Witness for the Border
“They said Mary used to be on this street.”
I turn my head quickly, unsure of what I heard.
“In a tree,” says Melba. One of the founders of Team Brownsville stops the car at an intersection. She continues her story. “The locals in Brownsville say there was a tree on this street that looked like the Virgin on the bark. Everyone used to come here to see her. There was such a commotion…”
Melba changes the topic but I’m so lost in thought I can’t hear her. I push my face against the car window to try to see if I can find the tree with a face of a woman.
Earlier that day, volunteers behind the bus station load the wagons with diapers, backpacks, and books. “Hide the new clothes under the books.” Melba directs us into the station for her preliminary speech before we cross.
“We’ve got a large group today.” Her pitch is perfected after decades of running kindergarten through college classrooms. Melba’s hair is cropped, graying at her black roots, and she wears a bright orange T-shirt. “Thank you to the yoga studio from Colorado and the synagogue from Washington. We’re going to cross all together. Follow the path until you find the tents. And please, triple check that you have your passports.”
I use two hands to drag the overstuffed wagon across the road to the Gateway International Bridge, a short walk from the Brownsville bus station. People carry flowers, shopping bags, and toilet paper. The guard waves me over. “Aquí,” he points to the machine below and I drop four quarters into the slot as if they are subway tokens. It costs one dollar to enter Mexico, and thirty cents to return to the US. The guards ask me what I’m bringing and I’ve been prepared. “School supplies,” I say and they carelessly glance in my wagon and at my white skin then let me pass.
The other volunteers and I form a line on the right of the sidewalk as Mexican and American families rush past us on foot. It’s Sunday and some of the children are dressed for church. The line of cars waiting at the bridge seems endless but no one appears impatient. They know it will take time to be searched. To my left, I peer through the fence and see a wall topped with barbed wire, stretching into the distance until it becomes nothing. The river below looks serene, but we’ve all heard the stories.
It’s January of 2020. I’m in Brownsville, Texas volunteering with Team Brownsville,[i] an organization formed in 2018 in response to the US-Mexico border’s increase of asylum seekers. Team Brownsville’s mission is to provide support on the ground, serving food, providing education, procuring medical aid. I happen to arrive the week the Witness at the Border vigil begins.[ii] Witness at the Border is a group that focuses on drawing awareness to the asylum seekers’ encampment as well as tracking all detainment and deportation activities performed by the US government. The two organizations are not affiliated even though both are fighting for the same cause.
Most of the vigil participants are retired and live locally, but others are from as far away as Florida, Oregon, and even Alaska. The group has a sign: “2 Days Witnessing at the Border.” The days will increase until people are given sanctuary. Witnesses bring beach chairs, posters and flags crowd the square across from the border entrance. They try not to block the plaque reading “Welcome to the United States of America.”
I spend my time volunteering and witnessing, crossing between Mexico and America, listening to stories from the people I meet, both volunteers and asylum seekers alike. I don’t have family or friends in Brownsville or Matamoros. I didn’t grow up in fear of hearing a knock on the door, or watching my parents being seized from the only home I’d ever known. I never had to suppress my accent or change my name. I decided to travel to the border after watching, like so many others in America did, eleven-year-old Magdalena Gomez Gregorio beg the government, through heavy sobs, to return her father to her.[iii] After seeing the photographs of families shivering in the hieleras, or “freezer” detention cells run by US Customs and Border Protection. After reading every day about ICE, America’s modern SS, who kidnap, abuse, and persecute people.
There’s no respite. No grassy patch of land, no moment of transition, nothing between the “Bienvenidos a Mexico” sign and the assembly of tents and people covered in dust.
It’s estimated that 2,500 asylum seekers are living in Matamoros, just across the border from Brownsville.[iv] They come from all over the world, but predominately from countries in Central America including Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.[v]
A young girl standing next to me grins so wide that I forget where I am. She asks me in Spanish, “Do you have anything for me?” And I laugh and fumble with my limited knowledge of the language and tell her to follow us where we’ll set up under the canvas tents on the higher ground. She stays by me and helps me push the wagon up the hill. On Sundays, Melba runs the Escualita, or little school where volunteers teach the children reading, science, or math. The kids sit on tarps which become muddy when it rains. Nine-year-old Naoemi says she has four brothers and sisters and describes what her life is like in the tent. She tells me when she grows up she wants to be a doctor. I tell her to study hard and then I remember that she isn’t going to school.
Since the Trump administration implemented Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), or “Stay in Mexico” in January of 2019, the past year has seen between 57,000 and 62,000 people being forced to wait in Mexico for court hearings to determine the validity of their asylum cases.[vi]
“We used to cook dinner for them in our kitchen,” a retired Texan says as she and her husband give me a tour of the Matamoros city park, which is now covered entirely with tents. “It was just single men in the beginning, maybe one hundred or so. Now, it’s mostly women and children.”
One family, Carolina and her husband José (names have been changed to protect identities), are the gatekeepers of this world. The Honduran couple run Tienda 1, or the Free Store, located closest to the entry of the border on the Mexican side. Carolina, whose family at that point had been there a little over ten months, knows every family at the border. “She keeps track of who gets what,” a seasoned volunteer tells me, “so that no family gets more than another.” After two and a half years of living in a tent, the family is finally granted asylum in March 2021.
