Central American immigrants’ story reflects Jews’ past

I recently was part of a small group of lawyers given the opportunity to tour the family immigration detention centers in southern Texas. The purpose of the trip was to introduce us to the facilities and the detainees and to urge us and our law firms to contribute our time and skills to representing detained women and children. The trip was eye-opening in so many ways. The professional mountains needed to be climbed to help these terror-stricken families are matched only by the personal trauma so evident in the eyes of so many. We came face-to-face with the trauma experienced by today’s immigrants and with the ghosts of our past. 

As all of us on the tour were children and grandchildren of immigrants, and several of us, as Jews, particularly aware of our immigrant ancestry, we saw these facilities and the 1,000 women and children currently being held there through the filter of our own histories. At the Karnes City and Dilley detention facilities, we witnessed up close the results of the national debate on immigration. Both sites are about 60 to 90 minutes outside of San Antonio, although they might as well have been in another world, for all we knew and all we were prepared to see — the world of our ancestors.

Our group of lawyers was first alerted to this border crisis last summer at a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden on other pro bono related projects. During that meeting, he asked us, board members of the Association of Pro Bono Counsel, to keep an eye open for an impending surge of immigrants crossing the United States-Mexico border. Newspapers across the county ultimately covered the arrival of this enormous influx of unaccompanied children escaping heinous violence in their native countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Many of those children and their families have been the victims of awful domestic violence; some have seen family members murdered, others have been raped, more have experienced the loss of a disappeared loved one. Officials in their native countries often are powerless or unwilling to provide protection. All of these immigrants have one thing in common: They are running for their lives, and the lives of their families, risking everything to make a treacherous journey north, seeking the protection and promise of the United States.

At the facilities, we saw children who were clearly not healthy. Their life-endangering journeys to the U.S. left them exhausted, sick and scared. Many had lost a frightening amount of weight. Even more gut-wrenching, the children plaintively asked their mothers, “Why are we in jail?” Mothers cried to the lawyers, begging for help. Some had been held for six, eight, 10, even as long as 12 months. It was heartbreaking.

Amazingly, most of the detained families have viable asylum claims, making them eligible to remain in the U.S., entitling them to find safety in the promise of democracy. But without the chance to be represented by attorneys, they are without hope. As many as 95 percent of those without counsel will be deported simply because they are poor and cannot find representation. Many likely could pass their “credible fear interviews,” establishing to the satisfaction of U.S. immigration authorities they have a credible fear of returning to their home countries. This means they essentially could prove the bona fides of a legally sufficient asylum claim that, under the law, would entitle them to be released from detention. However, without lawyers, they cannot navigate the system, they are too frightened to tell their stories, the complexities of a foreign legal system are too overwhelming, and so, as a result, they likely will be returned to the dangerous places they risked their lives to leave. All because they are poor and do not have access to help.

One recently released mother told us of how she, her husband and young son had escaped a vicious rogue military group. Their other son, who is older, had been abducted. The family learned he had been taken by the “military.” The mother embarked on a desperate, ultimately futile search for her child. She first asked, asked again and then hounded local officials. She went to the police. She asked friends for help. Months passed, but her son was nowhere to be found. She repeatedly was warned to back off, stop going to the police, told not to contact local or foreign officials. One day, while this mother and her family were visiting her father in a nearby town, neighbors called to warn her not to return home because the family’s house was being ransacked, and angry men with guns were searching for her. The family fled to the U.S. with only the clothes they were wearing, trying desperately to save their remaining son, whose life they still had in their hands. At the border they were detained, the father sent to one facility, the mother and son to Karnes City. They were held for months, the young boy asking for his brother and his father, not eating, getting sicker and sicker. It was heartbreaking.

Another mother was with her daughter. They had witnessed the rape of another daughter and the murder of the father. They themselves then had barely escaped the horrors of their gang-controlled village, with local authorities unable to provide any kind of meaningful prosecution, much less protection. Similar stories abounded.

My thoughts quickly turned to another young woman. Like the women we had just met, she had escaped marauding soldiers in the countryside of her homeland. She was a teenager who had witnessed her sister being brutally raped and her brother carried off by the “army,” never to be seen again. Her parents scraped together enough money to hire someone to smuggle her out of the country. Her treacherous journey landed her in jail. When her family was able to secure her release, terrified and sick, the family sent her off again. This time, she reached the United States. She was reunited with her grandmother while in detention. When they ultimately were released, she managed to make a safe life for herself. However, she was forever scarred, forever frightened, forever missing her absent family members. That lone, brave teenage girl was my grandmother, fleeing from the pogroms of czarist Russia.

It is often said we are a nation of immigrants, all of us having become Americans because someone in our past was strong enough to escape oppression and find safety in the arms of democracy. Whether it was czarist pogroms, Nazi genocide, Middle East dictatorships or communist regimes, all of us are here because our ancestors had the inner strength to flee for their lives and make it through the Karnes City and Dilley of their day. Our Jewish bubbes and zaydes, often as young children, came through Ellis Island or through European displaced persons camps. Their immigrant transition was difficult. Language issues, poverty, anti-immigrant attitudes and anti-Semitism made for a hard climb up society’s social ladder. They were helped by a system of Jewish communal support and by the safety net of community. Today, American Jews are the living embodiment of one side of the current immigration debate. We are here and thriving in the United States because, despite many obstacles, this country opened its arms like no other culture had ever before done for us. These Latin American women today are escaping the same kinds of dangers, obstacles and nightmares that our ancestors fled, seeking peace and solace. As Jews, our histories remind us of the hurdles they will face and the helping hands they will need, which are within our hearts to fulfill. The ghosts of our grandmothers today are sitting in detention in southern Texas.

Attorneys interested in providing pro bono support to the women and children in detention or to those who have been recently released can contact their local immigration legal aid offices, the San Antonio office of RAICES (raicestexas.org) and the American Immigration Council (americanimmigrationcouncil.org).

David A. Lash is an attorney in Los Angeles, serving as the managing counsel of pro bono and public interest services at O’Melveny & Myers LLP. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Association of Pro Bono Counsel. The views expressed in this article are the author's alone.