We have organized many report-backs on our recent experience witnessing tent courts and deportations, and providing humanitarian aid to asylum-seekers who are being forced to wait for months in crowded and unsafe refugee camps on the Brownsville/Matamoros Border under the controversial MPP (aka Wait in Mexico) Program. Please spread the word and contact us if …
Monthly Archives: February 2020
More information about recent Homeland Security denial of asylum rights to migrants
Here is Josh Rubin explaining the latest developments: Our observations have suggested a couple of things. First, we have heard from more than one source that the rate of people being placed into MPP—that is, the policy that strands people in Mexican border cities while a long, drawn out sham legal process takes place—has slowed …
!We are here
We are here. We have witnessed. We have prepped and served. We have crossed to the tent camps. We have hugged. We have witnessed shackled migrants already boarded on buses at the airport. We chanted to them and held banners and hearts for them to see. We have cried. We have witnessed in the Tent …
Ways to Get Involved/Organizations to Support for Justice on the Border
The delegation of the Western MA Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice who traveled to the Brownsville/Matamoros border for a week in February 2020 have seen and felt very directly the hardship faced bythe migrants stuck in the tent encampment in Matamoros, as well as the amazing organizations and individuals providing much needed care every day. …
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Changes in policies that affect migrants’ lives
The rules and the policies affecting the fates of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers at our southern border are constantly changing. At the Brownsville/Matamoros border, we spent eight days helping and witnessing in the tent camp where more than 2500 asylum seekers are being kept back from entering the US to make asylum …
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Members of the Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice Delegation to the Border Share Their Biggest Takeaways from our Nine Days on the Border
Eyewitnesses from Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice delegation to the US/Mexico border share their deepest takeaway AND a list of public reportbacks in Western Massachusetts.
Light in the Dark
Having just returned from our week immersed at the southern border of Brownsville/Matamoros, I am struck by the many ways that I witnessed “light in the dark”. In the face of enormous fear, danger, and harsh, cumulative injustice, the migrants of Matamoros, whose hearts seem buoyed by indomitable faith, carry on with beautiful resilience. We …
Reflections on the Witness Action at Brownsville Airport
By Annique Boomsma To see up close our brothers and sisters from Central America being deported to countries they fled makes it impossible to EVER look away. At the airport yesterday where Trail Boss buses drove up with people in chains, 5 point chains we were told, we witnessed the horror of what our government …
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“It Made a Difference for This One”
A few times when I’ve been witnessing this week at the spot where people come off the bridge from Mexico, I’ve wondered if our actions were making a difference—especially when we’ve discovered and participating in so many opportunities to roll up your sleeves and get involved directly with helping the refugees. Haven’t the people of …
Slow erosion of democracy
I am in Brownsville Tx at the Mexican border where daily there are hearings for asylum seekers to make their claim to remain in this country out of fear for their safety. The “courts” are in tents with judges seen and heard on giant monitors. It is all very democratic-seeming with rules that are insane…straight …