EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Several migrant advocacy groups will convene in El Paso in November to discuss a collective response to increased immigration enforcement in border communities.
The planned summit will follow the release of results from an ongoing abuse documentation campaign by Border Network for Human Rights in mid-October.
“We already are seeing very bad things happening in border communities in terms of abuse of authority,” said BNHR Executive Director Fernando Garcia. “The border summit at the end of the year will be to engage in this discussion of human rights, immigrants’ safety and this militaristic approach” to immigration enforcement.
In a Zoom call on Tuesday, Frontera Organizing Project coordinator Alan Lizarraga disclosed two cases illustrating the fear facing immigrant families on the border and how immigration enforcement is touching residents who aren’t undocumented migrants.
One case involved a resident driving home from work who was stopped by an unmarked pickup equipped with sirens. When an officer stepped down from the truck, the driver asked why he was being pulled over. The officer allegedly said, “You speak English?” turned around and left the scene.
Another documented case could be typical of the daily drama playing out at federal courthouses in border cities. A woman accompanied her husband to a routine immigration appointment only to see him taken into custody.
“I waited outside for him, and later he called me to let me know he was going to be detained,” the wife said in a statement shown by Lizarraga. “I asked if they had shown him a warrant; my husband handed the phone to one of the (agents) who said that under President Trump’s orders, he would have to continue his case in detention.”
Amid this environment, activists from the Rio Grande Valley, Laredo and West Texas are expected to join colleagues from El Paso and New Mexico to step up community organizing and know-your-rights education.
Protecting Immigrant Families Coalition Director Adriana Cadena said advocates also will be trying to dispel myths about immigrants leeching off public assistance. Unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid or food stamps, yet the administration shaved billions off both of those programs implying they’re being abused by non-citizens, according to Cadena.
The result will be that eligible children will have less access to nutrition and health care particularly on the border where poverty rates are high, she said.
Last April, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins issued a statement saying American taxpayers “will no longer subsidize illegal aliens.”
Read: Read More