On October 4, students packed into the auditorium to watch the assembly on immigration and using children as political weapons, led by the student organization La Causa (formerly known as the Hispanic-Latinx Alliance).
The assembly included extremely powerful videos, including one from John Oliver’s show. In the clip, Oliver put together mock trials of children in immigration courts, giving the viewers a visual of what some cases could look like. Children are not entitled to a lawyer in immigration court so in the majority of cases, they enter the court alone, even if they are only a toddler. Some of the children did not know what a lawyer even was when asked by the judge, demonstrating that they are unfit to defend themselves given their extremely young age. Of course a young child who doesn’t speak English does not understand what occurs in immigration court and cannot stand up for their rights. Therefore, 90 percent of children who go into immigration court without a lawyer are deported.
Another powerful element of the assembly was the recordings of babies crying in detention centers, separated from their families. Hearing these noises made it clear how tragic their situation is.
The assembly also taught the student body that the United States was a large factor in causing the need for Central Americans (particularly people from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras) to migrate. In the past, the U.S. supported dictators that were “anti-communist” and corrupt national governments who were “fighting drug-trafficking.” These dictators and corrupt governments ended up causing extreme violence and unsafe environments due to gangs and organized crime embedded in the police and army. Even though the United States was a large factor in causing these unsafe living environments, we only accepted 3 percent of asylum seekers from northern Central America and deemed the rest “economical asylum seekers” rather than “political asylum seekers” –– sending them back to certain death.
Overall, this assembly opened the student body’s eyes in many ways, one being the specific flaws within our government in terms of immigration and how specifically child immigrants are mistreated in the citizenship process. Hopefully the inspiring speakers influenced students to dive deeply into conversations around immigration and will lead to concrete action to combat the injustices surrounding immigrants’ rights.
