Here's what I saw at the border (3/3)
I want to update you on the people whose stories I shared earlier this weekafter our visits last week to Juárez and to Donald Trump's detention facilities:
- After we intervened on her behalf, the woman our team met in Juárez (who faced complications with her pregnancy that threatened her life and her baby's life) is now safe with her sponsor in the United States.
- Unfortunately, the men we spoke with at the Otero County Processing Center are on the third week of their hunger strike. We are monitoring the situation closely to make sure their rights and their safety are protected.
We must respond to the violations committed in our name. Long term, that means taking back the Senate. Closing the camps. Fixing our broken immigration system. Defeating Donald Trump.
My team and I saw and heard stories on our trip that shook us to our core:
People forced to run for their lives because they'd refused to cooperate with or surrender to powerful cartels;
Families who fled violence at home, only to be kidnapped and abused for months;
People who'd watched their friends and loved ones indifferently tortured or executed by brutal criminals.
But they never lost hope. They summoned up unfathomable courage and made their way to the United States.
And when they arrived at our nation's doorstep seeking refuge, they were met with Donald Trump's systematized cruelty.
Trump's "metering" policy has stranded thousands of people in Mexico – without reliable access to food, shelter, or medical care and sometimes for months at a time – while Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) approves a tiny quota of asylum requests each day.
And his "zero-tolerance" policy has led to the bleak, inhumane conditions in the camps on our soil: children ripped from their parents' arms and herded into cages, with inadequate or nonexistent attention to their recreational, nutritional, educational, or hygienic needs.
This humanitarian crisis doesn't have a complex origin; it's a direct, intentional result of the racist, heartless strategy employed by Donald Trump to discourage people from coming to our country.
There are any number of principled, compassionate ways our country could respond to an increase of asylum claims. Instead, this administration has opted to hurt people, including (and especially) children.
It's cruel by design, a crisis by choice. And it's one of the most flagrant betrayals of American core values I've ever seen.
Our movement has contributed nearly $30,000 so far to organizations on the front line of the fight, working around the clock to defend children and asylum seekers' rights in court and at the border.
In unity,
Ron
