Blog / Our America

The Women and Children of Dilley, Part Two

October 23, 2018 - By Katherine Silver

Photo from the Cara Pro Bono Project

Read Part One here.

Credible Fear

In order for an American woman and her children imprisoned at the South Texas Residential Center—run by the private, for-profit, publicly traded CoreCivic Company (previously named Corrections Corporation of America, and whose motto is “Better the Public Good”)—to be released, the Asylum Officer (AO) who interviews her must give her a positive result on her Credible Fear Interview (CFI).

Helping her to prepare for this interview is our primary job as volunteers at the DPBP. A positive outcome allows her and her children...

The Women and Children of Dilley, Part One

October 22, 2018 - By Katherine Silver

Photo from CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project

Kidnapped Kids

Since the 2016 election, several of my local translator colleagues and I have been volunteering with Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland, California, as legal interpreters. I have worked with asylum seekers to help them fill out forms (asylum application, work authorization, change of status, etc.), interpreted during psychological evaluations, and am currently interpreting for two pro bono lawyers as we prepare an asylum case for one Guatemalan Kanjobal woman and her two young children. We have been working on the case since August and the hearing is this week. I have been spending long hours helping to...

The Women and Children of Dilley, Part Five

October 20, 2018 - By Katherine Silver

Drawing by Marcela Castro,
from the video Drawings by Themselves: Portraits of America

Read Part Four here.

One Last Story

Here’s a bipartisan idea: Declare MS-13 an international terrorist organization. It is. They could. Problem: they’d have to believe the women…and give them asylum. Maybe even stop punishing them in the iceboxes and the dog kennels. Problem: it never works out well when the U.S. intervenes with the use of force in another country. Problem: other gangs will fill the power vacuum unless government institutions are strengthened and shorn of corruption.

...

The Women and Children of Dilley, Part Four

October 20, 2018 - By Katherine Silver

Welcome sign in Dilley, Texas (wikimedia commons)

Read Part Three here.

Individual Stories

As I reflect on the week in Dilley, the ongoing work I do here in the Bay Area, I wonder: Do individual stories matter anymore, outside the hearing room, that is, the courthouse, and only insofar as the boxes get checked, the requirements met, the woman in front of the judge allowed to live? Do they have an impact beyond the prurient satisfaction of momentary curiosity? Already, many of the stories I have heard have blended together. They are all the same. They are each...

Stop! In the Name of History

October 2, 2018 - By Michael Thurston

(Photo by The Onion)

Let’s get one thing straight about the Supremes. In this moment, where hope still springs for the defeat of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court (hope that ought to be shared not only by those to the left of center but by anyone who cares about the rule of law, the basic trustworthiness and, well, judgment of their judges), it’s worth remembering that we’ve seen this before. If justice once again loses and allows the unjust elevation to “Justice” of an unworthy candidate, that’s pretty much par for the Court’s course. Many of us came of age when the Supreme...