Coming to Tucson

My mother’s family comes from a border town in South Texas, and when I was young I grew up going to Camargo, Mexico with my grandparents. When we crossed the river I would marvel at being in two places at once and looked forward to buying an elote (roasted corn sprinkled with chili powder). My grandpa told stories about the border, which became mythical to me. His stories were about wild horses that crossed the Rio Grande, poverty and survival, what it meant to be Mexican and American.

Before I came to Tucson to work as the On the Ground Coordinator for the DukeEngage Program, I worked with an organization called Student Action with Farmworkers for about two and a half years. While at SAF I had the opportunity to meet many farmworkers that had migrated from places like Chiapas, Guerrero and Veracruz. Farmworkers’ face what many immigrants face when they come to the United States: low wages, harsh working conditions and family separation.

I felt like I understood the impact that migration and immigration on farmworkers and communities in North Carolina, but I wanted to go to Tucson, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora to learn more about what is increasingly becoming a militarized border and how that affects communities on both sides of the border. I wanted to learn more about the lives of the people who make a treacherous journey to come to the United States for work. What are their motivations? What do we have in common? I came to learn about this line in the sand that redraws the stories of my childhood into a place where migrants die by the thousands every summer, where fear drives policy, the heart of a national debate that no one seems to have an answer to. Also, I came to be the On The Ground Coordinator for the DukeEngage Tucson group, which has been a wonderful decision!

Part of the programming for the DukeEngage Tucson program is a two-week, intensive delegation with the organization Borderlinks. We have had the opportunity to learn from individuals, community organizations and government agencies about the impacts of immigration on Arizona. It has been an impactful week. We have met from everyone from Border Patrol to human rights activists who leave water on the border for migrants who are dying from thirst.

So far, visiting the Federal Courthouse and watching “Operation Streamline” procedures has been the most impactful to me. In the past, immigration violations didn’t carry a criminal penalty. Now, with Streamline migrants can face up to six months in jail (at a huge cost to the tax payer). Streamline is unique because it sentences and prosecutes up to 75 migrants over the course of an hour and a half. Since 2008 over 50,000 migrants have faced criminal charges for coming to the US without authorization. Migrants are brought in front of a judge in groups of eight or nine; all shackled and then all plead guilty en masse. It is beyond shameful to see justice carried out in this way. Most of the men and woman prosecuted under Streamline don't speak English and usually didn't even know that they would be sitting in a federal courtroom when they woke up that morning. I can't imagine what it would be like to go to bed at a night in a foreign jail, to wake up to find myself sentenced without real access to a lawyer.

For me, the public defenders and the community of Tucson, these proceedings bring up questions of constitutionality. For example, do these proceedings comport with due process laws guaranteed by the 5^th Amendment? Are migrants who have varying degrees of education and language ability fully understand what they are doing when they waive their rights and agree to a plea agreement? Do lawyers have enough time with their clients? Each lawyer meets with their client the day of the hearing and they have less than 30 minutes with each client. If you are interested in reading more about Operation Streamline, check out this report from the Warren Institute called “Assembly Line Justice" http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Operation_Streamline_Policy_Brief.pdf