#its such a prime time for an accomplished man to become insecure

[bottombaron]

for some reason i find Nandor, having died probably somewhere in his late 30s/early 40s, being constantly in a state of mid-life crises, deeply hilarious

[cruelfeline]

One of the aspects of Hordak that strikes me so significantly when compared to other characters is the unexpected, terrifying escalation of his situation. 

We don’t really see this happen with anyone else: generally speaking, our other characters are very much a case of “what you see is what you get.” Adora is perhaps a bit of an exception, seeing as her status as “First Ones gun trigger” is used as a plot twist in season four, but her general background and the overall nature of her situation remain fairly consistent throughout the show. 

Same with Catra. Same with Glimmer and Bow. Mermista, Perfuma, Scorpia, Frosta... everyone else receives a backstory and, barring minute elaborations, stays true to our first impressions of them. Our understanding of who they are and what they are about doesn’t really change.

Hordak is not this way.

Hordak starts off as a pretty standard, one-dimensional evil warlord character. Season one finds him very much delegated to the background, supposedly pulling the strings behind the scenes as other characters have their dramas play out center stage. He is well-designed and frightening, an imposing individual with a stoic personality and a sense of reason and logic that marks him as an effective commander. 

We get no backstory at this point, and the initial impression of the character (at least for me) is “capable evil leader, little to no depth beyond what is absolutely necessary.” And that’s fine. At this point in the story, there’s no suggestion that Hordak will have any sort of role save for serving as an ultimate antagonist for our heroes, so a backstory is largely unnecessary. He appears properly built to provide powerful opposition, and that’s all we need.

This is Hordak’s starting point. It is a serviceable starting point. It is also stunningly different from his end point, and at this stage in the series, there is zero indication that there is going to be any alteration, let alone such a dramatic one.

Seasons two and three see Hordak gaining actual development. Significant development. Development that provides him with a painful, sympathetic reason for waging his war. Suddenly, Hordak is not an all-powerful, untouchable warlord. Suddenly, he is a vulnerable individual with significant physical ailments and resulting emotional trauma. 

His situation has escalated. 

We see now that his body is falling apart, that he is sickly and weak and dependent upon armor and bravado to maintain control over his subordinates. We see that he is not the stoic, omnipotent man presented to us in season one. 

Instead, we learn that he is a manufactured clone with deep emotional wounds linked to past rejection and trauma, that he comes from a society where his illness is scorned enough to earn him rejection and what amounts to a death sentence. We come to understand that he views himself very poorly, and that a significant number of his negative character traits are rooted in shame and fear and a desperate need for validation.

we also learn that he has cute lil ears that can wiggle and droop when he’s sad

To these significant developments we add his budding friendship with Entrapta, and we find that Hordak is very much capable of desiring, forming, and maintaining a positive, affectionate relationship with someone. His character thus becomes even more complex.

Now, something to keep in mind at this point: thanks to revelations provided by his backstory, we can view Hordak as a more vulnerable individual with legitimate feelings and insecurities. That said, there is still a certain dangerous edge to him. At this point in the series, we have been told, by Hordak himself, that he was a top general in a much larger version of the Horde. 

This supposed fact somewhat tempers his vulnerability. We get the sense that, while he is suffering from the shame and subsequent rejection brought on by his disability, his ultimate goal of rejoining his brother still involves a certain level of power. There is this idea that, though he wants validation and acceptance, he is also seeking to regain a position that, theoretically, grants him greater power and authority than the one he holds now. Hence why he doesn’t just settle for conquering and ruling Etheria: being lord of Etheria does not hold a candle to the power granted him by regaining his rank as Horde Prime’s top general.

One can look back at the fandom during late 2019 to fully appreciate this: fanfiction from this time period often features headcanons of particularly accomplished clones holding respected positions in Prime’s empire. High ranking clones have names and titles. They have ships. They have their own planets and their own armies. Even though they serve Prime and are, sadly, purpose-bred clones, they have power and status that provide them with a certain level of agency. 

Essentially, there was the idea that a traditional Horde military structure exists, and Hordak held privilege within it.

So, while Hordak’s situation has escalated in emotional poignancy from “evil warlord wanting to rule the world” to “defective clone seeking validation,” there remains an unsympathetic aspect to it. There is still some degree of potential power-hunger that one can attribute to him. 

This changes, very suddenly and traumatically, in seasons four and five. And this, friends and neighbors, is where I begin to become very emotional.

Our first indication that things are about to wildly change comes during the season four finale. We meet Horde Prime. We see how submissive and terrified Hordak is in his presence. We witness Prime’s distaste not only for the state of him and his failed conquest, but for Hordak daring to take a name.

It is Hordak’s name being a problem that plants the seeds for an upheaval of our preconceived notions regarding a clone’s function in the Galactic Horde. Those seeds germinate abruptly and violently in the next few moments as Prime lifts Hordak by the throat, declares him an abomination, and viciously violates and erases his mind.

And oh, friends and neighbors, now we know that something is wrong. 

We don’t quite know the specifics yet, but we know that there is some sort of discrepancy between what Hordak told us and the truth he has lived. At no point in the narrative did Hordak say anything about names being inappropriate. At no point did he say anything that might have prepared us for the suspiciously religiously-coded language Prime is using. At no point did he say anything to suggest that there was anything wrong with what he was doing beyond trying to compensate for a physical disability.

And then, alongside all of these dark little surprises, there are the hauntingly blank stares of the clones standing besides Prime’s throne.

All of these factors instill a sense of dread that culminates in the chilling reveal of the Galactic Horde’s true nature come season five.

It is a cult. An honest-to-the-gods, played-absolutely-straight religious cult.

The Galactic Horde isn’t a traditional army, or an aggressive nation, or even a standard imperialist empire. It is a cult, with Horde Prime as its god and countless clone acolytes acting as its horrifically willing members.

We never see a top general, or any generals at all. We never see any sort of military hierarchy. We never see clones leading armies, or owning ships, or holding ranks, or commanding anyone or anything.

What we see instead is clones blindly worshiping their Brother. We see them doting on him, sacrificing their own life force to maintain his form. We see them forfeiting control of their bodies to him whenever he feels like using another’s form. We see them chanting the virtue of suffering to achieve purity. We see them blank and emotionless save for religious zealotry, a purpose-bred cohort of completely brainwashed followers. We see that there is no apparent escape from this life, for Prime sees their minds and controls every aspect of their existence, and we see that there is no desire for escape among them, so utterly indoctrinated are they.

We see Hordak reduced to one of these cowl-wearing acolytes: nameless, powerless, ready and willing to endure physical agony in order to forget his shame and relinquish his self to his Brother in the hopes of... well, certainly not of regaining some exalted military rank, or of reclaiming some previously-held status. These things do not exist. Not in this actual religious cult.

Hordak’s true situation is now fully apparent, and it is so far removed from our views of him back in previous seasons: rather than being a calculating warlord, or even a defective clone seeking to regain military glory, Hordak is a manufactured soldier-slave who was born into a religious cult, so indoctrinated and bound to his Brother that he risks his own life in order to win Prime’s love and approval.

Because that’s what this final realization confirms: Hordak was never after any sort of power or prestigious military status. They never existed. Hordak was, in the end, an abused slave trying desperately to win love from his loveless master. He truly was just after validation and affection and a feeling of secure belonging. All things that he was deprived of because he was born a slave-acolyte in a godsforsaken cult. 

And that’s... that’s such a vastly different state of affairs than the one we accepted in season one. It completely rewrites our understanding of Hordak’s power, of his vulnerability, of his true wants and needs and desires. Said understanding shifts from a purely villainous one to one steeped in self-loathing and control and lifelong victimization. It is absolutely shocking to see a character’s circumstances completely transform the way Hordak’s do between the show’s beginning and its finale. It is utterly bewildering to witness this intensity of change.

As I stated at the start: this doesn’t happen to anyone else. Oh, other characters develop and grow and undergo their arcs, sure, but by and large, Catra remains a scrappy catgirl. Adora remains an orphaned heroine. Swift Wind remains a revolutionary winged steed.

Only Hordak undergoes a transformation as dramatic as shifting from “all-powerful conquering warlord” to “defective clone seeking validation... but maybe also galactic power” before finally settling, tearfully and painfully, on “shamed, love-starved cult victim.” Only his situation, his true identity and our understanding of it, escalate so shockingly and to such terrifying levels. 

I’m still not over it. I still cry about it. I still feel light-headed sometimes, knowing that Hordak's circumstances revolve around being born into and abused and thrown away by an actual cult. Even though we're over two months out from SPoP's finale, it's still that emotionally powerful to me, and the shock of the difference between seasons one and five only make it more so.

[lodelss]

I Went to Mexico to Meet Asylum-Seekers Trapped at the Border. This Is What I Saw.

Two weeks ago, I traveled to northern Mexico along with Mexican photographer Guillermo Arias to meet with asylum-seekers who’ve been trapped at the southern U.S. border by Trump Administration policies. Neither of us was prepared for what we saw there.

We visited two cities – Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros – to track down people who had been placed into the deceptively misnamed “Migrant Protection Protocols” that have slammed America’s door shut to people fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries. Before we arrived, we wondered whether the stories we’d read of kidnappings, assaults, and despair were as widespread as they sounded. It didn’t take long for us to get our answer.

There is – right now, at this very moment – a humanitarian crisis unfolding at our southern border. And we are not paying enough attention to it.

First, a little context. The Trump Administration has been waging an all-out war on the U.S.’s asylum system, which for more than 50 years has provided shelter for people who need protection. To accomplish this reversal of tradition, they’ve put into place a series of policies that have made it nearly impossible for people to quickly and safely claim asylum at the southern border. Chief among them is the forced return to Mexico program, which has trapped tens of thousands of people in dangerous cartel-controlled cities in northern Mexico while they wait for distant court dates inside the U.S.

The circumstances these vulnerable people are facing in the meantime are dire. We saw them first-hand.

Mexican asylum-seekers sleep on the street near the Paso del Norte bridge in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

Everywhere we went, people told us stories of being kidnapped or extorted while stuck in Mexico. Many were sleeping in tent encampments on the streets while safety across the border was literally within sight, but legally out of reach. Some were packed into shelters set up by the Mexican government, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on thin mattresses on the floor of converted warehouses. Others were living in privately-run shelters with no security protocols to prevent intruders from intimidating or preying on them.

Matamoros is a small city right across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, just along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where corruption and cartel-related violence is so bad that the U.S. state department has given it the same travel advisory as Afghanistan and Somalia. It’s also become home to thousands of people who’ve fled Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and other parts of Mexico searching for safety.

Previously, they would have been processed through the asylum system and then either detained or released inside the U.S. while their claims were evaluated by an immigration judge. But now, they’re given a sheet of paper that tells them to come back to the border months later for their first hearing. In the meantime, they’re stuck, with nowhere to go and most often nobody to help them. Next to the Matamoros-Brownsville bridge, a tent camp has sprung up on a patch of pavement and dirt that around 2,000 asylum-seekers call home. The camp is growing every day.

Children of asylum-seekers eat near the Puente Nuevo Internacional bridge in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The night before we visited, a storm system had swept through Texas, flooding the inside of the low-quality tents people were living in with rain. There was mud everywhere, and it was cold. Few people had the clothing to cope with the chilly temperatures, and the first few people we talked to were shivering, their teeth chattering as they spoke. Everywhere we looked, there were very young children sitting on curbs or hanging onto their parents.

