Operation Streamline

Update

I have now officially started my second week of work at BorderLinks.  I'm loving it more and more everyday.  Today we visited the Paulo Friere Freedom School to present skits and workshops on legal immigration and the market basket survey.  It has been fun preparing for the skits and brushing up on my facts.  Our house is starting to feel more homey, now that our fridge is full and we have pictures up on the walls.  We're continuing to get to know the city step by step.

Operation Streamline

Last Thursday, I walked into the Federal Courthouse, a few blocks away from work.  Making sure that my phone was turned off, I entered into the courtroom to witness Operation Streamline.  Operation Streamline is a zero tolerance border enforcement program, started in 2005 in Del Rio, Texas, that targets even first time undocumented border-crossers.  Instead of routing non-violent individuals caught crossing the border into civil deportation proceedings, Operation Streamline forces undocumented migrants through the federal criminal justice system and into U.S. prisons. Those who are caught making a first entry are prosecuted for felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison.  And with this fast-track program, a federal criminal case with prison and deportation consequences is resolved in 2 days or less!


Based on its success in Texas the program was taken on in Tucson about a year ago. The program began with the intention of arresting and convicting in federal court a goal of 100 migrants a day who were caught crossing the border.  According to the border patrol, convicting migrants, who will then have a criminal record, will lower future border crossing due to the risk of greater consequences. Each day at the Tucson courthouse between 70 and 80 migrants are tried each day (on Thursday, there were 77 people: 66 men and 11 women) and given prison sentences from 3 to 180 days. When they are released, they are often intentionally separated from those that they have been traveling with, even driven hundreds of miles away from the location they were picked up in, in order to make their journey more challenging.

Nothing could have prepared me for the experience of sitting in the courtroom, the only person not involved in the proceeding in some way.  What struck me most was a noise: a never-ending tinkling of chains causing an almost beautiful never-ending sound of falling rain.  You see, the men and women in the trial wore shackles around their wrists, ankles, and waists and had to shuffle forward when called.  If put on trial, the migrants are not allowed to have shoelaces or hair ties on their person, so that they don't try to do anything dangerous.

One of the hardest, but most powerful parts of witnessing Operation Streamline was at the beginning of the session when the clerk was making sure that all of the migrants were presente, present. She would call a name, the person would stand, say "presente" and sit down.  Now, some of you know what I went to the SOA protest last November with the Peace and Justice group at Beloit.  On the morning of the last day, there is a vigil in remembrance of those killed and disappeared at the hands graduates of the SOA.  People hold white crosses with the name, age, and information about th ose killed.  On the stage stands a group of people with a long list of names, read out loud and clear, one at a time.  After each name, the crowd, who slowly walks the perimeter of the grounds, holds up the crosses and in unison, says "Presente," present, in memory of the people. 


So, it was a bit of a shock to hear that same phrase coming from the mouths of people who had just crossed the border, had gone through terrible hardship, and had to sit in jail for days.  The treatment and respect that they receive being at a bare minimum.  Stuck in chains and handcuffs.  These are people that I want to remember, that I want to say "Presente" for, to remember that they are present in our lives and in the lives of the people that they are leaving in Mexico and in the United States.


At one point an attorney and her client stepped forward to ask for a special consideration.  The man had been deported before, leaving behind a U.S.-citizen wife and child.  He was trying to cross over into the United States again so that he could be a could husband and father and provide for his family.  He realizes, said the attorney, that what he did was illegal, but he was doing it for the sake of his family.  He hopes to find a job to support his family in Mexico and that they will come to join him soon.  The judge sentenced him to 7 days in jail (a low number for a second offense) and he was sent off to be processed.

At the end of the two-hour court hearing, all 77 had been sentenced, and in a single-file line they exited through a side door of the courtroom. Afterwords, the judge called the 9 public defenders to the front of the room and starting joking and laughing with, while the migrants were processed; some sent back to the jail to fulfill their time, and some to the bus or plane to be sent back to their countries.  Who knows if they will try again, or what will happen on the way. The same proceedings happened yesterday, and the same will happen tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.