Bob Lee: I’m Bob Lee. I’m the editor of the People’s Tribune for those of you who may not know me, and along with our sister bilingual publication, Tribuno Del Pueblo. We’re happy to be among the sponsors of this series of very important webinars on the struggle for human rights along our Southern border. This is the fourth in this series of panels and I wanted to let you know that we are recording this discussion, and the recording will be posted later on the websites of the People’s Tribune and Tribuno Del Pueblo. With that, I’ll turn it over to our moderator for this panel, Leno Rose-Avila.
Leno Rose-Avila: Thank you. I want to tell you that I’m very excited. My name is Leno Rosa-Avila, and I’m part of this great coalition with the two newspapers, and Director of Building Bridges. A lot of us came together from all over the country because we wanted to do a caravan from Texas to Tijuana, but the coronavirus got us, and so we sat down and we said what alternative can we have? We said why don’t we host Zoom meetings and visit the same areas we wanted to. So what’s important is that we’re able to reach a lot of people from all over the country in this process. Today we have some very exciting voices, from the women I just met over the telephone and zoom, that we are going to be hearing from, but we have five very interesting speakers today. They’re going to talk about 10 minutes, and then try to save some time for the end for questions. The first one is Tania Garcia, she’s with Espacio Imigrante. She’s a lawyer with a PhD in sociology, coordinates the legal clinic for them in Tijuana and they provide dignity care and humanitarian assistance for the migrants there and people in the Tijuana area. Tania, can you give us your introduction.
Tania Garcia: Sure, thank you all, and it is so good to meet you in this new digital way, and thank you for the opportunity to share with you all what we have been documented and the way we have worked. Well, for those who don’t know what we do in Espacio Imigrante, we are anonprofit organization. We work to create a safe and exclusive space for the migrant community, but especially for children, young people, and families to receive humanitarian and dignified care. We are located in Tijuana. This worked with the community because we also have a small shelter, but we also have a lot of work with the community that has allowed us to know and live with them. The changes in the U.S. immigration policy have a really negative impact in the policies in Mexico, but also in the lives of the migrants that are seeking asylum in the U.S. And well, I think you know that since the creation of the MPP, the condition of the migrants in the city have become very complicated since they don’t have information and they have to be listed in order to apply for asylum in the United States, and then when they finally do they have to return to Mexico to await their process and now since Covid-19 and the closure of the border, this has represented a great challenge for them and for us as an organization. We had to completely restructure the work that we usually did and find a new way to approach them and try to help.
We have identified several changes faced by immigrants during this pandemic. For example, with this border closure asylum seekers are not being received on the metering and so the families already in MPP, they have to wait indefinitely. They have been abandoned by the U.S. and Mexico governments because there are no programs for them to apply for some help. This has had an impact on all, but these communities have very special needs. Most of them are undocumented. The ones on MPP have a permit, but it doesn’t allow them to work and so a lot of people have lost their jobs and that means that their living conditions are at risk. Suspending the MPP hearings means the families have to wait longer, and the families that were waiting for the last hearing in April or March and now they don’t know when they can finish this process. This has had a profound impact on mental health, so that is one of the things we have documented, the mental health, and in Tijuana there are not many organizations that can provide these kinds of services.
Also, for many people that have lost their jobs and have issues of housing and food security have been put at risk because there are no programs from the government. We have been trying to work in alliance with some other organizations such as IOM , Al Otro Lado, Haitian Bridge Alliance, and I know I’m forgetting a few, but we are trying to work on a program that we called Migrant Community Support to provide electronic cards so they can go to the supermarkets and buy some food.
We also have been working with the IOM as they have a filtered hotel, which involves families and migrants passing a quarantine, and now they are being able to refer to shelters for safe entry in health matters, as healthcare is one of the biggest issues that we are worried about here in Mexico because they cannot have access in a regular time now especially with Covid. Healthcare is one of the most important things they should have guaranteed. That’s why we need to find new strategies to deal with these kinds of problems. And also, migrants have their own ways to try to go through all these challenges, as a lot of people have lost their homes and have to go to their networks like friendships to ask them to live with them meanwhile they find another job and ensure an income, and now have the possibility to pay rent and buy food. These are the things that we have been dealing with, and about housing here in Baja, California there is no program that helps them to secure that, so they have to go to shelters, but also during the pandemic most of the shelters close their entries, so now with the filter Hotel of the IOM, now there is a possibility for them to be referred to a shelter.
And, of course, legal representation keeps being a problem here in Tijuana for their cases in the US. There was no easy access to it before the pandemic and now it’s even worse. A lot of people don’t know what to do because they have to wait for a longer time and they are really worried about their process, if they have been canceled or not. So, we are trying to refer them to Al Otro Lado and HIAS, the two organizations that have legal advice for processing in the US, but we know that they have a lot of work.
Here in Tijuana, as I am a Mexican attorney, I work with refugees and asylum seekers here in Mexico, but also because a lot of people don’t know how many more months they have to wait, I’m working to ensure access to the right of education. Here in Tijuana, the state of Baja California there is a program for the Ministry of Education and so we are working as a link between the migrant community and this Ministry of Education to ensure this access. A lot of people, before the pandemic, they weren’t sure if to enlist their kids to school because, well, they thought that they were going to cross and they would be able to at enlist them in the US, but now as they don’t know how much more time they have to wait now they are willing to let the kids go to school. This is another kind of problem because this is a new way they have to work, like a digital work, they have to have internet or they have to have like a cell phone or a smartphone or a computer and a tablet, and so we’re trying to work with that kind of thing, and this with mental health are two of our biggest concerned because in regard to e-wallets and cards for the grocery shopping, we are working with some other organizations and we have been able to make like a GoFoundMe process and to get more resources to help families.
