IMMIGRANT RIGHTS GROUPS DEMAND RELEASE OF BLACK DETAINEES IN ISOLATION
In other news related to our continued ICE detention reporting: The Southern Poverty Law Center – along with several other organizations – filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security urging the agency to release Black asylum seekers who are on a hunger strike at the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana.
The detainees in isolation spoke to me back in June, when they organized a peaceful protest in honor of Juneteenth. "Knowing the U.S. is one of the nations that protects human rights and freedom of speech, we hope that at this particular moment, someone could hear us,” one of them told me at the time.
Earlier this month, about 45 detainees, most of them from Cameroon, declared they were going on hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention and the racist treatment they have experienced inside detention, according to the complaint. An analysis from the Southern Poverty Law Center found that Cameroonians are two and a half times more likely to have their parole determinations denied than other asylum seekers from countries outside Africa.
This week, guards in “full military gear” escorted the detainees on hunger strike with the use of force into an isolation unit, according to the complaint. “Officers restrained three men, climbing on top of them and attempting to place them in choke-holds. One man on hunger strike who had his hands up described being thrown to the ground with six officers on top of him. He felt he was going to be suffocated, and had bruises all over his body.”
Read the complaint here.
3 THINGS WE’RE READING
1. Volunteers are struggling to provide schooling to migrant children at the border during the pandemic. (The New York Times)
With little to no help from the U.S or Mexican governments, volunteers working along the border mobilized in the last year to offer schooling for the children of asylum seekers waiting in tent camps for their U.S. immigration court dates. Then the pandemic hit.
The kicker: (Ana) Morales Becerra’s children, along with the other 75 kids at the three shelters, were suddenly adrift, in lockdown, while their parents learned their court appointments to apply for asylum would be delayed because of the coronavirus. Or worse: that they could be forced to return to the violence they were fleeing. As contributions and aid dwindled during the next two months, the children at Embajadores de Jesús shelter were desperate, stressed and bored without lessons. “All the aid stopped coming. The doctors, donations, the psychologist … everything,” Morales Becerra said. Her eldest son, 12-year-old Jesús, kept a copy of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” which tells the adventures of a young wizard. “Since I had nothing to do, I would finish it and read it again, and again, and again,” he said.
2. From funeral arrangements to grocery delivery, a Mexican priest steps in to help undocumented families in his community. (The New Yorker)
Immigrants living in Brooklyn consider Juan Carlos Ruiz one of the pillars of their community. As COVID-19 devastated Latino residents, Ruiz has stepped in to the fill the void caused by the state’s failure to help thousands of undocumented residents. He delivers groceries, arranges funerals and advocates for rent cancellation. “I think we’re reaching the stage when things are getting so bad that people who have sacrificed everything to come here and work in New York City are doubting what the whole point is,” he said.
The kicker: Throughout the spring and early summer, Ruiz’s cellphone rang incessantly. People were losing work, going hungry, falling ill, dying. “It was like a war had started,” he told me. A man called Ruiz late one night, after a fistfight with his landlord over rent he couldn’t pay because he’d lost his job. Ruiz heard from an undocumented immigrant who’d been living for several days with the corpse of his brother in their shared apartment; he was afraid to call city authorities but unable to pay a funeral home to retrieve the body. Officials from (the Mexican state) Guerrero were regularly seeking advice on how to repatriate the remains of locals who had died in New York.
3. Funeral homes serving Latino communities are overwhelmed by families in need of their services. (Los Angeles Times)
Latinos account for 47% of COVID-19 deaths in California, and funeral homes are struggling to keep up with the demand for their services. At the Continental Funeral Home in East Los Angeles, director Magda Maldonado had to rent a small refrigerated storage container to increase the funeral home’s capacity. And with a lag in paperwork from the state, the process of transporting a body to Mexico went from 10 days to almost two months. “It really caught us all off guard,” Maldonado said.
The kicker: Bob Achermann, executive director of the California Funeral Directors Assn., said funeral homes were relying on guidance from the state – but it became confusing to follow at times. “The rules were sometimes changing from week to week, location to location,” he said. “When there were services, only 25% of the space could be occupied and that you were social distancing.” “How do you not hug? How do you not touch during, you know, those times of grief?” he added.
NEWS BREAK: STORYTIME AT THE BARBERSHOP
Antonio Brown owns a barbershop in St. Petersburg, Florida. He loves to read and wants to impart his passion for books to young customers. So on Wednesday afternoons, he gives free haircuts to kids ages 4 to 12 who read to him. From behind his barber chair, Brown says, “I’m trying to help mentor the boys, the kids.”
From the Tampa Bay Times story:
Clumps of hair pile on the floor as R.J. Franklin reads The Same Stuff as Stars from the barber’s chair. He sounds out words, slowly making his way though Katherine Paterson’s young adult novel. Cassiopeia. Briefcase. Anxious.
“Do you know what that word means?” barber Antonio Brown asks. “Anxious.”
“When you’re angry?” the 10-year-old asks.
“It’s when you’re kind of nervous and eager,” Brown explains. “So if your dad says, ‘Hey we’re going to Orlando, you better be good,’ it makes you anxious, right?”
Brown, master barber and owner of Central Station Barbershop & Grooming on Central Avenue in St. Petersburg, teaches kids ages 4 to 12 how to read from 4 to 6 p.m. every Wednesday as they get their hair cut. And if they read the book to him, they get to keep the book and get a free haircut.
Brown, 39, came up with the idea five years ago when he first opened the shop. He wanted to do something different in the barbershop – something that would help kids.
“I was always passionate about reading, so now I’m carrying it on,” Brown said. “I don’t take for granted knowing how to read. Being able to teach to those younger than me is something I’m dedicated to doing.”
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– Laura C. Morel
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