Halloween in NYC vs. Halloween in Dilley, TX
October 31, 2016
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For anyone who has never been to or heard of Dilley, it is a small, hydro-fracking-effected town positioned as sort of a vestibule to the United States just 30 minutes from Mexico. The locals in Dilley describe their town as nothing to look twice at. I spent the last week of October 2016 volunteering in Dilley, TX with nearly twenty other attorneys and two paralegals from my law firm.
Why did I and so many of my colleagues make such a long trip? Because there is an ongoing Central American crisis. Women from the northern triangle of Central America continue to seek refuge in the United States. Our country's response to this rush was to detain the women and their children (the youngest one I encountered was barely a year old) in the South Texas Family Residential Center, in Dilley TX until they pass a Credible Fear Interview with an asylum officer or immigration judge, or are ultimately deported back to countries that annually top the list of most dangerous countries on earth. The CARA coalition has staff in the detention center year round to represent every single woman and her children. CARA relies extensively on volunteer attorneys nationwide to travel to Dilley and provide legal support.
Having already spent two consecutive weeks as a CARA volunteer in November 2015 and having gone solo for that tour, I went into this assignment feeling ready and prepared. Volunteering with the CARA coalition's team on the ground in Dilley is fast paced and high stakes. Rapidly preparing women for their Credible Fear Interviews ("CFI prep"), mad-dashing your way through writing a declaration, and making appearances in Miami immigration court (from Dilley via video) or the Asylum office, is a day in the life of a CARA volunteer. During my week as a volunteer, I combined my asylum expertise and previous volunteer experience to conduct 62 CFI preps--hardly a dent as there were almost 2000 women in the facility.
On my return flight to NYC, I thought for a moment about the routine Halloween festivities that laid ahead. But after a week consulting dozens of mothers and children in despair, their collective pain, fear, and sorrow remained omnipresent in my mind. My thoughts immediately went to the scores of women who were scheduled for Credible Fear Interviews on 10/31.
When I casually asked a Honduran mother whether Halloween is celebrated in her country, she responded with a somber look of disillusion: "we used to celebrate it, but now it's too dangerous to walk around the streets any time of year." Juxtaposing Halloween in NYC and Dilley, the differences are ironic. In NYC, children and adults will be in costumes, eating candy, laughing, trick-or-treating. In Dilley, laughter and joy are rare. Dressed up in detention garb, the only strolls these women can take their children on would be to and from the nursery while they themselves have legal consultations or expedited removal proceedings. Unless and until these children and their mothers are released from detention and reunited with family members in the United States), Halloween 2016 for them will be trick but no treat.