Leno Rose-Avila: You have one minute.
Tania Garcia: Yes, sure. Thank you. So, this has been a really difficult time for everybody, for the migrant community, but we are really glad that we have the opportunity to work in Alliance with some other organizations and to try to dignify, just a little, the state for them in Tijuana. So, thank you very much for the opportunity.
Leno Rose-Avila: Thank you, Tania. That was wonderful. Just so everyone is reminded, we’re trying to allow time at the end for questions. If you put your questions in the chat line, they’ll come to us. I’d like to introduce to you a woman I met a couple of years ago, Yolanda Varona, who’s the Director of Dreamers Moms, and she’s a mother who has a daughter who is a Dreamer in the United States, like a lot of other mothers, and she was deported during a difficult time in her life to Mexico without any support or anything. Yolanda if you can speak in some phrases, I can try my best to translate. So, here’s Yolanda Varona.
Yolanda Varona: (Already in Spanish)
Leno Rose-Avila: One of the things that I know from going to Tijuana regularly, is they do a lot of activities with the mothers. One of the things that I went to was a Mother’s Day event. Carolyn and I were there, and it was very beautiful to see the dreamer’s moms and sometimes their children come to the border and they put a mesh over there at the Friendship Park, so you can put your hands through there, so people put their pinky there. They call it the pinky kiss, where you touch their families. It may not seem like a lot, but I’ve pinky kissed a couple of people and it’s electric, but for some people that’s as close as they can get. There’s a lot of tears. They do a lot of activities, and they get used clothing donations and other things that they go sell to raise money. Along with the Veterans, they do activities around Thanksgiving and other holidays and Christmas. All of these groups that are working in Tijuana need help. Obviously one of the things that Yolanda did not say is for those people who would like to have a further conversation, she has done Zoom meetings or workshops, and she can do that so people could have that. The other thing is that she’s invited all over the country to speak on behalf of women, and women working at the border. Our next speaker is Carolina Cortes, and she’s related, unfortunately, to one of our committee members, Laura. She works for Border Kindness. I met her recently. One of the things that impresses me about Carolina is that she’s a real active student and is really wanting to use her time, and then the Covid-19 interrupted her plans. She was in Germany studying and working, and she has had a lot of different experiences, including working for somebody by the name of Senator Kamala Harris, so I’m going to invite Carolina to talk a little bit of her work and her dreams. Carolina.
Carolina Cortez: Hello, good afternoon everyone. My name is Carolina Cortez, and I’m actually coming to you from Mexicali, so I’d be glad to answer any questions that pertain specifically to Mexicali. I am currently working with Border Kindness, and I managed the children’s Empowerment Center. We are a fairly new nonprofit organization. We began in Fall of 2018, so about two years ago with our Executive Director Kelly Overton just bringing clothes to the migrants in Mexicali in his car, sleeping in his car, and trying to help in any way that he could. Over the past two years, we have grown exponentially. We started with a staff of about two to three people and we’re at 20 right now, about to be 25 in the next couple of weeks, and with that our services have also grown here in Mexicali which I will briefly talked about and briefly mention before talking specifically about the Children’s Empowerment Center and the work that we’re doing to try and provide some sort of education and help to all of the migrant adolescents, but also local adolescents here year in Mexicali, as well.
We provide legal services to the migrant community here in Mexicali. That meant pairing up migrants with lawyers to help with other organizations, providing transportation for migrants to get to their MPP Immigration Court hearings in Tijuana. That was a lot of the work that we were doing before Covid-19 and we plan on continuing that once the immigration court situation starts back up. As of right now we are just the middleman between the migrant community and I would say the immigration courts to get them the correct information of when their next court date is. We all know that those dates are getting pushed back and a lot of the time these people don’t have a way of getting that information if it’s not coming to our office and asking directly.
We also have a full service Medical Clinic, which has been up and running throughout the Covid pandemic. A lot of the people that we help need prenatal care, so that’s very exciting that we’re able to help women gain access to all of the help that they need to get them through their pregnancy. We have had a couple patients that tested positive for Covid, so taking the necessary precautions to get them the help that they need here in Mexicali. And very exciting, but we’re about to open sort of like a Food Kitchen in the next couple of weeks to provide migrants with healthy and nutritious food. A lot of times it’s the only access that they have to getting food whether it means that morning or that day. We’re really excited to be partnering with a lot of really great organizations that will be helping us donate, but that kitchen will be run independently and will be providing large quantities of food to the shelters here in Mexicali.
