The rest are men, some of whom look as young as 14, and some of whom could be in their sixties. To be processed in Streamline you are supposed to be a legal adult, but sometimes minors say they are 18+ so they are processed with a family member of the same gender. Minors are sent to different facilities, as are males and females.
- Every defendant is shackled at three points: their hands, around their waist, and between their ankles, allowing for only short strides. I've heard different rationale for this from different people, one saying that every federal criminal defendant in that building is shackled. Another said that only when the defendants outnumber the court marshals is everyone shackled, for safety reasons, of course.
- The judge addresses all of the defendants at once to read the charges and make sure the defendants understand their rights. Every judge does this differently, and with different speed and intentionality in their voice. 
- Groups of five to seven come up to the front to stand at microphones with their lawyers. They are then questioned individually these days, with different groupings of questions depending on the judge.
- In hearing judges read off, "Mr./Ms. ______, are you a citizen of _____ and did you enter the United States on ________ away from an area or time designated by U.S. immigration authorities?" (or some variation of this), you usually learn where people are from. Mexico has the largest representation, unsurprisingly, but other typical homelands are El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.
- Normally all you hear an individual say is "si," "no," and "culpable" (guilty). And then they are led away.



I have personally seen it take 33 minutes to process 70 defendants. 33 minutes. And I have seen it take around two hours. Has justice been served here? 

One public defendant we have met with said first thing, "So, you are all shocked and appalled at witnessing brown people being shackled who are economic refugees." From there, we processed more of what we saw and heard, and contextualized it within economic systems and the private prison industry booming as a result of the criminalization of economic refugees.
  


This is when I struggle the most between being professional as a delegation leader and experiencing right along with my participants. There is delicacy required to impartially (as impartially as possible) opening a space for others to experience and form their own conclusions, contributing your knowledge without tainting their organic takeaways or guiding them to what you want them to get out of it, and sharing your own reactions to grow with your group.
 
My first Streamline experience was unfortunately an excellent trial run for professionalism vs. being human. I was as an assistant delegation leader with Alex's group from Phillips Theological Seminary. I had spent some time with them the couple of days prior, so we had some foundation for relationship-building. I sat in the front row next to a participant, a forty-something year-old woman with whom I had shared some decent conversation. I'm pretty sure she had also been one of these forty- to eighty-year-olds on this delegation who had given advice to me, this 23-year-old, as parents would. 

Sitting in the front row on the right side of the courtroom, we were the last thing defendants saw before they disappeared through the side door to await their return to detention. Most were led to the door with their lawyers and stopped to thank them, once in a while glancing over at the peanut gallery. 

But one man, probably in his thirties, in his last moments in the courtroom, paused and turned around just before passing through the door. He looked each one of us in the front row in the eye, and just nodded.

I took that as to mean he intended to thank us for being there, and I just cried. I hate crying, and for much of my life, I haven't. But this, I couldn't take it.

I've learned it takes something to be vulnerable with other people; to share yourself with other people. I'm still not good at it, but I don't know if anyone really ever is. 

Outside the courtroom afterwards, I had the opportunity to walk with her as the group migrated to the public defenders office, and I apologized for crying. She refused to accept my apology, and instead told me that it was powerful for me as a leader to experience that with them, and to acknowledge my own humanity. And that is why I say as I have to bring groups, and bring myself, to Streamline time in and time out, I don't want it to stop bothering me.

The first time, I remember feeling like it was a zoo. That, to be very blunt, we were a bunch of white people watching brown people led around in chains. As other people I have connected with through BorderLinks have said, it is just another facet of the criminalization of dark-skinned and indigenous people. And as my delegation co-leader from HEPAC, MaryCruz, says, "History does not repeat itself. We repeat history." We have choice in the matter. But we continue to tell people their way of life isn't valid, and whomever does not fit into our framework is cast aside and/or criminalized. And we silence them.



Voice.
To me, the most important piece of Streamline is voice. The voices that drown when you have an en masse hearing for 70 people. The voice that fill the courtroom versus the Spanish interpretation that flows only to the headsets of defendants who need them. The power of the voices of different judges as they vary in their approach from "Get me the heck out of here" and throwing three questions mumbled in succession at each individual, to "I really want to make sure that you understand your rights and that you know what you are agreeing to," to "Do you have anything you would like to say?"

