Blessed Humanity in Cursed Times By: Lucas Aisenberg

[For the purposes of anonymity, the initials of the asylum applicants in the post below have been changed.]

On August 2, we had a Honduran client (“L”). L is a poor farmer from the interior of Honduras. He cannot read; he cannot write. He has six children in total. When a RAICES attorney brought him to Stefanie and I, he had a two-year-old little boy attached to his leg. If there were any reason to believe that there is a higher power above taking care of us, this situation evidenced the contrary. But thankfully, L and his baby were not separated when they were detained. They entered the US recently, and ICE brought them directly to Karnes. The boy felt sick all night, so they gave him cough drops. At one point I needed something that L had in his pocket, and he had to leave the baby, who was falling asleep in his arms, standing next to him for less than ten seconds. When released, the baby started to cry. At that moment, it was difficult to follow Karnes’ protocol, which required me to stay in my seat and not follow my human inclination to comfort the sweet, sick baby in front of me. More difficult still was not to start crying next to him. In a week of hard moments, this one broke my soul.

I checked the documents. L did not have much: he only had a few paper with the names of two relatives in the US, a “Know Your Rights” pamphlet in English, and a note from a doctor saying that he had to go to a mental health professional the day before. While talking with L, I asked him if he had a report from the mental health professional I had assumed he saw, pursuant to his appointment sheet. He shook his head, staring blankly, and I realized not only did he miss his appointment, but also he did not fully understand the basic Spanish I was using to try and communicate.

L never went to school, but he is neither the first nor the last of our clients with whom we spoke who did not finish elementary school. I translated what was going on to Stefanie, and we realized that he presented as someone with potential intellectual difficulties. We wrote it down in our notes as a flagged case to follow up on, and gave it to our favorite RAICES intern. When I asked L why he did not go to his appointment to see the mental health professional, he said because he did not know how to read the instructions on the appointment sheet or the numbers on the door.

I explained to L, the best that I could, that I was going to find someone who could take him directly to the mental health clinic.

In the center of the main, huge room where we were meeting with clients, there is a desk where the guard sits. Every day there is a different guard, but on this particular day, a less-than-pleasant guard the detainees refer to as the hijuaeputa occupied the desk. The hijuaeputa was not in a helpful mood… I asked if I could enter the general population with a guard to take a client to the clinic. She answered by asking if it was an emergency. I mean… this policy does nothing but create legal emergencies. Medically, for L, not so much. So she sent me to hell, telling me that we “civilians” cannot go where the detainees are caged. My goal became getting someone inside the facility to take L to the clinic. I did not know the detainees who were in the plastic cage that is the “waiting room” between the general population and the RAICES staff. I was not going to leave L like that. I tried to call “H,” an asylum seeker with whom Stefanie and I previously worked, and who we knew was a good hombre J. H is an indigenous owner of a business that came fleeing gang violence with his ridiculously charming ten-year-old son. H was not on the list, so upon requesting to speak with H, the hijuaeputa told me no. We had not met our other appointments for the day, so we were unsure if we could ask for their assistance. Stefanie was making sure the RAICES interns were still searching online for L to appear in their system, to see what we could do for his legal case.

We suddenly remembered “M.” M is a young man who came with his seven-year-old boy from the same Department in Honduras (like a province or state) as L. We had seen him earlier that day, so I knew he was on the visit list. In the same line of questioning, I asked the now deeply annoyed guard to call M to the visitation room where we were. I explained to her that he was already on the list, so she did not have a policy explanation to say no. She opened the faux leather notebook with the detainees’ names in order to get M’s bunk information. She did not really seem like she was paying attention to the names her eyes were blankly glossing over. Luckily, I caught M’s name written in a poorly formed scribble around the second page. The guard called for M on her walkie-talkie. Victory, at last! M came to the visitation room rather quickly with his son, who smiled at me and told me that he had a good day at school and that he was going to play soccer in a little while. I asked M’s son to dedicate a goal to me, and he laughed while we did our cool little handshake of freedom.

I told M, while his son played with some friends, that we did not call him because of his own case but because we needed a favor. I told him more or less that we needed his help. Upon asking for his help, his face indicated that he had already agreed, without even hearing what we needed. We asked M to leave L’s and L’s son’s papelitos (documents requesting asylum to halt deportation proceedings) in the ICE mailbox (and not one of the other two government agencies) and to take L and his son to the mental health clinic. I told M that L could not read well enough to get there by himself and that I was not sure he understood everything I had told him. M told me, “How could I not help you two. Introduce me to him.” The three of us went together to see L. After a quick introduction, I explained to them the plan, while the RAICES volunteers watched the interaction from afar, smiling probably for the first time all week. I accompanied them to the door of the waiting room to see that they would get along without any issues, and so that the hijuaeputa knew that she had lost this battle, that someone who needed help was getting the help he needed.

I thanked M for his help. In turn, he looked at me and thanked Stefanie and me for ours. We said our goodbyes. I wished him the best of luck, and I saw them disappear in the tide of people living in this limbo of detention. But this time I was not flooded by the pessimism that invades us when we see that there are weak cases or that there are people not being taken care of properly. M made me come back to my table smiling at the blessed humanity in these cursed times.

Thank you, M, and good luck.

This post was originally published at "STU Karnes Project", a blog coordinated by Donna Nasimov. (https://stukarnes.wordpress.com)