On the Fence

From El Paso, Texas to the Gulf of Mexico, the Rio Grande runs (not-so-grandly) through deserts and mountains, forming the US-Mexico border. In El Paso, the river bends north and becomes the border between Texas and New Mexico instead. At that point, the US border continues to travel west across land all the way to the pacific.

If you want to go up to the fence, and see Mexico directly on the other side, you have to go to New Mexico where there is not a river at the border. Every year at the fence in New Mexico, a border mass is held in honor of the struggling migrant and of the deaths and injustices that have occurred on the border. This year, I took some pictures.

Above, you can see Mexico on the left of the fence, and the US on the right of the fence. You'll notice that on the Mexican side, the people are crammed against the fence, and on the US side, there is a significant gap between the fence and the people. Seeing this gap, one of the attendees called it, "fucking scandalous." Apparently, last year border patrol put a line a few feet away from the fence where people could not cross, except for during one part of the ceremony, the sign of peace, where you can go to the fence and embrace, with squeezed fingers through cracks, the people on the other side. It was told to me that after communion last year, the bishop from Juárez said on to the US side, "We are further apart than we have ever been, you would think we have a disease or something, I hope that next year we can be fully united once again." This year however, it was far more than a mere few feet of separation.
Some people blamed this gap on the Border Patrol that stood in between the fence and the US crowd. Based on the line that their bodies formed, it appeared the we were not allowed to pass to the fence. Curious, I went up and asked if we could pass and stand at the fence. With a little hesitation, he said yes. So I walked up and stood by the fence, feeling uncomfortable and as if I was neglecting some unspoken rule.
Many flags and balloons hung high on the Mexican side. After the ceremony, the sky became filled with white balloons floating up and up and up.
Above, friends—separated by the fence—take the time to catch up. Despite the umbrellas, it was not raining. It is a new phenomenon to me that in November umbrellas are widely used as sun protection.
When people say it was swarming with Border Patrol, they mean it. These agents are standing about ten feet from the fence, making sure that no one jumps over or climbs through a hole.
These kids seem more interested in the ceremony, than trying to hop the fence.

One interesting dynamic between the Border Patrol at the ceremony and the partakers and bishops of the mass, is that I bet both parties would claim that they were there for the purpose of justice. But justice with different definitions. Perhaps justice to Border Patrol is making sure that a person who commits a crime (such as crossing the fence) gets the punishment that is necessary. Perhaps to the bishops and the guests at the mass justice means creating fairness and equality for all people. The ambiguity of the word justice, considering it's implications, strikes me. One of the big jails in El Paso, where guests from our house have ended up, is located on the not coincidentally named "Justice Street." When seeing the reasons people have been sent there, and the time that they are to spend there, the word justice doesn't particularly come to mind.

Dying to Live

Some days the sala is full, others it is empty. This depends on if the guests could find work that day. Sometimes, guests leave the house to rent a place of their own, and sometimes, they leave to go back to their home country. This depends on if the guest could find work. The general mood of the house also fluctuates with the availability of work. On days when work was abundant, people come home in high spirits and ready to go to bed early. It is days when no work was available that people are on edge, and problems arise. Finding work, one day a week, or two days a week, is the make or break for many guests. It determines if their family in Mexico will have food on the table. It determines how long they have to be separate from their families. A day of work means everything.

This week I will try to document the public policy and economic marginalization involved with the displacement of many native Mexicans—necessitating their migration north. I will highlight how the “workers” category at our house exists because of failed public policy.

Although migration north for work has been a phenomenon since the US acquisition of Mexican land in 1848, the recent waves of migration can be traced back to the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on January 1st, 1994.

This agreement, between Canada, Mexico, and the US, was reached in hopes to strengthen all three economies with more cooperation and a more free market. Essentially, NAFTA lowers tariffs on goods between the three countries, including the complete elimination of tariffs on 21 farm products. This would allow US companies to take advantage of the cheap labor in Mexico, without having to pay as much to get the goods back across the border. Also, without tariffs, it put the economies of all three countries in direct competition with each other, meaning that the Mexican corn farmer, the US corn farmer, and the Canadian corn farmer were all put head to head to see who could make corn the cheapest.

