Journey For Justice Dec 5th, Day 5: Eagle Pass, border patrol, golf course.

How much more amerikkkan can you get? A fuckin golf course backing up to the Rio Grande where the wealthy men can ride around on golf carts while the border patrol is jumping into rafts and dragging refugees, wet and freezing cold, out of the river to take them off to a detention prison.

I have a conversation with one of the golfers who tells me this is the land of opportunity. He feels for the refugees but thinks they should enter the country 'legally' and follow the correct steps to be allowed in. I ask him if that's how his parents entered. He colors a little and admits not at first but eventually they did get their citizenship, as did he.

He claims you only have to work hard, and then he gives me a litany of the hard work he did to make it in this country. Now he is retired and he will not let anyone, including those refugees being shot, hunted down, incarcerated, keep him from enjoying his retirement.

As a group of maybe 8 young dark-skinned men shivering in their wet clothes, hands cuffed behind them, shoe laces gone, possessions lying dumped in a pile on the edge of the 18th (or whatever) hole, are being marched into a van, he heads off to catch up with his golfing buddies, head turned away from the site of those less fortunate than his family.

Journey For Justice Dec 5th, Day 5: Army or National Guard and military exercise on the Rio Grande

The first thing I see as we approach the underside of the bridge - in addition to the cleared land which I later realize is a fuckin golf course - are a bunch of men in army fatigues and an entrance to the shores of the Rio Grande.

As I approach the shore line, a young soldier marches up to me with one of those ugly, violently offensive ar or ak or a-whatever rifles slung across the front of his chest, with a slew of bullets dangling there and other weapons as well.

He addresses me but I ask him to wait a minute and tell him I need to video record this conversation.

He actually says okay and waits until I turn on my phone and think I'm pressing video. I find out later that I was not really fuckin recording him but about half-way through our conversation the young womon from Brazil who is traveling with us and documenting our journey rushes up to record our interaction. I try to recap what we had talked about thus far.

He has tried to order me off the place where I am trying to take pics of the river. I ask him what authority he has to order me around. I let him know that I am not on a military base, where he does have that authority.

I ask him if he is border patrol, national guard or military.

He claims he is not national guard and I can see on the side where cloth is showing out from the rifle that it says "army".

I ask him if that is the same rifle that recently killed 19 children and two teachers 60 miles away a few months ago. He pats his rifle and says the rifle didn't kill them, a terrorist did.

I'm 'amused' incredulous - not - and say exactly how is a 17 year old disturbed teenager from the community who is not a member of any u.s.ofa. white supremist terrorist groups, exactly how has he decided this youth is a terrorist? A terrorist armed with a military-grade rifle.

I tell him he needs to also explain why he thinks he can tell me I can't go to the bank of a river to get a picture. He then relents, sweeps his arm around to include the other armed men standing around, and claims they are in the middle of a military operation.

"A fuckin military operation of u.s.ofa. soil?" I demand incredulously. "Not on a military base or federal land but on the edge of a golf course?"

I ask him then how long this operation will take place and when will they leave so I can take unhindered pictures of this river.

He claims that is something I can never know, like he's on a top secret mission and not on a hunt for human beings that are so desperate they are treading through a river in cold weather to try to seek asylum in this country.

The womon videoing tells me she will send me the video clip after she returns to Brazil and has a chance to edit and copy it. I'll post it here when I get it from her.

Journey For Justice December 5th, Day 5: Uvalde to Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras

We head to a shelter in Eagle Pass, the u.s. side of the border where Piedras Negras sits across the Rio Grande in Mexico.

We are there for maybe 20 minutes and in that time at least 5 large school buses full of refugees enter the parking lot and we watch as refugees – mostly men, black or brown – spill out onto the dirt lot, and line up by sex.

They are spoken to in Spanish by the accompanying border patrol officials, whether they speak Spanish or not, and directed to go inside the shelter.

The womyn who work there daily tell us they try to help up to 900 or more refugees every day. These are the refugees who have been picked up by border patrol, processed which includes taking all their personal possessions they are carrying if any and their shoe laces. Then they are saddled with a cell phone now instead of an ankle bracelet – a cell phone that tracks their every movement, a cell phone from which they have to call in daily and at a certain time from the location they are supposed to be at.

So if they cannot charge their phone or for any reason miss their phone call time, or if they are at a location they have not received previous permission to be at, they will then be immediately picked up and either dropped across the border to then be taken back deep into Mexico or sent to some other country.

The womyn tell us they try to feed as many people as possible, often running out of food before they run out of mouths to feed; they provide a bathroom, shower, clothes if available, and help with figuring out where their family or friends are located and if there is a bus that will take them there, providing they can get someone to buy the ticket.

Most refugees have little concept of how large this country is, how far away New York or Detroit is, how they will now make it from Eagle Pass to the place where they will eventually go to immigration court to plead their case – let alone whether they will be allowed to seek asylum here in this country.

She says some come with a hand cut off, an eye gauged out, a leg gone, other scars and evidence of torture and violence often the result of our u.s.ofa. insatiable greed for drugs and the flesh of womyn and children, the labor of men.

Often children and youth are sent over by parents forced by our immigration policies to separate their family in the hopes of finding safety and security let alone food for at least their children.

Some of us stay at the shelter to help prepare lunch. Others of us go to two different bridges: one that people will freely cross over into Piedras Negras as we are amerikkkan citizens and can do so, and easily cross back, passing those hollow-eyed womyn, children and men seeking not just a better life but a life free of the violence fueled in their countries by our insatiable greed for drugs and flesh of womyn and children, and the labor also of men.

The other bridge is where the Rio Grande is shallower certain times of the day or week and people can make it across to u.s. soil if not detained on the Mexican side or picked up by our law enforcement before they reach the u.s. Once they touch u.s. soil, legally they then should have the right to apply for asylum – but too often this is now left up to the individual border patrol or national guard person. Sometimes they are just rounded up and deported back to Mexico.

I choose to go to this second bridge, because it is a 1.5 mile walk but also in case I can witness refugees crossing the river and watch border patrol, videoing them to keep them at least a little under control.