Update: NYT Business of 31 July, 2019 reports the giant public relations firm Edelman dropped the GEO Group account after employees at the firm objected to the contract. In what is perhaps a “choke point” for this business sector the company was afraid the association would damage the very nature of their business, their “public image”, and hurt their bottom line.
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“In his one-year odyssey, by plane from Congo to Cuba, to Guyana, and thereafter by bus through the American continents, he had learned Spanish by necessity”

In early June, 2019, I was in San Antonio volunteering with RAICES, the largest pro-bono provider of immigration legal services in Texas. I worked alongside RAICES staff and fellow volunteers assisting immigrants at the Greyhound Bus Station and a nearby immigrant resource center maintained by the San Antonio Interfaith Welcome Coalition with funding from the San Antonio City Council, and at an ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) Detention Center in Karnes.

The work at Karnes was grueling for both volunteers and staff. We would leave San Antonio at 8 AM for the one-hour drive to the rural facility, and would not return until around 9:30 at night. When detention officers had the women immigrants available to be interviewed (sometimes we were forced to wait an hour or more as detention protocol required that we could only see the next person on our visitation list, even though a second or third immigrant was already waiting for us), we worked virtually non-stop to complete as many as 10 intakes and interview preps under the time pressure that if we didn’t get through them all, some women would have their asylum interviews before they understood the process and/or legal representation at their “credible fear” interview could be arranged. On my days at Karnes, I returned to San Antonio with the still unfinished task of summarizing my handwritten case notes, and getting them off to the RAICES staff that would represent the interviewed women as their cases progressed. After a week at Karnes, the more relaxed pace of my work at the bus station was a blessing.

One of the deepest impressions of my two weeks in Texas were of the ebb and flow of the massive migrant crossings, & how migrants of particular nationalities by sharing information on social media and through phone communications, were able to meet & group up at certain border checkpoints despite months of traveling alone, or with family, through multiple south and central American countries. This was particularly the case with a group of about 25 Congolese migrants whom I met at the San Antonio immigrant resource center. I communicated in Spanish with one young man, accompanied by his preteen daughter. In his one-year odyssey, by plane from Congo to Cuba, to Guyana, and thereafter by bus through the American continents, he had learned Spanish by necessity.

Shared information helped the Congolese to get to the same border crossing point, but shared misinformation resulted in their being stuck in San Antonio, hanging out at the resource center by day, & sleeping in a church near the bus station at night. Having no family or friends in the U.S., each had provided ICE with the same “sponsor” information–an agency in Portland, Maine where Congolese granted refugee status had been assisted in the past. But the agency only had a government contract to temporarily house refugees—migrants approved by the USCIS (U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services) abroad for resettlement–and could not accept these new asylum seekers. Who would agree to sponsor them?  Where would they be able to settle? No one knew; everyone was scrabbling.

“Karnes’ 2300 oil wells have polluted the water table to such an extent that they took declarations of immigrant inmates who drank, and showered in the local water, developing skin diseases and illnesses.”

The greatest surprise of my time in Texas was that the largest number of incoming migrant women at Karnes were not the expected Hondurans & other Central Americans, but Cubans. Like the Congolese, their shared information had them arriving in large numbers at particular checkpoints at the Texas border. Their staggering presence was new for the RAICES staff and a question was why now–more than two years after the 1/17 end of the policy that had previously permitted any Cuban who made it to U.S. shores or illegally over the border to apply for permanent residency after just one year here? Most of the Cubans had extended family in the U.S.  Were their relatives suggesting, or was word going out through social media that it was now or never? Was political repression in Cuba on the rise? (Most of the incidents of personal persecution related to us were reported by the Cubans as having taken place in the last 6 months.) The Cuban asylum claims were in stark contrast to those of the Central and South Americans, as I will explain further below.

This was the first time I ever did immigration work in a private prison, and that was an unwelcome revelation as well. Karnes Detention Center is one of more than 10 immigrant detention facilities in Texas, and is managed by GEO Group, a Florida- based corporation “specializing in privatized corrections, detentions & mental health” both in the U.S. and abroad. GEO Group was a donor to Trump’s campaign, and the recipient of 1.3 billion in federal contracts during this administration. The single story facility at Karnes, with artificial turf and flowers at its entrance, sits amongst pastures pocketed with small active pump-jack oil wells–and the mansions of the ranchers who own them. A RAICES lawyer tells me that Karnes’ 2300 oil wells have polluted the water table to such an extent that they took declarations of immigrant inmates who drank, and showered in the local water, developing skin diseases and illnesses.

