Colorado activists travel to border to help children»
Denver public policy consultant Katie Reinisch was writing Rep. Diana Degette and Sen. Michael Bennet. She was furious. She was demanding action.
It wasn’t working. The media images kept coming — of children sleeping on concrete floors, sobbing, their tiny hands gripping the chain link fences that confined them far away from their parents. There had to be something she could do.
Finally, she posted a note on Facebook saying she was going to Texas and, if someone who speaks Spanish were willing to go with her, she’d pay expenses.
A few days later, she and four like-minded Denver residents pooled their resources and boarded a plane for Texas. They rented a van and drove five hours to Mcallen where they slept for two hours before beginning a whirlwind two-and-a-half days of intense volunteer work, fund-raising, bearing witness and seeing for themselves how our leaders are acting in our name.
It was sickening.
They met an attorney from the Texas ACLU who was trying to represent detainees in their court appearances. They accompanied the attorney to the court, where the hearings, scheduled on the published court docket, were set to begin at 10 a.m.
When they arrived, the court official told them the hearings were over. They were held at 9:15. None of the detainees were allowed to have legal representation.
The same thing happened the next day. Twice. It was not a coincidence. Reinisch volunteered at the respite center operated by Catholic Charities, distributing food and water, finding clothing for people who had nothing but the filthy clothes they had been wearing for weeks as they walked miles and miles to seek legal refuge in the U.S. She played ball with frightened children and tried to comfort them before they were loaded on buses for Baltimore, Minneapolis, Duluth, the unknown.
She and her companions joined protests, shouting, “Shame! Shame!” at the legions of law enforcement officers surrounding buses of sobbing children being transported from detention centers to bus stations.
Reinisch walked along a line of officers trying to take pictures of their faces and their nametags only to have them rip the tags off their shirts or hide their faces. Shame, indeed.
A group of Muslim women came to join the protests, to stand with the immigrants. “That was very moving for me,” said Reinisch. “They stood there in the 100-degree heat wearing hijabs.”
They came because they knew what it was like to be hated.
Reinisch noticed that the detainees had no hair ties, belts or shoelaces. They had been taken from them upon their arrest, “just like the Jews in the Holocaust,” she said. “Everything was taken from them.
“I know, I know, we shouldn’t make the comparison, but I couldn’t help thinking we’ve just substituted Honduran or Guatemalan for Jew.” They were given Mylar blankets for sleeping on the floor in the detention centers. Somehow they had torn strips from the blankets to use for belts to hold their pants up.
Reinisch tells the story at a breathless pace, memories spilling out into a mountain of consciousness-raising.
“I felt like such a hypocrite. I was an armchair activist. I had to do something,” she said.
Sitting at home in the air-conditioning, reading about our country’s abuse of children and of desperate people for … for what? She couldn’t live with herself.
Still, so much needs to be done.
“The children, many 8 years old or younger, were in buses with bars,” Reinisch said. “They were alone and crying. They didn’t know anybody. They spoke no English. They had no idea where they were or where they were going.”
Have you ever wondered what you would have done if you were there when the soldiers were pushing children into cattle cars to ship them to prison camps? Now you know.
It’s not too late. Reinisch suggests that anyone with time, Spanish language skills, legal skills, medical skills, a conscience, a heart can help. For those without the capacity to volunteer, sending money to Catholic Charities, the ACLU or the Texas Civil Rights Project can go a long way.