Migration issues at the u. S. mexico border. Its about an hour and 15 minutes. Advocates, students in the audience. And we are looking forward to a robust discussion among our three expert panelists and a very strong question and answer period. My name is anna gallagher, executive director of the catholic Legal Immigration network. We are an Affiliate Organization with over 370 members in 49 states across the United States. I always like to say were sort of a sleeping giant. Were a quiet organization. Folks may not know our name as quickly as they know the aclu or other organizations. However, we do a lot of the groundwork to support and represent low income immigrants across the United States. We do we help build their programs. We train them. We do advocacy. We also have religious Immigration Services division, which represents and helps bring sisters, brothers, priests, clergy to work in immigrant communities in the United States. And in the last year we added our litigation. Weave beefed up, increased our litigation quite a bit and have been involved as organizational plaintiff or have been directly litigating and suing the United States government for many of the policies that were discuss today and especially on this panel. Were very happy to be here. One important thing id like to share with you is our work at the border. We recently started whats called. [ speaking Foreign Language ] asylum project started in august. We dont do operations. However, when theres a great need and we are asked to do so, we stepped in. So, given the great need at the border after seeing thousands of people stranded in mars without legal counsel, we decided to start and launch an asylum project. Were working closely in collaboration with hias, and youll hear more about that from sue. This project involves providing know your rights talks to the thousands of immigrants forced migrants in juarez, consultations to identify potential options for relief and how we can represent them. We also are doing representation. Were creating a pipeline from a to z, teaching about rights, consultations, identifying attorneys in the United States to take these cases. I would urge you to go to our website and look at that project and also volunteer. We are now starting to invite and have attorneys go down and work with my staff down there with the forced migrants to help them with our cases. Go to the website, sign up as a volunteer, support, share it with your other folks. Now, what were going to do just to move forward now with the panelists, what we intend to do in this panel is talk to you about sort of the origin of some of these policies. We will talk about race issues when talking about these other begins. Were going to talk about nuts and bolts. What it looks like on the ground. Then were going to talk about the human face of it. While i was preparing for this panel, we had a call. And i asked joel rose, who is our reporter on the panel, what struck him most when he started reporting on this issue. He talked about the complexity. So i have to share with you, after 30plus years on this work, i wake up every day. Theres new things happening and plenty that i dont understand so i think were all in this together. Hopefully we can clarify some of these things for today and share our experiences for you. Just moving onto our panelists, id like to introduce you to dylan corbett, the founding director of the Hope Border Institute, which is a Research Policy work leadership and development and Action Organization unique to the United States and mexico border region. The project turned four in may of this year. Dylan brings a unique perspective to this panel in that he works in washington, d. C. And now he works on the border so he sees it from both sides. Hell talk to you about why the Hope Border Institute was started and share his experiences along the border and talk about it in terms of the recent el paso shootings. We also have sue kenneypfalzer from hias, the border and asylum network. She and her team have been working quite a bit this past year on developing processes along the border, services for the forced my grants and she also so they put fellows in different places along the border to assist the migrants there. Shes going to share her role, what hias does. Shell explain to us the nuts and bolts. Whats happening on the border today. The categories of people who are facing migrant facing these proceedings, what we can and are doing. Finally we have joel rose, our immigration reporter from npr. He puts a human face on these complex issues. Hes relatively new to the immigration beat and hes been quite busy. Im looking forward to hearing joels stories. With that im going to pass it over to dylan to start our discussion. Thanks, anna. Its an honor to be here and speak with you today. Im honored to be among friends and colleagues on the panel and with my friends. Thank you for the work youre doing at the border. Its been great to collaborate with you on that. And its so important, the work youre all doing, both of you. I also understand that its its this is an exclusive club. Not everybody is invited to speak gets to speak at this conference. Im honored to be able to have something to say to you all. I do want to talk about anna thought it might be appropriate to talk about the situation in el paso. I come from the Hope Border Institute. We work in a national way in juarez. Its hard for us to talk about these immigration issues without acknowledging about what happened back on august 3rd, just two months now. So on august 3rd, as you know, there was someone who drove 650 miles from another part of texas, a faraway place, to come to el paso, texas and he took the lives of 22 latinos. And the wounds for us right now are still fresh. The physical wounds, the psychological wounds, the spiritual wounds. And so were still dealing with that. If anything was made clear because of what happened on august 3rd with that matanza and i use that word on purpose because of the torture and limpking of latinos on the border, this has been going on for some time. Theres historical precedence for this. If theres