Typically, even when a judge asks, "Do you have anything to say?", the answer is "No." However, it does happen that there is a precedent set by one person who speaks up, and then others follow suit. My first time at Streamline, a man in the very last group spoke up and said, "I just want to say that even though we came here illegally, no human being is illegal, and I just wanted you to know that." The judge could have ignored his comment or replied in any number of ways, but she said, "Thank you for saying that, and I'm sorry." I feel it was such a tragedy for only four other defendants to hear his message. What power that would have carried for the other 65.

Last time, near the last few groups, three out of five spoke up and shared their reasons for coming into this country without the requisite documents. One talked of his sick mother in Mexico that he had to send money back to. Another talked of reuniting with his son in the United States. And then a third said he needed to find work in the states to support his wife and three children back in Mexico.

The judge this time took it upon herself to tell each of them variations of this message: "I understand things are hard, but your family needs you to be safe and working back in Mexico. I know you want to do what is best for your family, but what is best is for you to be with them."

Clearly she was giving them the best advice she could think of. But first, that doesn't address the issue of separation from family in the U.S. And two, that demonstrates a lack of understanding on her part about the economic situation back home. That if there were work back home that paid enough to take care of their families, they would not have risked their lives to come here.

One man from Mexico was not wearing the earphones for interpretation, instead going through the entire court proceeding in English, signifying he had either practiced a lot of English in Mexico, or he had been in the U.S. a long time and was immersed. He used his voice in a way very powerful for us, which was not in front of the entire court, but when he reached the audience before going through the door, he said to us in perfect English, "Have a good day." Ay, mi corazon, my heart.

In my four times at Streamline, I've only seen one case thrown out because of a language barrier. Typically that would happen in the morning before the public proceeding, but this young man was just 18 years old, his first language was one I had never heard of, and when it was his turn at the front, his lawyer just noted to the court that they had some problems with understanding and asked for more time at the end. The lawyer claimed that they could go through the court proceeding because even though it was clearly evident that he did not understand everything that was being said, he had up to 8th grade education in Spanish and understood alright when it was written. The judge did a verbal evaluation with them after everyone else had left the courtroom, and she in agreement with, surprisingly, the prosecutor, advocated the case be thrown out.

This transpired under a female judge who spoke deliberately slowly and clearly and asked many times throughout the process for the defendants to confirm understanding or raise questions if they had any. She is the only one I heard ask if anyone wanted more time with their lawyer, and one defendant actually took her up on that, standing up and receiving a sidebar with his lawyer while the first group of five processed to the front for questioning. How would defendants know they have a right to and deserve more time with their representation?

And how do you listen to 70 people saying "culpable," "guilty," when they hang their heads to confirm they crossed the border without the permission of the mighty United States?

When it is in fact the responsibility of the mighty United States to prove they performed the action of crossing the border without permission at the specified time and place, like the prosecution asserts?

When they perhaps have a claim to asylum or derivative citizenship or another defense, but just didn't have enough time with their lawyers?

When if every single Streamline defendant chose to take their individual case to trial, it would overwhelm the system and who knows what would happen? 

But do you encourage defendants to do that when they resign themselves to being culpable and just want to get this over with so they can serve their time and get out of detention as soon as possible, rather than waste in detention waiting for a trial for an indefinite period of time?

When they know they could get out in 30 days, or 85 days, or 160 days to try to find work to feed their families? 

How do you bear witness to this? I have no good answer, and that is the struggle.


Further rhetorical questions:
What does it mean to be a witness? Do your best to acknowledge the humanity of others? How do you do that? Share someone's pain for that split second of eye contact? Share their joy that this process is over, or that they got a shorter sentence than it could have been? How in the world do you communicate numbness, anger, hurt, frustration, helplessness, etc. in a single glance?

There is no justice served here, in my opinion. This is when I feel most helpless in my job. But people in Tucson are doing something about it, from BorderLinks where we feel nearly every delegation should witness Streamline, to the End Streamline Coalition, which has more action-driven intentions - including a letter campaign to all lawyers and judges to demand them to recuse themselves from participating in Streamline, so as to jam the cogs in the machine.

