DILLEY DAYS: CRISIS AT THE BORDER
ADVOCACY IN
ACTION
Immigrant Justice
Top photo: NASW-NJ members and other volunteers with the Dilley Pro Bono Project.
10 March 2020 | www.naswnj.org
It was shortly before 8:30 a.m. on a Monday in February when, after passing through the equivalent of a TSA security checkpoint, we entered a sparsely appointed room, in a large trailer stationed on the grounds of the South Texas Family Residential Center. A small cadre of lawyers and paralegals— perhaps 4 or 5—were hustling around the room efficiently, setting up rows of plastic chairs on one half of the room—enough to seat 30-40 people—and making a large circle of perhaps 20 chairs on the opposite half of the room. They were the staff of the Dilley Pro Bono Project (DPBP), a local Texas partner in the Immigration Justice Campaign. Its mission is to serve the immigrant mothers
and children detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, TX (men and children over the age of 18 are separated from the women with younger children and are detained at other facilities). Our cohort of 9 social workers from the NASW-NJ Chapter was about to join their volunteer ranks for the week. Our volunteer experience began prior to our arrival in Dilley, with two advance trainings, one via videoconference and one in person at the legal clinic in San Antonio, to prepare us for what we would experience at the detention facility and to provide us a crash course in current asylum law, which would be crucial to our work on the ground.