anything that may clear on that day is that the same the same politics of exclusion, the same policies of xenophobe yeah that are driving the policies were seeing on the border in some way directly or indirectly we can have an argument about that, but that same spirit of xenophobia happened on that day and there are parallels and resonances between what happened and what were seeing on the border. Sues going to talk a little about the different policies and the different changes, the difference things were seeing every day on the border. Its true. Just as on august 3rd, were dazed, were confused, were wounded by all these changes were seeing in rapid succession on the border. Its like being at the end of a fire hose. But if theres one thing that i would say from our perspective on the border that you need to keep in mind, whether its remain in mexico, whether its sending people to third countries, whether its the deployment of the military, whether its policies to make people wait in mexico because theyre being metered or turned back on the bridge, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, at the end of the day the only policy of the u. S. Government on the policy with respect to migration is deterrence and its deterrence at all costs. Its deterrence whether that is deadly or not. People are dying on the u. S. mexico border. People are dying in the custody of the u. S. Government. On the border. And that deterrence has a couple faces. If its deterrence, think of it as a coin. On the one side of the coin, its criminalization, and weve seen this weve seen this go on for some time now. But the u. S. Government is simply criminalizing more and more people and convincing other americans that we have to fear that people who are coming to the border to the point that legal Asylum Seekers. Asylum is effectively over at the border. Asylum seekers are affected like criminals. Whether detained or sent back. The pall of criminality has been cast over them. Thats one side of the coin. On the other side of the coin we have the militarization of the border. The ma tear zalgts of our checkpoints with walls, et cetera, et cetera. All of these things behave effectively a wall on the u. S. mexico border. Whether its a wall of policies, a wall of hate or an actual physical wall, which is being built in our community. Those are the two sides of the coin. There is historical precedence for that, too. The reality is this has been going on for some time. Its been enabled by both congress, the administration, the white house. Its been enabled by both democrats and republicans. There is a categorical difference between whats going on now and then with the Trump Administration. And its this, its simply the radicality with which the policies are implemented and the kulty with which theyre implemented. Thats the difference. The tool box is there. Its been there a long time. But its the radicality and the rulety and thats why its so deadly. Again, none of this is responding to actual policy gaps at the border. Theres simply no argument to be made that what were doing, these policies of criminalization and these policies of militarization are effective, sensible, rationale policy from any point of view. Tech accuraticly, they dont make any sense. Because of that, its impossible for us not to see again, this is what was clarified. If there was any doubt for us on the border on august 3rd, its impossible for us not to see that these are driven by a politics of fear, by a politics of hate and by a politics of xenophobia and its become deadly. Not just for migrants anymore but for people in el paso. That has to stop. [ applause ] thank you, dylan. Before we move on to sue, we spoke a little bit when we started about why the Hope Border Institute was created. Id like you to share a little bit about what we talked about with the audience. Sure. The Hope Border Institute, as anna said, we turned four over the summer. We were really driven by what happened in 2014. Again, 2014 you saw the rise of the rivals to the u. S. mexico border. And the desire are to communitye a legal office with the two mexican attorneys and two parallels and we work with the clinic staff there, and we work with the participations and the oneonone screenings and to refer people to niko, our fellows on the other side of the b border to try to get someone out of nbp and expand the full asylum case. We are asked by mexico to submit a proposal to work in te haw na and tijuana and mexicali, and so we are also going to look to include services for psychomental health, and physical health. So i have been to the border a lot in the last year, and i think that i counted six times. And i am not the one doing the work, but i am the one working with our partners and working with the lawyers and implementing the programs designing the programs, and also i communicate on a regular basis with the lawyers down there doing the work. And there is a Facebook Group called my execution protocols which is with what mmp should be instead of migrant protection protocols, and i asked them yesterday on the facebook, what is the number one thing they would like the audience to know, and the responses were the situation is worse than you think. Its inhumane. Peoples human rights are just completely disregarded and just how dangerous it is. People are kidnapped virtually everyday from right outside of the Immigration Office where they are dropped off. Even for lawyers, one lawyer mentioned that she is looking into the kidnapping insurance now, because it is so dangerous, and particularly in the area of the border across from brownsville and mcallen. It is so dangerous for all involved. And as someone on the first panel accounted there is vast amounts of reported rapes and lack of clean water and even when they can get into the shelter, the quality varies. So it is dire, and more dire than you think it is what they wanted me to let you know. In terms of the lawyers in the room, there is a complete assault on the due process. There is no access to counsel which is the most obvious one. On the ntas, the notice to appear, the addresses put for the migrants