And on October 11th (goodness, this was a long time ago!), people chained themselves to the federal courthouse gates and around two buses to prevent Operation Streamline prosecution and deportation proceedings, and they succeeded! "According to multiple sources, as a result of the three and a half hour long and continuing peaceful blockade, the court, for one of the only times in it’s history, cancelled the proceedings where detainees are presented in shackles in front of a judge and sentenced as a group" -  Tucson Blocking Deportation Buses

“'Anyone who witnesses Operation Streamline will come away convinced that it is both unconstitutional and immoral,' explains writer and author, Roberto Cintli Rodriguez. 'There is no justice in that courtroom. It violates every principle the US claims to ascribe to.  When humanity is confronted with unjust laws, it is our responsibility to challenge them.'” I have since met this author, who happens to be a professor at the University of Arizona, on several occasions because he is so active in the community, and I am amazed by how he shows up for different organizations working for immigration justice on top of his work in the classrooms about reinvisioning the colonial Americas and patterns of migration. And he makes the time to get to Streamline regularly to continue to be present, to continue to be a witness, just as we do.

If you're feeling overloaded already, just think I was about to make this blog post about three times as long! Instead, I decided to focus on the initial Streamline experiences and heart-mode in this post. In the next installment of Kathryn Witnesses Operation Streamline, I'll take the corporeal to the streets and dive into the intellectual/philosophical realms with some political theory and civil disobedience.

Hasta pronto,
Kathryn

Immigration 101

Hi friends, it's good to connect with you again! 

 

First, I want to bring a quick fundraising note to your attention. Every YAV is asked to raise $3000 to to contribute to their year of service, and each YAV site is asked to raise an additional $3000 per YAV (AKA $9000 between Heather, Amy Beth, and myself). The wonderful news is that the three of us Tucson YAVs have already met all our individual goals! In my case, my home church of St. Luke Presbyterian blew me away by fundraising for the Tucson YAV program through their Change for Change effort in the month of June, and many friends and family contributed as well through St. Luke. I am forever grateful to all who helped make my journey here possible through countless ways, including blowing the individual fundraising goal out of the water!

And here's another piece of exciting news that we learned today: three months into our YAV year, we are only $500 away from meeting our collective house goal! We would love to meet our house goal by the end of the year so that our site can stay financially afloat, make it possible to recruit more YAVs for next year, and keep deepening our connections with the Tucson community.

 

So if you are so moved, please consider supporting our social justice ministries on the border by helping us meet our Tucson YAV site house goal! You can do that by clicking the "donate" button on the upper left side of my blog site, or here: Tucson/Borderlands YAV Site 

 

Whether or not you can give/have given financially, thank you for your love and support!

 

Thanks from the Tucson YAVs! Under our Día de los Muertos face paint, that's me, Heather, and Amy Beth. Without your support, we would not have been able to experience this Mexican/Central American cultural tradition Tucson-style!

 

 

Switching gears to the actual work on the ground... 

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a young man who grew up in my home church who I had not connected with much over the years, but now he is a freshman in college! How life flies. Anyways, he told me he had to do a speech about border control and immigration, and as he knew I was down here working on the border, he wanted to ask me a few questions. As if I'm some sort of expert - I certainly do not feel like an expert, but I am very flattered!

 

The legal framework surrounding immigration policy is the second most complicated body of law in the United States, second only to our tax code. In my short time here, I can now definitively say immigration law is not a career path I intend to venture into, and I'm even more grateful to those who do dedicate their lives to it! All I can do is give some thoughts on my experience and point him towards some more resources and questions to research, but I took a bit of time to answer as comprehensively as I could (while boiling down the main points, and I'm sure oversimplifying an unimaginably complex issue), and I felt like sharing what I wrote with you all in case you are wondering about some of the things that are going on in my head these days within the broader national picture on immigration.

As for the three questions this young mind asked me to cover, here's a summary: what I'm doing at BorderLinks, three points to focus on in the speech, and why people want more or less control on the border. You may have seen or thought about some of these topics or points of view before, but here's everything in the neatest package I could tie up for you. Here goes!

At BorderLinks, I say that I am part social media master, part Program Organizer. I am in charge of maintaining our Facebook, blog, and website, as well as helping with some event planning, hosting workshops, and community outreach. On the Program Organizer side, in mid-November I will start leading delegations to show people the reality of the Borderlands by having groups meet with various community partners as well as cross the border to Mexico if they can do that. Our main goal is to create space for people to learn and reflect about the border and migration, and then hopefully inspire people to use their knowledge when they go back home.

