https://www.propublica.org/article/life-inside-ice-dilley-children
"Fourteen-year-old Ariana Velasquez had been held at the immigrant detention
center in Dilley, Texas, with her mother for some 45 days when I managed to get
inside to meet her. The staff brought everyone in the visiting room a boxed
lunch from the cafeteria: a cup of yellowish stew and a hamburger patty in a
plain bun. Ariana’s long black curls hung loosely around her face and she was
wearing a government-issued gray sweatsuit. At first, she sat looking blankly
down at the table. She poked at her food with a plastic fork and let her mother
do most of the talking.
She perked up when I asked about home: Hicksville, New York. She and her mother
had moved there from Honduras when she was 7. Her mother, Stephanie Valladares,
had applied for asylum, married a neighbor from back home who was already
living in the U.S., and had two more kids. Ariana took care of them after
school. She was a freshman at Hicksville High, and being detained at the Dilley
Immigration Processing Center meant that she was falling behind in her classes.
She told me how much she missed her favorite sign language teacher, but most of
all she missed her siblings.
I had previously met them in Hicksville: Gianna, a toddler who everyone calls
Gigi, and Jacob, a kindergartener with wide brown eyes. I told Ariana that they
missed her too. Jacob had shown me a security camera that their mom had
installed in the kitchen so she could peek in on them from her job, sometimes
saying “Hello” through the speaker. I told Ariana that Jacob tried talking to
the camera, hoping his mom would answer.
Stephanie burst into tears. So did Ariana. After my visit, Ariana wrote me a
letter.
“My younger siblings haven’t been able to see their mom in more than a month,”
she wrote. “They are very young and you need both of your parents when you are
growing up.” Then, referring to Dilley, she added, “Since I got to this Center
all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression.”"
Via Muse, who wrote:
"I spent part of a year visiting a refugee detention centre in Melbourne,
Australia. What is described here is very much like what I experienced at the
Melbourne Immigration Transit Centre. So many stories I could tell. I
particularly remember one woman whose young son had a medical condition
concerning his heart. He had caught some sort of infection and the Serco
administrators were refusing him any medical help. I sat with her as she held
him, worrying that these were going to be his last breaths. God, that was
horrible.
Fast forward and I am visiting my parents in the US just before Donald Trump is
first elected. My dad takes me to the cafe where he and a group of retired men
regularly hang out for a cup of coffee. One fellow started talking near me
about how he had heard about the Australian immigrant detention centres. He
reckoned that the Australians had gotten it right, and the US should follow
their lead. I carefully asked, what would that fix. He ignored me and went on
talking."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
