Eyewitness to Kids in Cages
Journey Home
In the beginning of March, I traveled to my birthplace of Dallas, Tejas. I made the difficult decision to travel and visit family after two years. I have always possessed conflicting feelings about what returning “home” means to me. In a state that historically was part of México and tries to erase this fact. On land historically belonging to indigenous people that was stolen. I am reminded of the quote: “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.” Yet, the racist politicians in power fight to keep those who have been forced to migrate due to U.S. imperialist intervention from seeking refuge. As immigrants and Xicanos, we are constantly told and made to feel that we do not belong. A state that loves our “culture,” but in the same vein demands that we only speak English.
Tejas has never felt safe to me. Despite the majority of my family being Tejano (being born and raised in Texas) we are treated as outsiders. My family has told me countless horrific stories including about how my great grandfather’s brother was killed by a Texas Ranger for standing up to his racist actions. My grandmother was beaten by her school teachers for speaking Spanish. My father and uncles were racially profiled by the police since their youth. This is how white supremacy does it: instill fear and forced assimilation. I have often felt frustration with my family and how they focus on their “Americanness” as protection and distinction from the “other”. Now, I understand that this defense is tied to trauma. The trauma of being forced to lose one’s language and customs and being treated as “second-class” citizens.
My fight for migrant liberation is my form of resistance against the white supremacist project. Organizing to end immigrant detention and supporting migrants through solidarity efforts such as anti-deportation campaigns has long been a lifeline for myself.
My fight for migrant liberation is my form of resistance against the white supremacist project. Organizing to end immigrant detention and supporting migrants through solidarity efforts such as anti-deportation campaigns has long been a lifeline for myself.
During the time of my visit, the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) decided to send 2,000 migrant teenage boys between the ages of 15 to 17 to be held at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center located in Dallas. I decided to volunteer at the convention center while there. I want to share my story in what I witnessed as a Tejana.
Kids in cages continues
Under Trump, the deportation apparatus built by prior administrations was intensified with outright racist disregard for human life. When the Trump Administration filled these facilities with families and separated children, people rightfully expressed visceral outrage and engaged in active opposition. Despite the Biden administration’s campaign promises to end family separation and halt deportations during his 100 days in office, it has instead proceeded to deport more than 127,457 individuals in the first four months alone. In addition, despite outrage from immigrants, immigrant justice activists, and advocates, many for-profit migrant facilities have re-opened. The re-opening and re-filling of these facilities under Biden has not provoked the same reaction.
A visiting doctor referred to these places as “torture facilities” due to vast over-crowding and children sleeping on concrete floors and being denied soap and toothpaste. Prior to Trump, these centers were harshly criticized due to their dangerous conditions, lack of medical care and of oversight.
When people envision these camps and see them on the news, they often believe that these facilities are limited to the U.S. – México border. However, the horrors of these holding facilities does not end at the border. Throughout the last few years, unaccompanied minors have been sent to centers throughout Texas, and other parts of the country.
The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center is a bland and block type building located in downtown Dallas. I arrived one early Saturday morning to volunteer in welcoming and working with the unaccompanied minors.
Entering, I did not know what to expect. I had seen the news about the centers at the border where young children were crowded in makeshift rooms with foil blankets. I asked myself, “Was it going to be like what I had seen on T.V.?” I entered the large, drafty convention room, and walked into a sea of around 2,200 young teenage boys dressed in gray, white, and navy-blue sweatpants. I was startled about how much they looked like my younger brother. It was another stark reminder of how differently my story would have ended up if my family didn’t migrate. Could one of these young boys have been my brother?
Could one of these young boys have been my brother?
There were rows of cots aligned in a grid-system, which I would later find out that was how a boy would be located. By his group and cot number based on the grid system. He simply became a letter and number. My role was to locate youth in order for the other volunteers to make calls to their potential sponsors within the United States. Many of the young boys were coming from detention centers at the border and were already screened for potential sponsors. The call center was staffed by a small number of volunteers.
