March 5, 2019
Yesterday a friend who has volunteered with the Dilley Pro Bono Project forwarded an email to me. It reminded me of a question that is so often asked of Germans or by Germans themselves: How could you not know? How could people claim ignorance when so much horror was unfolding all around them in the 1930s and 40s? Without claiming direct parallels between horrors, I still think there is reason to question ourselves what we do and do not know right here and now.
The Dilley Pro Bono Project (DPBP), a local partner in the Immigration Justice Campaign, operates a non-traditional pro bono model of legal services that directly represents immigrant mothers and children detained at the 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.
DPBP basically have volunteers come for a week of service, assisting the lawyers who try to help the asylum seekers at the detention site. Volunteers need to be able to speak Spanish, since most clients are fleeing violence in South America. They also need to be able to face 12-15 hours a day of grueling physical and emotional labor. People with A, J or other visitor visas need not apply since ICE will not let them into the facility; people on DACA will only be allowed in if they have not so much as a parking ticket in their legal history.
Here is what came out of Dilley yesterday:
As I mentioned in last week’s dispatch, two weeks ago we saw something we have rarely seen in the STFRC: babies under the age of 1 year old detained. In total we have confirmed 16 cases of babies between the ages of 5 and 11 months, although we believe there were at least a few more.
Every mother we spoke to reported that her baby was sick, either with gastrointestinal issues or severe congestion and cough. Some reported their child having difficulty breathing, including one who said her baby tried to cry and couldn’t. The families experienced delays in receiving formula, and were denied bottled water despite their concerns about the quality of the tap water they were mixing into their babies’ bottles. Baby food is unavailable, and one child’s pacifier was confiscated and not replaced. Mothers had difficulty exercising their right to the asylum process, caring for sick babies during legal consultations and having babies returned to them in the middle of credible fear interviews for having cried at the daycare.
In this moment, when we have more than doubled the number of volunteers, AND need to respond with new client service strategies in light of the Attorney General’s horrible asylum decision in Matter of AB, we urgently need more full-time legal staff on the ground at the Dilley Pro Bono Project to support this extra work.
Please consider donating to the Dilley Pro Bono Project today to help us hire additional senior and junior staff attorneys. Share this link with all of your networks – and don’t forget to include your own stories of volunteering. Link to your op-eds and blog posts about your time OTG. Many of you on this listserv have been with us since the beginning of our fight to end family detention. No one can speak for the importance of this work more articulately, or more forcefully, than you.
Now more than ever, we need your help to spread the word. Be our megaphone! Help us hire more staff. Thank you!!
With love,
Shalyn Fluharty Managing Attorney Dilley Pro Bono Project
Attached is a link that has short reports by volunteers:
https://www.immigrationjustice.us/volunteeropportunities/volunteer-testimonials/dilley-snapshots
I obviously never volunteered there, but I do have a blog post and thought it is important information to share. Fittingly, this related article appeared in this morning’s NYT:
Music today from Sofia Rei, her own music first, then a lullaby :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKSjxfYbxzc
Photographs are from a Mission near San Antonio, Texas – you’d think adherence to the gospel would make these kinds of cruelties impossible in a professed Christian state…..