We also have a student center, which is the thing that I primarily do. That’s kind of what I manage. Our goal right now has kind of shifted, as the entire education space has shifted, into providing local students and migrants with access to technology, so they have the opportunity to continue their education online. This has been specifically challenging because of either a lack of awareness how to use technology such as basic things, like the programs that teachers are using to reach their students, or just not knowing how to use a computer, not knowing how to use a smartphone, or just not having Internet or a reliable space to get Wi-Fi. We’re really excited to have and be able to provide that space for students following safety precautions and taking all of the precautions very seriously. But the space is open. We have access to computers. We have Internet. We have printing, and all of these things are free of charge for anyone that shows up to the Student Center. We are also providing tutoring for students whose education has either been disrupted because of their journey from their home country to the border. A lot of these kids haven’t had formal education in about a year, a year and a half, so we’re trying to provide a service where we analyze where the students are and how we can help them improve without actually having a student be enrolled in the education system, which is another challenge in itself for the migrant parents or the migrant community.
We’re also partnering with other organizations to provide educational programming for the students. This is specifically geared towards migrant kids that can’t actually enroll into the education system here in Baja California and these classes will include basic computer skills, coding. We’re hoping to do English classes. We’re really excited to use Virtual Reality technology, to give these kids, these youths, not only just hope and have them view education, have them view learning as a way to improve, not only themselves, but hopefully their future, but also using this as an opportunity for them to find their own interest, their own passions and develop their own unique set of interests despite the usually very, very challenging situations that they’re in. Like I said, I would be happy to answer any questions that there are about Mexicali, what the situation is currently like in Mexicali, or anything specifically geared towards the education or the challenges a lot of the youths and adolescents are facing right now during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Leno Rose-Avila: Carolina, before I let you go, we have 2 minutes here. I wonder if you could share, because I was very impressed because you’re a bit younger than some of us, coming back to Mexicali in the area, what motivated you to want to work with an organization like this with so many challenges as a young person?
Carolina Cortez: I have personal ties to Mexicali. I live here now. My parents are from here and my family’s from here, so for me it’s a little bit more of an emotional tie because I’ve always seen a lot of the inequality and the poverty that there is here, especially when you come from California. I’m from California, so you see a lot of the wealth and privilege that we have just from being in the United States. My time in Mexicali has always been like a wake-up call to the true amount of world and inequality that there actually is, and I know that Mexicali is only a certain grade or a degree of poverty, but I’m just very passionate about like working in whatever way I can to come to diminish and help the levels of an inequality globally. I’m very interested in working with communities from Latin America. I’m Mexican, so I feel like this is my own way of giving back to my community, but a lot of the times we think of our community as Mexican-Americans or people that identify as Latinx in the United States, but I think a lot of the times we forget about the people that are still living in Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala and how their struggles can sometimes be a lot more challenging than what we might face and the privilege of living in the US.
Leno Rose-Avila: Great, thank you very much. I’m impressed that you would go and work for that organization and go back to your roots. Now we’d like to hear from Hector Barajas. I started going because my wife was doing some volunteer work with Maria Hornales and some other people at Al Otro Lado, which is a legal firm there in Tijuana and when I went, I went as a spectator and people kept talking to me about this group, Deported Veterans. I said, how can they deport a veteran. It was insane. I said, if they’ve been a veteran how can the government deport them, so I went in search of Deported Veterans and when I met Deported Veterans I also met the Dreamers Moms. The story of the Deported Veterans is one that America needs to know about, so I’d like to invite my brother Hector Barajas to talk about himself in his work. Hector.
Hector Barajas: Hi, good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon, Leno, and I see everybody that I’ve met. My name is Hector Barajas. I was born in Fresnillo, Zacatecas in1977. I came to the United States like many immigrants as a young child, or either as an adult, and eventually I ended up getting a green card through my parents. I enlisted in the U.S. military at the age of 17 and eventually went on to basic training when I turned 18. I ended up enlisting for 4 years and then re-listing for another three, so I did a total of 6 years served. I served with the 82nd Airborne. I didn’t serve in combat, but I put my life on the line at various times in airborne operations. While in the military, I started having problems with alcohol and addiction and after my honorable discharge it continued about six months after I got out. I ended up in a situation where somebody fired a weapon at another vehicle and went to prison for 3 years. After my prison sentence, I thought I was just going to get paroled, or I was supposed to parole and get out. I did have an immigration hold in Bakersfield INS. Sure enough the U.S. Marshals picked me up, put me on an airplane, kind of like Conair, and sent me over to Iloilo, Arizona where I fought my case for a year, ended up getting deported in 2004, and then I just decided Mexico’s not for me and I snuck back into the country 6 months later. Laid low and for the first time in my life I actually had to live as an undocumented person, like working or putting up with difficult jobs, or seeing how people would get treated. I remember I used to work as a roofer in the union and they would tell me, “your time starts when you get on the roof,” and it took an hour to load the roof, so it was those kinds of things. Always getting pulled, maybe 10 times, got my vehicle impounded because I didn’t have a driver’s license and then eventually I got pulled over for a traffic violation and got deported for the second time. This time I had a life deportation and I had started a family, I had a young child and I was just tired of hiding.
I wanted to do things the right way, so I started using social media. I started telling people my story and I thought it was going to be something quick, but it took me 10 years out of the United States this last time. Officially I was deported for 14 years and I started organizing, connecting with people when I first started out. I had a little list of people that I knew were deported and now I have a list of people from 50-something countries. All over the world from the Philippines to the UK to predominantly people from Mexico. We think it’s either a couple hundred, if not thousands of people have been deported since 1996. We’re talking about 20-something years of deportation of US veterans. Nobody’s really done anything about it. When I started organizing it was prior to my second deportation. There was already a couple people organizing, maybe three or four people. When I got deported, I opened up. I turned my apartment into a place where people could stay at and I didn’t have any real set goals, it was just, like come stay with me. It’s good to do things just out of the blue, but you really have to put things in order and have a mission and goals.
