Name: 【TED】Erika Pinheiro: What's really happening at the US-Mexico border -- and how we can do better (What's really happening at the US-Mexico border -- and how we can do better | Erika Pinheiro)
Uploaded: 2019-12-16T23:18:48.000Z
Duration: 14 min 4 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I drive from my home near Tijuana, Mexico,

over the US border, to my office in San Diego.

The stark contrast between the poverty and desperation on one side of the border

But what makes this contrast feel even starker

is when I pass by the building that those of us who work on the border

unaffectionately refer to as the black hole.

The black hole is the Customs and Border Protection,

locked in freezing, filthy, concrete cells below the building.

Downstairs: the reality of the US immigration system.

And it's where, one day in September of 2018,

a woman who CBP had recently separated from her seven-year-old son.

and the policy and litigation director of Al Otro Lado,

a binational nonprofit helping immigrants on both sides of the US-Mexico border.

We'd met Anna several weeks earlier at our Tijuana office,

where she explained that she feared she and her son would be killed in Mexico.

So we prepared her for the process of turning herself over to CBP

A few days after she'd gone to the port of entry to ask for help,

from her family members in the United States,

telling us that CBP officials had taken Anna's son from her.

but I knew that Anna's son had special needs.

this news filled me with the sense of panic and foreboding

that has unfortunately become a hallmark of my daily work.

I had a signed authorization to act as Anna's attorney,

Not only would CBP officials not let me speak to Anna,

but they wouldn't even tell me if she was there.

begging to submit evidence of Anna's son's special needs,

but no one would even talk to me about the case.

It felt surreal to watch the shoppers strolling idly by

what felt like a life-and-death situation.

After several hours of being stonewalled by CBP,

I found Anna's son in the foster-care system.

when she turned up at a detention camp a few miles east.

and she followed the law when asking for asylum.

Still, immigration officials held her for three more months,

Anna's story is not the only story I could tell you.

and sent to a government shelter thousands of miles away,

where they failed to properly bathe him for months.

who was held with adults for 28 days in CBP's horrific facilities.

a pregnant refugee who begged for medical attention for eight hours

CBP officials held her for three more weeks

for an asylum hearing in the United States.

Seeing these horrors day in and day out has changed me.

but now, I inevitably find myself telling people

about how our government tortures refugees at the border

and congratulate me for the great work I'm doing in helping people like Anna.

But I don't know how to make them understand

that unless they start fighting, harder than they ever thought possible,

we don't know which of us will be the next to suffer Anna's fate.

Trump's mass separations of refugee families

and woke many to the cruelties of the US immigration system.

more people than ever are involved in the fight for immigrant rights.

But unfortunately, the situation is just not getting better.

Thousands protested to end family separations,

but the government is still separating families.

More than 900 children have been taken from their parents

Thousands more refugee children have been taken from their grandparents,

siblings and other family members at the border.

at least two dozen people have died in immigration custody.

【TED】Erika Pinheiro: What's really happening at the US-Mexico border -- and how we can do better (What's really happening at the US-Mexico border -- and how we can do better | Erika Pinheiro)

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【TED】Erika Pinheiro: What's really happening at the US-Mexico border -- and how we can do better (What's really happening at the US-Mexico border -- and how we can do better | Erika Pinheiro)

access

situation

force

catastrophic