One young man told us that in a tent nearby there was a Honduran woman with a newborn baby, so we stopped in to visit them. She’d delivered just five days earlier. Only 21 years old herself, she’d been living in the tent with her four-year-old daughter since being sent back to Matamoros by Customs and Border Protection agents. She said that when she’d first told CBP officers that she was pregnant, they suggested she get an abortion before telling her to come back for a court date over a month in the future.

A young mother sits inside her tent with her newborn child and daughter in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The tiny child was bundled into blankets in the small tent where it was spending its first days of life. Her mother coughed when she spoke, visibly exhausted. She said that she’d fled an abusive spouse and was too afraid to return to him. Later, one of the few health responders who visits the camp regularly told me that she was fearful about whether the child would survive conditions at the camp, which she said reminded her of refugee camps she’d worked at in Bangladesh.

“If there’s a cholera outbreak here, half of them could die,” she said.

Further up the hill next to the camp, along a wooded grove, lies the Rio Grande. There are a few makeshift showers near the camp, but they aren’t nearly enough for the entire camp to bathe, so many choose to wash and do their laundry at the bank of the river. The river is rife with pollution, and people living in the camp have developed rashes and other skin problems from bathing in it. Next to a small, muddy clearing, a series of white crosses stood in remembrance of the children who’ve died by drowning in the river in recent months.

Wooden crosses honoring children of asylum-seekers who drowned in the Rio Grande in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

A few nights before we visited the camp in Matamoros, some of its frustrated residents had staged a protest against conditions in the camp and the policies that have trapped them there, shutting down the bridge for 15 hours. “They keep telling us we have to wait longer and longer,” one told Buzzfeed News. “When will it end?”

Walking among the tents and meeting their gracious and welcoming occupants, I felt the weight of my country’s responsibility for their suffering. The insecurity, desperation, and discomfort of the people we were speaking with isn’t a corollary effect of the policy, it’s the core intent. The “Migrant Protection Protocols” were designed to make it so uncomfortable and dangerous for people who are seeking asylum that they will simply give up, exhausted and defeated, and return back to the dangerous situations they fled.

Many have, indeed, already done so.

Further along the border, in Ciudad Juarez, we visited a network of shelters that have been set up in recent months to cope with the roughly 17,000 asylum-seekers who’ve been returned there since mid-April. On one side of the spectrum was the newly-opened federal shelter, supervised by the Mexican government, which was housing over 500 people the week we were there. A converted warehouse with no individual rooms, people were sleeping on rows and rows of small mattresses lined up against the walls and across the middle of the large hall. Its inhabitants were there waiting for court hearings as far out as January of next year.

Asylum-seekers inside the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

We met with Venezuelans who’d fled the political crisis in their country and El Salvadorans who spoke of witnessing family members gunned down in front of them. People told us they’d been dropped off on darkened streets in Juarez by Customs and Border Protection with no idea where to go or what to do. One parent told us she’d had to wrestle with a man who tried to abduct her daughter in front of her. Some spoke of the dawning realization that they might now have no choice but to return to the very danger they’d run away from to begin with.

As we walked through the shelter, a woman approached us cautiously. She broke into tears and told us that a few nights earlier she’d woken up to see a man from the shelter trying to sexually assault her underage daughter. Could we help, she asked? We passed on her story to one of the administrative staff at the shelter.

At night, people gathered in a circle to sing hymns, the glittering lights of Juarez in the distance.

Asylum-seekers pray at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The Mexican government has been providing assistance to asylum-seekers who’ve grown exhausted with the long wait times and difficult conditions, helping to arrange travel back to their countries of origin. A staff member showed us a list of people who’d relented and returned home. In just two months, 205 people had made use of the program and left for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. 97 of them were minors.

While that shelter was crowded and lacking the barest level of privacy, it did have security protocols set up to protect people living there. There were heavy gates surrounding the facility and guards who checked the names and credentials of every visitor. This was not the case in other shelters we visited.

At one, a small horseshoe of villas surrounding a decrepit playground on the outskirts of Juarez, there was no gate or security guards at all. The risks facing people stuck there were immediately apparent. Juarez is a dangerous city, and criminals there have realized that migrants have relatives who will often pay ransoms if they are kidnapped. An unsecured shelter is a prime target.

We were there to interview a woman who said she’d been kidnapped near the border by Mexican police officers. She played messages for us that the kidnappers had sent from her phone to her relatives back home. And she told us that not long ago a truck filled with masked men had driven into the shelter and slowly circled the courtyard. Since then she hadn’t left her corner of the shelter very often.

An asylum-seeker in a private shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 10, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

As she was telling us her story, we heard crying outside. A legal aid worker who’d brought us to the shelter said that a family living next door had just received word from their son that he’d been kidnapped that day. The boy had been picked up near the shelter and was now texting his mother the ransom demands of his assailants. Our escort offered to take her to a new shelter but she declined, saying she feared that it might seem like she was abandoning her son.

In the wake of a kidnapping the victim’s family may be placed under observation by the culprits, and we were told that the presence of journalists with cameras could further endanger the young man. So we quickly left.

In just a brief visit, we’d heard one detailed story of a kidnapping-for-ransom and witnessed another family living through that trauma in real time. The experience underscored the insecurity and fear that tens of thousands of asylum-seekers are being subjected to across the U.S. border right now.

Supporters of the new, punitive asylum processes say that most of the people seeking shelter at our southern border are liars who are after better work opportunities in the U.S. That simply did not gel with much of what we heard. One man said he’d been a municipal employee back home. He liked Honduras, and he hadn’t wanted to leave. But a street gang had threatened to murder him and his son if the young boy didn’t start selling drugs for them, so he felt they had no choice but to flee.

Another young woman from Nicaragua showed us pictures of the street demonstrations she’d participated in against President Daniel Ortega’s government. One of her friends who she’d marched with was killed and others were arrested, so she fled north. Only 19, she looked like a high-school student, speaking in a soft voice with her shoulders drooping as she recounted her separation from her sister at the border.

I have covered challenging stories across the world. For both Guillermo and I, this was a particularly difficult trip. I will not soon forget the eyes of the people we spoke with, at once tired and hopeful, nor their stories of determination, horror, and resilience. The shame I felt as an American while interviewing them was profound. Our country is turning its back on vulnerable people who need our help, right at our doorstop. We have to do better.

The danger they face will not soon come to an end, either. ACLU lawyers have filed suit against every anti-asylum policy the Trump Administration has tried to implement, but the courts have allowed several policies to go forward for now while the litigation against them continues.

A young boy sits in the parking lot at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The attack on vulnerable people seeking asylum at our border is a political crisis, and we have to start approaching it as the matter of life-and-death that it is. We need our elected representatives – including Democrats vying for the nomination – to take a clear stand and explain what they’ll do to roll back these abusive policies as soon as possible.

At stake is our identity as a country. The people asking us for help at our border are no less human than we are, and we have the capacity to help them. How will we respond to their suffering? Wil we allow the most hateful and uncaring among us to write our history, or will we fight back and demand better? There are tens of thousands of eyes cast towards us at the border right now waiting for our answer.

Published October 24, 2019 at 03:34PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/2PmIiYG

[nancydhooper]

I Went to Mexico to Meet Asylum-Seekers Trapped at the Border. This Is What I Saw.

Two weeks ago, I traveled to northern Mexico along with Mexican photographer Guillermo Arias to meet with asylum-seekers who’ve been trapped at the southern U.S. border by Trump Administration policies. Neither of us was prepared for what we saw there.

We visited two cities – Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros – to track down people who had been placed into the deceptively misnamed “Migrant Protection Protocols” that have slammed America’s door shut to people fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries. Before we arrived, we wondered whether the stories we’d read of kidnappings, assaults, and despair were as widespread as they sounded. It didn’t take long for us to get our answer.

There is – right now, at this very moment – a humanitarian crisis unfolding at our southern border. And we are not paying enough attention to it.

First, a little context. The Trump Administration has been waging an all-out war on the U.S.’s asylum system, which for more than 50 years has provided shelter for people who need protection. To accomplish this reversal of tradition, they’ve put into place a series of policies that have made it nearly impossible for people to quickly and safely claim asylum at the southern border. Chief among them is the forced return to Mexico program, which has trapped tens of thousands of people in dangerous cartel-controlled cities in northern Mexico while they wait for distant court dates inside the U.S.

The circumstances these vulnerable people are facing in the meantime are dire. We saw them first-hand.

Mexican asylum-seekers sleep on the street near the Paso del Norte bridge in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

Everywhere we went, people told us stories of being kidnapped or extorted while stuck in Mexico. Many were sleeping in tent encampments on the streets while safety across the border was literally within sight, but legally out of reach. Some were packed into shelters set up by the Mexican government, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on thin mattresses on the floor of converted warehouses. Others were living in privately-run shelters with no security protocols to prevent intruders from intimidating or preying on them.

Matamoros is a small city right across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, just along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where corruption and cartel-related violence is so bad that the U.S. state department has given it the same travel advisory as Afghanistan and Somalia. It’s also become home to thousands of people who’ve fled Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and other parts of Mexico searching for safety.

Previously, they would have been processed through the asylum system and then either detained or released inside the U.S. while their claims were evaluated by an immigration judge. But now, they’re given a sheet of paper that tells them to come back to the border months later for their first hearing. In the meantime, they’re stuck, with nowhere to go and most often nobody to help them. Next to the Matamoros-Brownsville bridge, a tent camp has sprung up on a patch of pavement and dirt that around 2,000 asylum-seekers call home. The camp is growing every day.

Children of asylum-seekers eat near the Puente Nuevo Internacional bridge in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The night before we visited, a storm system had swept through Texas, flooding the inside of the low-quality tents people were living in with rain. There was mud everywhere, and it was cold. Few people had the clothing to cope with the chilly temperatures, and the first few people we talked to were shivering, their teeth chattering as they spoke. Everywhere we looked, there were very young children sitting on curbs or hanging onto their parents.

One young man told us that in a tent nearby there was a Honduran woman with a newborn baby, so we stopped in to visit them. She’d delivered just five days earlier. Only 21 years old herself, she’d been living in the tent with her four-year-old daughter since being sent back to Matamoros by Customs and Border Protection agents. She said that when she’d first told CBP officers that she was pregnant, they suggested she get an abortion before telling her to come back for a court date over a month in the future.

A young mother sits inside her tent with her newborn child and daughter in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The tiny child was bundled into blankets in the small tent where it was spending its first days of life. Her mother coughed when she spoke, visibly exhausted. She said that she’d fled an abusive spouse and was too afraid to return to him. Later, one of the few health responders who visits the camp regularly told me that she was fearful about whether the child would survive conditions at the camp, which she said reminded her of refugee camps she’d worked at in Bangladesh.

“If there’s a cholera outbreak here, half of them could die,” she said.

Further up the hill next to the camp, along a wooded grove, lies the Rio Grande. There are a few makeshift showers near the camp, but they aren’t nearly enough for the entire camp to bathe, so many choose to wash and do their laundry at the bank of the river. The river is rife with pollution, and people living in the camp have developed rashes and other skin problems from bathing in it. Next to a small, muddy clearing, a series of white crosses stood in remembrance of the children who’ve died by drowning in the river in recent months.

Wooden crosses honoring children of asylum-seekers who drowned in the Rio Grande in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

A few nights before we visited the camp in Matamoros, some of its frustrated residents had staged a protest against conditions in the camp and the policies that have trapped them there, shutting down the bridge for 15 hours. “They keep telling us we have to wait longer and longer,” one told Buzzfeed News. “When will it end?”