Leno Rose-Avila: Hector, can you say how they offered you citizenship as an immigrant?
Hector Barajas: Sure. They didn’t. When I was in the military, I was never offered citizenship or how to do it. One of the things that I do tell people is that even though there is a process in the military to become a citizen, there’s no program, and I’ve heard people say we’ll hold your hand on how to shoot a rifle, on how to march, so why not ensure that you hold that individual’s hand to make sure that you take care of them. That’s part of being a squad leader, a supervisor. It’s kind of like if you’re a Walmart employee there’s a 501k or 401k, then show that person what it is and help them. So, I just started organizing and, unfortunately, through a lot of different things, I ended up being homeless at some point. I ended up being strung out for a couple months. I’ve been suicidal. I’ve been through all the ups and downs of being a deportee and when I decided to do this the second time, I decided to use what I’ve learned in the military, some of the discipline. Also, being imprisoned you got to be disciplined. There’s rules and regulations, and I went from creating forms on dealing with the guys because I’ve always struggle with telling them what to do, like “hey, turn off the lights,” you know, “we’re going to get up a certain hour,” and they wouldn’t listen to me, so I created a little form. These are the rules, you screw up three times and you’re out, those kinds of things. I started implementing ways of organizing the house and organizing other people.
Right now we have another support house in Juarez and online bunkers, like the Dominican Republic, which I’ve been there personally, Haiti, Costa Rica and different places. Right now we ended up turning into a resource center so we provide shelter, we provide food depending on what kind of things have been donated. Right now, with the pandemic it’s gotten kind of slow. Also, clothing, hygiene products, we connect the veterans with job placement with the call centers. We also provide legal assistance through the partners that we work with like the ACLU, public counsel, psychological and emotional support. We have people that volunteer their services. We’ve had people that have done yoga for individuals one-on-one, peer-to-peer. Now with Covid, it’s also going to be easier because we can do stuff via Zoom. We do community events, like Thanksgiving dinners, we observe all major U.S. holidays and those are the times when we usually do observance at the border and we get media to cover those things. We do funeral details. We’ve had men pass away on this side of the border, so I’ve personally done a couple of funeral details, which to me it’s the odd part about it when we do take some of the bodies across. Obviously they can if they have an honorable discharge, they can get their full military honors and they’re honored by the United States. To me it’s morally wrong.
We work with state and federal and County legislators, so we’ve gotten State legislation passed on the federal level. We’ve helped introduce legislation and then we’ve also passed county bills, like San Diego County, where we have a vet program that still hasn’t been placed because of Covid, and we’ve had all kind of authorities visit Tijuana from Senators, we’ve had three or four Congressional visits from Tammy Duckworth to Congressman Vargas and have on different people. I recently have been asked to speak before Congress, as well, and I know some of you don’t like Donald Trump, but I went to the State of the Union and for me it was important because I was able to connect with different allies, and just to see what that thing’s kind of about. It was interesting. Last week, I spoke with Isla Map (?) for their fundraising event and they are, basically, again the military doesn’t provide really any legal assistance, so some of the attorneys that are in the military that help these veterans are not experts, so Isla Map (?) actually partners up with these attorneys and they actually assist these -duty people and their family members to get a naturalization. That’s kind of what we do, we do a lot of different things.
Just going into how I ended up back in the United States, I was able to get a pardon through governor Jerry Brown about six months before April 13th of 2018 when I got my citizenship, but it took me about five years to get my citizenship. They were trying to deny me at one point because I grew up in Compton, California with a group of a lot of gang members and some of those guys I still talk to because they’re deported and they live here, and they were trying to deny me for moral character because I talk to these guys. Basically, I talk to all of these gang members because it’s more of a social interaction, not like we’re going to plan like the next drive-by or anything, so the government was kind of crazy about going after me even the same day that I was supposed to naturalize. They were alleging that I had lied to them about how many times I had crossed the border because this newspaper published that I had crossed more than three times and they literally had me get on the phone with my attorney and we had to go back and forth with documents. Had I lied to them they wouldn’t have let me cross that specific day, but finally we went over everything and I became a U.S. citizen on April 13th of 2018.
As far as I know, I’m the only person that’s ever become a citizen after having a criminal record and being deported twice. It’s been through the help of many people, like organizations like the ACLU and some of the legislators and the allies that we create today, like Leno and everybody else that keep our spirits up. Many other men have also gotten pardons. We have over half a dozen men that are in the process of returning home. We help many men with their VA benefits. We’ve gotten over 20 people their VA benefits that’s anywhere from a couple $100 to $3,000 a month, and in Mexico $3,000 a month is a large amount of money. That’s pretty much it. I want to thank you guys for having me on here. I’m kind of horrible at public speaking but if anybody wants to reach out, they can through our Facebook. We also have various documentaries. One that was done by Showtime, it’s called Ready for War and talks about the different situations that veterans go through, and it was co-produced by Drake as well. Look us up on Google, my name or Deported Veterans and you’ll see a lot of media done on us, but the average American still does not know about Deported Veterans, and we want to thank you guys for giving us this opportunity so we can bring our men and women home. Again, thank you.