Mexico signed the deal hoping that the increased incentive for foreign investment would help to stabilize their economy. On the morning of January 1st, 2004, when NAFTA went into effect, Mexico woke up to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation declaring war on Mexico and using the date of the implementation of NAFTA as a symbol of the greater than one hundred years of oppression of the indigenous people of Mexico.

This immediate resistance to NAFTA could be traced to two main reasons. First, because the rural population of Mexico realized that the decreased tariffs would put them in competition with the US farmers and the huge US farm subsidies, therefore, putting them out of work. Second, a Ejido land system had existed in which land was constitutionally protected for certain communities to live on and cultivate. This land was the livelihood for many indigenous people. George Bush Sr. had given Salinas, the then-President of Mexico, an ultimatum that if he did not make the ejido land available for sale and for factory use, NAFTA would not be signed by the US. Salinas then amended the Mexican Constitution to allow for the sale of ejidos, leaving the land, and the people of the land, victim to wealthy landowners and government officials.

The declared Zapatista revolution had dramatic effects on an international scale. Hundreds of foreign investors pulled money out of Mexico as fast as they could, fearing the tumultuous state of the country. With money rapidly leaving the country, the value of the peso fell to less than half of its prior value. Concerned with the disastrous state of our southern neighbor, and the effect that could have on us, the US offered Mexico bailout money, but only under the condition that Mexico would cut social, educational, and infrastructural spending.

In the first year of the implementation of NAFTA, Mexico had witnessed the birth of a revolution, the value of the peso cut in half, and their freedom to spend where they wanted infringed by debt and dependence on US bailouts. The early days of NAFTA did not bode well.

Before NAFTA, one half of Mexico’s land was dedicated to corn production, with the help of two and a half million farmers. The implementation of NAFTA changed things. The US gives twice the amount of subsidies to its farmers than Mexico does, and therefore, the US farmers can grow corn for a much lower cost. Also, the US has an agreement that they will buy up any excess corn that the farmers produce. With the extra corn that the US buys, they then sell it in Mexico, flooding the market with cheap corn. These systems make it nearly impossible for Mexican corn farmers to continue, putting millions out of work. By 1996, two years after NAFTA began, 2.3 million Mexicans lost their jobs, the average cost of living rose by 80% while the average salary only rose 30%, and 20,000 small-medium size businesses went out of business. The disastrous effects of NAFTA seem very evident when you look at the numbers.

With a seemingly eternal tremulous economy in Mexico, there is a saying that, “When the US sneezes, Mexico catches Pneumonia.” This has been seen in the recent economic downturn. In the three-month period this year between April and June, the Mexican economy contracted 10.3% while the US economy contracted 1%. Currently 60% of the active working population in Mexico is working in the informal sector, trying to squeeze out a livelihood washing cars, selling papitas and so on. Of every 730,000 people that entered the labor market before 2008, only 80,000 found employment. Hearing these numbers, it is no wonder that since 1994 and the implementation of NAFTA, 500,000 Mexicans migrate to the US annually.

It is a portion of these 500,000 each year that show up at our door, in a state of crisis, looking to earn enough money to keep them and their dependents in Mexico alive. These people are the byproduct of disastrous public policy, and are the real, living example, of what went wrong. It certainly does something to see the numerical effects that NAFTA has on Mexico. But it is when you get looked in the eye and told by someone that he lost his job, his family went hungry, and now he is simply dying to live, that you can really absorb the pain, injustice, and errors of this particular public policy.

ICE Cracks

All of the meals at Annunciation House are eaten with everyone together, around one large table. Niños primero, and then the rest can grab food too. If you look around the table at any given meal, you will see many very unique stories of how each person arrived at that table. There will be kids laughing, crying, and throwing their food. Mamas will be chasing, and trying to eat themselves. There will be lively talk in Spanish, English, Arabic… somehow all making just one large conversation. But if you continue to look, and pay attention to the patterns of the unique stories, you could realize that as different as the stories are, they mostly all fall into just a few categories. These categories are created by gaps in the social structure and errors in public policy. So it turns out that the guests at Annunciation House are to an extent just one byproduct of public policy, and because of that, they provide a unique view of what went wrong and why it didn’t work.

In this sense, Annunciation House is intimately connected with the actions of our government. Receiving no government funds and having no formal government connections, it is an odd relationship to feel so close to governmental policy via the fact that we are doing their dirty work.