Walking among the tents and meeting their gracious and welcoming occupants, I felt the weight of my country’s responsibility for their suffering. The insecurity, desperation, and discomfort of the people we were speaking with isn’t a corollary effect of the policy, it’s the core intent. The “Migrant Protection Protocols” were designed to make it so uncomfortable and dangerous for people who are seeking asylum that they will simply give up, exhausted and defeated, and return back to the dangerous situations they fled.

Many have, indeed, already done so.

Further along the border, in Ciudad Juarez, we visited a network of shelters that have been set up in recent months to cope with the roughly 17,000 asylum-seekers who’ve been returned there since mid-April. On one side of the spectrum was the newly-opened federal shelter, supervised by the Mexican government, which was housing over 500 people the week we were there. A converted warehouse with no individual rooms, people were sleeping on rows and rows of small mattresses lined up against the walls and across the middle of the large hall. Its inhabitants were there waiting for court hearings as far out as January of next year.

Asylum-seekers inside the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

We met with Venezuelans who’d fled the political crisis in their country and El Salvadorans who spoke of witnessing family members gunned down in front of them. People told us they’d been dropped off on darkened streets in Juarez by Customs and Border Protection with no idea where to go or what to do. One parent told us she’d had to wrestle with a man who tried to abduct her daughter in front of her. Some spoke of the dawning realization that they might now have no choice but to return to the very danger they’d run away from to begin with.

As we walked through the shelter, a woman approached us cautiously. She broke into tears and told us that a few nights earlier she’d woken up to see a man from the shelter trying to sexually assault her underage daughter. Could we help, she asked? We passed on her story to one of the administrative staff at the shelter.

At night, people gathered in a circle to sing hymns, the glittering lights of Juarez in the distance.

Asylum-seekers pray at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The Mexican government has been providing assistance to asylum-seekers who’ve grown exhausted with the long wait times and difficult conditions, helping to arrange travel back to their countries of origin. A staff member showed us a list of people who’d relented and returned home. In just two months, 205 people had made use of the program and left for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. 97 of them were minors.

While that shelter was crowded and lacking the barest level of privacy, it did have security protocols set up to protect people living there. There were heavy gates surrounding the facility and guards who checked the names and credentials of every visitor. This was not the case in other shelters we visited.

At one, a small horseshoe of villas surrounding a decrepit playground on the outskirts of Juarez, there was no gate or security guards at all. The risks facing people stuck there were immediately apparent. Juarez is a dangerous city, and criminals there have realized that migrants have relatives who will often pay ransoms if they are kidnapped. An unsecured shelter is a prime target.

We were there to interview a woman who said she’d been kidnapped near the border by Mexican police officers. She played messages for us that the kidnappers had sent from her phone to her relatives back home. And she told us that not long ago a truck filled with masked men had driven into the shelter and slowly circled the courtyard. Since then she hadn’t left her corner of the shelter very often.

An asylum-seeker in a private shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 10, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

As she was telling us her story, we heard crying outside. A legal aid worker who’d brought us to the shelter said that a family living next door had just received word from their son that he’d been kidnapped that day. The boy had been picked up near the shelter and was now texting his mother the ransom demands of his assailants. Our escort offered to take her to a new shelter but she declined, saying she feared that it might seem like she was abandoning her son.

In the wake of a kidnapping the victim’s family may be placed under observation by the culprits, and we were told that the presence of journalists with cameras could further endanger the young man. So we quickly left.

In just a brief visit, we’d heard one detailed story of a kidnapping-for-ransom and witnessed another family living through that trauma in real time. The experience underscored the insecurity and fear that tens of thousands of asylum-seekers are being subjected to across the U.S. border right now.

Supporters of the new, punitive asylum processes say that most of the people seeking shelter at our southern border are liars who are after better work opportunities in the U.S. That simply did not gel with much of what we heard. One man said he’d been a municipal employee back home. He liked Honduras, and he hadn’t wanted to leave. But a street gang had threatened to murder him and his son if the young boy didn’t start selling drugs for them, so he felt they had no choice but to flee.

Another young woman from Nicaragua showed us pictures of the street demonstrations she’d participated in against President Daniel Ortega’s government. One of her friends who she’d marched with was killed and others were arrested, so she fled north. Only 19, she looked like a high-school student, speaking in a soft voice with her shoulders drooping as she recounted her separation from her sister at the border.

I have covered challenging stories across the world. For both Guillermo and I, this was a particularly difficult trip. I will not soon forget the eyes of the people we spoke with, at once tired and hopeful, nor their stories of determination, horror, and resilience. The shame I felt as an American while interviewing them was profound. Our country is turning its back on vulnerable people who need our help, right at our doorstop. We have to do better.

The danger they face will not soon come to an end, either. ACLU lawyers have filed suit against every anti-asylum policy the Trump Administration has tried to implement, but the courts have allowed several policies to go forward for now while the litigation against them continues.

A young boy sits in the parking lot at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The attack on vulnerable people seeking asylum at our border is a political crisis, and we have to start approaching it as the matter of life-and-death that it is. We need our elected representatives – including Democrats vying for the nomination – to take a clear stand and explain what they’ll do to roll back these abusive policies as soon as possible.

At stake is our identity as a country. The people asking us for help at our border are no less human than we are, and we have the capacity to help them. How will we respond to their suffering? Wil we allow the most hateful and uncaring among us to write our history, or will we fight back and demand better? There are tens of thousands of eyes cast towards us at the border right now waiting for our answer.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/i-went-to-mexico-to-meet-asylum-seekers-trapped-at-the-border-this-is-what-i-saw via http://www.rssmix.com/

[thetrashyvulpix-blog]

Do every question for Tip. All of them. *shot* In all serious do my cinnamon roll and whatever questions you want. I just always like learning more about Tip.

1. Tip generally doesn’t have much of a scent, showering regularly but not adding on anything that stands out. He does enjoy using “orange-scented” shampoo, though, so at times he’ll smell a bit like citrine. I like to think oranges are his favorite fruit, if only because they help make the breakfasts he prepares that much better (and healthier!). Nicole is living the good life, not gonna lie.

2. Tip has a higher-pitched boy’s voice, but his tone is usually soft and meek, allowing him to sound more polite and formal. During times when he’s uncertain or scared, his voice make crack, and he may sound more like a younger teen than a young adult man.

3. I like to think that Nicole is his biggest motivator. And, for a large part of his life, she is. But after she passes, Tip likely looks to his children and to his students. He obsesses over being the best father he can be, because it makes him feel like his life is still worth something, and that he’s still loved, even after Nicole’s gone... Granted, even with Nicole by his side, he still takes his fatherly role very seriously, but when she isn’t there, even his students become second children to him. I like to think he’s helped a lot of kids in his class because of this...

4. Tip’s most embarrassing memory is learning to do anything romantic with Nicole. Whether it be kissing, dating, or further. He always messes it up in predictable ways, and he’s just glad that, half the time, nobody’s able to really make fun of him for it... (Fuck you, Peach and Yoshi.)

5. I’m going to assume physical pain. Tip actually knows how to take a hit. As a creation, his mind works a bit differently from others, and the pain he feels is lessened as a result. You could give him plenty of cuts, but he’d recognize that, even though they hurt like hell, the person bleeding from their head needs more medical attention than he does. It’s a very useful skill for a supporter/healer to be able to heal his allies, even if he’s hurt. Some healers may panic and heal themselves when in pain.

6. Tip is most comfortable in his academia uniform; he prefers wearing formal clothing, with school colors, to give people an idea of his profession and his magical school of choice. And as a creation of Balance, it’s just what he feels most comfortable in… Magical clothes that can help bolster his magical energy, or even just keep it under control, makes life easier for someone who was born from magic.

7. I honestly believe it’s a cross between Ian and Nicole in SC. I know, I know; IAN. But I honestly do believe that having someone so sociable around, even if he’s a little… Ian… would help Tip to open up more and become a more social person, himself. Even if we didn’t get to see them interact that much, I think Ian would have encouraged Tip to become a better person by talking to people and helping them open up to him; this charismatic skill would come in handy in later years, where Tip becomes a professor and has to help his students. Nicole obviously does a lot because she’s his wife, and she always helps calm him down and keep him happy…. But some part of me really wants to think Ian would be a great positive force, too. Ian Kubrick was a great character, and to not have him have some sort of impact on Tip would be a complete shame on my part.

8. Tip eats the dust of stars, dude. It’s fucking weiiiird.

9. Tip cannot go to sleep without hugging/cuddling something. Whether that be Nicole, a pillow, baby dragon Celestia, or a child of his that’s having trouble sleeping themselves, Tip is always holding something or someone in his sleep. He believes it’s because he just can’t stand being alone at night...

10. Tip loves breakfast foods. He loves making a great breakfast that will wake his friends up, and he especially enjoys receiving praise for his work. Nothing warms the boy’s heart more than receiving compliments on his cooking in the morning~

11. Tip is most insecure about his connections to other people. He knows he isn’t human, and he fears that people may treat him differently because of what he is and because of his lack of knowledge… This leads to near-constant depression in his early years.

12. Tip enjoys long, flowing brown dresses that match his eyes. He especially enjoys dresses that cover a lot of skin, so that he can feel enveloped in a silky, regal charm…

13. Tip usually tries to apologize right away when faced with guilt, and will do whatever he can to make amends… He always tries not to get on anyone’s bad side, so when he does, he generally breaks down. However, if that person is someone who has done enough bad that even Tip doesn’t mind doing something hurtful to them… The guilt doesn’t really hit that hard. There aren’t very many people that cross that line, though. If someone gets close, Tip usually just avoids them and tries not to confront them at all costs.

14. I got to show this in BAT2, but despite his calmness… Tip didn’t react very well. He’s gotten to the point where he avoids the person and generally would never trust them. I think Tip would be unable to really forgive betrayal unless the person directly apologized and was clearly trying to make amends. So he reacts like any other reasonable person would, really… There’s only one tick. If that person has only done negative things, it’s very hard for them to get back on Tip’s good side. Not to say that Tip’s “bad side” is necessary a bad place to be (even enemies are treated with the same courtesy he tries to give everyone else; it’s just that they’re avoided), but Tip is capable of holding a grudge, even if he’s not outward about it like a character like Peach may be.

Let me explain further, actually.

So Tip is capable of holding a grudge, but again, you need to be a pretty shitty person to get to that grudge. You’d have to do very negative things towards him or a person he cares about, and then you’d need to go as far as to betray or to do something terrible to him and his friends. Afterwards, you have to show no remorse.

Finally, the grudge wouldn’t be that bad. It’s the least meaningful grudge ever. You’re just avoided. Tip would never not include you in something that should include you, and you would be treated like everyone else as a breakfast or dinner party.

15. Tip’s greatest achievement is becoming the Professor of Balance at Ravenwood. Doing this has led him into a very stable career, and it’s probably the thing that’s kept him sane during all of these years of eternal life… He’s also touched many, many lives by becoming a teacher who is dedicated to what he does. It’s his biggest accomplishment for himself by far.

16. Tip tends to be able to deal with being tired well. Given how he’s a creation, sleep isn’t a prime necessity for him, anyway… It just helps a bunch. He can take some Stardust and be fine if he needs to. He prefers sleeping and cuddling with Nicole, though~

17. Tip doesn’t drink. He just doesn’t. I can never imagine Tip drinking. He’s too much of a “good boy”.

18. Tip enjoys calm, instrumental music. He probably especially enjoys Disney music, if only because of Nicole’s influence, and especially loves upbeat music that can get him going throughout the day. When you’re alone in life… You really have to latch onto every source of happiness you can.