Leno Rose-Avila: Thank you, Hector. I don’t know Dulce’s come on, who is our next speaker. Is Dulce in there? Does anybody see her?
Dulce Garcia: I’m here.
Leno Rose-Avila: Oh, you were hiding from me. So, Dulce has been real. Border Angels has been around over 25 years on both sides of the border. They do amazing work, and I was able to, some months ago, go with them when they did a water drop and it took some reporters with us. One of the great things is that all of the volunteers that they’ve gotten, have provided a lot of food and materials over the years to people in Tijuana, but right now everything is pretty much shut down with the virus. One of the things that I found interesting when I finally tracked down Dulce, she probably thought I was stalking her, but she is an immigration attorney, she’s a DACA recipient and she was also one of the plaintiffs that went before The Supreme Court, so I want to welcome you Dulce to this event. Tell us your story, sister.
Dulce Garcia: Yes. Thank you, Leno for this space. I want to start off by saying that Border Angels, our mission is one based of love, but it’s an active kind of love, and sure enough the water drop program is one of our signature programs here at the border and it has the aim of reducing the amount of deaths of people that are crossing through our desert, specifically here in our San Diego deserts. I want to give a few facts, the reason why we have to do this work as a direct result of the inhumane policies that are in place and have been in place for a number of years, so not unique to this administration, but as a result of this administration and this presidency, we certainly have had the last few years be more difficult when doing our water drops. In 2018, the border patrol reported 283 deaths. These are deaths that have been confirmed where border patrol has physically recovered or seen and confirmed these deaths in our desert. So many other more people go missing in the desert and are never found or are unaccounted for or mislogged and not logged in or recorded as a migrant crossing through the desert. It was said earlier, one example could be the mom that’s missing that we know attempted crossing and then we never hear from them. In our office now, the new thing that we’re realizing as we’re getting calls from people who say my person was supposed to have crossed through the ocean and they’re missing now, so now we’re seeing the boats that are tipping over and people are dying in our oceans. People are still dying in our rivers as well, and this is a direct result of funneling people to their deaths. As things like Operation Gatekeeper and other criminalization of our immigrant community, other policies and laws that were being put in place are funneling people to their deaths for many years now. For 2019, the numbers are not out, we can only speculate. Border patrol is not releasing them, yet, even though they’re overdue for a year. We think maybe because they’re higher than usual, but they’re not reporting those. But we know that thousands of people have died crossing through our desert.
As I was hearing Hector talk about funerals, we’ve been providing support as well for family members of people that we know passed away in the desert in the last couple years. We have noticed the trend where it’s not just the single male that’s crossing, but we also find items in the desert that indicate that it’s families that are crossing. Again, as a direct result of essentially dismantling the asylum process we see diapers in the desert, little kids backpack, little shoes, women hygiene products as we’re dropping supplies in the desert. As a result of the pandemic, we stopped doing our public water drops where we would have even a hundred people at any one weekend in the desert and instead we’re strategically dropping water in small groups with folks that are experienced and have done water drops. Our team is out there even if its 120 degree weather, and we expect tomorrow that it’ll be over a 110 degrees and our team’s going to be there to dropping water led by our co-directors, James Cordero, who happens to be in that famous list that was released, like a watch list, that the government keeps of immigration lawyers, activists, journalists, and one of our co-water drop directors, and the other director Jackman Arellano, who also does these water drops, have noticed the increased harassment of border patrol and that is a little different from what we experienced before this administration and the emboldenment of border patrol.For the first time in the many years that we have doing this work, we’ve had to assemble a legal team in case one of us gets arrested dropping supplies in the desert or blankets in the winter in the mountains.
We started this year our bond program because people, when they show up at our doors, instead of welcoming them, we put them in detention centers, asylum seekers. I want to share with you guys the recent trend that we see ICE is asking of these folks. These are folks that flee from Cameroon, that flee from Mauritania, African countries with nothing on their back and have suffered through so much trauma. Then we’re asking them for $18,000, $21,000, $15,000, $12,000. These are the most recent requests received in the last week or so $10,000, $10,000, and $12,000 and these from African countries, as well as Haiti, Cuba and China. It’s no coincidence that our Black folks are the ones that are having to go through all of these hoops that the government puts on them and then asks for, essentially, a ransom in the thousands of dollars to release these folks. So, Border Angels, again this work is not done in isolation, none of this is done in isolation, but we’ve been able to bond 56 people just this year alone. When the pandemic hit we were placing bonds on 7 sometimes in a week, so this year we’ve been able to place bonds for 56 people that did not die of Covid because we were able to get them, but people are still dying and ICE is still refusing to release folks even from Adelanto when we know there’s an outbreak of Covid-19, and when we’re ready and willing to bond these folks out, they shut down the process where we can’t even get these folks out.
To give an idea of who the folks that are migrating are, as quick example, there’s a gentleman who migrated from Cameroon through Brazil, spent six months in an immigration detention center in Mexico and then after traveling through 13 countries, the UC put him in a detention center in Otay Mesa for another 6 months. This guy, after having seen his family be killed in front of him, and suffered third-degree burns himself, he was put in a detention center, and then asked for, I think in his case, it was $7,500 or $10,000 that were being asked of him to be released. That’s just a very small glimpse into what these folks are going through as they are migrating to our countries and asking for help as asylum seekers.
