{"id":57,"date":"2011-09-20T15:13:40","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T22:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arroya.org\/?p=57"},"modified":"2011-10-09T00:32:12","modified_gmt":"2011-10-09T07:32:12","slug":"give-me-your-tired-your-poor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/?p=57","title":{"rendered":"Give me your tired, your poor…."},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/dd>\n

Hanging on.<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

I met a little boy today, probably 7 years old.\u00a0\u00a0 He was running around at the comedor in shorts and a polo shirt, back and forth among the migrants and an older woman sitting in the corner.\u00a0 Occasionally he buries his head in the old woman\u2019s lap.\u00a0 It turns out that this is his grandma.\u00a0 There is a little girl with a vacant look on her face—his sister, age 12. Transported from Florida to Nogales over the past few days, the children were separated from their mother during a pick-up by the Border Patrol in Florida.<\/p>\n

Florida??!!<\/p>\n

Their father is \u201csomewhere in Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what are they\u00a0doing here?<\/p>\n

The children were deported to Nogales, Mexico, and sent to DEF, the Mexican equivalent of Child Protective Services.\u00a0 Their mother was sent to a detention center somewhere—maybe Texas, New Mexico, Arizona.\u00a0 No one seems to know.\u00a0 Upon questioning, the authorities learned that the children had a grandmother in Nogales, Sonora, and so the kids were transported to this shelter.\u00a0 Today, no one knows where\u00a0their mother is—she\u00a0is somewhere in the \u201csystem\u201d between here and Florida.<\/p>\n

Who thinks up these maneuvers?\u00a0 Some malevolent troll under a bridge?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen the separation of families many times at the comedor.\u00a0 Women weeping because they do not know where their brother or husband or lover has been transported.\u00a0 This bit of human transport is supposed to discourage migrants from trying to cross the border another time.\u00a0 Ship them to Texas or California, separate the families, and make life even more unbearable than it already is.<\/p>\n

So someone in our group whips out a cell phone and we begin calling various detention centers in Texas hoping to find at least one of\u00a0their parents.\u00a0 A nun in a brightly colored apron comes out of the make-shift kitchen with a bowl of beans and fresh tortillas for the little boy and his grandma.\u00a0 She holds him close as he eats the refritos.\u00a0 I search through the clothes we have brought this week looking for little boy things.\u00a0 Nada.\u00a0 I find a flowery hair barrette for the little girl, who has the look of an old old soul.\u00a0 She smiles and whispers, \u201cGracias.\u201d<\/p>\n

The system of \u201crepatriation\u201d is complicated, I\u2019m told.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t care.\u00a0 This is just plain wrong, and it makes my blood boil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hanging on. I met a little boy today, probably 7 years old.\u00a0\u00a0 He was running around at the comedor in shorts and a polo shirt, back and forth among the migrants and an older woman sitting in the corner.\u00a0 Occasionally he buries his head in the old woman\u2019s lap.\u00a0 It turns out that this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117,"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions\/117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}