19. Right-handed.

20. Tip fears being left alone, having to fight alone, and having an evil that’s stronger than any hero appear...

21. Tip enjoys either a clear, sunny day, or a calm, rainy day. A day that’s too hot, a day with thunder and severe winds, or a day that’s only cloudy but not quite calm and rainy… Those days are just ‘meh’ to him. He appreciates weather that really sticks to one moderate side or the other.

22. Tip loves tan and maroon colors!~

23. Tip collects spell cards. They are physical manifestations of his own, learned spells. By the end of SC or BAT2, he only has about 22-25 spell cards, but by the time of SW… He likely has up to 200 spell cards, if not many more. Possibly 400 by the end of SE, depending on how much he studied Myth (Myth is the school I like to think has the most spells by far).

24. Tip prefers colder weather. He loves the cold breeze on a nice winter morning~

25. Brown eyes for Tip.

26. Tip’s race is “Creation/Human”. His skin is white.

27. Tip’s hair is also brown!

28. Tip is happy by the end of SC. He’s likely happy by the end of SE because of certain things that Terra has done. I’d say he’s pretty content… But in SW he’s a pure mess. With his wife gone for over a century and nothing but pain, the poor Apprentice has seen better days.

29. Absolutely! Tip tends to get up before Nicole to make her breakfast, and really enjoys helping everyone start their days right!~

30. Sunrise~

31. Tip is an absolutely organized person. He doesn’t like having to look for things, and he prefers making sure he knows exactly where everything is, all the time, even if it takes more time to get preparations and clean-up done.

32. Tip isn’t “peeved” by much, but someone who’s an out-right jerk could make him uncomfortable. He also doesn’t enjoy it when people pick on him for his quiet nature. But he would never get annoyed or angry with someone without great reason.

33. Anything Nicole had given him before she died is of the upmost importance… But, other than that, his Sidhe Staff. It was his first weapon, and still proves to be a valuable tool on the field thanks to its unique powers. It can help him gain more power pips, and will help raise the accuracy of his hard-to-use Balance spells.

34. Tip really doesn’t enjoy green peas. He doesn’t see how anyone could like those.

35. Gray. It’s a dull color that doesn’t really do much for him.

36. … Poison is a bad smell? Idfk. Bad smells are bad. His least favorite smell is probably the same as any other human’s.

37. The last time Tip cried was last Tuesday, obviously. He can cry often, especially when his situation really is stressful… And usually, when he does cry, it’s fair for him to cry, it’s just that he can get overly-emotional...

38. Tip was probably with Nicole the last time he cried. Tip always opens up to her, no matter what; he’s learned to trust her...

39. Tip has been injured several times in many battles. One time, in BAT2, he was severely injured by Nicole and Yoshi after having his identity taken from him by Doopliss. While physical pain doesn’t hurt so much, the emotional pain from having his friends attack him nearly destroyed him… If it weren’t for the heroes discovering the real Doopliss, Tip wouldn’t have made it long.

40. Scars can be healed in the Spiral universe, so no.

41. Does Tip struggle with any mental health issues?... Yeah, probably. I’m not an expert though.

42. Tip has a bad habit of being too formal to people, and not learning to cut back and try to have a warmer aura around him. When in ‘professor mode’ or ‘father mode’, though, he learns to curb these bad habits to become a more charismatic and happy person for his student/child.

43. Tip may be disliked because he’s not much of a people person. He’s quiet, timid, and always needs someone to stand up for him. Anyone who values confidence (aside from his more mature self in SE), a backbone, or some sense of masculinity will be disappointed in Tip Apprentice.

44. Tip is a very caring friend and very affectionate. He will do anything to make someone’s day, and generally does his best for the people who will let him. He is Balance…. Support. His life feels better when he can help someone else’s life feel better.

45. Ghosts are canon in the Spiral.

46. Tip would trust his best friends with his life.. And he would especially trust Nicole, his wife. He would also trust his children with his life, because he helped raise them.

47. Tip is almost always romantically interested in Nicole Peach~

48. Tip, luckily for him, is almost always married to Nicole Peach~

49. Tip isn’t a big fan of surprises. They scare him, and he’s always uncomfortable with having a plan ruined.

50. Tip’s birthday is…. I actually never thought of that. I’d say February 19th is his birthday~ That’s just after the beginning of the Spiral Chronicles RP, and it lands him in the Zodiac Sign I want for him.

51. He tries his best to celebrate his birthday with friends… But in his later years, he tends to enjoy quietly spending his birthday with close family.

52. Tip has no family until he’s married to Nicole. After that point, he wants a family, but it’s really up to Nicole as to how big that family gets. The only exception is Nicolas, a creation that is considered Tip’s youngest son, given how he was made almost a century after Nicole’s death.

53. Tip is close to his wife and children~ He views his family as the most important people in the entire world to him… He’d do anything for them, absolutely anything~

54. I’m already playing 100 questions, I’d rather not to a personality test too. owo;

55. Pisces. I think.

56. Hufflepuff? I have no idea.

57. Tip is a Lawful/Neutral Good. He may circumvent the rules to help others if he has to, but otherwise does his best to follow the rules.

58. Tip has nightmares about losing everything he loves. His nightmares are harsh and unforgiving.. Mostly because, some side of him is harsh and unforgiving towards himself. He constantly questions himself, especially with certain things...

59. Death is something Tip sometimes longs for, but he knows better than to take his own life. He has eternal life for one reason or another, doesn’t he..? Plus, even if he died, he wouldn’t go back to Nicole. He would suffer a far worse fate...

60. Tip will laugh at silly and cute things, but many clever/dark jokes will either fly over his head or disturb him.

61. Tip will pass the time by cooking or practicing new spells. And Tip has had many days of boredom in his years of living… This means he is both powerful, and a great cook!~

62. Tip Apprentice enjoys the outdoors, but he’s gotten used to the magically-conditioned indoors… It’s more comfortable for practicing support spells, cooking, and relaxing.

63. Tip has no accent. Even though everyone technically has some sort of accent, Tip’s tone and the way he says things are completely moderate thanks to being a creation. He does talk a bit too formally sometimes, though.

64. Tip actually prefers vanilla cake, so he’d offer the slice to someone else if he were given a slice of chocolate cake. Too much chocolate is bad for Tips.

65. Tip dying is a very complicated and touchy subject, especially given what it means for him if he dies… So I’m not sure if I can answer this without being in a call, rambling about him.

66. How Tip feels about sex… Well, it’s not all that complicated, but it merits a long explanation because of how it affects him.

Tip is very interested in sex. As a creation, he still has the same sexual urges anyone else would have at his age… But because he has eternal life, those urges last forever. He can’t help looking at Nicole in certain ways, and he feels his heart beat that much faster whenever he kisses her.

However, he’s disgusted by his own thoughts. Nicole is not one for sex (I believe she’s even sex-repulsed), and Tip is well-aware of that, so he likely keeps his feelings under wraps for a long time. However, when he wants to have a family… He realizes that sex is necessary. There are magical ways to get around it, but, he just can’t help but want to push his and Nicole’s relationship to ‘that level’. He’s outstandingly curious, and he has these intense feelings all the time…

But, ultimately, without Nicole saying anything or helping him… I don’t think Tip would do anything. He would, instead, silently resign himself to ignoring his feelings. He would likely become sexually repressed, not allowing himself to think about Nicole in certain ways, and even after her death, he would never touch himself or give into bursts of lust he may feel at night, thinking of Nicole.

Sex is an element to characters I think can be very intriguing for reasons like these. Even if Tip believes he’s disgusting for wanting sex, and even if he thinks he’s wrong… He’s really not. It’s his own instincts and body making him feel this way. Having a sexual attraction to a person you love is completely normal, but because he’s never really told this and because his only other real interactions with anything sexual is through Ian and Charles being crazy, kinky fucks… Tip can never bring himself to do anything.

I think that sex could become a large part of his depression in later years. He has these feelings, and his sexual repression has likely built up for over a century… His own wants and desires make him think he’s a disgusting person, and he begins to hate himself even more over it.

67. Tip is demisexual. He only has sexual feelings for Nicole. I imagine that, later into BAT2 (earlier than SC because of the Bond) and sometime after SC, Tip begins to feel a certain way for Nicole… And these feelings never die, because they’re a part of who he is, whether he likes it or not.

68. Absolutely… In the beginning. Later into his life, Tip has seen enough blood that he can deal with it, unless it’s on the floor/written on a wall/used for some sort of fucked-up thing.

69. Tip thinks his own sexual desires are gross, even if they’re actually rather vanilla and sweet. He resents them with a passion.

70. No idea! Fuck off TV Tropes I don’t have time for you *shot*

71. Does Tip Apprentice enjoy helping people?... Nah, probably not.

72. Tip is not allergic to anything. By-product of being a creation.

73. Tip does not have any pets. Celestia is not a pet. Celestia is Tip’s daughter.

74. Tip is the slowest to anger of my OCs. If he is actually somehow angry… You’ve really, really fucked up. You have to either be outright evil or an actual disgrace to humanity.

75. Tip is extremely patient. See the grudge stuff and the anger stuff for more details.

76. Tip is a natural at cooking. It’s his favorite hobby!~

77. Tip never insults anyone. Even the bad guys don’t really get insulted, he just points out that they’re wrong and they’ll be taken down. If he’s “insulting” someone, it’s usually just him pointing out a character flaw.

78. Bubbly and cute. Tip will act like sunshine and rainbows when he’s happy, trying his best to make everyone else happy, too~

79. I don’t imagine Tip would do anything with knowledge of others’ fears… Like, at all. He might try to help them overcome those fears, but he’d never push them to do anything, and the best he would do is give advice.

80. Tip Apprentice is the most trustworthy character of mine. He will never break your trust, so long as you are a decent person/nice to him and his friends.

81. The only times Tip hides his emotions are when he needs to (which is isn’t good at), or when it comes to sex. If he needs to hide his emotions, Tip is terrible at it, his true feelings usually seeping through… But when it comes to hiding his feelings about sex, Tip is really, really good. One would have to bring them up directly to catch him off-guard, as it’s a big mental barrier for him.

82. Tip exercises regularly by using his spells, which drain mental and physical power, but also help train his physical and mental features.

83. Tip is satisfied with his physical image. He thinks he looks alright, but not amazing or really cute or anything… He’s just fine with how he is.

84. Tip doesn’t immediately find anyone physically attractive for one thing or another… But after becoming close to Nicole, he finds almost every part of her attractive. Especially the kitty ears! So cute!!~

85. Great charisma will catch Tip off-guard and possibly trigger some attraction… But usually that attraction is short-lasting as he gets used to a person’s personality.

86. Tip enjoys sweet foods from time to time, but can’t have as much as Nicole. He prefers a mix of sweet and healthy foods.

87. Tip starts off 16-17, but is constantly 20-21 afterwards. Eternal life sure does suck.

88. Tip is short for his age and gender. He’s only 5’5’’, but he’s still taller than his wife.

89. Tip wears brown reading glasses. He doesn’t need them that much, but… Ian must have some influence on him, because even into SE, he thinks they’re stylish and cute.

90. Tip does not consider himself attractive. Actually, that’s something that constantly bothers him. He truly believes Nicole would never, ever find him attractive.. And, well, maybe that’s true. But because of that, alongside his more sexual feelings, his confidence is really low about how he looks and is when it comes to his wife. He thinks he looks alright to everyone else, and he doesn’t mind that, but he really frets about how he looks to Nicole… Even if he knows it may never truly matter, some part of him really wants Nicole to find him attractive.

