Two days before Christmas Eve, Ferguson activists Cathy “Mama Cat” Daniels and Elizabeth Vega – along with seven other activists from St. Louis – set out on an 18-hour journey to the Texas-Mexico border.
Their plan was to set up a resistance encampment in the middle of the desert, where nearly 3,000 immigrant refugee children are being held in a detention camp about 40 miles southeast of El Paso. In June, the Trump administration erected what the activists are calling a “concentration camp” to detain children, ages 12 to 17, before they are hopefully reunited with their families.
However, an hour after they arrived on December 23 and started setting up the encampment, they learned that about 200 migrant asylum-seekers had been released from a family detention center and dropped off at the Greyhound station with nothing. It was 11 p.m., but they still got back in the 15-passenger van and went to lend a hand.
“Some had no coats,” Vega said. “No shoes. No money. Really sick babies. It’s a sin what this country is doing. In true Ferguson style, Mama Cat is now cooking for both the occupation camp and for folks who are now at this emergency shelter that we established with the Detained Migrant Solidarity Committee.”
Now, every day since the St. Louis group arrived, Immigration Customs and Enforcement officials have released hundreds of migrant asylum-seekers in a park in downtown El Paso – even on Christmas Day. Because the local homeless shelters are overflowing, the St. Louis activists have been working with local volunteers to set up their own independent shelters at local motels.
“There is a Guatemalan mother who has three sick babies, one on her back and two under the age of four, and they have been in a detention center,” Vega said. “And they just dropped them off with nothing at 11 at night. It was mayhem.”
There was also a father who had to sleep sitting on a toilet holding his son in the family detention center because the room was so crowded, Vega said.
“It’s been heartbreaking to see what these families and especially children are dealing with,” Mama Cat said. “The children have sores around their mouths because they are dehydrated. They aren’t giving them water in there. To see the loss of hope and people are afraid, you gotta see it to really believe it. It went from an occupation to an ‘assist and resist’ because the need is so great here.”
A St. Louis nurse arrived on Christmas night and immediately went to care for the sick children, some of whom have bronchitis and pink eye. Working tirelessly, Vega and the others have been catching only a couple hours of sleep here and there.
But more help on its way. More than 30 people from St. Louis – including several Ferguson frontliners – will come this week to help with the shelters and hold actions outside of the children detention “tent city,” alongside Latino resistance groups from El Paso and Santa Fe.
The children’s camp, which is near the small town of Tornillo, was meant to be a temporary facility with 400 beds to house children separated from their parents through the Trump administration’s controversial family-separation policy enacted in May. However, the facility was expanded to 500 beds in August and to 3,800 in September. The government now has custody of almost 15,000 “unaccompanied children” who were apprehended at the border without a guardian, up from the 3,000 at the beginning of the Trump administration.
Although the family separation policy was technically ended in June, the number of children detained apart from their families continues to increase. That’s because in June the Trump administration immediately replaced the separation policy with rigorous requirements for reuniting children with their families, including fingerprinting. These requirements have been at the center of debates recently among Democratic legislators, who say fingerprinting isn’t necessary and only makes potential sponsors fearful of coming forward to claim the children – delaying their release.
When The American asked Mama Cat why she was willing to spend her Christmas at the border, she said, “These are all our babies – babies who are being mistreated.”
Mama Cat especially feels for the parents. The children who are in custody mainly come from Central American countries, where parents had to flee because they feared their children would be killed by gang violence or general unrest.
“They came here for safety,” said Mama Cat, who is known for nourishing the local protest community with her home cooking. “They got here, and they were met with hatred. It’s important to let these kids know they are not by themselves. There are people in this country who care for them.”
So, Mama Cat said it was an easy decision when fellow “Ferguson O.G.” Elizabeth Vega called her and asked her to cook for the resistance camp. She said she packed her cooking knife kit and came ready to “bang some pots.”
“This occupation is needed,” Mama Cat said. “And from what I understand, this area is pretty conservative. They are certainly not used to what they’re about to get. They are used to barking orders and people saying, ‘Okay’ because they are afraid. I’m not afraid because I live for liberation because that’s how I was made.”
Vega, the leader of the activist group called the Artivists, traveled to the Tornillo camps in November with a group of clergy. The first thing she noticed was that the “brown resistance” needed some backup, she said.
“Folks from St. Louis and Ferguson are uniquely trained and skilled to help build other resistance movements because we’ve been doing it,” Vega said. “I’m excited to share things that we learned the hard way.”
Local activists are mainly coming from the groups Detained Migrant Solidarity Committee and Movimento Cosecha. The locals led the creation of a Christmas tree out of empty water jugs that the nonprofit No More Deaths leaves along common migrant routes. The tree remembers 7-year-old Guatemalan Jakelin Caal Maquin, who died on December 6 from dehydration and shock after reportedly not eating or drinking for several days, along with thousands of others who have died making the treacherous journey through the desert.
The resistance is pushing for the closure of the Tornillo camps and immediately placing the children with their families. Activists also believe America’s foreign policies had a hand in destabilizing the countries where these people are fleeing from and that those policies need to change.
Mama Cat said she believes African Americans should take note and care about what’s going on at the border. “What affects them affects us,” she said. “We have crossed these same roads. It’s all our fight. These are all our children.”
The costs of the camps are also directly impacting funding for services that go into black communities nationwide.
The Trump administration has transferred $446 million from programs such as Head Start, cancer and allergy research and for substance abuse treatment programs in order to pay for detaining these children. That’s on top of the $1.2 billion that the administration budgeted in fiscal year 2018.
Vega said she decided to hold the actions over the holidays because she knew people, especially students, had time off.
“We have a choice on how we want to spend that time,” Vega said. “There were enough people who understand that this situation needs to be addressed and would be willing to give one Christmas up to justice.”
