Don Pesci: Avoid 'cheap grace': Bring migrant kids to Conn.
U.S. Border Patrol officers processing migrant children in Texas
Central American migrants charging their phones in Mexico City on their way to the U.S. border.
VERNON, Conn.
The crisis at the border has now officially become “a border crisis.” A story in The Hartford Courant boldly labels it as such: “Lamont was personally asked by Vice President Kamala Harris recently if Connecticut could provide space for some of the thousands of children who are being kept in detention centers along the Texas border after fleeing from their Central American countries. Their numbers have increased as the federal government is facing a border crisis (emphasis mine).”
“Crisis” is not a term often found waltzing around with the new administration of President Joe Biden. But it has become impossible in recent days for Friends Of Biden (FOBs) to overlook the massive numbers of illegal – shall we, for once, call things by their right names? -- immigrants that have poured over the US border after Biden, a few weeks into his presidency, opened the door to illegal immigration while telling the huddled masses yearning to breathe free in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, “Don’t come in just yet. We’re not ready for you.”
They came, in numbers impossible to ignore.
Biden honeymooners scattered throughout the United States have managed thus far to obscure the predictable consequences of Democratic attempts to rid the nation of any trace of Trumpism. Slathering such failed attempts with political slant-ointment has not worked to obliterate the failed results of Biden’s thoughtless border policies. George Orwell taught us that the most difficult thing that writers must do is to notice what is lying right under their noses, and some people in the news business have taken his admonition to heart.
The unmanageable influx of illegal immigrants quickly became a crisis after the Biden administration disassembled Trump’s effective, though imperfect, multiple solutions to illegal border crossings. The Trump protocols included a wall, much derided by anti-Trump Democrats; an arrangement with south-of-the-border states that illegal immigrants passing through other countries on their way to the United States must apply for asylum in the pass-through countries, and tighter border security. All this was washed away, mostly by executive fiats, following Biden’s elevation to the presidency.
The came the deluge. Suddenly everyone was woke.
Now that the immigration horses have escaped the barn, the Biden administration is reconsidering patching breaches in the border wall and bribing – shall we call things by their right names for once? -- South American countries plagued for decades by failed socialist policies, so that the governments of said countries might consider giving the Biden administration a hands-up concerning illegal border crossings.
Answering a plea from Vice President Kamala Harris, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has agreed to lend a hand as well. After all, why should a border crisis that affects the entire nation be borne solely by California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, states lying on our country’s mystical borders?
Good question. Is it not a form of cheap grace for progressives in Connecticut to refuse to put their muscle where their mouths have been? This time, Connecticut progressives are not marching in lockstep with their brother progressives in the Biden-Harris administration.
Connecticut progressives are wiggling on the point. Middletown Mayor Ben Florsheim, perhaps the most progressive politician in the history of Middletown {home of Wesleyan University}, expressed reservations. “Taking kids out of cages in the Southwest and moving them into cages in the Northeast, Florsheim said, “is not an immigration policy. This is a literal decommissioned child prison. It’s a detention facility.” Actually, was a detention facility; no one has been detained in the closed Connecticut Juvenile Training School since April 12, 2018. Then too, Harris was not whispering policy prescriptions into Lamont’s ear during her visit to Connecticut. She was begging Lamont to let down a much needed political life line and, really, doesn’t the temporary housing in Connecticut of distressed children merit a soupcon of compassion from the progressive Mayor of Middletown? We are, after all, a nation of immigrants.
The Connecticut Justice Alliance’s executive director Christina Quaranta, said that the former juvenile-detention center “was not built to care for, support, or heal youth — especially youth already going through such significant trauma. Even if all evidence that [the training school] is a maximum security, hardware secure facility is removed, it still remains a large, cinderblock building, with inadequate living space for young people.”
Nope, Lamont said, “I visited there last week. I had no idea what to expect: cafeterias, classrooms, big outdoor recreation, indoor rec areas. I think the federal government would come in and make sure that when it came to where people actually sleep, they can do that in a way that the kids feel safe and feel like they’re at home. It’s secure, but it’s also welcoming.”
And that is the point, isn’t it? Lamont and Harris are right on this one: Connecticut should share the burden of national problems – the sooner the better. Welcoming illegal immigrant children to a facility that easily can be adjusted to meet their needs is no different than welcoming illegal immigrants into Connecticut’s sanctuary cities, and progressives who lodge flimsy objections to this mission of mercy are practitioners of cheap grace.
The crisis elsewhere should come home to roost, if only to show that Connecticut is better than those who pray in the church of cheap grace. Jesus, incidentally, called the practitioners of cheap grace “the tombs of the prophets.”
Don Pesci is a columnist based in Vernon.
Karen Romero: Don't send migrants back to danger
Migrants from Central America looking at maps for routes to the U.S. border
Via OtherWords.org
Tijuana, where I live and work, has been thrust into the center of the Trump administration’s attack on migrants.
It’s the first site of the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their U.S. claims are processed. Since January, more than 15,000 people have been returned to Mexico after requesting asylum in the U.S. — many to Tijuana. The administration is now extending that policy all along the southern border.
These roadblocks in the asylum process — along with U.S. pressure on Mexico to crack down on Central American migrants — are intentionally designed to deter people from exercising their internationally protected right to seek asylum. The U.S. is turning its back on its legal obligation to protect people fleeing persecution. Instead, it’s sending vulnerable people back to some of the world’s most dangerous cities to wait indefinitely.
I regularly visit the shelters in Tijuana to meet with migrants, offer aid and support, and monitor the human rights situation. There I met Lya, a young trans woman from El Salvador who was frequently detained by the police and discriminated against because of her identity.
She worked at a beauty salon, where she began to receive threats from gangs who demanded she pay them to operate her business. When they threatened to kill her, she decided to flee. When she arrived at the U.S. port of entry bordering Tijuana, she requested asylum — and U.S. authorities sent her back to wait.
She now faces an indefinite wait and doesn’t have a lawyer representing her in the U.S.
The shelters along Mexico’s northern border are already full beyond capacity. Migrants there need housing, food, employment, and often psychological support, none of which the Mexican or U.S. governments have a plan to provide.
The U.S. has offered no information on how long asylum seekers will be forced to stay in Mexico. It could be months, or in some cases years. Over 800,000 cases are currently pending in the backlogged U.S. immigration courts.
Many families have told me they’re afraid to be in Tijuana.
I met a woman named Ruth who left El Salvador with her family last October. When they presented themselves at the port of entry, they were detained for four days. During her interview with the U.S. agents, she was not allowed to present her case, and her needs for refuge and safety were not evaluated. She was then returned to Tijuana to wait for her court date.
Like many others, the family is now considering returning to danger in their home country rather than continuing to wait in Mexico, where migrants have been the victims of robberies, extortions, and arbitrary detentions. In 2018 alone there were 33,341 homicides in Mexico. In December, two teenage boys from Honduras who had arrived with the caravan were murdered in Tijuana while they waited to apply for asylum.
Worse still, legal assistance is extremely limited. Earlier this year, U.S. attorneys who provide legal assistance to migrants in Mexico were detained and blocked from entering the country.
Under the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, asylum has been a fundamental right since 1951. The Remain in Mexico policy is a clear effort by the Trump administration to stop people from exercising that right.
Everyone who cares about human rights must call on the U.S. government to immediately and permanently repeal the Remain in Mexico policy, and let asylum seekers await the outcome of their case here in the United States.n
Never mind the Wall. They’re building warehouses.
Karen Romero is a consultant for American Friends Service Committee in Tijuana. She’s worked on migration issues at the border for almost a decade.
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