This topic was brought up when the board of directors for Texas ACLU met at Annunciation House. Someone asked what our relationship looked like with immigration and the government. We described it as simply anomalous. Here is a less simple explanation…

To generalize, the major categories that we see at our house are: the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) guests, the workers, the single mothers, the refugees from violence in Juárez, and the social security guests

In the next couple of weeks, I will attempt to go category by category and document how public policy and other factors have left each category of people in crisis.

This week I will document the public policy involved with former ICE detainees who become left with no options.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could be considered the muscle of immigration law enforcement. ICE manages all of the immigration raids, does investigations, and runs the detention system. If Annunciation House were ever to be raided for providing hospitality, ICE would be the ones to do it. But in fact, our relationship with ICE is unique, because they actually rely on us. Every few days or so, we receive a call from ICE asking us if we can take someone from their detentions. These guests are, for lack of a better term, called ICE guests (despite their warm hearts).

The ICE guests are here essentially because of faults in the detention and processing system. I would identify two groups in this category: Those who are seeking asylum, and those who were picked up by immigration officials without proper documents. ICE’s response to dealing with these people has changed drastically in the last few years. Until 2006, the US government used a system known as catch and release. With that system, when a person was identified by immigration as not having proper papers, they would be picked up, given a court date to appear before a judge, and then released on their own recognizance. According to a 2007 hearing from the congressional subcommittee on Border, Maritime, and Global Counterterrorism, more than 90% of these “illegal aliens”* never showed up to their court date. Because of this, in addition to a desire for deterrence and punishment, the US decided to begin detaining people instead of releasing them, under the Secure Border initiative. The new program is referred to as Catch and Return. The implications of this change are immense. In one year after the change, ICE increased its detention capacity by 7,500 beds. Now, more than 34,000 people are in over 500 US detentions each day, at the cost of $141 dollars per night per person. Despite the increase in beds and funding, ICE’s eyes appear to have been too big for their stomach—they simply cannot achieve the vast task in which they set out to do. ICE has to release detainees against their will for three main reasons. They don’t have enough beds, they can’t afford to detain people with medical needs, and because a Supreme Court ruling, Zadvydas, states that every 90 days the detention of each individual must be reviewed and if it does not appear that the person can be deported to their country, they then must be released.

So typically, people are released to our house for one of those three reasons. The oddity is that even though someone may be released from detention, it doesn’t mean that he/she has legal status. Many of them are still in the middle of immigration processing such as appeals on an asylum case, deportation proceedings, or waiting for work papers.

A few examples to make this clear (names and details have been altered for the sake of confidentiality)...Adam, from Somalia, was released to our house after 13 months in detention. While in detention, he won his asylum case, but then it was appealed. Later, he won the appeals. Now, while he is at our house, he is waiting because his case is being appealed, AGAIN, at the taxpayer’s expense. I find it quite silly that we (The US) are appealing his case twice, even though it was decided originally by the strict guidelines in which we put in place. It is interesting to know that 62% of people that apply for asylum in the US are denied relief. Because technically Adam hasn’t gotten asylum yet, he is left without working papers or identification to travel legally in the US. Therefore, in El Paso, where most shelters require legal status for admittance, he was left with no option but Annunciation House. ICE called us and asked if we would take him in. We said yes.

Javier, from Honduras, worked in a Mexican restaurant in North Carolina. One day, ICE raided the restaurant and picked up him and his friends. He was detained for six days in El Paso, but then released because they were running low on beds. ICE gave him a court date, and released him in hopes that he will show up. Unfortunately, he was released in a city he has never been to with no support network. That is how he ended up with no other option except Annunciation House. ICE called us an asked if we would take him in. We said yes.

Gloria, from El Salvador, was 4 months pregnant when Border Patrol picked her up crossing the border with her husband. They separated her and her husband, detained her for a few days, but then decided that they didn’t want anything to do with the medical needs of a pregnant women. They released her, leaving the medical expenses to the public, and gave her a court date. Most likely, once she has her child, she will be deported. ICE called us and asked us if we would take her in. We said yes.

The act of calling us, and asking for our help, is verification by ICE of our necessity and also of problems with the current system of catch and return. It is ICE admitting, “we need you, because we have cracks that people are falling through.” And this is precisely the reason that they show up at our door asking for help, and not ready to raid.

