Journey For Justice Dec 9, Day 9 Fort Bliss

So now refugee children are being incarcerated at Fort Bliss.

This light show is facing the highway into Fort Bliss - what a fucked misnomer.

This is the largest military base in the u.s. - the size of Rhode Island.

We hear from 1000 to 3000 children & 'unaccompanied' minors are being held here. They are being processed quicker than they were pre-covid but still no child belongs imprisoned on a military base.

Journey For Justice Dec 9th, Day 9: La Bestia Guatamala to Juarez a mother and her 2 year old baby girl

A young mother is fleeing for her life - and her baby's life - from a man who has beaten her and threatened her with death. She has fled from Guatamala and joined other refugees, jumping onto the top of freight trains.

After a couple days of this kind of dangerous travel, her daughter got sick. The mother couldn't find help for her daughter and holds her close, getting ready to jump on the next train. Other migrants try to help her but there is no doctor, no medicine and her daughter is getting sicker.

She is trapped. She cannot return nor can she allow the Mexican authorities to find her.

When she tries to give her toddler a few drops of water from an empty plastic water bottle, she realizes her baby is dead.

She begins screaming, her voice so anguished it carries over the entire length of the freight train. People try to help her, try to take her dead child but she refuses to let go of her baby and continues to wail the entire rest of the way to the final stop.

Journey For Justice December 9th, Day 9 Tornillo to El Paso and Juarez

We leave Tornillo in the morning to head the few miles to El Paso and Ciudad Juarez.

We are supposed to meet up with a couple other caravaners in El Paso so we can all walk over the border together. We are to meet at the greyhound bus station.

We pull up to the bus station, which is about 3 blocks from the border crossing, and refugees are hanging around outside in the cold waiting for the terminal to open. When they see us pulling up in my box truck, they rush over to us, most likely thinking we may have food or clothing donations.

Most of these people are shivering, in wet clothes, cold and hungry. Some are so obviously sick.

We feel so bad as we've left most of our donations in Brownsville/Matamoros at the beginning of our journey, but Marina is a nurse and I have my warm clothes so we begin going through our own things to see what we can pass along.

The men and boys push up to the front, of course, until I tell them mujeras primera and the womyn step forward when the men step back and make room for them.

Marina starts taking temperatures, asking questions and handing out meds and masks. I go into my clothing shelves and begin pulling out my warmer things like long-sleeved shirts, hoodies, and sweaters that are not written on (I do have a few) plus hats to pass out.

But of course it is not enough. We do have a few oatmeal bars to hand out that are swiftly shared and gobbled down.

When the other caravan womyn join us, we drive off to the parking lot and cross into Juarez.

The pictures below are of the fence that overs the entire walk - just in case someone wants to jump over to the u.s.ofa. side. The murals are on the cement walls of the Rio Grande, the natural border keeping people out along with the 'wall' and barbed wire.