Concerned Citizens Bear Witness to the Plight of Child Immigrants Detained in Texas Desert Tent City

Interview with Connecticut mother, Laurie Sweet, sheltering immigrants in her home, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

Many in the U.S. have been outraged by Donald Trump’s rhetoric and his administration’s treatment of Central American migrants as they journeyed through Mexico and approached the U.S. southern border. During the mid-term election campaign, Trump repeatedly referred to them as “invaders” and “criminals.”
Once groups of migrants traveling in caravans for safety and visibility actually arrived at the border in Tijuana, they camped out in fields and across town, waiting to be interviewed for their asylum claims, which has happened extremely slowly, if at all. At one point a smaller group of migrants rushed the border fence and were repelled with tear gas, affecting mothers with their young children.  Most of those in the caravan are fleeing poverty, violence and the ravages of climate-change induced drought that has made farming nearly impossible.
Though many have been angered about the harsh treatment of the asylum seekers on the border, many fewer have taken concrete action in solidarity with the migrants. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with one person who decided to take action, Laurie Sweet, a mother of two from Connecticut. She’s taken a mother, father and baby into her home after they were released from immigration custody and is now assisting them to pursue their asylum claims. Here, Laurie talks about a trip she took to the El Paso, Texas border area with the group Immigrant Families Together in mid-November to assist other asylum seekers. There, she also witnessed the situation where more than 2,300 immigrant children are being detained in a tent city in the middle of the Texas dessert.

LAURIE SWEET: So, the piece of my former work that’s important for this work is that rapid response. So if you have a mom in labor you can’t say, “hold on, I’ll get back to you on Sunday.” You go, you get up and go. It might be the middle of the night; you might be sleeping; you might be at another event. And that’s how this work has been. So there have been times when it’s midnight, and I’m working on booking a flight for someone I’ve been working with; usually it’s a relative.

BETWEEN THE LINES:  You’ve been down to the border yourself. So tell us about that, when you were there, what you’ve observed.

LAURIE SWEET: Yeah, so it was the Thursday before Thanksgiving. It was a very rapid trip: flew down, had a pilgrimage day, a witnessing day, and flew back the next day, because I have children and other family that rely on me. It was a little bit of a crazy trip, but it was really important for me to see El Paso, to see the border, to work with other asylum seekers as they’re being processed through the detention center, so I felt like I’ve seen the whole process – not to say I’ve walked in their shoes by any means – but maybe have a better sense of what they’ve experienced from waiting in El Paso. They’re waiting at the border.

BETWEEN THE LINES: They’re waiting on the other side, the Mexican side.

LAURIE SWEET: Correct. And they can’t get in, and they’re living on bridges, and this is happening all across our borders in the south. So I wanted to see that for myself. That was the first thing we did, was a walk in and out of Mexico. I didn’t go because I didn’t have my passport, but I watched and I heard about what that was like. The next step was to get on a bus and go about 30-40 minutes south from El Paso into the middle of nowhere Texas – Tornillo – where approximately 2,300 unaccompanied minors are living, and according to Josh Ruben – who’s just another person like me who’s living there, set up an RV and is observing and watching – those numbers are growing by the day. 2,300 is the numbers we are told, but having been there and having done a rally right outside the tents, I can tell you in an hour I saw three buses, pretty full buses, of children waving at us. They’re bringing in more tents, supplies, more water, port-a-potties, so this isn’t something that’s temporary and is going to go away. This is expanding, and that was hugely traumatic, to say the least.

BETWEEN THE LINES: We should point out, Laurie Sweet, that these young people being held at Tornillo are between the ages of 13 and 17, and crossed the border without their family members, right?

LAURIE SWEET: We’re told they crossed unaccompanied, but we’re still separating families, and it’s possible they came with other relatives, and the families I’ve been working with it’s often an aunt or an uncle. Well, they’re getting their own children out of detention centers, so they can’t always sponsor those children, and there’s rigorous background checks on moms and dads in order to get their own children. They have to be finger-printed, and everyone in the household has to be finger-printed. And yet, the people who are staff in the tents in Tornillo don’t have to be finger-printed but in order to be able to get your own child, you’re subjected to finger-printing. This is new, and it’s a lengthy process, and it’s causing further delays. And the thing I want to emphasize is, these children haven’t done anything wrong. They’ve been traumatized in their country of origin; they were traumatized on their trip here, and we’re traumatizing them further, and they aren’t criminals, they haven’t done anything wrong. They’re not allowed to hug each other, they’re not allowed to hug the staff, and they’re sorely understaffed for mental health clinicians, and that concerns me, too. I feel like we’re torturing children, and people need to know what’s happening, where our tax money is going, and we need to stop it.

BETWEEN THE LINES: The fact that they’re doing this really inadequate screening of staff is really scary. So, one other question, I guess, is that the Trump administration has basically said they wouldn’t process anyone who didn’t cross at a border crossing, and then a judge ruled that that isn’t the case, and they have to take people however they cross. But when people rushed the border and were met with tear gas – I don’t know if any of the people rushing the border were women and children, maybe it was all the men – but what do you say to people who say, That’s total chaos. Everybody should respect borders. What do you think law enforcement people should have done? Just let everybody in?

LAURIE SWEET: No, I don’t think everybody should be let in. I understand why we have the rules we do. We don’t want gang members coming into our country. We don’t want people coming in that are going to human traffic along our borders. However, we have created this crisis, and the reason those folks in San Diego were rushing the border is that they closed the port of entry. So anybody who wants to say, Well, they have to come in the legal way — the legal way is to go to a port of entry along our U.S. border and present yourself as an asylum seeker and say, I’m here for asylum. The reason there was such mass chaos at the border is that those people had been waiting there, living on the streets in Mexico for days, and they were not allowed entry. It is completely illegal, what we’re doing. The same thing is happening in El Paso, the same thing’s happening in Brownsville. Sometimes they only get three people, or no people, who are allowed to cross into the U.S. That’s illegal. It is a legal human right to ask for asylum. Period.  

For more information about Immigrant Families Together, visit immigrantfamiliestogether.com.

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