91. Tip loves cute, easy-to-understand humor that doesn’t hurt anyone. He’s an innocent child like that.

92. Tip is most often in a gentle, neutral mood… But his mood can easily become happy at the sight of his family or loved ones.

93. Again, Tip doesn’t get angry easily. Villains, evil people, people who are mean to everyone…. Even those people cannot easily get the wrath of Tip Apprentice.

94. Tip believes that life for him is some sort of cruel tragedy, up until SE and Terra’s work. He generally has a negative outlook on his own life, but… He does all he can to make it better. When with his family and when helping his descendents, Tip’s outlook on life is at its brightest, and he can feel like he really does mean something… He cries at Chelsea’s wedding with Amber. He beams with happiness when Nicolas and Nina decide to have their second child together. He hums happily to himself as he helps take care of a younger Terra… He feels such strong, positive emotions when he gets involved with the lives of people he loves...

95. Tip can easily get sad or depressed. Whether it be through questioning himself, thinking about his sexuality, having to face his eternal life, or going through rough times… Many things make him sad.

96. Tip Apprentice’s greatest weakness is his Confidence. He cannot believe in himself, even when he really should, and he has trouble sticking up for himself or battling a threat alone.

97. Tip Apprentice’s greatest strength is his Kindness. He can help turn lives around, give people the strength they need to succeed, and give someone the love they deserve.

98. Tip Apprentice sometimes regrets creating Nicolas, because of all the trauma he had to go through… But when he sees Nick happy with Nina and Tabitha, he thinks it was all worth it, in the end...

99. Already answered on question 15, SUCK IT!

100. Tip is a creation of Judgement. As such, the Bond was created by Judgement as a way of keeping creations like Tip alive, even when they’re without Stardust. The Bond is a very versatile tool, and it’s one whose details I’d rather keep hidden for now… But all you really need to know is that it hurts the creation and the bond recipient when they are apart, and heals them and brings them closer when they are together.

[mastcomm]

5 years of Buhari: We’re glad he got here our method

Buhari is 5 right now in workplace

By FEMI ADESINA

Who’re the ‘we?’ Converse for your self solely, some cynics would say on merely seeing the headline of this piece.

They might add: “You’ll be able to speak since you are in authorities, incomes ‘fats’ wage and having fun with different perks of workplace, so why gained’t you be glad?”

Okay. In order that there’ll be peace, I agree that I take pleasure in all of the belongings you declare, and extra.

However is that any motive for anybody to hold anger round in his bosom? What then occurred to goodwill in direction of all males, and malice to none?

However we’re not speaking about skeptics who conjure all types of improbabilities right now. We’re speaking of tens of millions of Nigerians who consider in our President, Muhammadu Buhari, and who’re glad he got here our method, because the administration he leads clocks 5 years right now.

Hundreds of thousands? Sure, very many tens of millions, a large number that no man can quantity. No marvel the margin of his victory retains multiplying at each election. In 2015, he scored 15, 424, 921 votes, defeating the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, with 2, 571, 759 votes.

In 2019, the Atikulators got here in a tough method. However the tougher they got here, the tougher they fell. Buhari chalked 15, 191, 847 million votes, profitable with a margin of three, 928, 869, a lot increased than that of 2015. Thanks, good Nigerians.

Can anyone, regardless of how she or he feels, want away these tens of millions and tens of millions of voters? Not by any stretch of the creativeness. Over the hills and the valleys, in clement and inclement climate, they trooped out to vote for the person they liked. And as he marks 5 years in workplace right now, we’re glad he got here our method. ‘We?’ Sure, ‘we.’ We’re in tens of millions upon tens of millions, much more than went out to vote, as there are lots of quiet disciples, who didn’t vote, or who didn’t even register to vote.

President Buhari completes the primary 12 months of a second four-year time period right now. And regardless of all of it, regardless of all of the challenges; insecurity, poor financial system, deliberate sabotage, poor well being at a time, evil needs from some quarters, foul language, and all types, we’re glad he’s right here.

When he rode triumphantly to energy in 2015, the typical Nigerian was uninterested in the state of the nation. Huge looting of the treasury by the celebration in authorities, and nobody was being known as to order, as a result of there was no ethical will to do it. Horrible insecurity within the nation, with no less than 17 native governments already annexed within the North-east of the nation by insurgents. That they had planted flags of a humorous kind of caliphate, and had been sitting in palaces of the emirs, who had proven clear pairs of heels. Do you blame them? Cities, cities, villages , mosques, church buildings, colleges, motor parks had develop into killing fields, and the slaughter was merely horrifying. But, authorities was helpless. The financial system was nosediving, certainly, primed for recession. Humongous quantities created from oil, which worth rose as excessive as 143 {dollars} per barrel the earlier 12 months, had been stolen. No funding in infrastructure, agriculture, training, healthcare, nothing. Money owed had been even piling up, and authorities was borrowing to pay salaries.

There was no willingness to avoid wasting, a key driver of the financial system confessed later about that authorities. So, when Buhari got here in, it was to fulfill a looted, badly vandalized treasury.

We’re glad he got here our method, I repeat once more. Although it was no tea celebration, no picnic.

Initially, it was like The Journey of the Magi, as described by the poet T.S Eliot:

A chilly coming we had of it, Simply the worst time of the 12 months For a journey, and such a protracted journey, The methods deep and the climate sharp, The very useless of winter.

President Buhari battled with insecurity. With the financial system. With a badly polarized polity, divided alongside ethnic and spiritual traces. With a badly overwhelmed and bruised political opposition, which was decided to not see any good in him. There was additionally the tiny however vociferous minority on social media, the wailing wailers, screaming all day as if pepper had been put of their delicate components. After which, well being challenges. Simply the worst time of the 12 months for a journey, for such a protracted journey.

Nevertheless, 5 years down the road, with recession knocking loudly on our financial doorways once more, for no fault of ours (the entire world stands within the throes of financial challenges, attributable to an enormous illness with small title; COVID-19), we’re nonetheless pleased Buhari got here. For regardless of all of it, issues are usually not the best way they was once. The descent into abyss has been checked, arrested, and issues are wanting up. Regardless of the looming Incubus of one other recession, the federal government continues to work, fulfilling its obligations to the nation. In February, when it grew to become obvious that the financial system of the world can be in hassle, with Nigeria possible worse hit due to overt dependence on income from oil, the financial advisory group held a briefing with the President and his group. The auguries weren’t good, under no circumstances.

Having taken all of it in, and the possible survival measures to be taken enumerated, the President advised the Minister of Finance, Price range and Nationwide Planning , Zainab Ahmed: “It doesn’t matter what occurs, salaries of employees should not fail, pensions should not fail, and funding of key infrastructure tasks should not cease.”

I say it once more. We’re glad this President got here our method. Within the top of world well being and financial challenges, with revenues already abysmally low, authorities continues to do the needful. A directive has been given to fund the primary section of the Presidential Energy Initiative, being completed in collaboration with Siemens of Germany. Work on the Second Niger Bridge just isn’t stalled, highway tasks are to restart because the financial system reopens progressively, and salaries and pensions are being paid. Promise made, and promise being saved.

We have to depend our blessings as a rustic, as an alternative of dwelling on issues that haven’t been completed. No authorities accomplishes the whole lot begging for consideration in a rustic. We at the moment are doing much more with quite a bit much less earnings. Issues we couldn’t do when oil costs stabilized at common of 100 {dollars} per barrel for a very long time, at the moment are being achieved. We’re glad this President got here our method.

For a chook’s eye view of issues President Buhari has completed for Nigeria, throughout totally different sectors in 5 years, please seek the advice of the Truth Sheet as launched by the media workplace of the President. You’ll then have trigger to be grateful, and never sit completely on the criticism counter.

To understand President Buhari on this season of celebration, allow me to borrow from the unique and impressed tune Duduke, not too long ago launched by Simi.

You realize say on a regular basis I dey pray for you Oh, in my coronary heart oh there’s a everlasting place for you, That’s why my coronary heart dey beat like duduke, du du ke ‘Trigger na you I select oh, ayanfe mi a yan fe I sing for you and I be like duduke du du ke.

President Muhamadu Buhari, we’re glad you got here our method. The previous is however a narrative advised.

The long run will nonetheless be written in gold, by the grace of God.

*Adesina is Particular Adviser to President Buhari on Media and Publicity

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com.ng/headlines/5-years-of-buhari-were-glad-he-got-here-our-method/

[cenaynaylovesjesus]

Access June 18th Outline Notes

Share: Pastor Joe from the Singapore site asked us this question. What is something that you are proud of in your life? Why?

Personal Reflection -junior Duchess -valedvictorian. -got to dream college (UT AUSTIN), graduated and got scholarships to fund education. Why am I proud of those goals? I set a goal and stuck with it for the most part.

Greater than what i hold onto. Consider: where do u find your safety, security and success? What do you hold onto?

The One Thing: Give up what you hold onto in vain; Jesus is your real gain.

Luke: 18: 18-23 ESV I. Jesus knows your "one thing" Profile: young rich man is… -young -successful. -entitled position of authority and influence. -educated. -do-gooder. "Good teacher, what must I do ro inherit eternal life?" Vs. 18

What is your actual belief about God?   In Singapore- people have the right answer for everything. 1+1=2. Right thing to say. There is this Asian culture to try to save face You have a different.... Face with family. Face In public Face with friends. Face at work. Americans value freedom of expression.. as long as I express myself that’s what matters. Not as much freedom to express what you honestly feel in Singapore and Asia in general.

It’s hard to know what people’s actual belief’s about God is because there is this culture of saving face. What is your actual belief about God? Jesus starts to reveal what he actually believes. Jesus asks.. why do u call me good? No one is good except God alone. God defines what is good alone. Do u really know and believe I am God?

The young rich guy: tells Jesus “I have kept the ten commandments since i was young.” Modern day rendition: “I I I think that I am good, and i am going to jesus for him to affirm me as a good guy…” “Don’t you see those 17 gold stars i saw in kindergarten. The rich guy was insecure..  genuinely curious. The way he responds is a little defensive explaining himself insisting on his own goodness.

Pastor Joe: For many years i felt like i was a good kid. I did all the right things.. knew all the right answers. Jesus revealed the mans actual belief. This is your one thing in life. He was sad, because he had a great number of treasures.

***The rulers actual beliefs: Good things, come to good people by their own good efforts.

**This mans actual one thing (God) My own accomplishments and gains.

Sometimes it takes faith to recieve Gods gift.

Pastor Joe: “Some of you use church as a cover for your unfaithfulness. Send me Lord... why? I was running away. I was such a perfectionist that i hesitated to turn in papers on time. Man... i don’t care about what ppl think but I care what ppl think.

Have you ever been uncomfortable trying to follow God? I don’t want to do this... Im so dry.. God just disagreed with you. Have you ever walked away from God but ever walked away feeling sad? You are here present but you heart is not.

What is that one thing? That thing u have to give up.

What is your one thing? God has revealed to you that you have put your trust in? Your true idol for safety, security? Success?

When Jesus isn't your one thing, Jesus just becomes an add-on in your life to make you feel more affirmed?

I placed my church inv. At my significance. Person came in late to access and judges them for being late. I refused to address outside of Jesus. I tried desperately to find my significance in anything and everything even in good things like the church.

The young ruler found his safety and security in things other than Jesus. When we surrender to God we are so focused on the losing part we dont realize what we are gaining. I wonder if he was insecure and didnt know the steadfast love of God was greater than anything else in this world.

