As hundreds of federal immigration agents flooded into Minnesota for Operation Metro Surge, this winter, flights filled with detainees ramped up at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Thousands of miles away, in El Paso, Marisa Limón Garza’s phone started ringing — attorneys, families, friends and friends of friends asking if she could find their loved ones.
“‘Can you go check on my person? Can you make sure they’re OK?’” Garza said, of the calls her staff received at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.
For Garza, executive director at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, it was a reminder that even in Texas, which has the highest number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers in the country, it was not business as usual.
ICE has long transferred detainees across state lines. But a Sahan Journal analysis in December found that during Operation Metro Surge, more Minnesotans were being transferred out of state — and more quickly — often cutting them off from their families and legal counsel.
In the information vacuum, families and attorneys began calling the people who knew the system best: immigrant advocates on the ground in Texas who became an emergency support system for people they did not expect to serve.
The need for support crystallized ongoing efforts to centralise a response system in Texas. Last week, Together and Free, a local organization launched a detainee hotline in collaboration with other local service providers, advocates and aid workers to help locate people detained in El Paso by consulting with the most relevant organization. The hotline can also help people consult an attorney for legal information, if not representation.
“That’s probably the only good thing to come out of this chaos is a coordination of resources and communication,” Imelda Maynard, legal services director at El Paso-based Estrella del Paso, told Sahan Journal. “It’s definitely made all of us see the need to be coordinated not just regionally, but also nationally.”
[…]
[Daniel] Hatoum said that local organizations like the Texas Civil Rights Project have long been on the front lines because of their proximity to the border. “And now the border is everywhere,” he said.
“The border came to Minnesota in the form of CBP, in the form of excessive force. And now, when it hits other states, we’re still here. We’re still finding a way to help them out.”
“The border is everywhere” is a good way to think about our current situation. This story was originally published in the Minnesota-based Sahan Journal and republished by El Paso Matters, which is how I found it. One consolation we can take from these terrible times is that the forces for good have had to step up their games, in organizing and collaborating and innovating. That is not only having a positive effect now, it should serve us all well going forward. You want to look for the helpers, here they are. And we can all do like they’re doing, too.