The ICE guests show up at our house because under the current system people are detained and then displaced upon release with no status to either travel back to where they have a support network, or to get a job for survival. They are left in a limbo, and Annunciation House exists to lift the bar and let them get through without breaking their backs.

This current program isn’t one without economic consequences as well. In FY 2010, our detention program will cost us over $1.7. Take Adam for example, who is in the process of getting asylum and who was in detention for 13 months. That means that the taxpayers spent $54,990 to detain someone who would eventually receive asylum. This strikes me as unfair to everyone involved.

One alternative to the detention system that many people in the immigration reform movement support is the switch to electronic ankle bracelet monitoring, which shows a rate of higher than 90% for getting people to actually show up to their immigration appointments. The cost of this is $12 per day per person, and is arguably more humane detention. However, a guest at our house has one of these ankle bracelets and it is not problem-free. He wears pants no matter what to avoid the embarrassment of people seeing the bracelet and assuming that he is some kind of criminal. Playing soccer, looking for jobs, hanging out with friends, he has to be wearing pants. Also, he has to sit by an electrical outlet for hours each day to charge the ankle bracelet. The dignity provided in this situation is certainly questionable.

The current system is overwhelmingly expensive, sadly inhumane, and clearly incomplete, leaving places like Annunciation House to pick up the slack. In 2006, when the catch and release program was visibly ineffective, major congressional changes occurred and created the system we now have. Today, in 2009, as the catch and return program is visibly inefficient and inhumane; it seems time for major changes once again. A ver.


* Governmental organizations and many media sources use the term “illegal aliens” to refer to those who are undocumented within our borders. Because of this, the term “illegal aliens” has become a common term in public use. However, it seems very clear to me that no person is illegal and no person is an alien, they simply don’t have proper documents—they are undocumented.

A Problem of Social InSecurity

I haven’t posted in a while partially because I have been working on what feels a bit like dead end research for my next blog. Although my research is more or less inconclusive at the moment, I will share what experience and research have taught me so far.

One category of guests at Annunciation House is the social security category. The social security guests come twice a year for one month at a time. They are typically older women and sometimes have kids. They are the survivors of a US resident or citizen who paid into the social security system then passed away. As social security policy goes, the surviving family of a deceased social security contributor can get survivors benefits in the form of a monthly check. The twist; what happens if the family is Mexican, and lives in Mexico? Well, the policy says that in order for them to receive their checks, they have to stay in the US for one month every six months. As I bet you can imagine, this can get problematic.

A feasible scenario illuminates the difficulty and injustice of this policy. Maria, a Mexican national, marries Juan, a US citizen. Mary, a US citizen, marries John, also a US citizen. These married couples live together for years in the US, Juan and John working and paying into social security. One day, John and Juan pass away, leaving and Maria and Mary to support their families alone. Maria, looking for help with her kids, moves back home to Mexico where family and friends can lend a hand. Mary continues to live in the US. Each month, Mary gets her social security checks in the mail, her only source of income, but luckily, just enough to get by. For Maria, things are more difficult to get her only source of income. Each year, the Social Security Administration tells her the two months that she must stay in the US. For at least one of those months, her kids are uprooted from school, as they are required to come with her to the US. She has to pay for transportation, food and housing for each month that they are in the US. But despite these costs, she still makes the trip north, because it gives her access to her only source of income. As Maria gets older, it becomes harder and harder to travel north. Eventually Maria is sick and can’t travel, but unfortunately more dependent than ever on these monthly checks. So, Maria’s health won’t allow her to take the twenty hour bus ride from central Mexico to El Paso, and subsequently, her only source of income gets cut off from her. This tragedy occurs often. If you were Maria, a social security beneficiary, would it be tragic that once you need your monthly checks the most, they are cut off because you can no longer travel? If you were Juan, a US citizen who fell in love with Maria, would you feel your rights were being violated when the money you paid into the system was cut off from your wife when she became too sick to travel to the US twice a year?

Aside from the injustice to the people and the immorality of it, this policy is also explicitly harmful to US taxpayers. On more than one occasion, we have seen elderly women come to the US for their assigned month, get sick, and end up spending the month in a US hospital, leaving the bill for the taxpayers. But what do we expect when we ask elderly women in poverty to spend 16% of every year in the US without family to take care of them?