We’ve been able to support over 12 shelters in Tijuana and provide direct monetary assistance because of Covid-19. Last year we would line up even 20 to 25 cars and take donations as Leno was saying. We haven’t been able to do that this year, but we’re still providing monetary support and so we know of shelters that have, like a broken fridge, for example, we just provided a brand new fridge to another shelter this week. Washer and dryers, we’re going through a pandemic and we tell them to keep everything neat, clean and disinfect everything, but if you don’t have a dryer and you’re dependent on the sun it’s challenging. It’s challenging to isolate 100 to 200 people in a shelter and especially when you don’t have the supplies to even buy masks. So we’ve been able to provide masks, some medicine, and monetary support so they can buy the supplies that they need to make it through the pandemic.
We just started this year our brand new Green Card for Kids Program, where we provide legal assistance to the children that are in the custody of the Riverside county that are perhaps eligible for something called SIJS, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, so kids that have suffered abuse, neglect, or abandonment by one or both parents, and end up in the custody of the state, in this case of Riverside County, may qualify for something called special immigrant juvenile status and we provide legal support so these children can go through this process. That allows them to then apply for legal permanent residency and then eventually citizenship. This month we received notice that we have two of these kids that may possibly become naturalized US citizens. That’s our Green Card for Kids Program. Again, we wish we don’t have to do any of this work, that’s our hope, that’s our goal. To one day not have to be dropping water in the desert, but unfortunately, since it’s needed we’re going to keep doing this work even through a pandemic even in nice weather like this one, but I can talk all day and I know about these issues including other efforts here in San Diego County to change the laws and policies locally, and to shut down the detention center.
Then I will say this, if you haven’t registered to vote, please, please vote and register as many people as you can to vote. We cannot stand four more years of this. Not that things were great before or that thing’s going to get solved with one election, but we have suffered as I mentioned before an increased amount of pain, especially as an undocumented person and especially here on our border. So, please, please vote and register as many people as you can to vote, and vote for immigrant rights and make sure that everyone you know has filled out the census. There’s hope. If I can say that in my last 10 seconds, we haven’t lost hope. The silver lining in all of this is that there are people stepping up on the Tijuana side of the Border as you know from these wonderful colegas and compas doing the great work in Tijuana, and also on this side of the border, so there’s hope. That’s the silver lining. Border Angels is 100% funded by the people for the people. We don’t get any government grants whatsoever, nothing, it’s people that are doing bake sales selling earrings like this one for $10. There are people that are doing designs on t-shirts. There was one that did abolish ICE on a cake and sold that cake. Pencils. There was a person that raised $3,800 selling a pencil that said abolish ICE on there. That’s how we’ve been able to bond 56 people and provide assistance for over 12 shelters in Tijuana, so there’s hope. Thank you.
Leno Rose-Avila: Gracias. There is hope for everyone, until we see victory. We have some time for questions. People in the chat room send some questions and we can try to get them asked while we still have our panelist here. Don’t be shy, we have time. It is important to send the message that you were doing Dulce because that’s one of the reasons that we started doing this effort because we wanted to bring to light the conditions of the border across the United States because immigration has always been a major issue in these elections and we wanted to give people a reason to vote. I will be doing an executive summary on the 29th, we have one more panel after this one, then the executive summary on the 29th of October to talk to the media about what we found and themes across the border. Then, we hope to have a final document afterwards on white paper that we can send out to people, and that we can take to the UN, the OAS and other human rights bodies to tell them what we found because people seem to forget with everything else that’s going around and people don’t understand how much the pandemic has hurt people of color in the United States. In particular, people on the borders on both sides. Are there any questions that we are getting in? Go ahead Laura, you’re the boss.
Laura Garcia: There’s a question for Hector as to how many veterans have been deported.
Hector Barajas: We really don’t know. That’s one of the things that’s been introduced in the legislation, is for ICE to track veterans. We really wouldn’t know because this has been going on since the 90s and even beforehand. They don’t ask you, when I went to prison and in county jails, they actually asked me whether I was a veteran, and they are able to give statistics for those kind of things, but Homeland Security still refuses to do that, so we have no idea. I have about 500 people on my list. That’s just a very small number of people.
Laura Garcia: There’s another question, who is able to go back and forth across the border in Tijuana at this time? That’s for any of the panelists. So who is able to cross the border back and forth?
Tania Garcia: I think I can answer that. The ones that are able to cross back and forth are the citizens and residents or someone that has an essential activity in the U.S., so we as tourists cannot go, the asylum seekers cannot cross, just them.
Laura Garcia: There’s another question, how many migrants are in Mexicali and Tijuana? Not migrants, asylum seekers. Sorry.
Carolina Cortez: I can go first. I think as of now, our executive director just gave me this number this morning, but the numbers have significantly reduced since the pandemic started and over just the course of the past two years. I think as of now we’re probably at around 500 to 1,000, which is significantly less than about two years ago when there were between 2500 and 5000 in Mexicali.
Laura Garcia: So what about in Tijuana?
