Border Justice

          Migrants, Justice and the Border

          On Wednesday April 7th our assignment was to attend a special public event at ASU West instead  of going to the class. This four day long event was called the Migrants, Justice and the border. The purpose of this event was to raise the awareness of deaths, murders and cruelty towards the immigrants at the Mexico-U.S. border.

              Although I wanted to attend more, I only had a chance to attend one of the events. This event was called “Metropolitan Borderlands: Migrant Justice in Phoenix”. It was a panel discussion including representatives from local agencies serving immigrants’ needs. There were five panel representatives. Jenn Allen, Shiu Ming Cheer, Raul Bustamante, Lt. Robert Handy. Jenn and Cheer work for an immigrant detention facility located in Florence, Arizona. This is a small town between Phoenix and Tucson. There are about 12000 people in this town and over 8000 are in prison or juvenile or a detention  facility. One thing that these two representatives mentioned was how the detained  immigrants  are treated the same way as the other criminals, including the murderers or rapists.

           Another representative was a public relations manager of Chicanos por la causa.   His name was Jose Cortez. He crossed the border illegally as a child but now he works in social services where he helps the immigrants.

          The forth member of the panel was the Phoenix Police Department lieutenant. He said that his point of view was a little different then that of the other panelists. He said   that it takes a lot of money and men power to deal with immigrants. One of the examples was cleaning out one of the drop houses full of immigrants waiting to be transported  around the U.S.

          The fifth panelist was Raul Bustamante who made a really good point about the immigration. He said that we are all humans and immigration is a human problem.