I was given a stack of papers with names and cot numbers and was told to locate these boys. As I walked through the vast room, I was met with hopeful and sad eyes. Eyes so wide hoping that I would call their names. Boys would come up to me at times asking if I had their name because they wanted to make a phone call. I would sort through the large stack of papers and apologize profusely, telling them I didn’t have their name. I would still go through the papers with them to double check even if I was certain their name was not there.
I walked by the numbered cots and boys playing card games and checkers to pass the time. There were pillows with prayers written in marker in Spanish, and one section even gave themselves the name, “Guapos”, which they had sketched on paper and taped to the floor.
Among the rows of cots, there often would be one missing. I later learned that these spaces were empty because of the boy being diagnosed with COVID. Due to the number of children, it was not possible to safely social distance. Testing occurred weekly and if diagnosed positive the boys were moved off site. When I asked where the boys were moved, they would not say.
I engaged in conversation with the boys while walking them over to the call center. The majority of them had made the journey from Guatemala. One boy that I spoke with was anxious because he had been at the center for seven days and had not made a single phone call. The call efforts were poorly organized, only allowed to happen twice a week before eventually shifting to every day. The boys were only allowed to call to the approved sponsor, their lawyer (if they had one), and their consulate. They were not allowed to call back home and let their parents know that they arrived safely.
The anxiety due the uncertainty of the overall process and the delay, led to five boys running away on that day. The center was placed on lockdown while the boys were forced to return to their cots and then were counted. The boys were found three hours later at a local 7-11 convenience store. Cinue Herrera, an immigration attorney working with family members of several children at the center spoke to this incident: “They’re just understaffed. They don’t have enough caseworkers to be able to process all these kids, I would say, in an adequate amount of time.”
While there, the American Red Cross was transferring operations to Culmen International, LLC., a private security firm that has just been awarded a $4 million dollar contract by the Administration for Children and Families for emergency relief services for the unaccompanied minors. Why would a contract be given to an international security firm to work with children?
Why would a contract be given to an international security firm to work with children?
At the end of March, almost 19,000 migrant children were stopped at the border and are currently in the custody of the U.S. Health and Human Services, with an additional 2,853 children being held by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Immigrant justice activists and advocates are demanding that there be faster reunification for children with family in the United States. In order for this to occur, there needs to be a priority toward renunciation and for the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center there needs to be a call center staffed with trained caseworkers and not simply volunteers. Why was none of the $4 million going to develop a system to reunite the boys with their sponsors? Instead of awarding contracts to private security firms, these contracts should be given to organizations currently doing this work and supporting them with the priority of renunciation.
Demand to restore asylum
Detention Watch Network and several other human rights organizations are demanding that the Biden Administration “rescind the Title 42 border closure and fully restore access to asylum at our borders including at ports of entry and ensuring unaccompanied children have immediate and consistent access to legal counsel, child advocates and interpretation services.”
The entire immigration system upholds the settler colonial and white supremacist project through the enforcement of borders and by determining who is “worthy enough” to “legally” immigrate to the United States – even though the settler colonial project, is founded on the murder, rape, and the decimation of indigenous people. Children being held in cages and the racism experienced by my family are part of this brutal system, whose goal is to eradicate our connection to the land and ancestral wisdom.
It is our duty to fight for the liberation for these children and all detainees and deportees. It is our duty to win.
To live in the Borderlands means to
Put chile in the borscht,
Eat whole wheat tortillas,
Speak Tex-Mex with a Brooklyn accent;
Be stopped by la migra at the border checkpointsIn the Borderlands
You are the battleground
Where enemies are kin to each other;
You are a home, a stranger,
The border disputes have been settled
The volley of shots have shattered the truce
You are wounded, lost in action
Dead, fighting back;To survive the Borderlands
You must live sin fronteras
Be a crossroads.Excerpts from “To live in the Borderlands means you” by Gloria Anzaldúa