The populations of Karnes and other Texas detention centers shifts with the numbers and composition of the crossing migrants, & the resulting policies and politics of the DHS. When I signed on to volunteer at Karnes 3 months ago, the inmates were fathers and sons; since April, 2019, the facility has only held immigrant women.

In a large room with immovable tables meant for prison visits, RAICES staff and volunteers—law students, lawyers, Spanish linguists, and Spanish-speaking academics–met with women inmates and explained the legal representation RAICES provided to prepare them for their “credible fear interview”—an administrative “Q & A” regarding their asylum claims with a San Antonio Asylum Officer.

We explained that during this interview, while the women would relate intensely personal and often traumatic incidents, they would be alone in a detention room with a telephone to connect them with the USCIS Asylum Officer. A translator would also be engaged by phone. If there was sufficient time between the receipt of their asylum interview notice & their permitted call to RAICES to allow RAICES staff & their partner, Project Corazon, to make arrangements with an attorney who could be present at the day and hour indicated, their legal representation would come via phone as well. However, too often interview notices were delivered only a day, or less, prior to the interview time. We urged the women we spoke with to insist on their legal right to postpone the interview to a future date until they were represented, but many, out of intimidation, impatience, or the misplaced certainty that all that was required to prevail was to tell their compelling history, did not. The transcripts of NCFI’s (negative credible fear interview determinations)—cases where immigrant asylum claims were denied by Asylum Officers—illustrated how confused applicants could get during a difficult interview—so much so that they appeared unresponsive, and therefore “not credible.”

And, And, And …

We were tasked with prepping the women for their credible fear interviews, which required that we help them to understand that asylum could not be granted simply because they or their family members had endured horrific persecution. They had to demonstrate that their fear of persecution was “on account of their race, nationality, religion, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. And that governmental authorities were unwilling or unable to protect them. And they could not safely relocated elsewhere in their country. Thus, the story of a young Salvadoran woman who fled after an unsuccessful robbery because she absolutely believed that she would be targeted by the surveilling robbers in the future, or a Guatemalan woman receiving a very credible threat of future harm from her sister’s rapist after her sister had fled, was unlikely to ground a successful claim. (Details of any asylum case I relate have been changed to protect client confidentiality.)  In discussion, we had to tease out further details–were the persecutors members of a local or national gang, was the woman being targeted because of her indigenous or minority background, were the local or national police force in league with the cartel, & if so, how did they know that?

The contrast between the asylum stories of the two largest nationality groups at Karnes — Hondurans and Cubans— could not have been greater. The Hondurans, and also the Salvadorans and Guatemalans, mostly feared being shot & murdered by gangs who had killed family members & threatened to do the same to them. Some had brought the death certificates of loved ones as proofs, and “denuncias”— police reports of being extorted, recruited, or raped & enslaved by gangs & cartels. Few had a significant chance of winning their cases: political asylum cases based on gang violence are rarely granted. Most fled soon after the receipt of death threats, because even though they may have reported these incidents to police, they were too terrified to remain to wait to see if the police, who were often working with local gangs, such as MS-13 which has a multinational presence, would arrest their gang or cartel persecutors. The Venezuelans were more likely to have accounts where they were targeted because of imputed or actual political opinion (e.g. opposition to the government of President Maduro resulting in the loss of government employment and, repercussions for protest activities–beatings, death threats, kidnappings–by the pro-Maduro vigilantes, known as “collectivos.” 

The persecution the Cubans reported was very different. It was, by their account, largely for failure to participate in civic and political activities, or for unsanctioned private businesses, and included baton beatings & detentions by local police, exclusion from government jobs & university courses, and surveillance and harassment by officials of the CDRs (neighborhood-based Committees for the Defense of the Revolution). Unlike the accounts of political opponents in other countries who had participated in mass demonstrations or protests, many of the Cuban accounts of persecution were of personal or family targeting as “counter-revolutionaries” due to having relatives who had escaped to the U.S. or had been detained in a thwarted escape attempt, or due to unsuccessful applications for U.S. visas. The reported acts of persecution were frequently sparked by verbal confrontations with low-level officials such as talking back to CDR officers and police & expressing disgust with unjust accusations of theft or illegal business activities, or by deliberately provocative acts—a dissident’s display of a U.S. flag, party music played during the national mourning period following Castro’s funeral.

