BORDER TRIP 2018: INSIDE THE ICEBOX
by Pastor Clint Schnekloth
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS)
October 2, 2018
https://www.lirs.org/inside-the-icebox/
At the end of September [2018], LIRS led a mission to Tucson, AZ to bear witness to the conditions of detention centers and immigration facilities housing children and individuals. […]
You enter Eloy [Detention Center, an hour south of Tucson] through a series of security gates. Each gate is a metal cage door surrounded by barbed wire. After this double buzzed entry, you come to the “lobby.” Already you feel the shocking cold, as the air goes from 100 degrees outside to under 70 inside.
At the lobby, we fill out visitor paperwork for a background check. Make a mistake on the form, you are required to discard the form and start over. It took me three tries to complete an accurate form front to back.
While we are completing these forms, we find out there was a miscommunication on the detention center pod schedule, so three of the four detainees we were going to visit are no longer available because they have switched pods. […]
The guard explains that there have been significant shake-ups in their systems because of the overall expansion of the detention system. Some detainees are now also housed over at the higher security criminal building because they’ve run out of beds in the main immigration detention facility. The result is considerable confusion of schedules. “So just always call us at the lobby to confirm your visit.”
We wait in the second lobby and watch cartoons with some children waiting to visit their parents. Finally, we’re admitted into the visitation room itself. This room is full of crude plastic tables modified with plywood barriers to prevent contact between detainees and visitors. Somehow the barriers are supposed to keep detainees and visitors from passing items to each other though it’s unclear how this helps much, or why such contraband wouldn’t be noticed during the very thorough metal detector and pat-down check that happens upon entry.
What it does do is isolate detainees even more from their families. Whereas in the past children could visit and sit in the lap of their parent, now with the barriers and the requirement to sit on opposite sides of the table, very little touching or contact can occur other than the initial hugs that happen at arrival and leave-taking.
Our detainee/friend arrived in the United States about one year ago from El Salvador. Once across the border, she was abandoned by those facilitating her entry. Caught in the middle of a storm and left on a mountain hillside, she was afraid she would get hypothermia and so walked to the nearest town where she was detained by ICE.
We learn right away that this week has been especially hard for her. She’s depressed and having trouble getting out of bed each day. She was recently separated from a friend in her pod because the guards perceived their relationship as too “sentimental.” Apparently, it is a regular practice to separate detainees who become emotionally close. […]
We learn she’d like to study medicine and become a doctor, or possibly, when she gets out, work in a field where she can help detainees by visiting them the way we visit her.
The hour goes quickly. The guard is not unkind, but he firmly tells us it is time to go. So we do, exchanging hugs on the way out the door. […]
As we drive back I keep remembering the families that came into the visitation room with us, many arriving with children in tow. Watching those children come in and give their parents such long hugs, realizing this had become normal to them, this separation from their parents, this Sunday morning visitation. The whole of it feels like communal, moral injury. It need not be like this, and so shouldn’t be.