Just a note, I approach this subject purely from a U.S.-Mexico border standpoint and primarily looking at migration from our neighbors to the south. However, there are other people as well that are coming from other countries, through our southern border or other ways, perhaps even on a temporary visa and then overstaying that visa to effectively become undocumented in the U.S. Also, I am focusing more on actual trends of immigration and border militarization than what's going on in the U.S. once people are here undocumented. If you want me to go into that, I can :-)

Three things I would recommend focusing on:

1) Strategy of deterrence. President Clinton politically needed to "get tough on immigration," so he was advised to expand the wall that started under Pres. H. W. Bush. First, the wall covered urban areas because they were the easiest to sneak through and blend into the crowd, and then people started going around, so the wall kept growing. The point was to make it so tough for people to cross that they would tell people back home, and fewer people would cross. But people kept going around the wall, and eventually the trend is that the wall is most lax around the Arizona desert, but people kept coming, and then they started dying in the desert. The government's intent was to make it so hard for people to cross that they wouldn't try anymore, but since people are still coming, in 2011 they started criminalizing immigration violations and detaining people for months instead of simply deporting them. This program called Operation Streamline exists in several cities, and at least in the Tucson sector, 70 people are arbitrarily chosen to get streamlined and criminally processed every single day within a span of a half hour to 1.5 hours. Sentences range from 30 days to 6 months in detention. The point is to look at the strategy of deterrence and how effective it is. 

 

2) Along those lines, with our current border enforcement strategy, are we really keeping out or punishing the people we want to keep out or punish with our criminal justice system? The Obama administration said they would target people who are considered "threats to society" for detention and deportation, but is that what has really happened? (Check out articles below)

3) In my mind, our approach to border security and immigration policy needs to address the root causes of immigration. What factors lead people to leave their homelands to face life or death, extortion, sexual violence, etc. countless times perhaps on top of trains from Central America, throughout migration routes in Mexico, across the border with a smuggler, and days of walking in the desert?


More control:

People are being smuggled across the border, drugs are being smuggled across the border, cartel violence south of our border affects the borderlands and spills over the border. And it is indeed a threat to national security to not know who all is living in your country. There are many economic arguments as well, such as undocumented immigrants are a drain on our social services and undercut our labor system by being willing to work in poorer conditions for less wages. Because people, drugs, and other things we don't want in our country keep coming across the border, the argument is to step up enforcement and pour more resources to stop these things from coming across. It would be helpful to research arguments around immigration and reform in general to know why people want to step up enforcement.

Less control:

I would perhaps think of this as more effective use of resources. When we look at the root causes of migration, we could instead try to work with sending countries to provide more economic opportunities and peaceful conditions so people wouldn't flee their homelands. Also, if we stopped targeting people who's only offense was crossing the border, we could shift resources from apprehending and deporting those people and also from paying detention centers to catching and prosecuting people who actually have committed crimes such as rape, murder, extortion, smuggling, etc.

One worrisome trend is the collaboration between local police and federal immigration authorities, which gets labeled "polimigra," police-migra (or border authorities) through the federal Secure Communities program. Especially in Arizona, state law SB 1070 makes it legal for local authorities to ask for documentation under reasonable suspicion, but police are in fact not required to either ask for documentation or call border patrol. However, the law is often abused, and people are pulled over for routine traffic stops and asked for their documentation, and if they are discovered to be undocumented, border patrol is called, people are held for longer than it is actually legal, and they are often deported. Many deportations happen as a result of routine traffic violations, and further, the trend is that people who are undocumented do not want to report an accident or crime for fear of being asked their status and then being deported.

Another aspect to think about is the environmental impacts. The wall not only tries to stop people, but it actively prevents many birds, plants, and animals from their natural roaming patterns. Additionally, the wall's construction disturbs the environment around it, and Border Patrol vehicles often go off-road and destroy the habitat in the process. Here's the Sierra Club Borderlands page if that helps: http://www.sierraclub.org/borderlands/

I would also like to point you towards a few good articles I've come across that could help, and since we're an educational organization, I have plenty more - just ask if you want more!

Check out this article from the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/not-one-more.html?_r=0. This obviously does not represent the opinion of everyone on the border or in the immigration debate, but it does encompass what a lot of people are looking for from the Borderlands.

Here is a comprehensive look at Congress' "Bed mandate" that perpetuates the system of criminalization and incarceration:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-26/congresss-illegal-immigration-detention-quota-costs-2-billion-a-year 

 

Here is another good look at militarization of the border - Todd Miller writes for Witness for Peace and also is on our BorderLinks board, which is a cool connection since I also used to work for Witness for Peace and am still involved as well.

http://www.witnessforpeace.org/article.php?id=1364

Hope that is helpful and all makes sense! If you have more thoughts or questions or want more resources, please do not hesitate to let me know. I am happy to help! 

 

All the best,

Kathryn