BRATTLEBORO — From July 31 to Aug. 8, I joined the Grannies Respond caravan that traveled from Beacon, N.Y. to McAllen, Texas, on a 2,000-mile, six-city mission to raise strong voices of dissent about our government's inhumane and immoral immigration policies and to learn firsthand what was taking place on our southern border.
Early this summer, Nancy Braus, co-owner of Everyone's Books in Brattleboro, told me about the separation of children from parents which was taking place on the border as a result of our government's zero-tolerance policy.
I, like Nancy and everyone else I knew, was horrified.
Early in June, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon visited Brownsville, Texas and was denied entrance to one of the largest child-detention centers. The media was all over the story and alerted the nation.
But the detention of refugees and their treatment as criminals had been going on for years. What had changed, what had woken up so many of us, was Attorney General Jeff Sessions' outrageous policy of deterrence: the abrupt separation of thousands of children from their parents.
It was an assault to our humanity.
“If people don't want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them,” Sessions told The Washington Post in June. A month before, at a press conference, Sessions said, “If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don't like that, then don't smuggle children over our border.”
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Already concerned about our country's slide toward what was looking a lot like fascism, I knew I had to do something.
The attack on immigrants was intensifying and taking on the face of mass discrimination, reminiscent of past practices with Native American children, Japanese internment, and the treatment of Jews in Europe. Our southern neighbors were being blamed, scapegoated, dehumanized.
And although quickly retracted due to mounting pressure and national appall, the strategy of separating more than 2,000 children from their parents, part of the zero-tolerance policy, was not just cruel but evil. Not caring about what happens to children crosses a deep moral line.
I was about to retire from a long career as an elementary school teacher. I had the time, and the moral obligation, to do something about this gross humanitarian injustice taking place in our names. I was to learn that countless others around the country had the same compulsion.
I investigated organizations working on the front line, and was making plans to volunteer with Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) in San Antonio, when I learned about the all-volunteer Grannies Respond Caravan.
The caravan, fueled (so to speak) by a GoFundMe campaign that had been organized just five weeks prior, planned to undertake the journey to McAllen, Texas.
The group wanted to join the growing stream of citizens who were taking it upon themselves to protest and help expose the U.S. government's immoral and inhumane immigration policy.
Speaking as society's compassionate elders, the group listed four principal demands: the reunification of families, the release of all immigrants and refugees from detention centers, the fair and decent treatment of all, and the invocation of the Granny-approved golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
One week prior to departure, I learned there was a spot for me in one of the vans.
Posters in hand, along with new friend and longtime activist Kali Bird Isis from Portland, Maine, I drove to Beacon, N.Y. early in the morning of July 31 to join the OGs, the “original Grannies” who organized the caravan.
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Our first stop on our long journey was in New York City, where we were greeted by a mass of media attention and passionate protesters. With more stops in Reading, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Montgomery, New Orleans, Houston, and Dilley, Texas, we held rallies and vigils that grew in size and intensity as we advanced south.
We also picked up Grannies along the way, and our caravan grew, including a camper, a motorcycle and long time traveling truck and activist Xan Joi. Sister Caravans from Portland and Sacramento, Tallahassee and Atlanta, Madison, and Dallas and San Antonio joined or converged so that by the time we reached McAllen, we were a group of about 200 strangers, diverse in religion, interests and geography, united in our disgust at the treatment of children and families at the border.
Only after I began my volunteer duties and made it to McAllen and Brownsville, Texas early in August did I learn about the tireless groups of volunteers and pro-bono lawyers who had been working around the clock for years, helping asylum seekers who were being charged as criminals and sent to detention centers to await “credible fear” hearings.
Ankle bracelets, $6,000 bonds, separating of men from their families, and long stays at prison-like detention centers: that was how we'd been welcoming our southern neighbors who were asking for humanitarian entrance at our legal ports of entry.
Our country's refusal to recognize that these travelers were exiles from Central America is unacceptable. They were seeking asylum from violence and were not criminals.
It is even worse when we acknowledge our government's role in contributing to crime and lawlessness in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador.
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Donald Trump defended the zero-tolerance policies and the separation of children from their parents by stating, “the United States will not be a migrant camp ... not on my watch.”
The president need not have worried about the U.S. becoming a migrant camp. What we have created instead is a system of internment camps, detaining asylum seekers in for-profit private detention centers. Most of these detention centers are for-profit institutions owned by private corporations that run prisons. In June, CNN reported that military bases would be used to house up to 20,000 children.
While we were traveling, we learned of a young child who had died of a respiratory infection soon after leaving the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. Outraged and dismayed, we decided to detour there on our way from Houston to McAllen.
Three Grannies were hoping to visit the detention center to check on the conditions and see how the women and children were being treated. We were denied entry and told to leave the premises or law enforcement officials would be called.
Conflicting reports have come from the center. Our impression of the facility from the outside was that of an internment camp or a concentration camp. It was isolated, privatized, and foreboding. But two days after our visit, ICE released a report about the good conditions at the detention center.
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As for the children, after intense public outrage a federal judge ordered that the families be reunited. According to the ACLU, more than 400 children are still in government custody. A large portion of these children have not been united because their parents have been deported without them.
“The federal government [has been] insisting that it's not their job to help people who have been deported without their children. They're trying to get nonprofits to do all the work,” Nancy Braus told me.
“I find this disgraceful and disgusting,” she said. “If they'd had one shred of intent in keeping these families together, all they had to do was spend 2 cents apiece for hospital bracelets to match small children with their parents.”
The ACLU rejected the government's insistence that it was responsible for matching deported parents with children in custody. The courts ordered the government to work with the organization to come up with a plan.
There are conflicting reports from the government and the ACLU about the process to unify families. Numerous reports claim ICE officials have told parents that if they signed papers giving up rights to seek asylum, they would be reunited with their children - but were then deported alone.
The government has yet to address the irreparable harm that has been done to not only those children still separated but to all who experienced the terror of being taken from their parents and sent off with strangers.
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Shortly into our journey, it became clear that we wanted to keep the focus from being on us, the Grannies. We were caravanning for the children, for the refugees, and for the need for immigration reform.
We wanted to be the ears and voices for those who couldn't make the journey, and to shout out for those whose voices weren't being heard.
Despite this, however, we did become celebrities of a sort, and we were warmly and sometimes rousingly greeted by our hosts as we arrived at each of our destinations along the way.
The warmth and shared compassion were striking as we encountered kindred spirits and the kindness and hospitality of strangers sharing one voice. I extend a special thank you to the organizations and families that supported us, fed us, and gave us places to sleep along the way.
The growing fervor culminated in McAllen, where we discovered not only like-minded activists but what I consider a legendary group of true folk heroes who have been working on the ground with the refugees, volunteering time, food, compassion, and legal assistance. Members of one group, Angry Tias & Abuelas, are providing the humanitarian aid that is lacking from our government.
It is important to keep the immigration situation from being buried. This ongoing crisis has spanned many years. All along the border, groups of volunteers are working tirelessly to provide the humanitarian aid and legal support that our government is refusing to provide.
The need for political action is an even larger issue. Our immigration policies, past and present, need to change. I hope continued pressure will lead to an overhaul of our inhumane immigration policies.
Significant and lasting change, however, will need to come from upsetting the current administration and those who are funding immoral policies and practices.