Fixing to hit the road again…

So I intend to be off this weekend – or maybe the beginning of next week – heading south to the border.

On my way, I want to stop at the two prisons – oh ICE ‘detention’ centers where refugees seeking asylum have been incarcerated there sometimes for years. The refugees have been engaged in a hunger strike and are being punished with extreme violence and abuse.

People who flee their own countries to come here have been sold the propaganda about the freedom we have here. And yet, as one refugee says: “From the very beginning, we declared a peaceful hunger strike, we were punished and are now being terrorized. If we can’t even do a peaceful protest in here, then what can we do to fight for our rights? We are being punished for fighting for justice”

For more info, read here: https://www.aclunc.org/news/after-hours-violent-abuse-ice-and-geo-group-abruptly-transfer-four-mesa-verde-hunger-strikers

I will continue to the border from San Ysidro to see what is happening with Friendship Park – remember the park where Patricia Reagan envisioned there would be no barbed wire or wall in the near future. Then I intend to head to Yuma and continue east.

Yuma is requesting donations of flip-flops, sandals, and granola bars. Remember, refugees are crossing the Colorado River seeking asylum in our country. The minute they are picked up by border patrol, they are stripped of all their belongs – from treasures to blankets to cell phones to shoe laces – no matter how many miles they’ve carried these meager possessions. They can only be processed with the clothes they’re wearing and shoes sans laces.

Every morning, in the dark by the light of sporadic camp fires, volunteers walk up and down the line of shivering and exhausted children, womyn and men to place in their hands fruit, sometimes burritos, always granola bars and water – at least handing them out until they run out of supplies.

I’ll be collecting flip flops, sturdy sandals and granola bars to take to Yuma.

Please know that these men policing our borders have the same attitude toward possessions of refugees that the police in our cities have toward possessions of unhoused people: everything is taken and tossed into the garbage. For refugees, some of their possessions are put in storage for 30 days before they’re tossed. If a refugee can get processed quickly and has the means and resources to retrieve their belongings and are not required to leave the area immediately, they might be able to pick up their belongings. But seldom do.