This afternoon I walked out of the
El Paso
terminal and into a wall of heat. I scanned the road for the hotel shuttle, and
instead found a familiar face. Rebecca Headen, fellow Mainer and current staff
attorney for the ACLU of North
Carolina Racial Justice Project, waved from across the street. It was good
to see a familiar face in a place so far from home – I’m closer to Juarez, Mexico right now than Portland is to Falmouth.
Rebecca and I are both in
El Paso for a
convening of advocacy groups to discuss border crossing issues with the Rights
Working Group and the Border Network for Human Rights. At the ACLU of North
Carolina, Rebecca is organizing Know Your Rights training
sessions for immigrants that live in 287g towns. 287g towns have entered an
agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to train local law
enforcement to enforce federal immigration law. The ACLU-NC recently published
a study detailing the ineffectiveness of the 287g program. Currently no
towns in Maine have a
287g Memorandum of Agreement with DHS, though that doesn’t mean a town in
Maine won’t
eventually. I’m excited to learn more about the programs and how various
communities prevent them from coming to their towns, and publicly educate
affected communities about their rights when a town has entered into a 287g
agreement. While in El Paso, I will
also share what I learned about Maine’s
border last week, and how we have worked with immigrant communities on policy
and public education.
I’m sure I will have quite an
update after my tour with Border Patrol tomorrow.