Her name was Jakelin Caal, a seven year-old Guatemalan child who made the treacherous trek to our country to flee extreme poverty. She made it, but she was met at our border with callousness — she was held and detained, and she died while in the custody of our border patrol agents. She wasn’t the only one. But she could have been me.
I came to this country through the Tijuana border when I was Jakelin’s age. I will never forget the night my mom, three siblings, and I made the journey and crossed the border with nothing but the clothes on our backs. We walked on the same mud-soaked ground. But I made it. We made it. I grew up undocumented for many years, but eventually received my permanent residency and became naturalized.
This is not the situation that refugees at our southern border face today. Instead, they are subject to human rights abuses: refugees are turned away at our border, prosecuted, separated from their families, detained and more. There is indeed a crisis at the border, but it isn’t the crisis that Trump keeps trying to sell – and the “national emergency” he threatens to declare will exacerbate rather than resolve it.
I am now in my adulthood, and I have been fighting and advocating for humane immigration and refugee policies so I can make my story a reality for the countless families fleeing unspeakable violence, persecution, and poverty to seek refuge in our country. My family was given a chance. We weren’t turned away at the border; we weren’t kicked or tear-gassed; and we weren’t kept out of school because we didn’t have documentation.
On International Human Rights Day, December 10, I joined a delegation of more than 200 leaders from different faith traditions and walked for more than two miles to the San Diego-Tijuana border to send a loud message to this administration that our faiths reject the cruel and inhumane policies of this administration, with its actions to demonize refugees and criminalize migration. We put our bodies on the line to tell this administration that we seek an end to the militarization of our border and to the detention and deportation of our immigrant brothers and sisters.
We walked arm in arm. We sang songs and chanted about peace and justice.
In all the times that I’ve organized demonstrations in Washington, D.C., on immigration and refugee issues, I was never terrified like this. We planned to walk right up to the border fence, beyond which we could see families gathered. As we got closer, my heart raced. I saw dozens of heavily armed Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers with batons, guns, and tear gas. One of them repeatedly asked other agents when he could start “gassing us.”
As we stepped closer to the border, the agents formed a line to block us. They questioned us over and over again, moving so close they were less than six inches from our faces. They yelled at us, asking why we were doing this, and instructed us not to engage in violence. Mind you, we came in peace. We came in religious garb and prayer beads in hand. We kneeled and prayed. We took a step forward, and they would take two steps toward us. They shoved and pushed us back.
I was in the second row. Those in the front row were getting arrested one by one. They singled out the leader of our group and yanked him away, ripping his backpack from him, and hauling him off violently. Our group was forced to then retreat. One officer kept staring at me and repeatedly shouted "What are you doing here?" I felt intimidated and afraid. In the face of that aggression, I could not tell him that I had been here before. I could not ask him why he was doing this to children and families just like mine.
I felt silenced. I felt like I failed.
We have all failed Jakelin. We have failed her family.
Nothing about what this administration has been doing in regards to the treatment of refugees at our southern border is American. These families have been robbed of their basic humanity that they are afforded under domestic and international laws.
Congress has a role to play. The courts have a role to play. But, most importantly, so do all of us.
Yasmine Taeb is a Senior Policy Counsel at the Center for Victims of Torture. You can follow her on Twitter @YasmineTaeb.