The situation instinctively seems very clear cut. It is a policy that doesn’t make sense and has the effect of leaving deserving people very desperate. It is a policy that needs to be changed as soon as possible. With that being my goal, I set out to do some research.

Some of my initial questions were: what is the name of the act that put this in place? When did it take effect? Is Mexico the only country to which it applies? Why hasn’t it been challenged?

The first try was with the board of directors of the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who fortunately for me, held one of their quarterly meetings at Annunciation House. On the topic of civil liberties and constitutional rights, we brought the social security issue to their attention, and to my surprise, they were overwhelmingly uninformed of this issue. They were astonished by the glaring unconstitutionality of it. Their lack of awareness tipped me off that finding information might be difficult.

My next stop was the Internet and the library. Both proved useless. I spent hours on the Social Security website sifting through policies that might contain this piece, but I couldn’t find anything pertinent. And not surprisingly, the El Paso Public Library did not have books about social security policy.

I then decided to go directly to the source. I walked the five blocks to the downtown social security office. As I entered, there was a machine that I pressed to get a ticket. The ticket printed and read, “You will be helped in approximately 450 minutes. Please take a seat and wait for your number to be called.” The hundreds of people sitting and waiting was a daunting site to see, and without 450 minutes to spare, I turned around and walked home. At home I looked up the social security phone number and gave them a ring. 20 minutes after listening to ear piercing on-hold music, I was startled by a real-live voice. This was a breakthrough.

The helpful man on the other end informed me that the policy was part of the 1977 Omnibus Reconciliation Act. With that name, no wonder I couldn’t find it online. He told me that this social security policy applies to every country in the world, not just Mexico. Surprised and unbelieving I asked, “So a women from Australia has to fly to the US and back twice a year to receive her checks?” He replied, “well they actually have a treaty with us to override it, so Australians can receive the checks without traveling.” On to something, I asked, “how many other countries have a treaty like this too?” “A few” he said. “What about France, England, Germany, Italy, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark…” I inquired. The answer was yes, yes, and yes. They all have treaties too. “What about Brazil, Honduras, Peru, Argentina…” The answer was no, no, no. They don’t have treaties. I quickly learned that if a country was primarily white and wealthy, they most likely had the treaty. If they weren’t white or wealthy, they most likely didn’t have the treaty.

This conversation was incredibly helpful and changed my thought path on how the policy might be changed. I had assumed that the policy was discriminatory against a few countries, and therefore could be challenged on the basis of NAFTA, other international agreements, or as unconstitutional. But the fact is that the policy is completely universal, and across the board. It is just isolated treaties that help some countries get around this crippling policy. Can a country be blamed for signing treaties with some countries and not with others? That is a right the government does indeed have.

The questions that this arrangement begs are what does a country need to attain this treaty. Has Mexico really not tried to make the treaty? Or have they just been denied? Is requiring a women from South America to come to the US twice a year to receive her checks essentially denying her her checks, because the travel expenses would make it fiscally useless? Is there a reason for the immense racial divide that tells whether or not a country has the overriding treaty? If we accept that it is necessary for Canada to have a treaty, why isn’t it equally necessary for Mexico to have the treaty?

My next goal is to answer these questions and then write a letter to my Congressmen.

As I have previously written, it is rare that I can feel so one-sided and sure about right and wrong on a particular issue, but this is one of those rare occasions. I know that this policy towards survivors of social security contributors needs to end, and the sooner the better. If you feel outraged, or even just agitated, by the situation Maria finds herself in, or for the citizen whose wife is put through so much just to receive the checks his family deserves, I hope you will help end this. I will post the letter to my congressmen, hoping that anyone interested will alter it accordingly and pay the 44 cents to send it along to his/her congressperson with his/her signature at the bottom.

At the Bottom of the Ladder: Unaccompanied Minors

An evening in Juárez brought to my attention the tragic struggle for unaccompanied minors on the border, and the odd relationship of power and obligation between different groups that share the same issue but at different levels.

