Immigration attorney describes families being separated, torn apart

[Wwcd]

Seeking asylum in the United States — often from violence — men, women and children, mostly from Central America, wait in line for days in the sweltering heat.
They sleep on concrete floors. If not for donations from Good Samaritans who regularly visit the area, they would be without fresh food or water.

“These are horrible stories, but I feel like their nightmare might just be starting,” a Mexican official told Amelia McGowan, program director and immigration attorney at Migrants Support Center though Catholic Charities in Jackson. McGowan went to the border — specifically Nogales, Mexico, about an hour south of Tucson, Arizona —- to see the situation for herself.

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While in Nogales, McGowan spoke with dozens of people in line, many of whom had been waiting to speak with officials for days.
She talked with people in the first week of June, days before news stories went public of family separations.

The day she left Nogales, McGowan wrote in a Facebook post:

"While turning yourself in at a port of entry is a lawful and proper means of seeking asylum protection under U.S. law, these families and children now face days of languishing at the border, and traumatized children are likely to be torn from the arms of their only protectors in a policy aimed at 'deterring' people from seeking this lawful protection, which is enshrined in U.S. law.

"Demoralized and retraumatized, these families will then face the arduous and unforgiving asylum process alone and from detention, where their access to legal counsel and other forms of support will be severely limited."

Here is McGowan's first-hand account of her experience, as told to the Clarion Ledger.


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We parked in a McDonald’s parking lot on the U.S. side of the border and took bags filled with supplies. We crossed over the land bridge, and going into Mexico was a very easy process. We went through the scanner and walked on through. On either side of the border there is a covered facility, open air, where people usually wait in the ques.

There were two lines; one really was for asylum seekers and one for everyone else entering the U.S. including permanent residents, tourists and business people. It was really kind of a catch all for everybody. That line, for non-asylum traffic, was moving fairly quickly.

There was a bar separating the two lines, and on the other side of the bar was a line of about 80 people who had been waiting for days to seek asylum in the U.S.

There was yellow tape, kind of like caution tape, mats and towels on the ground. The eeriest thing was there were children’s toys scattered. There were supplies lined up against the walls, these mats, and children playing on the floor. It was a very stark contrast between the two lines. It was kind of harrowing.


On one side, you have these tourists, carrying their souvenirs, their big sombreros coming back from Mexico.
These were tourists who had gone to Mexico for the day.
On the other side you had this police tape. There were families, some single men and single women, young mostly.
About half the people there were children, under the age of 18. There were a few infants to 2 years old.
There were a lot of toddlers and even more young children, I would say 5 to 10 years old.

I met a couple teenagers, a girl and a boy, from Guatemala. Both were unaccompanied minors. The boy was 14. He told me his father had been recently murdered in front of him. I don’t know how old the girl was, I would say about 12, she looked a lot younger.


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Leaving was an emotional experience. Obviously you’ve connected with these families.

You think about this poor little boy that you just met, and they ask for protection.
Not only are they not going to get it but I think that police officer was right.
This might just be the beginning, unfortunately.

All we had to do, this sounds so cliché, but all we had to do was take out our passports and come back home.
We had safety.
To leave people and know what they were going to have to face this uncertainty and this terror, it was really something to jump in this line and come back home.
It was kind of surreal.

We had not yet heard of family separation and then to know what happened days later, undoubtedly, I’m sure it happened to at least some of those families.
To know that that happened, you wonder what their fate was after we so easily left them.

We hope and pray for the best, but we know the reality.



Must Read..
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.clarionledger.com/amp/690945002

[jberryhill]

1. Perhaps she should get in touch with Michael Avenatti

Avenatti is trying to find a parent that has had their child taken from them at the border:

Link to tweet

It would be great if she could put them in touch, so that these parents could find a lawyer.