[1]Beto for America



John,



I’ve spent the last 24-hours in Mississippi following one of the worst ICE
raids in the history of this country. 

Here’s what I saw. 

In Canton, a small community about a half hour outside of Jackson, I met
with about 25 women, a couple of men and their very young children. The
women are undocumented. Most of the kids are U.S. citizens. Their husbands
were all apprehended in the ICE raid and they now have no idea when or if
they are going to see them again. They also don’t know how they’re going
to pay the rent, afford an attorney, or pay for school supplies. Of those
needs, money for rent is most important. All of them mentioned it
repeatedly.

An amazing local store owner seems to be the hub of the immigrant
community — everyone trusts her, everyone looks to her for help. It was in
her store that I met with the affected families. 

One woman, wearing an ankle monitor or grillete said to me, “We have never
been a burden. Some people claim that immigrants take public services.
I’ve never taken assistance or help in my life. I came here to work, and
every day I work. My husband works the night shift, I work the day shift.
Now that he’s detained and I’m not working, I have nothing, no way to
support my family. I don’t want anyone’s help, I just want to work.”

A young woman, 18 years old, told me about her parents. She told me that
they luckily both left the chicken processing plant just before the raid
took place. She started to cry when she told me that they are still
working, because they have no other choice. She told me she was crying
because she doesn’t know if one day when she’s at school she’ll come home
to find that they’re gone. They’ve lived here and worked here for her
whole life, they’ve raised a strong, smart, caring woman — a U.S. citizen,
someone who should be able to focus on her studies, her career, her future
instead of worrying about whether her parents will be deported for the
crime of working in a chicken processing plant for $12 an hour.  

Nearly 700 families were broken up in these raids. Hardworking,
family-focused people.

I went to the home of a young woman who lived on the outskirts of town.
She used to sell tamales to the workers at the chicken processing plant.
She arrived in this country four years ago seeking asylum, and has been
wearing an ankle monitor ever since. It’s heavy, gets hot, irritates her
skin, but she’s had it on every day for four years. She’s raising four
beautiful children, the oldest of which sometimes helps her to sell
tamales. Now that that the immigrants have been rounded up and are no
longer working in the chicken processing plants there’s no one to buy the
tamales. 

She’s worried that she’ll be deported back to Guatemala or, with no income
and no ability to pay the rent, that she will have no other choice but to
return. She showed us her scars from stab wounds she suffered when she
lived there, and said she had received a call recently from a gang leader
in Guatemala who told her that her husband had been murdered for
outstanding debts and that the gang wanted her children as additional
payment. She is certain that if she returns she will lose them. 

We went to a Catholic church in Forest that was providing help for
families torn apart by these recent raids. In addition to the priest and
nuns who were tending to the children, there were a number of attorneys
from Arizona who had flown in to provide free legal help to the families.
They were also helping to take care of the kids. People willing to do this
work are my heroes. It doesn’t pay, it’s tough mentally, it’s tough
emotionally, but it is so necessary.  

One of the families they were helping was really struggling. I met a dad
of a four-month old and a very sweet, polite 11-year old. The father told
me that his wife was picked up in the raid and that she is having a hard
time in detention. She is depressed, and her breasts are painful and
swollen, as she was still breast-feeding when she was picked up. She can’t
bond out — I don’t think they’ve even set bond for these families. 

I met another woman at the church. She was in detention for the last week
and was only released yesterday when ICE realized that they had also
detained her husband at another facility, leaving her children on their
own without either parent. She told me about the conditions in the
facility, the depression that she felt while she was there, missing her
family, not knowing how they were doing. She talked about the day of the
raid, one of her co-workers punched in the face by an agent (“he was
scared and he started to run, so they ran him down and punched him”). She
talked about workers being cuffed and their cuffs tied to ankle
restraints, like you’d tie a hog. I asked her how she felt now. She told
me “I’m just happy to be with my son. That’s the only thing that matters
to me.”

This cruelty, this terror felt by this community of hardworking
immigrants, is the policy of Donald Trump. His hope is that he can inflict
enough suffering for these immigrants to get them to leave, or perhaps go
back to the countries they fled in the first place. He’s trying to show
he’s tough by preying upon the vulnerable and the defenseless. 

I came to see it for myself. I am disgusted that we could treat people
like this in a country of immigrants. But I’m inspired by the way that
people have come together to help these families. 

My hope is that the more America learns about this the more we as
Americans will do to change this. As hard as this is to see, I’m glad I
came here — glad to be able to bear witness to what is being done in our
name to immigrants in this country. And I’m more determined than ever to
help lift up the stories of those who are suffering, and the stories of
those who are rising up to meet this moment. 

If you’re wondering what you can do, please make a donation to the
Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance. Here’s the link:

[ [link removed] ][link removed]

- Beto




 


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