are fake addresses, and usually it is for a shelter that they have never even before to, and some ntas are saying facebook as the address for the migrant. There are no longer going to be interpreters provided, but shown a video of the rights, but no interpreters in the hearings, and then the tent courts that are happening in brownsville. And the judges that are only appearing via tv screen, and so they dont have the opportunity to really judge the body language of the migrant and really be able to assess their credibility. So, its the order of the day is chaos and confusion, and it is designed to be that way. It is designed to be cruel. And there is no normal. Sometimes the people ask, well, tell me a normal day. Well, there is no normal and again, it is designed to be that day because everything is unpredictable, but i will do my best to walk you through some of the process. Some of you, this is maybe elementary, but there is a lot of people here who dont know the nuts and bolts of how things work. Starting with the metering. So metering is the process by which you, instead of presenting yourself at the border and saying that i have a fear of persecution in my home country, you are then instead put on a list called the metering list where you have to wait your turn to do that. And that started in april 2018, and everyone has to go and the metering list, including the mexicans. So will they are trying to flee the country in which they are persecuted and told no, you have to get on the list and wait for everybody else. Every port of entry is different, and every port of entry is different, and it is going to be a different entity to manage it and different way it is run. In tijuana, the wait from the metering list is about six months right now. That is so we just present ourselves, right. And in juarez, it is two to three months. Some statistics that i found said that there is approximately 26,000 people on the meters list right now. In the various ports. I have been hearing from my staff in juarez that often they go through 50 names in a day, and even though maybe 10 are let in, because so many people are not there. They get on the list and then they either cross irregularly as you say and without an inspection, or they are going to travel to different parts of mexico. Currently, maybe you heard of a situation in juarez with the Asylum Seekers camped out around the two bridges. There is about 1,700, and the numbers are being reported, they vary, but they are mexican Asylum Seekers and the reason they are camped out at the bridge is again this unpredictability. One day cpb came out, and only some people got to go in and others did not and that is reported by my managing attorney in juarez, and so the word gets around and everybody is like, what if they do that again . I am going cam right herep righ so they want go to the shelter, because of the unpredictability, and of course, it is dangerous, because the criminals know where the people are. So once you do get the number called after this several month wait and if you are expressing a fear of persecution in your home country, you are either allowed in and you are detained, or you are put into the mpp. So it is the mexicans and people from nonspanishspeaking countries are generally put into the expedited removal and going through the credible fear or the reasonable fear process in detention, and then perhaps can be paroled or bonded out. Everyone from Spanish Speaking countries other than mexico are the mpps and that is the remain in mexico policy in operation. So, again, more confusion, because not everyone who is subject to the mpp gets put in the mpp. It is very random. Sometimes people who would be subject to the mpp are allowed in and put in detention. Often, this is where the family separation is coming back again, and the family separation 2. 0 is what i hear it called often where the family units say that a mother, father, two kids present. Perhaps the father is allowed in and detain and the mother and the children have to wait in mexico or vice versa. That happens literally everyday. There are other ways that family separation is happening as well. Niko was telling me about a client that he helped from, a dad from guantanamo whose 2yearold son was taken away from him, because he had a wet diaper and cpp said he was a neglectful father, and so then he was unaccompanied minor because of the socalled negligent. And so when you hear that the family separation is not happening, dont take it at face value. And so what does that mean to be put in mpp. So you are in the cpb te dengs a detention and given a notice of date to appear in the court and then escorted to the bridge and the mexican migration takes over and takes you back and drops you on the street basically, and then on the mexico side. So you are there and have to wait until your Court Hearing of whatever is on the nta. There is supposed to be some exceptions to that in terms of the vulnerable populations not to be put in the mpp and people with health risks and mainly people are put in there that fall into the exceptions everyday. There is also to ask for a nonfulfillment interview, which means that you are afraid to go back to mexico until the date. But you are not asked affirmatively if you are afraid to go back to mexico. So you have to wait for the judge to ask if you have questions, because they dont ask affirmatively or you to find a attorney such as the border fellows helped by the staff in juarez to help accompany you to the bridge and this person has a fear of return for this reason, and you have to prepare a packet and there has to be evidence and then perhaps a nonfulfillment interview, but it is shrouded in secrecy and no attorneys are allowed to participate. We used to be able to listen in, but not any longer. And they are conducted by phone by an asylum officer in austin, and it is hard to win these interview, because less than one percent of the people who are asked for the interview are granted it, and taken off of the mpp, which means if they are taken off of the mpp, then they are detain and put into the removal proceedings. The people wh