Operation Streamline - Sophia Yapalater

I want to write about everything that is happening, but it’s all so intertwined that I’d have to have a stream of consciousness thing going on all day every day. And so I’m worried that I won’t explain everything well enough or give all the necessary background information to understand a certain happening and so on and such forth. Especially also because so many of the things that we have been seeing are emotionally draining and are hard to express in a coherent manner.

Anyway, bear with me.

Today was one of those hard to bear ones that was simultaneously very important. We have been peeling back the layers of the border, peering into the cracks that no one really wants us to peer into, and seeing what lies behind the expansive idea of the US/Mexico border. Last weekend we went to Border Patrol, as I wrote about a few days ago, and then drove to Altar, a town south of Nogales where people trying to migrate into the US meet coyotes and guides, spend the night (or nights), form groups to travel in, etcetera. We stayed overnight at CCAMYN (Centro Comunitario de Atencion al Migrante y Necesitado), a migrant shelter that provides breakfast, dinner, and housing at no cost.

I was already pretty down after spending time at Border Patrol and sat on a bench outside the dining area watching men (there were no women that night or in the morning) of different ages come through the gates to wait for dinner to be served. A young looking guy sat down next to me. We started talking and ended up having a long conversation that lasted through dinner. He was twenty-three and had worked for a year in Mesa, Arizona, and then was apprehended by Border Patrol and sent to a prison in Florence, Arizona- a town made up entirely of private prisons (also meaning that they are for profit institutions) before being deported to Mexico. He was now in Altar with two other men waiting for the other people they had been deported with to meet them so that they could attempt to cross the desert again. He was upbeat the entire time and kept making jokes about my name because he was really into that actress Sofia Veraga from Modern Family. Before he left, he asked for my phone number so that he could call me if he ever made it to Tucson. I saw him again the next morning at breakfast. He seemed a bit less upbeat but still joked around with me. Then breakfast was over, and he left.

The most upsetting thing about that whole experience is that I have, and will have no idea if he makes it to the US. I will probably never see this person again. Or if I do, it will be in a context that would be highly more upsetting. And then knowing all that he, and all other migrants from south and central america, are up against whether or not they end up in the US. It felt bad. I wished him luck when he left and safe travels. But I don’t even know what those things mean in this context.

I was thinking about him today as we made our way into the federal court house in Tucson to observe Operation Streamline. I was terrified that he might be there getting prosecuted for trying to enter the US and that I would have to face him again, this time in the country where I was born into citizenship. Operation Streamline is a program that calls for ‘zero tolerance’ border enforcement policy and makes crossing the border illegally a federal offense. Furthermore, people are prosecuted in large numbers under operation streamline. Individuals apprehended while crossing the border or within the United States are detained in Border Patrol facilities, fill out detainment paperwork, and then one morning (a day, two days, a week after) meet with a lawyer, who is also responsible for seven to ten other people. they are all advised to plead guilty to the charges of illegal entry or reentry, which hold baseline sentences of thirty to sixty days in prison. they are then brought to court, where they are shackled, arraigned, and sentenced along with usually around 70 others.

We got to the court house and went through the metal detector. One of the security guards looked at us all and said “Let me guess, Operation Streamline?” We nodded. He laughed a bit. “What, there aren’t any trees left to hug.” We shifted around uncomfortably, not sure how to react. “I heard there’s an endangered owl outside that needs saving, actually…” he continued. Upon not getting a reaction he told us to go to the second floor.

When we got into the court room we shuffled into a couple of the back rows. On the left were rows of men in shackles and wearing ear phones in order to hear the Spanish language translator. In the middle were women, also shackled and wearing ear phones. Behind them were well dressed individuals who seemed to be the lawyers. We sat mostly on the right, behind a group of people from Samaritans, a humanitarian aid organization, who told me that they come to observe the hearings. There were a few customs/border patrol agents wandering around and joking around with each other for whatever reason.

The rest of the hearing went like this: the judge would call about seven names and the lawyers who represented them, and they would go up to microphones before the judge. The judge would then ask each of them about when they were apprehended and if they were Mexican citizens. Then he would ask them to answer all together to a few questions about understanding the criminal proceedings and then ask if they pled guilty or not guilty. After the last question there would be a chorus of voices saying “CULPABLE” (guilty), the judge would read them their prison sentence, and then tell them good luck as they were then escorted out of the court room by the court marshall.

This happened over and over and over again. It was impersonal with no room for discussion, dissent, or really anything besides yeses and nos and "guilty"s and 30 days 90 days 60 days 105 days. Sometimes one the lawyers would exchange laughs with the border patrol agents or high fives. At one point, a woman was being sentenced and her lawyer asked if she could see her husband, who had already been sentenced, because she was being deported and he was going to prison. The judge said that they could speak but have no physical contact. At the front of my row, the marshal sat her down and brought her husband out. They sat near each other and spoke for a little while before the marshal came between them and shoved them apart. They had not been touching.

The lawyers left quickly after all of their 12-hour clients had been sentenced. We left soon after. Everything still feels wrong. It’s unconstitutional at “best,” to sentence people en masse and send them off to private prisons where they fill thousands of beds to make money for corporations. It’s inhumane at not nearly “worst.”