Friday 8.28.09: Tucson

Today we went to the Streamline hearings. Operation Streamline is something fairly new that cropped up in several border cities during the Bush administration. You can read a good article about it here. Of the 1-2 thousand people caught crossing the border every day, 70 are randomly selected to be tried and sentenced en masse. They tried 61 men and 9 women all as one big group. Everyone was in shackles, chains around their feet, their waists, their hands. The vast majority looked my age or younger. A lot of them looked terrified. I know I would be.

The first group the judge called up were indigenous people who didn't speak Spanish or English. They were deported with no record because they couldn't enter a plea. Then came two groups of people, the majority of the people there, who were charged with illegal re-entry. They were sentenced to jail time, between two weeks and six months. Then a small group of people who had previously been convicted of other minor offenses (reckless driving, minor in possession of alcohol, etc.), all who were sentenced to more jail time. The last group was made up of people who'd been caught crossing for the first time. They were "voluntarily" deported after waiving their right to due process and a trial. They were told that if they got caught re-entering, they'd be sentenced to jail time.

One guy asked if he could apply for amnesty because he'd been in the U.S. since he was 8 years old. The judge brushed him off and gave him a lecture about how his "free ride" in this country was over. There were four women sitting in front of us who were with him, two of them started sobbing. One of them cried out "I love you!" when they paraded him out the door at the end.

That was the first time this week that I cried. And it really hit home to me how fucked up this whole situation is from all angles. It's one thing to hear about how immigration policy is splitting up families, but it was another to see it, staring me right in the face. How scary it must be to be the one separated from your community and sent away, how painful to be one of the ones left behind.

All 70 people waived their right to due process in the hearing. The woman from No More Deaths who brought us said that many of them might be eligible for asylum, but in this system they're encouraged to go for the plea bargain and "voluntary" deportation.

We didn't get to hear many of their stories. The judge treated them like numbers on a sheet, names he could barely pronounce. He kept getting confused and addressing one person by another person's name, as though every migrant is interchangeable. I suppose in the eyes of the U.S. government and all it's auxiliary agencies, they are.

We did hear the story of one man who had a prior record (reckless driving and presenting the cops with a fake ID--two offenses 25-50% of alumni from Michigan State have probably been guilty of). His lawyer said that the man's girlfriend was 4 months pregnant, his father was dead, his mother blind from diabetes, and he had to take care of his 2 little sisters, who are both in the U.S. How's that for someone looking for a "free ride"? The judge still sentenced him to jail time.

Some people didn't seem to understand what was going on. Getting pulled out of the desert, where you were maybe wandering for days and massively dehydrated, and then flung into a mass deportation hearing two days later would probably do that to you. When the judge asked the last group of people to stand up if they'd changed their minds about the plea bargain, one guy stood up and then seemed confused. His lawyer gestured to him to sit back down. He did. The hearing went on and he was sentenced to deportation. I could see some of the security guards smirking about it.

At the end of the hearing, the judge, this old white guy, gave the last group a lecture about how they shouldn't try to come back. He said their "free ride" in this country was over, that they should make a home for themselves in Mexico, or go to another country that wants them. He said "the world is a big place". What a fucking uber-privileged dick. Excuse my language, but this made me so fucking mad. Maybe the world is a big place if you have privilege. It's bigger the more privilege you have. But it's not like if you're poor you can just pick up and move to Spain or something. And it's not like other countries aren't just as racist as this one. For some people, the world is very, very small. And there are barbed wire fences and Border Patrol all along the edges.

It's been a long, long day, and it's only 6:00. We got up at 5am, took down our tents, and went on a short morning patrol. We took one of the pickups to Bear Grass Canyon. I wonder why it's called Bear Grass when there are no bears here? It should be called Rabbit Grass. We saw footprints at the first water drop, all 50 gallons of water for that spot were gone. Got a little bit lost and drove around haphazardly in this meadow, but we made it back okay.

There's so much to think about and process from this whole experience. All of my thoughts are still to big for my head. I'm still adjusting to pavement, running water, toilets and clean hair. My regular life seems very far away right now.