What the young man should have responded.. is i have no good apart from God. Psalm 16: 1-2.

“The deepest, tenderest place in the heart of God is reserved for sinners who can offer him nothing but their need.” Ray Ortlund.

II. Jesus is worth surrendering to Read Luke 18: 24-27 The disciples told Jesus “you just turned away your prime candidate.” This guys has been to OCR b4 ocring, and been to every OCR, participated in Freshman missions, did Csmp and now going on asian missions. This rich guy “Hes done it all. Hes the ultimate bachelor. If not him.. who is good enough?”

***Our idolatry makes it impossible to follow Jesus and gain eternal life. Marriage is an exclusive committed relationship. Even if you are the most hard working person in life.. if its not Jesus your pursuit..  then at some point you may turn away.

Jesus is the only good one.. its on his goodness that we stand upon.

Ask yourself: Is there anything you feel like you deserve more of? Have you been obsessed with your competence, reputation, or ranking amongst others? Have you been experiencing a loss that u need to grieve over? Is there something youve gained that you feel you need to hold onto? Is there something you dont want to pray about?

A lot of seniors.. What r u doing after graduation.. idk.. stop asking me. Its embarrassing just to say IDK. Like an essay you are dragging out that you don't know. Second, Third, 4th friend all get jobs.. First friend.. you are happy.. But you think what about me God?

Come to LG you have job.. Praise God it was a gift to me.. yes lord it was a gift praise God..i can be a missionary in my field. 4 months in and your like i hate work.. it stinks.

We always challenge graduates to give your first paycheck to step out in faith.

Students esp... im telling you its harder and harder to give up your all. As a bachelor.. all i have is time.. married.. i hesitate.. Becuase of my Baby boy.. As you get more sucessful you gain more.. the more you gain the harder it is to give and hold up.

***Is Jesus really worth it? Jesus makes eternal life worth it.  .. not by yourself but by the work of God. Vs. 27   He makes it possible to say and do good works.. overflow of good works. Ephesians 2:8-10

Read Luke 18:28 Surrender to Jesus is complete. Surrender to Jesus is continual. In order for it to be complete but continual.

J.D. Greer Surrender starts with the realization that... I would gladly give it all. Surrender means coming to God with open hands and open heart. Am I fully surrendered?

Following Jesus doesn't have anything with your current profession.. its something deeper than that. Regardless of what your doing.. what and where.

Jesus is worth it all. Paul.. whatever I had i counted as a loss for the sake of Christ.

I was so dedicated to the middle East in the military I even came up with the... Four Ms Missions in Military for Muslims in Middle East - genuine prayer at first. Camp Greenly. Rifle in my hand and training.. shooting at target. God spoke to me to pray... Vivid image of when i gave my life a few years prior.. ive been pining my hopes in marine corps. I took pride in it.. over the years.. i put my safety security and significance in military. I took out loans.. forgive all loans if you sign up for more years.   I had stopped turning to the Lord as my providor. My lord i give up marine corp.. Hehe.  I see what u are doing..   Go to county called dajbootie. Narrowed down list.. Ok lord send me. My name wasnt called. Lord.. what is it that you want me to do? Those good things had become my one thing. Whole season pray through.. hopinh whatever you want to do.. show me and ill follow.

God opened door.. miracle provision for transformation center. Month later.. Months later pastor Andrew.. asked me to get inv. With church.. Month after that sent pastor ben. Month after that first int. Church plant.. 6 months. God showed me this is what I'm doing. Person challenged me.. what y Fast and pray about it.. I think, I think God was calling me to be a Pastor..

Went with Jakarta for a year.   That was a hard year. Christ was probing my heart what my one thing really was... Are we even listening to what the Lord has to say.

Psalm 27:4 Intimacy from God was Davids one thing.

Helen H. Lemmel

One thing: Give up what you hold onto in vain; Jesus is your real gain. Life Application: I release............. My reward is Christ alone.

Reflection: I think for me, I doubt that God wants me to give up on being an AuD. I just don’t think that’s what God want’s for me, but I think He is wanting me to surrender my timeline, by not getting into grad school this year, it kind of screws up my 10 year plan, but maybe one more year in Austin is just what I need to help transform me into a missionary not only as a worker in the workplace, but also as a student, in all areas of my life. 10+1 year timeline here we go. Also if you get a chance, please watch Pastor Joe’s from Singapore’s preaching. He’s such as hilarious pastor, he’s so sassy, in speaking truth to people’s lives, he calls them out on their bluff.  

[lodelss]

I Went to Mexico to Meet Asylum-Seekers Trapped at the Border. This Is What I Saw.

Two weeks ago, I traveled to northern Mexico along with Mexican photographer Guillermo Arias to meet with asylum-seekers who’ve been trapped at the southern U.S. border by Trump Administration policies. Neither of us was prepared for what we saw there.

We visited two cities – Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros – to track down people who had been placed into the deceptively misnamed “Migrant Protection Protocols” that have slammed America’s door shut to people fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries. Before we arrived, we wondered whether the stories we’d read of kidnappings, assaults, and despair were as widespread as they sounded. It didn’t take long for us to get our answer.

There is – right now, at this very moment – a humanitarian crisis unfolding at our southern border. And we are not paying enough attention to it.

First, a little context. The Trump Administration has been waging an all-out war on the U.S.’s asylum system, which for more than 50 years has provided shelter for people who need protection. To accomplish this reversal of tradition, they’ve put into place a series of policies that have made it nearly impossible for people to quickly and safely claim asylum at the southern border. Chief among them is the forced return to Mexico program, which has trapped tens of thousands of people in dangerous cartel-controlled cities in northern Mexico while they wait for distant court dates inside the U.S.

The circumstances these vulnerable people are facing in the meantime are dire. We saw them first-hand.

Mexican asylum-seekers sleep on the street near the Paso del Norte bridge in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

Everywhere we went, people told us stories of being kidnapped or extorted while stuck in Mexico. Many were sleeping in tent encampments on the streets while safety across the border was literally within sight, but legally out of reach. Some were packed into shelters set up by the Mexican government, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on thin mattresses on the floor of converted warehouses. Others were living in privately-run shelters with no security protocols to prevent intruders from intimidating or preying on them.

Matamoros is a small city right across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, just along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where corruption and cartel-related violence is so bad that the U.S. state department has given it the same travel advisory as Afghanistan and Somalia. It’s also become home to thousands of people who’ve fled Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and other parts of Mexico searching for safety.

Previously, they would have been processed through the asylum system and then either detained or released inside the U.S. while their claims were evaluated by an immigration judge. But now, they’re given a sheet of paper that tells them to come back to the border months later for their first hearing. In the meantime, they’re stuck, with nowhere to go and most often nobody to help them. Next to the Matamoros-Brownsville bridge, a tent camp has sprung up on a patch of pavement and dirt that around 2,000 asylum-seekers call home. The camp is growing every day.

Children of asylum-seekers eat near the Puente Nuevo Internacional bridge in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The night before we visited, a storm system had swept through Texas, flooding the inside of the low-quality tents people were living in with rain. There was mud everywhere, and it was cold. Few people had the clothing to cope with the chilly temperatures, and the first few people we talked to were shivering, their teeth chattering as they spoke. Everywhere we looked, there were very young children sitting on curbs or hanging onto their parents.

One young man told us that in a tent nearby there was a Honduran woman with a newborn baby, so we stopped in to visit them. She’d delivered just five days earlier. Only 21 years old herself, she’d been living in the tent with her four-year-old daughter since being sent back to Matamoros by Customs and Border Protection agents. She said that when she’d first told CBP officers that she was pregnant, they suggested she get an abortion before telling her to come back for a court date over a month in the future.

A young mother sits inside her tent with her newborn child and daughter in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The tiny child was bundled into blankets in the small tent where it was spending its first days of life. Her mother coughed when she spoke, visibly exhausted. She said that she’d fled an abusive spouse and was too afraid to return to him. Later, one of the few health responders who visits the camp regularly told me that she was fearful about whether the child would survive conditions at the camp, which she said reminded her of refugee camps she’d worked at in Bangladesh.

“If there’s a cholera outbreak here, half of them could die,” she said.

Further up the hill next to the camp, along a wooded grove, lies the Rio Grande. There are a few makeshift showers near the camp, but they aren’t nearly enough for the entire camp to bathe, so many choose to wash and do their laundry at the bank of the river. The river is rife with pollution, and people living in the camp have developed rashes and other skin problems from bathing in it. Next to a small, muddy clearing, a series of white crosses stood in remembrance of the children who’ve died by drowning in the river in recent months.

Wooden crosses honoring children of asylum-seekers who drowned in the Rio Grande in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

A few nights before we visited the camp in Matamoros, some of its frustrated residents had staged a protest against conditions in the camp and the policies that have trapped them there, shutting down the bridge for 15 hours. “They keep telling us we have to wait longer and longer,” one told Buzzfeed News. “When will it end?”

Walking among the tents and meeting their gracious and welcoming occupants, I felt the weight of my country’s responsibility for their suffering. The insecurity, desperation, and discomfort of the people we were speaking with isn’t a corollary effect of the policy, it’s the core intent. The “Migrant Protection Protocols” were designed to make it so uncomfortable and dangerous for people who are seeking asylum that they will simply give up, exhausted and defeated, and return back to the dangerous situations they fled.

Many have, indeed, already done so.

Further along the border, in Ciudad Juarez, we visited a network of shelters that have been set up in recent months to cope with the roughly 17,000 asylum-seekers who’ve been returned there since mid-April. On one side of the spectrum was the newly-opened federal shelter, supervised by the Mexican government, which was housing over 500 people the week we were there. A converted warehouse with no individual rooms, people were sleeping on rows and rows of small mattresses lined up against the walls and across the middle of the large hall. Its inhabitants were there waiting for court hearings as far out as January of next year.

Asylum-seekers inside the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

We met with Venezuelans who’d fled the political crisis in their country and El Salvadorans who spoke of witnessing family members gunned down in front of them. People told us they’d been dropped off on darkened streets in Juarez by Customs and Border Protection with no idea where to go or what to do. One parent told us she’d had to wrestle with a man who tried to abduct her daughter in front of her. Some spoke of the dawning realization that they might now have no choice but to return to the very danger they’d run away from to begin with.

As we walked through the shelter, a woman approached us cautiously. She broke into tears and told us that a few nights earlier she’d woken up to see a man from the shelter trying to sexually assault her underage daughter. Could we help, she asked? We passed on her story to one of the administrative staff at the shelter.

At night, people gathered in a circle to sing hymns, the glittering lights of Juarez in the distance.

Asylum-seekers pray at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The Mexican government has been providing assistance to asylum-seekers who’ve grown exhausted with the long wait times and difficult conditions, helping to arrange travel back to their countries of origin. A staff member showed us a list of people who’d relented and returned home. In just two months, 205 people had made use of the program and left for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. 97 of them were minors.

While that shelter was crowded and lacking the barest level of privacy, it did have security protocols set up to protect people living there. There were heavy gates surrounding the facility and guards who checked the names and credentials of every visitor. This was not the case in other shelters we visited.

At one, a small horseshoe of villas surrounding a decrepit playground on the outskirts of Juarez, there was no gate or security guards at all. The risks facing people stuck there were immediately apparent. Juarez is a dangerous city, and criminals there have realized that migrants have relatives who will often pay ransoms if they are kidnapped. An unsecured shelter is a prime target.

