Border Angels Weekly Newsletter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This holiday weekend further proved that especially during the summer we cannot take time off from the desert. Our limited group scouted a new location, dropped supplies and cleaned up over 20lbs. of trash.
We found a chilling scene of a barrel cactus that was chopped open by a piece of scrap metal found along the freeway. The inside of the cactus was consumed by the person(s) there who had taken whatever limited shade was available. Not more than a hundred feet away was a bottle that contained urine, presumed to be saved for liquid consumption in the most desperate of situations. This past week, it has been over 110° every day, and tomorrow we are headed out where it is expected to around 120°. With these extreme conditions, death in the desert has proven to be a reality, as we found out this week.
That is why we are out as much as we can. We are doing everything we possibly can to get supplies to where they are going. While right now we cannot take new volunteers out, we fill our weekly drops with members of our leadership team and then if there’s spots open we take volunteers who have been out to numerous drops with us. The summer and the extreme heat is not a safe time to learn and experience your first Water Drop.
|
|
|
|
ATTENTION: We bonded 7 people out of detention this week! That brings our total to 41 people free from Otay Mesa and Adelanto ICE detention! We are overjoyed and beyond grateful to all of the wonderful organizations that we have collaborated with, and to your amazing support. It is such a triumph to see the number of people we have freed and so many individuals reunited with their loved ones. Meet the two Mexican and Haitian asylum seekers we bonded above: Evens, Raul, and Jesus!
However this great achievement is bittersweet, as we have just learned another life was lost at a Milwaukee Detention Center. The ongoing threat of COVID inside detention centers is unforgiving, and while it may sound exaggerated, your donations and the Familias Reunidas Bond Program are literally saving lives. It cannot be stressed enough, just how important it is we get as many people out, as we have seen what happens to our folks when we do not. Evens, Raul and Jesus and the 38 others who, we have freed can attest to the nightmarish conditions ongoing in these detention centers.
How many more our folks have to parish for our legislators to pay attention? One life lost, is one life too many. We demand our folks in detention #FreeAnd Alive. We demand our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and community members are not forced to wait in such conditions simply for seeking a place or a part in this country. Evens, Raul and Jesus represent so many others being subject to racist and inhumane policies, who have seeked safety in our country and have instead been met with death and injustice.
Again, we thank you so much for your support and ask you to continue to help us make sure we #FreeThemAll.
|
|
|
Shelter Aid Update:
We love to see shopping carts full with groceries headed back to our beloved migrant shelters.
Thanks to your continued support, we are happy to share rent, utilities, and groceries have been paid for another month! We miss our migrant friends in Tijuana so much, and continue to provide assistance in the most responsible ways possible, and cannot wait for the day we are able to be reunited.
We are especially grateful to your contributions, as one of the shelters we support now houses 15 pregnant women, and you are helping us make sure they stay strong healthy.
We will continue adapting our humanitarian aid to whatever challenge we face, and handle our migrant community with love and care as we always have. Gracias!
|
|
|
Thank you so much to the San Diego Union Tribune for the recognition!!
Read a bit about our Executive Director Dulce Garcia and why she was chosen to be part of "Phenomenal San Diego Women in Advocacy and Empowerment".
"She came to this country when she was 4 and settled with her family into the shadow world of the unauthorized. Sleeping under someone’s kitchen table. Working jobs that paid her in cash. Dulce Garcia saved enough of that money to go to college, then law school, and works now as an immigration attorney and as executive director of the human-rights group Border Angels. She was one of the plaintiffs challenging the Trump administration decision — ruled unlawful last week by the U.S. Supreme Court — to end protections for her and thousands of other “dreamers,” people brought as children to the country illegally by their parents. “To live in America is to hope,” she told the Union-Tribune two years ago. “It’s what brought us to this country in the first place.”
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/phenomenal-women-series/story/2020-06-27/phenomenal-san-diego-women-in-advocacy-and-empowerment
|
|
|
Border Angels "Angeles de la Frontera"
has released on bail 41 migrants from detention centers
|
|
|
Border Angels liberó 7 migrantes del centro de detención Otay Mesa
By Uniradio Informa
"Through funds provided by the community, the program requests that migrants be released on parole on bail. When ICE or a court grants that possibility, Ángeles de la Frontera contributes up to $ 5,000 to secure liberties on bail. When the bond is above $ 5,000, the organization requests assistance from relatives of the migrants, if any in the United States, and from other organizations.
The migrants continue their asylum application process, but on parole without the risk of contracting Covid 19 at the Otay Mesa detention center, the one with the most infections in the country.
The Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported that this Friday it has 172 migrants infected with Covid 19 at the Otay Mesa detention center, four of them in isolation. A migrant from the same center was killed by Covid 19 this spring."
https://www.uniradioinforma.com/noticias/sandiego/606435/border-angels-libero-7-migrantes-del-centro-de-detencion-otay-mesa.html?fbclid=IwAR3_hSp9j4FlIkVIdY2hwmBGGVOSjDuidURvupgryawwFOIrSB8RCa1eB-A
|
|
|
With our new Green Cards for Kids program, we are so lucky to be able to work with immigration attorney Fabiola Navarro who will be representing these children.
It is crucial that we help these children as they have already suffered enough abuse, neglect and/or abandonment.
With your continued support, we can help pay for the legal representation these children deserve in this critical time of their lives.
Please consider donating! No amount is too small!
|
|
|
You can donate to Border Angels when you shop on Amazon.
Amazon will donate 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible items to Border Angels!
**
Tienes la oportunidad de donar a Border Angels cuando compras en Amazon.
Amazon nos donará el 0.5% del precio de compra de artículos elegibles!
|
|
|
|
Despite the growing challenges of this pandemic, Border Angels remains determined to protect and support the community we have pledged to serve. Even though we are currently unable to accept physical donations, we are always accepting monetary donations to support:
1. Our Shelter Aid Program❤️: Especially now that we are unable to receive these items, we need your help to provide funds for groceries, hygiene products, utility bills, rent, clothes, etc.!
2. Familias Reunidas Bond Program👨👩👧: Given the severity of this outbreak, we NEED to get as many people out of the Otay Mesa Detention Center as we can. With your help we can post bond for more individuals! (Link in highlights under Bond Program)
3. Water Drop Program💧: Even after having to postpone public water drops, our team is still constantly in the desert scouting and dropping the supplies necessary for survival. Their work never stops because the need never stops.
Thank you for your continued support.🖤🦋
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