The US Consulate in Juárez, located ten or fifteen miles from el centro de Juárez, looks pristine and tranquil from the outside, surrounded by tall white walls, guards with European looking berets, and decorated with bright, human sized letters identifying itself. A high-fying American flag floats fiercely in the windy desert sky. The busy streets and towering chain hotels around it forebode what is found inside the protective white walls. Once you are in, there is visible truth to the fact that it is the busiest consulate in the world. The paths leading through the rare green grass are busy, and the shiny floors inside sing a constant melody of squeaking leather shoes, tapping high heels, and a bilingual murmur.

In order to get in I had to fax a copy of my passport ahead of time, and then, as verification, present the actual passport when I arrived. That got me into the lobby and screening room. From there an escort took my group through the well-watered lawn and into the glamorous, newly built main building. Upon entry, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama welcomed me warmly, or at least their large pictures did.

I was at the consulate to attend a symposium about unaccompanied minors on the border. The event was set up with a panel and an anxious audience to ask questions. The crowd mainly consisted of high-level diplomats in suits, and then of course there were four Annunciation House volunteers noticeably under dressed. To my surprise, the event was a potluck. But all that we could have possibly offered was our water bottles and journals, which we each carried in hand. Our lack of contribution didn’t stop us from enjoying homemade tandoori chicken, flan, tortillas, pastries, etc. I was delighted at the idea of a governmental potluck, and of course by the free food (monetarily speaking).

Prior to the event, I knew nothing about the topic and was hoping to take some notes and learn a little bit because the issue of unaccompanied minors is one that affects the work of Annunciation House. The assemblage of information at the consulate was evident, and I was eager to get at some of it, so I had fun asking officers about consulate information. During a side conversation, one of the questions that came up was what happens if a non-US citizen happens to have a baby while visiting the Consulate. Since it is technically US soil, would their child be a US citizen? The answer was no. Apparently, at any time the US can momentarily switch the possession of the land to Mexico, making it a Mexican baby, not a US baby.

As I learned who each of the panel members were, I realized that whoever chose the panel members must have a taste for drama and tension. On the left, was a high up administrator in Desarollo Integral de la Familia (DIF), which is the Mexican version of US Child Protective Services. Her role was to provide information about the services that DIF provides and how it runs. On the right was Ginger, a sharp woman from where she calls, “the boondocks of Pennyslvania,” whose role was to testify to the conditions (reportedly awful) of the DIF facilities in Juaréz. In the middle, maybe designed this way to keep the peace, were two representatives from the Mexican Consulate. Ginger’s presence provided much excitement. She initially became involved with border issues when she volunteered with a DIF shelter in Juárez during college. After graduation, she went back to volunteer with DIF, and wrote and received many grants to help support the struggling shelter where she worked. Ginger put in tremendous time and resources to the DIF shelter, but was dismissed this past June for “administrative reasons.” These reasons are most likely related to her speaking out about corruption in the organization, and neglect of the unaccompanied minors. Remember that on the other side of the panel was an administrator from DIF, potentially responsible for Ginger’s dismissal. As the talks got under way, the tension between the woman on the left and the woman on the right seemed palpable.

Slowly, background information surfaced. The primary issues with unaccompanied minors are who is responsible for them, what that responsibility entails, and where the kids go in the long term. For example, a boy who is fifteen might cross the border, maybe looking for work, or maybe escaping an unsafe situation at home. If border patrol then picks him up, where does he go from there? Sometimes the boy would be deported immediately, other times, he might be detained, and then deported. One of the questions is what responsibility does the US have to provide education and services to the kids who they choose to detain. The responsibility is great, and also has a great cost. It is very expensive to provide schooling, counseling, housing, and meals for someone that they plan to deport anyway. The cheapest thing to do is to deport the kid to Mexico, where he will then be under DIF jurisdiction. Once at DIF, the next goal is to make contact with the child’s family, get an address, and send the kid “home.”

My question was if a kid has traveled all the way from his home by himself and attempted to cross the dangerous border, isn’t it clear that home might not be the best place for him. But then, what is the alternative? What I found out is that in this whole process there is very little, or no part at all, that includes the desire of the kid. Because they are under the discretionary age of 18, their opinion is more or less disregarded, and their plans are made by members of US and Mexican governments. Clearly, this story of an unaccompanied minor navigating the process of crossing the border and being deported is a tragic one. Undocumented minors on the border could very well be the most vulnerable of all, and because of limited funds, limited contacts, and a hot potato attitude to send them back across the border, children on the border are the victims of an international game of politics, money, and jurisdiction.

