Western Mass Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice
Ending child-asylum-seeker detention
While many of us adjust to the myriad difficulties of life during the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 37,000 migrants are trapped like dry timber in US detention centers, where the COVID-19 pandemic will spread imminently like wildfire, causing unnecessary deaths and further strain on our medical system. This story is not making headlines, nor is it …
Continue reading “COVID-19 POSES GRAVE THREAT TO MIGRANTS IN DETENTION AND IN MPP”
IMPORTANT ACTION Pioneer Valley Workers Center—Sign this petition now, it will be sent quickly to FREE EDY!https://actionnetwork.org/…/free-edy-from-indefinite-ice-de… Our member Edy was ordered deported March 13, and transferred to Louisiana last Friday for a flight to Guatemala. Now officials say such flights are impossible until the COVID crisis passes, and Edy will remain detained in Louisiana indefinitely. …
JOIN US: Virtual Phone Bank for the Work and Family Mobility Act! (MASS. DRIVER’S LICENSE BILL) Monday April 6, 6-8 pm. More information is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/908052409633790/ We are joining Pioneer Valley Workers Center, the Jewish Community of Amherst, Congregation B’nai Israel, and JALSA (Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action) in a virtual phone banking night …
Continue reading “Join Us–Virtual Phone Banking for MA Driver’s License Bill”
They come in shackles. They hold their shackled wrists up to the bus window and blow kisses. We hold hearts and shout, “Lo queremos” (We love you) and “No estan solos” (You are not alone).But are they alone? Even the one who manages to open the slot at the back of the bus and poke …
Continue reading “REFLECTIONS ON WITNESSING AT THE AIRPORT: What if This Were a Train to Auschwitz?”
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 …
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 …
Continue reading “Changes in policies that affect migrants’ lives”
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 …
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 …
By Susie Zeiger For the past two evenings most of us have been serving food prepared by World Central Kitchen to approximately a thousand asylum seekers who line up and wait patiently to be served. I was told that there have been fewer people waiting recently because it’s been so cold in the evening. The …