Day 11 & 12, leaving Artesia

Yesterday was my 11^th day in Artesia and the end of the 7^th week of the AILA Pro Bono Project here. It was my quietest day at the facility. I hadn’t scheduled too many meetings because we were down to just a handful of attorneys again (myself, Lisa, Frank and Rosa- an all New England crew!). But we had help from Allegra, a amazing New Mexican volunteer from Week 6 who came back with a colleague, Barbara, to help for the weekend, as well as Stephanie, a volunteer from a previous week that I hadn't met yet. As the project continues, there is rapidly growing number of attorneys who have been in Artesia and have either “adopted” clients to work on from their home offices, or stopped back in to help for a few days. This network is invaluable because every fresh volunteer requires an average of 2 days to adjust to Artesia; despite all the warnings, no one really expects or is prepared for the chaos, emotions and long nights. Each person reacts to it differently, but people get angry, overwhelmed, frustrated, tearful, until there is a turning point and the attorney hits a stride and becomes integrated into the project. In Week 7, two people had to be talked out of quitting the project because they felt completely overwhelmed and like they could not give anything worthwhile.

Yesterday, the last clients I met were an adorable 3-year old girl with pig tails and big brown eyes, and her worn out mom. As I tried to comfort mom, the girl kept smiling at me and giving me crayons. It was a difficult conversation because mom doesn’t speak Spanish very well, coming from a remote village where she grew up speaking a mayan language: K'iche'. Her daughter’s face will be my last impression. 

Reflections on Artesia

Before I came to Artesia, I had heard reports of human rights violations in the facility. I heard about lack of food, lack of blankets, mistreatment of detainees, substandard to completely unavailable medical resources. I have seen these things. The medical situation is particularly wretched and the stories from the early days in the facility are horrifying, especially when the lawyers could not get access. But my own experience with the ICE officers has been a positive one. I saw an ICE officer playing catch with a young boy, have seen ICE officers yelling at other officers for driving too fast in an area where kids might be around. A couple of them have also indicated that they appreciate (off the record) the work that we're doing and to keep up the fight. They are making efforts to improve the place and are letting us conduct a survey of food preferences since almost all of the kids are losing weight because they are refusing to eat anything but breakfast. 

But nothing gets around the fact that Artesia is a jail for Central American children. It is surrounded with barbed wire fence and contains a few hundred of them averaging 6 years old. The food and medical care follows the guidelines for detention of adult U.S. prisoners, because a detention facility for hundreds of children is unprecedented. They are trying to adapt the jail to childrens’ needs, mainly in response to AILA’s immense activist effort, but no amount of toys or playrooms will make it acceptable to detain children. Kids need to be free to grow, play, learn and thrive. Their mothers need to be allowed to nourish and nurture them; they are watching their children lose weight and become less playful, less inquisitive as the weeks drag on. It is killing them. 

The jail exists to send a message to the women of Central America to stop fleeing to the United States. They are not welcome. Our government is using Artesia as a tool to communicate down the continent that the U.S. is not a safe haven. Our country has acquired a reputation for freedom and safety. It is such a glorious place that people are willing to travel hundreds of miles with small children by bus and by foot in the desert to reach US soil. Our government wants them to know that if they are looking to escape the violence, rapes and death by coming to the U.S., they will have to keep looking, because we will not make room for them.

We don’t agree, and this is why we’re in Artesia. Racism has deep roots in the U.S. but we have fought long hard battles against it and our laws no longer support it. We have a history of being a safe haven for refugees. Many of us have ancestors who fled persecution or death to start a new life here. It's a source of pride and something worth fighting for. Perhaps they thought the location was remote enough that no one would notice. 

Under international law, detention is only permissible when necessary, reasonable and proportionate to the legitimate purpose to be achieved, and then only after less coercive measures have been found unsuitable. In all of our bond hearings, DHS is putting forth an argument that the detention is necessary to prevent more migration, which would be a "security risk" to the U.S. In other words, the "legitimate purpose" of all this suffering is to deter future unnamed asylum seekers. By law, in determining a bond amount, the judge should consider the security risk to the U.S. and the flight risk. Usually for bond hearings, we show that the individual is peace-loving and non-dangerous, but in these warped Artesia hearings, even the release of a 2-year old is a "security risk" because of the signal it sends to other mothers back in Honduras. 