The discussion went back and forth between Spanish and English, but I thought this to be insignificant as I assumed that every one there would understand both. At one point, in English, Ginger made a very pointed argument that DIF is not using its resources to support the kids that it needs to support, and furthermore, that she has often seen inhumane treatment of kids in DIF custody. She said that the administration of DIF is caught in dirty politics, and more interested in their image than the work that they do. She pointed out that the people who are experiencing the repercussions of this behavior are the stranded unaccompanied minors. As Ginger spoke, I continued to look over at the DIF administrator, trying to read her reaction to the very clear criticism of her work. I thought I saw embarrassment on her face.

At the end of Ginger’s statement, someone from the audience raised their hand and asked the administrator from DIF a question in English. She looked confused and nervous, and finally spit out, “en Español por favor.”

This indicated to everyone that the administrator from DIF didn’t speak English, and therefore had missed Ginger’s entire argument against the administration (her administration) of DIF. An air of disappointment came across the room. The importance of bilingualism on the border, and in general, became glaring. Without it, as we saw that night, Ginger might as well have been talking to a wall.

One thing that continued to frustrate me during the talks was the futility of it all, and the utter lack of options. The problem is clear—unaccompanied minors don’t have a home on either side of the border, have risked lots to flee their family, and neither Mexico nor the US has the resources or creativity to figure out what to do with them. But there seems to be little alternatives to that reality. Dealing with unaccompanied minors on the border is a really difficult task inside and out, and it became clear to me that no potluck symposium was really going to change that fact. So it seems, the problem of handling these kids on the border, is really just a byproduct of a bigger problem, which is the fact that children, for whatever reason, have been handed a situation in which the need to leave their family, in search for something else, exists.

The real root of this problem is the social and economic systems that dictate these people, and put them in positions where escape becomes their only perceivable option. But recognizing the real roots doesn’t feel like much help either, as it just makes me realize the depth of the problem and feel further from a solution.

Similar to many problems, this one has distinct levels. These distinct levels of power and responsibility strike me, and are painful to consider. From the bottom of the food chain to the top the levels go like this: The unaccompanied minor, the shelters (like Annunciation House) who receive the unaccompanied minor, the Mexican and US consulates, and the economic, political, and social structures of our world. I am writing about unaccompanied minors now, but a tier system like this seems to exist with many national and international structures as well. It is painfully ironic that the lowest levels on the power scale seem to be the highest in the knowledge-of-the-issue scale. It is also unfortunate that all of these levels can’t get it together to communicate and send some knowledge up the ladder and some power down the ladder.

It seems too often that the people at the bottom are left to clean up the mess that the decisions and structures above have made. This is a constant occurrence in Annunciation House. It seems that the type of person who walks to our door, is decided by national and international policy. As those policies change, the populations of our houses change in correlation.

Simply put, our house serves as the home for the byproducts of failed governmental policies. Detailing that statement will be saved for another blog.

An uncovered thought

Today I remembered something that I had written about immigration and borders nearly a half a year ago. I searched my computer and found the document. In reading it again, I was shocked by my radicalism and harsh criticism of United State's roots, and mainly by my overall one sided opinion, which I often try to avoid in my writing. Despite the narrow view of the argument, I think it is worth posting. Here it is...

International border control is an extremely important and under recognized global issue. Since human greed and territorial nature created the idea of a “border” centuries ago, the world as we know it has been defined by borders and the policies that surround them. As natural borders—such as rivers—drastically change environments, artificial borders—such as the US-Mexico border—drastically change human existence. A look at the border policy of the most powerful nation in the world is a good exercise to connect with the vast implications and hypocrisy of border and immigration policy.

When the white man arrived in America, we encountered the native population, who believed that like the air and the water, land was not something that could be “owned.” Exploiting this belief, we swept away other cultures and civilizations from coast to coast, and then drew lines on the land to signify what was ours. As we defined ourselves to be a beacon of hope, the masses arrived, and increasingly, we have looked to those lines on the land to keep them away.

Our southern border, which was once abstract, has come to separate one of the wealthiest nations from one of the poorest nations in the world. Before the border existed, the man two feet north was no better than the man two feet south, but today, that difference of four feet might be the difference between wealth and poverty, food and starvation, hope and desperation. All because of a line and our laws to define its significance.