We were there to interview a woman who said she’d been kidnapped near the border by Mexican police officers. She played messages for us that the kidnappers had sent from her phone to her relatives back home. And she told us that not long ago a truck filled with masked men had driven into the shelter and slowly circled the courtyard. Since then she hadn’t left her corner of the shelter very often.

An asylum-seeker in a private shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 10, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

As she was telling us her story, we heard crying outside. A legal aid worker who’d brought us to the shelter said that a family living next door had just received word from their son that he’d been kidnapped that day. The boy had been picked up near the shelter and was now texting his mother the ransom demands of his assailants. Our escort offered to take her to a new shelter but she declined, saying she feared that it might seem like she was abandoning her son.

In the wake of a kidnapping the victim’s family may be placed under observation by the culprits, and we were told that the presence of journalists with cameras could further endanger the young man. So we quickly left.

In just a brief visit, we’d heard one detailed story of a kidnapping-for-ransom and witnessed another family living through that trauma in real time. The experience underscored the insecurity and fear that tens of thousands of asylum-seekers are being subjected to across the U.S. border right now.

Supporters of the new, punitive asylum processes say that most of the people seeking shelter at our southern border are liars who are after better work opportunities in the U.S. That simply did not gel with much of what we heard. One man said he’d been a municipal employee back home. He liked Honduras, and he hadn’t wanted to leave. But a street gang had threatened to murder him and his son if the young boy didn’t start selling drugs for them, so he felt they had no choice but to flee.

Another young woman from Nicaragua showed us pictures of the street demonstrations she’d participated in against President Daniel Ortega’s government. One of her friends who she’d marched with was killed and others were arrested, so she fled north. Only 19, she looked like a high-school student, speaking in a soft voice with her shoulders drooping as she recounted her separation from her sister at the border.

I have covered challenging stories across the world. For both Guillermo and I, this was a particularly difficult trip. I will not soon forget the eyes of the people we spoke with, at once tired and hopeful, nor their stories of determination, horror, and resilience. The shame I felt as an American while interviewing them was profound. Our country is turning its back on vulnerable people who need our help, right at our doorstop. We have to do better.

The danger they face will not soon come to an end, either. ACLU lawyers have filed suit against every anti-asylum policy the Trump Administration has tried to implement, but the courts have allowed several policies to go forward for now while the litigation against them continues.

A young boy sits in the parking lot at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The attack on vulnerable people seeking asylum at our border is a political crisis, and we have to start approaching it as the matter of life-and-death that it is. We need our elected representatives – including Democrats vying for the nomination – to take a clear stand and explain what they’ll do to roll back these abusive policies as soon as possible.

At stake is our identity as a country. The people asking us for help at our border are no less human than we are, and we have the capacity to help them. How will we respond to their suffering? Wil we allow the most hateful and uncaring among us to write our history, or will we fight back and demand better? There are tens of thousands of eyes cast towards us at the border right now waiting for our answer.

Published October 24, 2019 at 08:04PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/2PmIiYG

[lodelss]

ACLU: I Went to Mexico to Meet Asylum-Seekers Trapped at the Border. This Is What I Saw.

I Went to Mexico to Meet Asylum-Seekers Trapped at the Border. This Is What I Saw.

Two weeks ago, I traveled to northern Mexico along with Mexican photographer Guillermo Arias to meet with asylum-seekers who’ve been trapped at the southern U.S. border by Trump Administration policies. Neither of us was prepared for what we saw there.

We visited two cities – Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros – to track down people who had been placed into the deceptively misnamed “Migrant Protection Protocols” that have slammed America’s door shut to people fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries. Before we arrived, we wondered whether the stories we’d read of kidnappings, assaults, and despair were as widespread as they sounded. It didn’t take long for us to get our answer.

There is – right now, at this very moment – a humanitarian crisis unfolding at our southern border. And we are not paying enough attention to it.

First, a little context. The Trump Administration has been waging an all-out war on the U.S.’s asylum system, which for more than 50 years has provided shelter for people who need protection. To accomplish this reversal of tradition, they’ve put into place a series of policies that have made it nearly impossible for people to quickly and safely claim asylum at the southern border. Chief among them is the forced return to Mexico program, which has trapped tens of thousands of people in dangerous cartel-controlled cities in northern Mexico while they wait for distant court dates inside the U.S.

The circumstances these vulnerable people are facing in the meantime are dire. We saw them first-hand.

Mexican asylum-seekers sleep on the street near the Paso del Norte bridge in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

Everywhere we went, people told us stories of being kidnapped or extorted while stuck in Mexico. Many were sleeping in tent encampments on the streets while safety across the border was literally within sight, but legally out of reach. Some were packed into shelters set up by the Mexican government, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on thin mattresses on the floor of converted warehouses. Others were living in privately-run shelters with no security protocols to prevent intruders from intimidating or preying on them.

Matamoros is a small city right across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, just along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where corruption and cartel-related violence is so bad that the U.S. state department has given it the same travel advisory as Afghanistan and Somalia. It’s also become home to thousands of people who’ve fled Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and other parts of Mexico searching for safety.

Previously, they would have been processed through the asylum system and then either detained or released inside the U.S. while their claims were evaluated by an immigration judge. But now, they’re given a sheet of paper that tells them to come back to the border months later for their first hearing. In the meantime, they’re stuck, with nowhere to go and most often nobody to help them. Next to the Matamoros-Brownsville bridge, a tent camp has sprung up on a patch of pavement and dirt that around 2,000 asylum-seekers call home. The camp is growing every day.

Children of asylum-seekers eat near the Puente Nuevo Internacional bridge in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The night before we visited, a storm system had swept through Texas, flooding the inside of the low-quality tents people were living in with rain. There was mud everywhere, and it was cold. Few people had the clothing to cope with the chilly temperatures, and the first few people we talked to were shivering, their teeth chattering as they spoke. Everywhere we looked, there were very young children sitting on curbs or hanging onto their parents.

One young man told us that in a tent nearby there was a Honduran woman with a newborn baby, so we stopped in to visit them. She’d delivered just five days earlier. Only 21 years old herself, she’d been living in the tent with her four-year-old daughter since being sent back to Matamoros by Customs and Border Protection agents. She said that when she’d first told CBP officers that she was pregnant, they suggested she get an abortion before telling her to come back for a court date over a month in the future.

A young mother sits inside her tent with her newborn child and daughter in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The tiny child was bundled into blankets in the small tent where it was spending its first days of life. Her mother coughed when she spoke, visibly exhausted. She said that she’d fled an abusive spouse and was too afraid to return to him. Later, one of the few health responders who visits the camp regularly told me that she was fearful about whether the child would survive conditions at the camp, which she said reminded her of refugee camps she’d worked at in Bangladesh.

“If there’s a cholera outbreak here, half of them could die,” she said.

Further up the hill next to the camp, along a wooded grove, lies the Rio Grande. There are a few makeshift showers near the camp, but they aren’t nearly enough for the entire camp to bathe, so many choose to wash and do their laundry at the bank of the river. The river is rife with pollution, and people living in the camp have developed rashes and other skin problems from bathing in it. Next to a small, muddy clearing, a series of white crosses stood in remembrance of the children who’ve died by drowning in the river in recent months.

Wooden crosses honoring children of asylum-seekers who drowned in the Rio Grande in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

A few nights before we visited the camp in Matamoros, some of its frustrated residents had staged a protest against conditions in the camp and the policies that have trapped them there, shutting down the bridge for 15 hours. “They keep telling us we have to wait longer and longer,” one told Buzzfeed News. “When will it end?”

Walking among the tents and meeting their gracious and welcoming occupants, I felt the weight of my country’s responsibility for their suffering. The insecurity, desperation, and discomfort of the people we were speaking with isn’t a corollary effect of the policy, it’s the core intent. The “Migrant Protection Protocols” were designed to make it so uncomfortable and dangerous for people who are seeking asylum that they will simply give up, exhausted and defeated, and return back to the dangerous situations they fled.

Many have, indeed, already done so.

Further along the border, in Ciudad Juarez, we visited a network of shelters that have been set up in recent months to cope with the roughly 17,000 asylum-seekers who’ve been returned there since mid-April. On one side of the spectrum was the newly-opened federal shelter, supervised by the Mexican government, which was housing over 500 people the week we were there. A converted warehouse with no individual rooms, people were sleeping on rows and rows of small mattresses lined up against the walls and across the middle of the large hall. Its inhabitants were there waiting for court hearings as far out as January of next year.

Asylum-seekers inside the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

We met with Venezuelans who’d fled the political crisis in their country and El Salvadorans who spoke of witnessing family members gunned down in front of them. People told us they’d been dropped off on darkened streets in Juarez by Customs and Border Protection with no idea where to go or what to do. One parent told us she’d had to wrestle with a man who tried to abduct her daughter in front of her. Some spoke of the dawning realization that they might now have no choice but to return to the very danger they’d run away from to begin with.

As we walked through the shelter, a woman approached us cautiously. She broke into tears and told us that a few nights earlier she’d woken up to see a man from the shelter trying to sexually assault her underage daughter. Could we help, she asked? We passed on her story to one of the administrative staff at the shelter.

At night, people gathered in a circle to sing hymns, the glittering lights of Juarez in the distance.

Asylum-seekers pray at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The Mexican government has been providing assistance to asylum-seekers who’ve grown exhausted with the long wait times and difficult conditions, helping to arrange travel back to their countries of origin. A staff member showed us a list of people who’d relented and returned home. In just two months, 205 people had made use of the program and left for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. 97 of them were minors.

While that shelter was crowded and lacking the barest level of privacy, it did have security protocols set up to protect people living there. There were heavy gates surrounding the facility and guards who checked the names and credentials of every visitor. This was not the case in other shelters we visited.

At one, a small horseshoe of villas surrounding a decrepit playground on the outskirts of Juarez, there was no gate or security guards at all. The risks facing people stuck there were immediately apparent. Juarez is a dangerous city, and criminals there have realized that migrants have relatives who will often pay ransoms if they are kidnapped. An unsecured shelter is a prime target.

We were there to interview a woman who said she’d been kidnapped near the border by Mexican police officers. She played messages for us that the kidnappers had sent from her phone to her relatives back home. And she told us that not long ago a truck filled with masked men had driven into the shelter and slowly circled the courtyard. Since then she hadn’t left her corner of the shelter very often.

An asylum-seeker in a private shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 10, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

As she was telling us her story, we heard crying outside. A legal aid worker who’d brought us to the shelter said that a family living next door had just received word from their son that he’d been kidnapped that day. The boy had been picked up near the shelter and was now texting his mother the ransom demands of his assailants. Our escort offered to take her to a new shelter but she declined, saying she feared that it might seem like she was abandoning her son.

In the wake of a kidnapping the victim’s family may be placed under observation by the culprits, and we were told that the presence of journalists with cameras could further endanger the young man. So we quickly left.

In just a brief visit, we’d heard one detailed story of a kidnapping-for-ransom and witnessed another family living through that trauma in real time. The experience underscored the insecurity and fear that tens of thousands of asylum-seekers are being subjected to across the U.S. border right now.

Supporters of the new, punitive asylum processes say that most of the people seeking shelter at our southern border are liars who are after better work opportunities in the U.S. That simply did not gel with much of what we heard. One man said he’d been a municipal employee back home. He liked Honduras, and he hadn’t wanted to leave. But a street gang had threatened to murder him and his son if the young boy didn’t start selling drugs for them, so he felt they had no choice but to flee.

