One_liners
_This interview of a Border Patrol agent, who recently resigned, will not only make you realize how ineffective border walls are, it might wake you up to unconscious bias.
_SBCC steering committee member Joanna Williams of Kino Border Initiative explains how prosecuting asylum seekers is against international laws signed onto by the United States.
_Check out this compelling opinion written by SBCC Border Dreamer Viviana Arciniega that advocates for the protection of New Mexico’s Organ Mountains.
Must_reads
_More walls = More deaths. Want to know all the reasons a border wall is a horrible, dangerous idea? One major reason is that it literally kills people by funneling them into crossing in more remote, arid regions of the border. Walls also cause environmental devastation_including putting at risk endangered wildlife species_and seriously damage border communities and their economies. To bring this home, we joined the ACLU Border Rights Center and others in releasing a report that compiles past and, potentially future, harmful effects of a border wall. Download this valuable resource here.
_Politics, not facts, basis for wall. SBCC steering committee member Pedro Rios of American Friends Service Committee and SBCC ally Astrid Dominguez of the ACLU Border Rights Center comment on the environmental and humanitarian crisis caused by the construction of a border wall and how this crisis could become worse if Trump’s vanity wall is built.
_Public opinion ix-nays wall. Poll after poll have shown that almost 60% of Americans oppose the construction or expansion of more border wall. This new poll digs a little deeper and shows that at least 65% of Latinos in Texas don’t want more border walls and that almost 90% of Latinos in the Brownsville area disapprove of the wall, which is not surprising considering this community has experienced the loss of their private lands to the border wall. The construction of Trump’s vanity wall will rob more private landowners in the Texas Rio Grande Valley of their lands, including families that may have owned this land for more than two and a half centuries. Thanks to the work of border rights activists, public comment against this part of wall construction was extended until Tuesday, Nov. 6.
_Jailing the innocent, indefinitely. The Trump administration continues to work towards jailing immigrant children indefinitely by posting a federal rule change that will allow them to eviscerate a prior protective court ruling that forbids detaining children longer than 20 days. Comments opposing the rule change are due Tuesday, Nov. 6 (i.e., mid-term election day). The administration also decided to triple the number of beds where immigrant children will be held in a tent facility at the Tornillo port of entry, near El Paso, TX.
_Clarification: In our last edition, we mentioned how the U.S. was again denying passports to people who were delivered as babies in the United States by midwives. While this has been true since the George W. Bush administration, what we should have highlighted is that now the consequences are more grievous: “In some cases, passport applicants with official U.S. birth certificates are being jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation proceedings. In others, they are stuck in Mexico, their passports suddenly revoked when they tried to reenter the United States.”
_No more walls. PERIOD. Because no one wants to rock the mid-term electoral politics boat vote_congressional members struck a deal this week to pass lesser controversial parts of the government’s Fiscal Year 2019 budget and pass a continuing resolution (which keeps funding at the same level) on the more controversial mini budgets_like the one for Homeland Security_ until December 7. When our delegation visited Washington, DC, this week, some congressional offices_to our disappointment and chagrin_said we should expect funds to pass for new and/or replacement wall along the border. We returned home even more determined to continue sharing the facts of how destructive walls are for border communities. Will you join us? Please take two minutes of your time and call your congressional members to tell them a wall is not only ineffective, it is a waste of taxpayers money, puts lives at risk, and damages public and private lands. Spend the money instead on revitalizing, not militarizing our borderlands.
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border_lines is published every Friday for your reading pleasure. If you’d like to submit an item for inclusion, please email Vicki B. Gaubeca at [email protected], by Wednesday COB.
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