There is a legislative line of order versus liberty that is hopefully balanced, but more often stumbled over, when defining the rules of our border. As immigration into the U.S. increases, citizens sometimes feel that we are losing order and that “our” land should not be theirs too. This ideology is often rooted in racism and a fear of blending cultures. The notion of protecting “our” land has been given life through much legislation dating back as early as the Chinese Exclusion Act or even as recently as the major immigration reform in 1996 and the USA PATRIOT Act following 9/11. Essentially, this type of legislation makes our borders less permeable, and allows us to send more and more immigrants across that line and back to their “homes.” The irony of this ideology—that has become the centerpiece of US immigration policy—is simply immeasurable.

The U.S. is located on land that we stole through violence in the Mexican American War. The U.S. came to prosperity on the backs of stolen humans from another continent. One of the driving forces of our economy today is the cheap and hardworking undocumented labor force, a product of the line we drew so long ago. But still, despite all this, our policy towards immigrants is self-righteous and overtly seeks to protect “our” land for ourselves.

This hypocrisy expands beyond the line from Tijuana to the Gulf of Mexico. It exists in every border laid out on this earth. Can we truly own land? Can we acquire it fairly? Is the security that we feel from a line in the dirt worth the tremendous divide that it unequivocally creates among humans? The root question that we each must ask ourselves as part of humanity, is whether borders are justified in their existence.

As always, please comment with thoughts or criticism...I am eager to hear it!

A Place We Call Home

Williams is a Rwandan national, who has been in the US for no more than half a year. John, a Somalian national, is his good friend. Yesterday Williams walked into Annunciation House and asked me, “Is John home yet?” I answered, “I think so” without digesting the significance of this question.

After a moment, I got it. Williams calls this place home. To me, that means a whole lot.

You could call Annunciation House a homeless shelter, but I guess, once the guests are here, they are no longer ‘homeless.’ For that reason, among others, we choose to call Annunciation House a house of hospitality.

Raul snapping shots of himself

It uplifts me to know that my day’s work (and night’s work) sustains a home. A home for thirty, forty, or fifty people, that by some definition, are ‘homeless.’ A home that serves as a refuge from violence, oppression, racism, marginalization, and all else that exists out side of our brick walls.

Because I sleep, eat, and live at the house with all of the guests, and love every moment of it, I sometimes lose sight of the fact that the people living here—who would be deemed by society as the poorest of the poor—might not love living here as much as I do. But even if the guests don’t want to live at Annunciation House forever, it is a testament to something good, that for at least today, the guests call it home.

Max's Despedida

I remember vividly, and shamefully, the confusion of when I visited Annunciation House for the first time last winter. I walked into the main Sala, and didn’t know how to act with the guests. “Should I act sympathetic and understanding?” or “Should I just walk by and do nothing?” I wondered. These thoughts went through my head because at some level I assumed that the people at the house felt bad for themselves, were unhappy, or maybe even lacked hope. Why I assumed these things, I don’t know, because they are quite far from reality.

Victorcito and Miguel spinning the office chair

The guests at Annunciation House, and most likely all people in the world, don’t feel bad for themselves. Nor do they lack hope, dignity, or happiness. They are in fact hopeful, proud, and happy to be alive, despite that they have been thrown hefty challenges to overcome, and great pain along the way. The space of hope, pride, and dignity, thus becomes our mutual space. The space where all people interact on the same level. It is this oasis of communality that we at Annunciation House rely on to sustain a home.

When we see oppression in the world, or anything that we know in our gut is wrong, we can choose to fight it or to take flight from it. The fight that I take is in creating a space within which a community can avoid all those things that lessen us as human beings. I may not be able to give surgery to this woman, or get a job for that man, but I am with them in this communal space, representing the world that we seek. Right now, I can’t change the law, or stop the violence in Juaréz. So I will start small, and work to sustain the microcosm of what I hope to see bigger one day; a place where all people are welcomed warmly, and respected highly. A place where all people can find home.


Please feel free to comment if you any thoughts have been provoked.


Something funny: after writing this I stood up to use the bathroom in the shop where I write. Above the urinal was large sharpy writing, which read, “Find Home”