Tania Garcia: We actually don’t know the number because we don’t have a census and a lot of the asylum seekers are not in shelters, but there the thought that there might be more than 5,000 because there are the asylum seekers, like the ones that are on MPP, the ones there are listed in the metering, and the ones that want to get enlisted, so we have like three categories that goes to the same way. I just want to answer the question that I just saw about the volunteers. If you are a resident or a citizen, you can cross the border, but if you are not then you just can’t. They might ask you at the gate why do you cross to Tijuana, but you shouldn’t have a lot of problems.
Leno Rose-Avila: Any more questions?
Laura Garcia: Have citizens been arrested for aiding migrants in the desert? This is for Dulce.
Dulce Garcia: We saw the prosecution of Dr. Scott Warren in Arizona for doing similar work and when that trial resulted in a hung jury, meaning they didn’t find him guilty, they used resources to then prosecute him a second time, and again, they lost the case and they found him not guilty, but it was definitely as a message that we’re criminalizing humanitarian aid. And this is a white man, right, Dr. Scott Warren. That’s why we have a lot of fear for those of us that are not white men to do this kind of work, particularly to be in the desert doing this kind of work, and that’s why I had to assemble a legal team. There are facilities, No Mas Muertes has been raided during the summer a couple of times and they were arrested. They’re definitely making a case out of their humanitarian aid work.
Leon Rose-Avila: Any more questions, Laura?
Laura Garcia: Are the vigilante numbers growing?
Dulce Garcia: Oh my goodness, so when we’ve been in the desert we see our gallons being used as target practice. We don’t know if it’s Border Patrol, we don’t know if it’s the surrounding community members, but we’re in the desert and sometimes during our water drops we hear the gunshots happening and we see people with their target practice happening. As you’re going through the desert you see thousands and thousands of shells and casings of signs that people are shooting through there, and it’s heartbreaking to see that our water gallons are being used that way for target practice, so we think like these folks are hopefully, hopefully, acting out of ignorance and not out of hate. I mean if you’re a migrant crossing in the middle of the desert and you hear these gunshots, you can only imagine what’s happening, especially if you’re running from civil unrest. You know you’re running from a country where you’re literally running away from your government and trying to save your own life or the life of your child. It’s terrifying, but yeah, just 2 weeks ago we saw people practicing in the desert. You know, we’ve seen the videos of border patrol slashing our gallons of water. Yes, we’ve seen harassment by border patrol where they’re taking note of our vehicles when we’re out in the desert. They’re making their presence known. They definitely approached us in a different manner of what they used to do before. My very first water drop in 2014, the border patrol agent approached us with the intent of educating us and having a real conversation with him. That has not been the case in the last couple of years. The approach has been more aggressive.
Leno Rose-Avila: Can you talk about how you mark the water that you put out?
Dulce Garcia: Yeah, we constantly change the way that we drop these supplies in the desert and that’s because we’re collaborating with other folks and learning from other people that been doing this work as well, like No Mas Muertes. Now we place water differently, we wrap it up differently, but what has stayed the same is the messages that we write on the bottles, messages of encouragement. Just over the summer, we received a call from a family member’s wife of a man that was missing in the desert and he was able to place a phone call in the desert telling her that he had a used one of our water gallons during his journey and was lost in the desert. Unfortunately, Jose passed away and the wife had to say goodbye to him through the phone in the desert, but the wife was really grateful that because of that water gallon he had reached, he was able to place this call and say his goodbyes to her and have a little extra time for him in this life, but we often get calls later of people saying, you know that pair of socks kept my toes from freezing or you know I was going to give up and then I read on the water gallon a message of encouragement saying you’re almost there, or you’re loved and you’re welcomed. Bienvenido. Keep following your path. People get encouraged by reading that message and as I started this conversation, our mission is one of love, but it’s active, and this is one way that we transmit that love to our neighbor by writing these messages on these bottles and we often get calls later saying how encouraging it was for those folks.
Laura Garcia: Yeah, there are. What are the numbers of farmworkers crossing into the US and back into Mexico in California. Does anyone know?
Dulce Garcia: I don’t have those numbers of specifically farmworkers, but that’s a good opportunity to address the immigration policies, so as I mentioned, I’m undocumented, so one of the estimated 11 million people in this country and the laws that I was referring to earlier, what it caused was it created 5 million of us undocumented in this country, in the US, and what we refer to as this golden cage where we can’t leave and the purpose of that was to stop encouraging people from coming into the country. The unintended consequence of that is that it kept us here so we’re not going back and forth across the border but we have settled here and created roots here in the U.S., so you have this situation where you have people like me that have been here for over 30 years without a path to citizenship, without a path to become a legal permanent resident, so I’m undocumented and the only protection I have right now is DACA and only because we sued the president to defend it. If this President gets elected, I’m probably going to be one of those people that is going to end up in a detention center and is going to require a bond myself. That’s the reality that we still have today in 2020. Now when the president was elected, there’s a study that showed there was a net zero migration happening for Mexico. The same amount of people that were coming into the US were the same amount of people that were leaving the US, so there was a net zero migration and so the whole idea that we needed to stop immigrants from coming over was politicized, but it was factually wrong. Undocumented people, like myself, have been here in the US for a long time and want to remain here in the US, but we have no path to citizenship and we have no ability to travel across the border, and now that the President has doubled down on criminalizing our community. So, we see now with this Administration, incarceration of people that are coming across the border unlawfully.
