We first thought Dilley isn’t inherently evil-just a large, emotionless machine running on bureaucratic inertia. Now we learn that for some, that’s not true. For them, Dilley is a torture chamber, built to cause the most extraordinary pain and exert devastating control over women
We have yet to see a single drug dealer, gang member or vandal bent on a life of crime in the US. That’s what they’ve risked their lives to escape, not what they intended to bring to America. And yet we expend enormous resources to keep these victims from victimizing us.
About 40 women are frozen at Dilley, trapped for three months, with no end in sight. When they arrived their children were taken. And when these distraught women were shoved through the asylum process, the only subject they could talk about was, where were their children?
Over and again, these women asked the presiding Asylum Officer,
“Where is my child?”
“When will he or she be back with me?”
“Is my child safe?”
They shook with fear, they wept, and they got no answers from the officer.
When asked to explain why they feared persecution in their countries, they stumbled and stuttered, thinking not of themselves but only of their fears that they had lost their children. Officers deemed they failed to establish their cases, and they were scheduled to be deported.
Let’s be clear: the separation of these mothers from their children was a government orchestrated, sadistically cruel, intentional exercise. The government took away their oxygen and then asked them to breathe, knowing they would fail.
These 40 women now have been reunited with their children-and unless advocacy on their behalf somehow turns the tide and reverses their negative CFI outcome through a lengthy process of appeals, they and their children are all destined for deportation.
These mothers are broken
As you walk out the door at Dilley, toward your shiny rented car and a nice, hot shower in your motel, you shiver with horror. Your eyes well up uncontrollably. Psychologists call this secondary trauma. We call it grief without relief, grief so deep it wells up and speaks to you.
Our thoughts drift to the classic elegiac poem by W.H. Auden:Stop all the clocks. Cut off the telephone…
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one.
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Thank you, @pwoldow, for traveling down to Texas and volunteering. You continue to make a difference, every day
Please support♦️Protect Corazon ♦️by texting CORAZON to 91999
And remember, never give up, never give in, always #resist
Imagine if a sitting Supreme Court Justice was involved in discussions about whether the US can imprison people
Without a trial
Without lawyers
And torture them-
And then lied about it
During his own confirmation hearing
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When Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to become a judge in 2006, he was asked about his work in the Bush administration. Specifically he was questioned about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. He said he was “not involved in the questions about..detention of combatants.”
Problem is, a year later it came out that he WAS involved in some of these arguments.
Men working at Dilley have to tread carefully, because many of their clients’ pains and indignities stem from their oppressed relationships with the men in their lives: abusive husbands, gang members, drunken relatives, indifferent police and government, and snakeheads.
It is therefore no surprise that some of the women receiving Credible Fear Interview preparation are reluctant to have a man sitting in on their prep team, are reluctant to reveal painful intimacies to men whose supportive attitudes and good will may seem foreign to them.
Would you support a Supreme Court nominee if a Senator asked the Attorney General to investigate that person for perjury?
What if that same nominee thought a president should be free from virtually any scrutiny while in office?
Both are part of Brett Kavanaugh’s record.
Thread
Kavanaugh worked in the Bush White House. Later, he testified at his confirmation hearing to become a federal judge and was asked about his role in the administration’s development of policies involving torture and treatment of detainees. He denied all knowledge and was confirmed
The next year, NPR reports came out which indicated Kavanaugh was indeed aware of these policies. Senator Durbin said “[h]e had to know he was misleading me and the committee and the people who were following this controversial nomination.”
We are now a coalition of 40+ large law firms and non-profit organizations, 6,000+ volunteer lawyers across the country, 2,000+ translators, social services providers, and others, all working together to address not only the immediate family separation crisis and asylum issues.
Last week, we launched our remote legal services project, drafting five "Request for Reinterview" briefs in under 12 hours for mothers who are separated and detained. This week, we are working to help drafting of as many as 350 Motions for Reconsideration for separated parents.
While most of us spent the 4th of July with our families, intrepid Lawyers for Good Government volunteer attorney Veronica Walther was in Texas helping women apply for asylum.
Here is part of her harrowing report /2
I spent all of this Independence Day at #KarnesResidentialCenter Yes, it's a holiday but these women and children do not get a day off from detention so we do not take a day off from helping. There is more than enough work to do. /3