Another young woman from Nicaragua showed us pictures of the street demonstrations she’d participated in against President Daniel Ortega’s government. One of her friends who she’d marched with was killed and others were arrested, so she fled north. Only 19, she looked like a high-school student, speaking in a soft voice with her shoulders drooping as she recounted her separation from her sister at the border.

I have covered challenging stories across the world. For both Guillermo and I, this was a particularly difficult trip. I will not soon forget the eyes of the people we spoke with, at once tired and hopeful, nor their stories of determination, horror, and resilience. The shame I felt as an American while interviewing them was profound. Our country is turning its back on vulnerable people who need our help, right at our doorstop. We have to do better.

The danger they face will not soon come to an end, either. ACLU lawyers have filed suit against every anti-asylum policy the Trump Administration has tried to implement, but the courts have allowed several policies to go forward for now while the litigation against them continues.

A young boy sits in the parking lot at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The attack on vulnerable people seeking asylum at our border is a political crisis, and we have to start approaching it as the matter of life-and-death that it is. We need our elected representatives – including Democrats vying for the nomination – to take a clear stand and explain what they’ll do to roll back these abusive policies as soon as possible.

At stake is our identity as a country. The people asking us for help at our border are no less human than we are, and we have the capacity to help them. How will we respond to their suffering? Wil we allow the most hateful and uncaring among us to write our history, or will we fight back and demand better? There are tens of thousands of eyes cast towards us at the border right now waiting for our answer.

Published October 24, 2019 at 03:34PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/2PmIiYG from Blogger https://ift.tt/2N4Tl6g via IFTTT

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ACLU: I Went to Mexico to Meet Asylum-Seekers Trapped at the Border. This Is What I Saw.

I Went to Mexico to Meet Asylum-Seekers Trapped at the Border. This Is What I Saw.

Two weeks ago, I traveled to northern Mexico along with Mexican photographer Guillermo Arias to meet with asylum-seekers who’ve been trapped at the southern U.S. border by Trump Administration policies. Neither of us was prepared for what we saw there.

We visited two cities – Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros – to track down people who had been placed into the deceptively misnamed “Migrant Protection Protocols” that have slammed America’s door shut to people fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries. Before we arrived, we wondered whether the stories we’d read of kidnappings, assaults, and despair were as widespread as they sounded. It didn’t take long for us to get our answer.

There is – right now, at this very moment – a humanitarian crisis unfolding at our southern border. And we are not paying enough attention to it.

First, a little context. The Trump Administration has been waging an all-out war on the U.S.’s asylum system, which for more than 50 years has provided shelter for people who need protection. To accomplish this reversal of tradition, they’ve put into place a series of policies that have made it nearly impossible for people to quickly and safely claim asylum at the southern border. Chief among them is the forced return to Mexico program, which has trapped tens of thousands of people in dangerous cartel-controlled cities in northern Mexico while they wait for distant court dates inside the U.S.

The circumstances these vulnerable people are facing in the meantime are dire. We saw them first-hand.

Mexican asylum-seekers sleep on the street near the Paso del Norte bridge in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

Everywhere we went, people told us stories of being kidnapped or extorted while stuck in Mexico. Many were sleeping in tent encampments on the streets while safety across the border was literally within sight, but legally out of reach. Some were packed into shelters set up by the Mexican government, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on thin mattresses on the floor of converted warehouses. Others were living in privately-run shelters with no security protocols to prevent intruders from intimidating or preying on them.

Matamoros is a small city right across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, just along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where corruption and cartel-related violence is so bad that the U.S. state department has given it the same travel advisory as Afghanistan and Somalia. It’s also become home to thousands of people who’ve fled Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and other parts of Mexico searching for safety.

Previously, they would have been processed through the asylum system and then either detained or released inside the U.S. while their claims were evaluated by an immigration judge. But now, they’re given a sheet of paper that tells them to come back to the border months later for their first hearing. In the meantime, they’re stuck, with nowhere to go and most often nobody to help them. Next to the Matamoros-Brownsville bridge, a tent camp has sprung up on a patch of pavement and dirt that around 2,000 asylum-seekers call home. The camp is growing every day.

Children of asylum-seekers eat near the Puente Nuevo Internacional bridge in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The night before we visited, a storm system had swept through Texas, flooding the inside of the low-quality tents people were living in with rain. There was mud everywhere, and it was cold. Few people had the clothing to cope with the chilly temperatures, and the first few people we talked to were shivering, their teeth chattering as they spoke. Everywhere we looked, there were very young children sitting on curbs or hanging onto their parents.

One young man told us that in a tent nearby there was a Honduran woman with a newborn baby, so we stopped in to visit them. She’d delivered just five days earlier. Only 21 years old herself, she’d been living in the tent with her four-year-old daughter since being sent back to Matamoros by Customs and Border Protection agents. She said that when she’d first told CBP officers that she was pregnant, they suggested she get an abortion before telling her to come back for a court date over a month in the future.

A young mother sits inside her tent with her newborn child and daughter in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The tiny child was bundled into blankets in the small tent where it was spending its first days of life. Her mother coughed when she spoke, visibly exhausted. She said that she’d fled an abusive spouse and was too afraid to return to him. Later, one of the few health responders who visits the camp regularly told me that she was fearful about whether the child would survive conditions at the camp, which she said reminded her of refugee camps she’d worked at in Bangladesh.

“If there’s a cholera outbreak here, half of them could die,” she said.

Further up the hill next to the camp, along a wooded grove, lies the Rio Grande. There are a few makeshift showers near the camp, but they aren’t nearly enough for the entire camp to bathe, so many choose to wash and do their laundry at the bank of the river. The river is rife with pollution, and people living in the camp have developed rashes and other skin problems from bathing in it. Next to a small, muddy clearing, a series of white crosses stood in remembrance of the children who’ve died by drowning in the river in recent months.

Wooden crosses honoring children of asylum-seekers who drowned in the Rio Grande in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

A few nights before we visited the camp in Matamoros, some of its frustrated residents had staged a protest against conditions in the camp and the policies that have trapped them there, shutting down the bridge for 15 hours. “They keep telling us we have to wait longer and longer,” one told Buzzfeed News. “When will it end?”

Walking among the tents and meeting their gracious and welcoming occupants, I felt the weight of my country’s responsibility for their suffering. The insecurity, desperation, and discomfort of the people we were speaking with isn’t a corollary effect of the policy, it’s the core intent. The “Migrant Protection Protocols” were designed to make it so uncomfortable and dangerous for people who are seeking asylum that they will simply give up, exhausted and defeated, and return back to the dangerous situations they fled.

Many have, indeed, already done so.

Further along the border, in Ciudad Juarez, we visited a network of shelters that have been set up in recent months to cope with the roughly 17,000 asylum-seekers who’ve been returned there since mid-April. On one side of the spectrum was the newly-opened federal shelter, supervised by the Mexican government, which was housing over 500 people the week we were there. A converted warehouse with no individual rooms, people were sleeping on rows and rows of small mattresses lined up against the walls and across the middle of the large hall. Its inhabitants were there waiting for court hearings as far out as January of next year.

Asylum-seekers inside the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

We met with Venezuelans who’d fled the political crisis in their country and El Salvadorans who spoke of witnessing family members gunned down in front of them. People told us they’d been dropped off on darkened streets in Juarez by Customs and Border Protection with no idea where to go or what to do. One parent told us she’d had to wrestle with a man who tried to abduct her daughter in front of her. Some spoke of the dawning realization that they might now have no choice but to return to the very danger they’d run away from to begin with.

As we walked through the shelter, a woman approached us cautiously. She broke into tears and told us that a few nights earlier she’d woken up to see a man from the shelter trying to sexually assault her underage daughter. Could we help, she asked? We passed on her story to one of the administrative staff at the shelter.

At night, people gathered in a circle to sing hymns, the glittering lights of Juarez in the distance.

Asylum-seekers pray at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The Mexican government has been providing assistance to asylum-seekers who’ve grown exhausted with the long wait times and difficult conditions, helping to arrange travel back to their countries of origin. A staff member showed us a list of people who’d relented and returned home. In just two months, 205 people had made use of the program and left for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. 97 of them were minors.

While that shelter was crowded and lacking the barest level of privacy, it did have security protocols set up to protect people living there. There were heavy gates surrounding the facility and guards who checked the names and credentials of every visitor. This was not the case in other shelters we visited.

At one, a small horseshoe of villas surrounding a decrepit playground on the outskirts of Juarez, there was no gate or security guards at all. The risks facing people stuck there were immediately apparent. Juarez is a dangerous city, and criminals there have realized that migrants have relatives who will often pay ransoms if they are kidnapped. An unsecured shelter is a prime target.

We were there to interview a woman who said she’d been kidnapped near the border by Mexican police officers. She played messages for us that the kidnappers had sent from her phone to her relatives back home. And she told us that not long ago a truck filled with masked men had driven into the shelter and slowly circled the courtyard. Since then she hadn’t left her corner of the shelter very often.

An asylum-seeker in a private shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 10, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

As she was telling us her story, we heard crying outside. A legal aid worker who’d brought us to the shelter said that a family living next door had just received word from their son that he’d been kidnapped that day. The boy had been picked up near the shelter and was now texting his mother the ransom demands of his assailants. Our escort offered to take her to a new shelter but she declined, saying she feared that it might seem like she was abandoning her son.

In the wake of a kidnapping the victim’s family may be placed under observation by the culprits, and we were told that the presence of journalists with cameras could further endanger the young man. So we quickly left.

In just a brief visit, we’d heard one detailed story of a kidnapping-for-ransom and witnessed another family living through that trauma in real time. The experience underscored the insecurity and fear that tens of thousands of asylum-seekers are being subjected to across the U.S. border right now.

Supporters of the new, punitive asylum processes say that most of the people seeking shelter at our southern border are liars who are after better work opportunities in the U.S. That simply did not gel with much of what we heard. One man said he’d been a municipal employee back home. He liked Honduras, and he hadn’t wanted to leave. But a street gang had threatened to murder him and his son if the young boy didn’t start selling drugs for them, so he felt they had no choice but to flee.

Another young woman from Nicaragua showed us pictures of the street demonstrations she’d participated in against President Daniel Ortega’s government. One of her friends who she’d marched with was killed and others were arrested, so she fled north. Only 19, she looked like a high-school student, speaking in a soft voice with her shoulders drooping as she recounted her separation from her sister at the border.

I have covered challenging stories across the world. For both Guillermo and I, this was a particularly difficult trip. I will not soon forget the eyes of the people we spoke with, at once tired and hopeful, nor their stories of determination, horror, and resilience. The shame I felt as an American while interviewing them was profound. Our country is turning its back on vulnerable people who need our help, right at our doorstop. We have to do better.

The danger they face will not soon come to an end, either. ACLU lawyers have filed suit against every anti-asylum policy the Trump Administration has tried to implement, but the courts have allowed several policies to go forward for now while the litigation against them continues.

A young boy sits in the parking lot at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

The attack on vulnerable people seeking asylum at our border is a political crisis, and we have to start approaching it as the matter of life-and-death that it is. We need our elected representatives – including Democrats vying for the nomination – to take a clear stand and explain what they’ll do to roll back these abusive policies as soon as possible.

At stake is our identity as a country. The people asking us for help at our border are no less human than we are, and we have the capacity to help them. How will we respond to their suffering? Wil we allow the most hateful and uncaring among us to write our history, or will we fight back and demand better? There are tens of thousands of eyes cast towards us at the border right now waiting for our answer.

Published October 24, 2019 at 08:04PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/2PmIiYG from Blogger https://ift.tt/2pMfBKa via IFTTT