3 THINGS WE’RE READING
1. The pandemic is further undermining advocates’ search for migrant families separated under the Trump administration. (KQED)
Nearly all of the roughly 2,800 migrant children separated from their parents in the summer of 2018 under the “zero tolerance” policy have been reunited. But the government later acknowledged that hundreds more children who were separated as early as July 2017 remain apart from their parents, many of whom have been deported. Advocates and lawyers have been searching in Central America for their parents, but with new travel restrictions in place due to COVID-19, the search has become more difficult. “We're now in 2020 and this is still going on,” said Lee Gelernt of the ACLU.
The kicker: "When the administration started separating families at the southern U.S. border ... there was no plan to track the families or even reunite them, even though their own experts warned these separations were causing harm," said Nan Schivone, the legal director for Justice in Motion. "And here we are three years later, still dealing with the fallout."
2. COVID-19 is devastating Latino communities in Texas, where they are more likely to be hospitalized and die of the virus. (The Washington Post)
In Texas, Latinos comprise about 40 percent of the state’s population. From San Antonio natives to indigenous immigrants in Austin, “Latinos comprise the bulk of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths.”
The kicker: Jocelyn Hernandez, a nurse at Davis’s clinic, lives with 10 family members, including her siblings, parents, an aunt, a cousin and a 6-year-old niece. All followed the decontamination rules Hernandez helped establish. She and her sister were the assigned grocery shoppers of the home. But they could not control for everything. There are six rooms and three bathrooms in the house but one preferred shower. Hernandez, 27, starting feeling feverish at work at the same time that her father, who has diabetes and hypertension, was bothered by chest congestion. Her mother felt her allergies flaring up. Their symptoms weren’t severe at first, but everyone got tested. All but the child were positive.
3. Amid the pandemic, a moment of joy for new U.S. citizens at a Texas naturalization ceremony. (Dallas Morning News)
The government postponed naturalization ceremonies at the beginning of the pandemic. But in June, the ceremonies restarted on a much smaller scale, with participants wearing masks and sitting six feet apart. On a recent Friday, 30 Texas residents became citizens after a 10-minute ceremony. “Family waiting outside moved in to snap photos and grab hugs. Masks hid half their faces, but not the joy in their eyes.”
The kicker: From a video screen, Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn, chief of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, presided over the ceremony. “I wish I was there with you, seeing and welcoming you as new citizens, shaking your hands,” the judge said. “But we can’t do that now, for obvious reasons." Thirty people, all wearing masks and spaced across a room, peered back at the judge. Most arrived by 7:30 a.m to take their oath of allegiance.
NEWS BREAK: A TREASURE HUNT YIELDS SHARDS OF TEXAS HISTORY
How does one pass the time on a ranch in South Texas during the pandemic? For writer Melissa Guerra and her family, the answer is scouring the land with a metal detector to unearth artifacts that once belonged to “neighbors who lived out here before us.” They’ve found Lone Star Beer pull tabs, spark plugs, a hammer from the 1800s, and lots of pieces of ceramic dinnerware from England.
From the Texas Monthly story:
Rural social distancing has heightened my curiosity about other people living in isolation. With everyone at home and communicating through Zoom, we have all become hungry voyeurs: we scrutinize other people’s garage offices and kitchens, and we study the bookshelves that serve as teleconference backdrops. But in less populated communities like mine, we can also acquaint ourselves with the intimate lives of the neighbors who lived out here before us, by excavating the relics they left behind.
On a recent Sunday my husband and I headed to my brother’s property, also in Hidalgo County. Aided by our family and the beep boooop bip bip of a metal detector, our searching yielded a particularly good bounty. By the afternoon, my husband had already dug up some ancient Lone Star Beer pull tabs and spark plugs, what we suspect were a Confederate soldier’s heel taps, coffee grinder parts, and a chunky clothing iron that was missing its handle. My ten-year-old niece was sifting sand with her dad when she found a flintlock rifle hammer that we later learned was manufactured between 1816 and 1830. I found three white glass ointment jars and stumbled across a knobby pre-HD television set that appeared to have been shot and set on fire.
But amid the jetsam, we invariably find one artifact more often than any other: pieces of ceramic dinnerware manufactured in England in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rancher friends from the Coastal Bend to Jim Hogg County report the same findings on their land. We come across these pieces of porcelain far more often than the Mexican pottery that I’d expect to unearth this close to the border. Agriculture, weather, and animal traffic have moved the pieces over wide areas, so surface-level ceramic shards can only show us approximately where people resided. We usually use metal detectors to sleuth out rusted artifacts buried in the dirt, uncovering ceramic fragments as we dig. Sometimes, when agricultural machinery has exposed them, the pieces lie right on the surface, scattered across the red sand and glinting in the sun. Occasionally, if we catch the setting sun at the right angle after a good rain, a scintillating mosaic of British traditional industry stretches from under our snake boots all the way to the horizon.
Your tips have been vital to our immigration coverage. Keep them coming: [email protected].
– Laura C. Morel
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