Around the park, families set up makeshift stoves, hang laundry, and charge their phones. Everyone I speak to tells me why they’re here. One mother from Honduras says her son was killed by gang members. Another man from Cuba was persecuted for being gay. One family faced continuous death threats in Nicaragua. These are people who’ve left their homes and loved ones for a chance at survival.
Team Brownsville, relying solely on volunteer effort, serves dinner to the asylum seekers five times a week. We bring steaming food in foil pans, juice boxes, and cut fruit. People line up as soon as they see us cross. Most haven’t eaten since breakfast. Juanito, the little boy with the mischievous smile, asks for only fruit, and a lot of it. Mothers and fathers struggle to carry their children and their paper plates, which have sunken and torn from the heat. We try to make small talk with the people we serve, watching each spoonful we dish out, praying that there will be enough for everyone.
Volunteers come on average for perhaps a week and are usually from religious groups or volunteer clubs. I meet other solo travelers, mostly white women, who stay for over a month and return to Matamoros frequently, the desire to help others compelling them. Those who live in Brownsville year-round devote their time to running the volunteer organizations, seeking funding, learning each asylum seeker’s stories, tend to be of hispanic origins. I can’t help but notice these differences.
One day, I speak with a fifteen-year-old girl across the border in Matamoros. She asks me if I’ve visited New York City. I don’t want to tell her I grew up an hour away and that when I was her age, my friends and I saw Broadway shows and took the subway and ate pizza in St. Marks Place and didn’t think about if it rained, that our house would be destroyed.
Her eyes widened, waiting for my answers. “You’ll love it.” I force a smile. She links her arm in mine and introduces me to her friends. I feel guilty that I’m white and privileged and born a US citizen, and that Mariana, who comes from a rural community in southern Mexico, will never have the experiences I’ve had. That at fifteen she has been through hardships I have had the fortune to not to know. That white privilege exists at the expense of others’ suffering.
I went to the border to volunteer with people who are being victimized at the hands of multi-system oppression. I found myself witnessing, a term I only vaguely understood. My recount of what I saw will vary from those who have been there longer, those who came as journalists, or those from different parts of the country. My words will be different than those who see what is happening as justice served. Witness is not an impartial verb.
A few days later, I arrive at the makeshift courts outside the border entrance just before seven in the morning. Brownsville is empty at this hour. Even the entrance to Mexico is strangely silent. The courts are held in white tents surrounded by barbed wire, temporarily erected to house the numerous cases heard daily. They had been closed up until this week, meaning that the public had been unable to watch the proceedings.[vii] We are here as volunteer witnesses. That’s what the leaders of the Witness at the Border vigil tell us. We are to witness the US government's violation of asylum law and bring back our stories to our friends, our towns, our states.
After I relinquish my ID and am searched, I wait in a room with the air conditioning hovering just above what feels like freezing. When we finally enter a courtroom, the bailiff tells us that under no circumstances are we to talk to the asylum seekers. We nod. “Make sure to remember the judge’s name,” a man in the group whispers to us. Since cellphones, pens, and paper are contraband, we must rely on our memories.
The bailiff ushers in fifteen people, including one girl who looks to be about ten years old, and instructs them to sit before a large screen on which a translator is the only person in view. All of these cases rely on video stream, thus saving the government money from having to pay a judge to travel to Brownsville every day. The asylum seekers are brought to the courts at four in the morning. Some of us surmise that it’s nothing more than a tactic to make them too exhausted to argue their cases.
“I’ve heard of children as young as four going to court alone,”[viii] the woman sitting next to me says.
Judge Sean Clancy sits next to the translator and shuffles the mountain of overflowing blue folders in front of him. After the usual proceedings of swearing people in and reciting their rights, Judge Clancy calls each individual by name before addressing their plea for asylum.
Three people have lawyers and the other twelve are representing themselves. Attorneys for these cases are difficult to find and the majority of asylum seekers can’t afford them.[ix] More seasoned witnesses tell me that this is only the first hearing. Judge Clancy reviews the asylum seeker’s case and sets a court date for three months out. A man from Guatemala, via the translator says, “Please, I’ve already been here for nine months.”
The judge replies, “I’m sorry for your troubles.” His voice is flat with no trace of emotion.
Networks like Fox News and One America News promote the idea that asylum seekers are prohibited from entering the United States because they are here illegally.[x] The fact is, the majority of asylum seekers risk their lives to get this far in order to apply for asylum legally.[xi] It’s the new “Stay in Mexico” policy that prolongs the court hearings to an average of a year’s wait.[xii]
A twenty-two-year-old woman from Nicaragua tells the judge she does not feel safe waiting in Mexico and does not feel safe returning to her home country. The judge replies, “I’m sorry for your troubles,” and says that DHS will interview her after court.