The San Antonio Greyhound bus station

The San Antonio Greyhound bus station is where asylum-seekers from Karnes and another detention center in Dilley, Texas, are dropped off by ICE if they pass their “credible fear interviews”. But the majority of the immigrants I see during my two days at the bus station have been brought directly from the CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) outposts on the border. These are parents with young children whom the DHS has decided not to detain for initial asylum interviews in large part because of the humanitarian restrictions placed on the incarceration of minors in a 1997 federal court settlement decision (Flores). However, if there were both a mom and dad with the kids at the border crossing, it is likely that the family was separated, and one of the parents was detained.

If the immigrants had no resources for airline or bus tickets to reach to the cities where sponsors awaited, or if they were waiting for sponsor funds, or as in the case of the large group of Congolese, they had no sponsors, the families hung out by day in the make-shift resource center, run by San Antonio’s Interfaith Welcome Coalition, and if they had no place to go, slept in churches at night.

These families were predominantly Honduran, Guatemalan and Salvadoran. In their backpacks and bagged possessions each family had a clear plastic envelope with ICE paperwork indicating the address of the ICE deportation office where they would report at their destination, as well as the Immigration Court address where their asylum case would be heard. Hopefully, though not always, the ICE office and Immigration Court were located near where they would live with family or friends during what would be at least a year-long asylum process. They process culminates in a final court date where most, if 2018 statistics of an 80% denial rate continued, would likely have their asylum cases denied.

“Sometimes sponsors backed out after being contacted by ICE, leaving families with no place to go.”

Volunteers behind a long counter at the resource center tried to figure out how immigrants could get to their destination by bus or plane. Departures for volunteer rides to the San Antonio airport were posted on white boards behind them, as were the bus schedules for the nearby Greyhound station. Periodically volunteers with bullhorns would come through the two large rooms where migrants were waiting and announce departures. Children were constantly underfoot, many happily playing with new toys or coloring books; others napped on quilts and clothes on the floor. Money, largely coming from a Catholic Charities fund, had to be allocated for tickets for families without funds. Sometimes sponsors backed out after being contacted by ICE, leaving families with no place to go. The wonderful RAICES social worker I worked with was unsuccessful in dissuading a young woman not to go to a home offered by a woman she had met on Facebook, or to convince another woman with a baby not to travel some 1000 miles to the town where a distant relative had stopped answering her calls.

Once immigrants were routed to the Greyhound bus station, the Interfaith Coalition volunteers filled out a form called “la mapa” for them. The map grid explained each bus they needed to take to make it to their destination, and its departure time. Volunteers also provided families with a backpack gift with blankets & packed lunches, as well as stuffed animals & toys for the kids. RAICES volunteers like myself went around with a “pink sheet”; we reviewed ICE paperwork to write down where and when migrants were to report to ICE once at their destination. We also made sure they understood how using an 800 number to find out the date and place of their first Immigration Court hearing. This was especially important because there were mistakes: some folks were going to one place, but had ICE appointments in another state far away.  We tried to explain how to try to deal with situations like this, as failure to report to ICE would probably result in their future incarceration. Failure to present themselves at a first Immigration Court hearing would result in an in absentia deportation order. But first we had to break it all down by trying to explain the difference between reporting to ICE ( “la migra, la policia, no son amistades”) and the Immigration Court, where they would have to open up and present the very personal details of their asylum case. Explaining this & other essential information to over-stressed immigrants often with limited education who barely knew the name of the town to which they were headed, had to be overwhelming and bewildering for them.

There is far more to report than I’ve been able to put into these few pages. For instance at Karnes and other Geo-Group facilities immigrants are “permitted” to perform paid work for $1 an hour cleaning the detention facility.

There are too many unanswered questions about what will happen in the future–not least because of the threat of further cutting of government monies for immigrant services and continued privatization of the incarceration system. From what I observed of the young dedicated staff of RAICES (median age late 20’s), that organization despite an enormously successful Facebook Go Fund Me campaign that raised more than $20 million last year, is struggling to provide the amount of legal and logistical support needed by the immigrants to Texas. For instance, to avoid burn-out from 12 hour days at Karnes Detention Center, RAICES lawyers and paralegals are rotated so that none does the trip more than twice weekly, legal volunteers and linguists flesh out RAICES commitment to the detained immigrants to try to assure each is seen, their story heard, and that they receive future legal representation.

Is this sustainable? What will happen in San Antonio when city council funds run out? What if volunteers–either at Karnes and other detention facilities or the bus station and resource center– no longer assist in their present large numbers? What will happen to the immigrants at their destinations when faced with a lack of legal resources to represent them in Immigration Courts in a system where in 2018 98% show up for their immigration hearings but only 20-35% of their asylum applications were granted?

This border saga will continue…..

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