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Advocacy in Action: Dilley Days: Crisis at the Border
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.
That Monday morning saw a flurry of activity that we soon realized was the norm for this project. Women and children, black- and brown-skinned and speaking a variety of languages, began streaming into the room from the corridor that led to the holding facilities. The predominant language we heard was Spanish, but there was a significant amount of Brazilian Portuguese, Haitian Creole, and Vietnamese, among other languages, peppered throughout. Children ranging in age from infancy to early teen years clung to their mothers’ legs or retreated to a small play area (no DPBP volunteers allowed). Some cried, but most seemed in good spirits, speaking with other children and exploring the facilities, as children are wont to do.
About half the women were preparing to receive a charla, or informal chat, that explained the role of the DPBP staff and volunteers, provided information about the asylum process, and gave detainees a chance to ask questions about the process. The remaining women in the room were “walk-ins,” detainees who had not been scheduled for legal consult or follow-up, but required assistance from the on the ground team, nonetheless.
It was our job to provide preparation for Credible Fear Interviews (“CFI prep”) for the women who would present their cases to Asylum Officers over the next 24-48 hours. This appointment would determine whether they would be permitted to remain in the U.S. to pursue a claim of asylum. Those of us who spoke Spanish were immediately assigned to work with Spanish-speaking detainees; the remaining volunteers were assigned to work with detainees who spoke languages other than Spanish, via the use of a confidential phone interpretation service, Language Line.
The task, regardless of the language in which it was conducted, was to help these women fit their personal narratives of
trauma, discrimination, and abuse into the strict categories that allow for the granting of asylum under U.S. law. This required the women to reiterate their painful stories and their reasons for seeking asylum in our country, often a repeated number of times and in front of their children.
The stories we heard that day, and throughout the week, were chilling and the general circumstances similar, with only the specific nature of the traumas changing. There were stories of domestic violence. Political oppression. Religious oppression. Robbery. Rape. Arson. Unlawful imprisonment. Torture—conducted both by criminal enterprises (gangs, cartels) and by the state and local police in league with these villains. There were death threats made against women, children, and entire families by individuals who pursued them across local, regional, and in some cases international boundaries. The likelihood of these women and children receiving asylum in the U.S. has decreased greatly over the past 6 months. Previously, upwards of 90% of asylum seekers that passed through the South Texas Family Residential Center would be permitted to remain in the U.S. to seek asylum before an immigration judge; in recent months that number has dropped below 60%. Policies, procedures, and practices put in place by the Trump administration since July 2019—as well as severe limits placed on the number of asylum-seekers permitted into the U.S. annually—ensure the deck is stacked against these desperate migrants. Despite stating their intention to seek asylum at the border or soon after entering the United States, all these detainees had been placed in expedited removal proceedings. Expedited removal is the process by which certain immigrants are denied entry to and/or physically removed from the U.S., without going through the normal removal proceedings (which involve hearings before an immigration judge). The CFI prep sessions we conducted were designed to help these women get reassigned from expedited removal process to the standard removal process. This designation allows them the legal right to remain in the U.S. while they Painting hung in the Dilley Ranch. Artist uknown.
in Dilley. She was working with an asylum-seeker whose case was likely to be upheld because it did not fit the strict requirements for asylum (meaning she would not be permitted lawful entrance to the U.S. or to an asylum hearing, and would instead be returned immediately to her home country). When the volunteer explained this to her, the woman responded: “Tell me, then... When I am sent back to [my home country], and I am killed by the same people I have just told you are trying to kill me…. What will your government do then?” What will our government do, indeed? Right now, the sad answer is “nothing.” But as social workers, we can do something. We can tell the stories of the men, women, and children seeking asylum in our country. We can dispel myths about who is seeking to enter our country and why and speak out against false narratives. We can advocate for more humane asylum and immigration policies. We can use our freedom and our right to vote to bring change to our government. And we can challenge the dialogue around immigration that often reduces unique individuals with real problems and real lives to an undifferentiated pursue a claim for formal asylum, which could take years. The work we undertook was difficult and fatiguing, both mentally and emotionally. We spent 9-10 hours per day working with the women at the detention facility, followed by an evening of finishing up case notes and data entry. Our group of volunteers became very close in a short amount of time. If it were not for the mutual support of our fellow volunteers and the dedicated staff of the DPBP, most of us would have burned out after a day or two. Our camaraderie and shared experience—as well as the persistent hope that the work we were doing would help even a small number of these women and their children—kept us afloat. Moreover, the undying spirit of the brave migrant women and children at the facility buoyed our spirits—glimpses of smiles, the occasional laughter of a child, and the pure graciousness of those who thanked us for our assistance, even as we told them they would most likely be returned to their country of origin. Not all the stories are positive ones, though. And not all the endings happy. One of the volunteers on our trip shared the following story as we were debriefing our final evening “Tell me, then... When I am sent back to [my home country], and I am killed by the same people I have just told you are trying to kill me…. What will your government do then?”
mass of humanity we label as “alien” or “other,” making it easier for many to turn away from their plight.
As social workers, it is our job to help these individuals tell their own stories. It is our job to ensure those who have been silenced are heard. It is our job to inject humanity and ethical thought processes into the impersonal and exploitive systems that threaten to consign individuals to the undifferentiated mass. And it is our job to ensure that immigrants—indeed all disadvantaged persons—are not allowed to be relegated to the role of “other” or “less than” by a cruel and uncaring society.
The reality is… the immigrant, the alien, the other—is me. And the other is you. The other is each of us and all of us at one time or another. And we must be the ones to offer a hand up when one of us is in need. As the ancient Rabbi Hillel famously asked: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?”
The time to stand up is now.