“The file will just end up in a drawer somewhere,” someone behind me whispers. The bailiff approaches us with a finger to her lips and we hush like school children. At this point, it’s obvious that the court is putting on a show and each person is met with a prescribed script. The court acts under the illusion of justice, finding any excuse to deny entry. We hoped that each person would be met with an unbiased ear, that the judge would abide by the law and examine each piece of evidence fairly before coming to a conclusion. We hoped for this because as US citizens, we learned this is what the law is supposed to be.
The hours go on like this, every successive case identical to the one before. The asylum seekers describe running from violence, poverty, or political oppression, and each one of them is given a court date and ordered to return to Matamoros. I am outraged. I’m afraid I will jump up and scream at the judge. I can only see the backs of the asylum seekers’ heads, but I imagine the expressions on their faces, the wrinkles and depressions etched in their skin, like the grooves on the bark of a tree.
“What are their chances?” I ask a man sitting behind me, who I find out is an undercover journalist.
“Less than one percent,” he replies.[xiii] He hides a small notepad in his lap and writes everything the judge says. I see an elderly lady next to me slip a crumpled piece of paper and a pen out of her sock. We all have our ways of fighting.
As I write this essay, the situation for the asylum seekers has drastically changed. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the Trump administration implemented Title 42, blocking entry to the US from Mexico and completely eradicating any semblance of due process.[xiv] Attorneys who had spent years building their cases had to watch as their efforts go for naught. The people waiting at the border were told to leave, that asylum as we know it had ended[xv]. Deportations or “death flights”[xvi] still occur daily and parents are so desperate for their children’s safety that they send them to cross alone to live with family already in the US.[xvii] It feels nearly impossible to remain hopeful that there will be change but somehow, witnesses, volunteers, and most importantly, asylum seekers, do have hope.
We hear stories about what happens on the Mexican side. “A child drowned in the river last night,” a volunteer from Florida with wispy white hair tells me while we wait in Matamoros to support two mothers and their babies who’ve been attempting to cross into the US. The mothers gave birth on Mexican soil and their lawyers have been trying to persuade border patrol to allow them entry based on the “one country over” policy.[xviii] A group of witnesses wait with them along with a documentary crew and lawyers to put pressure on the patrol officers.
We are standing on the bridge and I look below my feet to the Rio Grande where women wash their clothes.
“No space for them,” the border officer says, calling me back to the present.
“Do you mean there’s no space in the entire country for these mothers?” One of the lawyers asks. The officer shrugs his shoulders and tells her that he’s following orders from his supervisor.
The stories spread on the American side of the border, just a few steps away, and I’m not sure which ones are true and which ones are not, but they all have high stakes, reminding us that the people at the border are constantly in danger.
“The two mothers with their babies finally crossed over!” Melba yells during a protest we have outside the courts a few days later. We stood under the hot sun, signs reading “Free Them” and “Déjalos Pasar” in our hands.
With every attempt to cross, the mothers were met with a different excuse—no space, they don’t have their records, their boss isn’t picking up his phone. When the Hispanic Caucus arrives for a tour of the border and a press conference, we feel their presence shift fate.[xix] Representatives from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oregon, and other states declare the camps “a violation of human rights.”[xx] With the increased attention from the press, the mothers and their infants are finally granted asylum, as well as a family with a six-year-old girl with Down syndrome and a heart condition.
“There are so many more.” A woman shakes her head. While three families feel like a success, the moment is disrupted by the reminder of the thousands more desperately waiting for their turn.
“What happened to the tree?” I ask, as Melba pulls her car to a stop in front of my Airbnb. “The one with the Virgin on it?”
“Oh,” Melba pauses for a second. “I think they cut it down.
After I wrote this essay, the camps in Matamoros closed on March 7, 2021[xxi]. The Biden administration has granted the majority of migrants waiting at the border asylum and others are being cared for by churches in Mexico. While this is has provided a unanimous feeling of elation among all of us, there is now an increase of migrants, specifically unaccompanied minors, seeking asylum. The current administration is scrambling to fix the damage done in the past four yers. There has been much discussion about reopening for-profit detention centers around the southern border and the Dallas Convention Center has officially opened preparing to detain 2,000 minors.[xxii] Our fight continues. The sources of their migration are insidious and deep and cannot be undone over night. The desperation and the hope I’ve seen among migrants, lawyers, witnesses, and volunteers does not waver. This is what I have witnessed.
[i] https://www.teambrownsville.org
[ii] https://www.witnessattheborder.org
[vi] https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/policies-affecting-asylum-seekers-border
[vii] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/16/us-immigration-tent-court-trump-mexico
[viii] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/children-immigration-court/567490/
[ix] https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/asylum-seekers-waiting-in-mexico-rarely-find-lawyers/2290856/
[xii] https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/01/29/qa-trump-administrations-remain-mexico-program#
[xiii] https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/01/29/qa-trump-administrations-remain-mexico-program#
[xvi] https://www.witnessattheborder.org
[xviii] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/trump-asylum-coronavirus.html
[xix] https://www.themonitor.com/2020/01/18/hispanic-caucus-tours-migrant-camp/
[xxi] https://prospect.org/justice/final-day-matamoros-asylum-camp-immigration-mexico/
[xxii] https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/19/politics/migrant-children-dallas-convention-center/index.html