Laura Garcia: This one is for Tanya, I believe. How do asylum seekers receive updates on their MPP hearings? Are the judges assigned by DHS or public officials?
Tania Garcia: So, the asylum seekers have a number, like the alien number, the number they call their case number so they can call to a number that is given to them to ask for their date, for their next hearing, or they can go online and check in the Department of Justice at justice.gov. They can check their hearing, so what they do is because now they know they can do that and it’s getting easier for them because they have to do that a lot of times. They can go online or they call the organizations they usually go to, and we can help them to check that, but they do not receive like an email or a call or anything, so they have to check for themselves. About the judges, I actually don’t know how they are assigned on the cases.
I just want to say something I remembered about the vigilantes or the hate groups, there is the Southern Law Poverty Center, they do hate reports every year, and actually it’s very interesting because they work with the hate groups in all the United States and they do have located an anti-immigrant hate groups on the border and across the United States, so if you can check that out it’s very, very interesting. Also, I did check that last year and there is an increasing number from the time that Trump got into the administration because his speech has been all criminalization and stuff. So, you can check that just us and additional information. Thank you.
Laura Garcia: Thank you. This is for everyone and I think it’s very important. Would it be possible to share all links and places to donate and support all of this? Are there any emails and be sent, if possible, to everyone who registered to this talk? And Bob said yes, he will make that available. That’s all I have.
Leno Rose-Avila: No other questions?
Laura Garcia: No questions, but a lot of thank yous.
Leno Rose-Avila: I want to mention a couple of things if you let me speak, Laura. I have to ask for permission. One of the important parts of this work is that since we started along the border in Brownsville and Tamaulipas, it’s incredible, the courage that people have working. I know for those of you in Mexicali, and all of those that are here in Tijuana, you risk your health and well-being because the government doesn’t want us, both the Mexican and U.S. government, doesn’t want you to be doing what you’re doing, and so I’m always in awe of the of the good work that’s done with very little resources. These are not multimillion-dollar agencies. People sacrifice and to see somebody like Carolina come in, who is part of our youth and energy that we need in this movement. And the other thing that struck me as we go across the country, the number of women who have been our panelists. If we would have done this 25 years ago eran puros caballos or men, and it shows that at least we’re beginning to recognize as a community, the strength of good men as well as some great women in doing this work, and that’s what makes it available.
Prior to the coronavirus, I was taking the delegations into Tijuana and now that I know Carolina would be going into Mexicali once we can cross the border, but our issue was that when we took activists across the border and they met people, and they met people like Dulce on this side of the Border, that gave them more reason to talk about immigration and to be able to donate and get involved because immigration change and work doesn’t mean you have to have all the degrees or all the knowledge or all the resources. We just have to have el Corazon, the heart to want to do the work. And the other reasons these people are there are legal, moral and spiritual, but I think the important part is, and I just sent out a notice to some of my list, asking people to vote for me on November 3rd, and they said why vote for you, you’re not a candidate. I say, when you vote for me you’re voting for you, and when they vote for us you’re really voting for all the people that we care about, The immigrants, LGBTQs, the environment, deported veterans, dreamer moms, women’s rights. That’s what you got to do. We got to work as people on this side of the Border as if we were the candidate and these were our last weeks to turn out the vote. We cannot let the candidates do it all. Everything from city council to the presidency, people have to vote for people who have good positions on immigration, human rights, women’s policy, women’s rights. We have a responsibility to those that are not us, that are healthy, and can do that. That’s been our message since we started this. El voto es tu voz, and you don’t lose it and don’t abuse it. Your vote is your voice. Laura, always does our closing for these events.
Laura Garcia: The only thing I have to say is thank you. I thought they were great with a lot of good information, and a lot of inspiration, too. Thank you to Hector for attending and giving his presentation and for remembering me. I just want to announce that we’re having our next panel on the 14th and it’s going to be on the militarization of the border, and it’s all going to be organized by Pedro Rios. The 14th, am I right Pedro?
Pedro Rios: Yes, that’s correct. On the 14th at 4 p.m. pacific time. See you there.
Laura Garcia: We’ll see you there. Thank you, all. Bye.
This online panel discussion offers testimony from those working for human rights on both sides of the border in the Mexicali and San Diego/Tijuana regions. This is the fourth of five US-Mexico Border Fact-Finding panels in the Zooming to the Border for Human Rights series sponsored by the People’s Tribune and El Tribuno del Pueblo.
Panelists in this video are Tania Garcia, Coordinator of the Legal Clinic in Espacio Migrante, a binational organization based in Tijuana that provides dignified care and humanitarian assistance to migrant communities and shelter residents; Yolanda Varona Palacios, founder of Dreamers Moms in Tijuana, a group of deported mothers whose children are Dreamers and US citizens; Carolina Cortez, who manages the Student Empowerment Center at Border Kindness in Mexicali, Mexico; Hector Barajas, a U.S. Army veteran who was born in Mexico, raised in L.A., was deported and later founded the Deported Veterans Support House; and Dulce Garcia, Executive Director of Border Angels, a non-profit organization that conducts humanitarian work. The moderator is Magdaleno Leno Rose-Avila, Executive Director of Building Bridges, an innovative program that supports various groups fighting for human rights.
