Working on the front lines: the impact of secondary trauma.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got secondary trauma.  As I was traveling home, I kept seeing members of our STU team.  I saw Otto Ruiz, Donna Nasimov and Alexsandra Simoes, until I looked again and realized it wasn’t them.  When I heard little children crying, I had to look and remind myself that I was no longer at Karnes.  Last night, I arrived in Portland, Maine at 12:20 a.m. and headed to the nearby campground, where I stumbled around in the dark with my IPhone as my flashlight, lost in the woods, trying to find my campsite.  I could imagine what it was like for parents and children w

andering in forests or deserts in search of the border and freedom, only to find themselves imprisoned.  I can only imagine what it’s like for the team at RAICES who go to Karnes week in and week out.  They rotate two different teams, a Monday/Wednesday team and Tuesday/Thursday team, because it would be too draining to do this work all week long.  The two guys in the photo are from RAICES, Primitivo Torres and Ryan Clough, standing with Judy Bachay, Jackie Vazquez-Aldana, me, Alexandra Simoes, and Florencia Cornu in front of Karnes shortly after at 8:00 p.m. when GeoCorp threw us out.   This was our last day, all together.  Ryan sent me an email at 3:25 a.m. following up on some cases.  I found it when I woke at 7:30 a.m. and emailed him right back.  He immediately replied.  They tell me he never sleeps.  Andrea Meza, who started the Karnes Pro Bono Project a few years back, told me no one at RAICES on the front lines is sleeping these days.  We were only there a week.

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