Aside from the human rights concerns, it is vastly expensive for the U.S. to run a detention program on this scale. Almost all of these women have people who are willing to assist them financially. Instead of allowing them to do  it, the U.S. is paying for all of their food, medical and other expenses. If the concern is that they will flee and fail to attend their asylum hearings, they could be given ankle bracelets as a start, saving hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars for both the government and the lawyers. 

The Legal Battle

During my 11 days in Artesia, I witnessed tremendous evolution of the project. When I arrived last week, the mood was grim and defiant- it was trench warfare, with a chaos of files and clients and a small group of lawyers each week drowning in the work, writing briefs until well past midnight only to attend court in the trailer the next morning at 7 and listen to heartbreaking tales all day. That was Week 6. Week 7 brought in more than a dozen volunteers. They each got their own caseload, they organized the client files, they filed motions and took statements and made arguments all week. The leaders of the program descended on Wednesday to guide the first two asylum trials in Artesia on Thursday and Friday, and both were tremendous victories. When I left last night, the atmosphere was hopeful. Week 8 will be even better, since the next group of volunteers are some of the best removal defense experts around, and we have crossed a threshold in terms of organization and unity of vision. 

I have never experienced this level of camaraderie with other lawyers (or anyone). I was humbled with admiration for Danielle, Kely, Bridgit and Cynthia, all brilliant and beautiful lawyers from Southern California, who fought like hell for these kids all week. I met Danielle on Saturday; on Tuesday, she moved into my hotel room and by the time she left yesterday morning, we were fast friends. My first meltdown was when I came back to the hotel last night and she wasn’t there. Also a shout-out to Frank, a business immigration attorney from Boston who came with no experience in asylum or removal work and only very primitive computer skills. Yet he has been sitting with these clients each day, giving them his full devotion and commitment and stretching himself to the breaking point trying to learn the ropes in a new field and struggling with technology. Rosa from Rhode Island came later in the week and has also been amazing- I passed the torch to her last night, nominating her as the one to bring the our portable office to the jail tomorrow and run the show for the morning until Christina (an Artesia regular who won the Thursday asylum case) takes over for the week. 

We have put our all into this battle to seek release of our clients on bond, and we have been breaking ourselves against this rock. The govt seems to be doing everything possible to create procedural barriers for the clients. The clients are placed 200 miles from any decent-sized city, forcing lawyers to spend many thousands of dollars to get to them and assist them. We are exhausted. We have no legal assistants. We are working by day in a corner of an attorney trailer, and by night in a florescent lit cockroach infested room that we rent from a local church. (Ok, maybe not "infested" but they are pretty huge cockroaches). Yet faxed submissions to court are rejected because the fax machines are “too old” or “broken”, causing sometimes a delay of up to 3 or 4 weeks for someone to get a new hearing to look at bond eligibility. DHS sometimes inexplicably hasn't received our emailed submission to them and requests a continuance. 

But this week, we won our first two asylum cases and that has spread a ripple of hope. Lisa, another New England recruit, is bringing the third case to merits tomorrow. Laura Lichter and Stephen Manning have led the effort and held everything together and inspired us all to do this work.  They have kept us going and helped us keep sight of the big advocacy picture instead of just keeping our heads down and burying ourselves in the work. They never seem to tire, and they both have been able to play to everyone’s strength creating a great team. It has been a privilege to know them and be able to stand with them in this.

I'm finishing this post back in Massachusetts, but I think it will take a couple of days to really come home. Fortunately, Curran & Berger has been supportive of this whole effort and have even purchased a massage for me, apparently. It's been a tough couple of weeks but nothing compared to what the ladies in Artesia have been through. 

If you want to donate to the project, money is the best way. This will go towards the funding of lawyers on the ground and office supplies. We are also looking for volunteers; please be an attorney or paralegal, Spanish-speaking, and experienced in removal and asylum work (or have a genuine desire to learn these skills). If you want to write letters in Spanish to the children or their moms, we could probably also get those through. Stickers and colored paper also seem to be safe. This week's gift of colored paper led to a garden of folded flowers and a full out paper airplane war zone.

The chicken pox quarantine was up yesterday- this means new detainees coming in starting today, and they will need help. 

Feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions about Artesia or would like to volunteer. 

Thanks for following along (-: