For the past few weeks, the US Southern border has been the site of a humanitarian crisis: a surge in the number of unaccompanied, undocumented minors trying to cross into the United States, mostly from Central America. The situation has created a national outcry and has overwhelmed immigration authorities like the Border Patrol, in charge of holding the children for within 72 hours, the detention time limit set by Border Patrol. The situation prompted this tweet, republished on Vox, from the Border Patrol Union showing the insensitivity of the organization to the situation. The tweet has since been deleted.
Latino USA reached out to K, an anonymous worker at a place where undocumented child immigrants are held and processed before being released to family or deported. Many of these children came to the United States by themselves. K tells Maria Hinojosa about the conditions the children live in, and discusses the Texas facility known to the children as la hielera, or the icebox, where many of them were previously held, in cold, crowded conditions.
Photo of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Nogales, AZ Placement Center — not mentioned in this story — by Ross D. Franklin-Pool/Getty Images
Is there any way to provide assistance to these kids? Clothes, toiletries, etc.? Are there any groups / organizations involved that may need this type of assistance?
A poem by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes
I come from people who were and are crammed
into immigration and deportation shelters,
sitting there with shivering metal price tags
shot through their earlobes
like the cattle in the slaughter house
$2,000 to go back or come here,
either way, to the con-man Coyote,
it makes no difference
He will leave thousands of Souls
who cannot read nor write
in the desert
with a gas-station road map made on thin paper,
and one old gallon container of water.
The Coyote will no tell you it is 800 miles
through a riverless desert
to Los Angeles.
And yet many will make it.
Even though it ought not to be so.
But the Mojave Desert is said to be
Our Lady’s turf, and that desert
is said to bear more miracles per square mile
than most any other place on earth.
A poem by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes
I come from people who were and are crammed
into immigration and deportation shelters,
sitting there with shivering metal price tags
shot through their earlobes
like the cattle in the slaughter house
$2,000 to go back or come here,
either way, to the con-man Coyote,
it makes no difference
He will leave thousands of Souls
who cannot read nor write
in the desert
with a gas-station road map made on thin paper,
and one old gallon container of water.
The Coyote will no tell you it is 800 miles
through a riverless desert
to Los Angeles.
And yet many will make it.
Even though it ought not to be so.
But the Mojave Desert is said to be
Our Lady’s turf, and that desert
is said to bear more miracles per square mile
than most any other place on earth.