Shortly after the passing of my father, I was presented with the opportunity to be a legal volunteer at a “Family Detention Center” in Dilley, Texas. I agreed to embark on this opportunity because I thought it would be a form of therapy that would allow me to cope with my grief and loss. With limited awareness of the current conditions and realities that the women and children seeking refuge face while in detention, I left to Texas for a week along with a group of about 15 other legal volunteers from across the nation.

About 70 miles southwest of the San Antonio airport, you will find Dilley. A small town surrounded by vast arid land with limited human interactions. This is a town that radiates a sense of isolation and solitude; a perfect place for our government to hide a human internment camp of asylum-seeking women and children. About a mile off the freeway and next to a prison, I arrived at a huge white gravel lot full of hundreds of cars next to a fenced and guarded facility composed of trailers. Each day as I entered or left the facility, the heat and brightness of the sun reflecting off the white hot ground was blinding.

To enter the facility, prior clearance is required and all of the volunteers, myself included, was subject to a search of our belongings through x-ray and metal detector devices at the security trailer. The walls of the security trailer showcase several framed depictions of the conditions of the detention center with images of smiling children running and playing and mothers enjoying the outdoors with their children. As each day passed and I learned more and more about the actual conditions at the detention center, these images were harder and harder to look at. Once I cleared the multiple stages of scrutiny at the security trailer, I was allowed to exit through the back door and onto the grounds. Outside, I found myself in a small rectangular dirt area, with a ramp leading me to three destinations: the court trailer, the detention facility entrance, and what we called the legal trailer. Our access was restricted to the court trailer and the legal trailer only. The legal trailer was originally built as a family visitation area but has now been partially converted into a temporary legal operation. I learned afterwards that this agreement was reached after much negotiation and advocacy by the on-the-ground legal team.

The legal trailer has a large common area with 5-6 offices on each of two sides. Each office contains a desk, a chair and a window with a view of the outside. However, the other trailers are strategically placed to prevent everyone from seeing anything through the window besides the occasional official walking by. Phones were only available in the offices on one side of the trailer and required a calling card to place a call. The common area had a dozen small round tables surrounded by plastic chairs. The trailer had one entrance and one exit and both had one or two “guards” at all times. There were also a small “play room”, single stall women’s and men’s restrooms, and a couple of vending machines.

One of the offices had been designated the “pro-bono” room where we had two small printers, two desks, file cabinets, office supplies, a phone and one computer that was set up to send print jobs. It was amazing to see all of the great work that we were able to accomplish with such minimal resources. Despite our efforts, we were only able to serve an average of 120 women each day. While I was there, the detainee population hovered at 1,500 women and children and every day, 70 would leave with just as many or more arriving.

At 7 am on the very first day, we were given a quick tour by our volunteer coordinator and then divided into teams to handle the various types of cases and questions that we would be seeing that day. I was on the “quick check” team meaning that I would help anyone who did not have an appointment. Right off the bat, I heard the women’s stories, fears and challenges. These narratives included unimaginable series of events not only about their home country and the conditions they were fleeing but also about this country that they had finally arrived at and were seeking refuge in. Common themes across all of their testimonies were love and concern for their children and a determination to secure their safety, health and happiness. Many of the stories I heard were about the reasons the women fled their homes due to violence targeting themselves or their children. The violence and threats came from government officials, gangs and sometimes even their own spouses.

An indigenous woman from Guatemala with limited Spanish skills told me her story with the aid of her bilingual 8-year-old daughter. They both shared their vivid testimony about how they witnessed their neighbor’s husband killing his wife.

-Their cries for help were muted by the emptiness that surrounded them as their village was t two hours away from the nearest police station. As the man was killing his wife, his father attempted to save the woman but he did not succeed as the man also killed him. Right after choking his wife to death and decapitating his own father with an axe, he looked over straight at the woman and her daughter and told them that they were next. He said, “Shut up! Because if I’m willing to chop up my own father imagine what I will do to you”. The woman grabbed what she could and escaped with her daughter.-

Thousands of miles later and after suffering other traumatic events along their journey, she found herself at a desk in front of me trying to explain her story. The most infuriating for me in learning the asylum process is that the process does not depend on whether or not her testimony gives her a valid asylum claim but rather on how well I could prepare her to share her story and focus on certain key elements and words. Forgetting to include one key fact can make the difference between her release and being allowed to continue her case outside the facility or getting deported right back to the dangers that she and her daughter are fleeing.

Many of the stories that I heard were horrifying and unimaginable but I was most disturbed by the atrocities committed by our own government. Many of the women entered the country by swimming across the river but they were awaited by Border Patrol agents that detained them shortly thereafter. Border Patrol would then throw them into a concrete warehouse with refrigerator like temperatures, called the “hielera” by the women. As a form of deterrence, they held them there for a few days in their soaking wet clothes before sending them on to a detention center. The lucky ones were held in what is called a “perrera,” or dog kennel, and was described as a huge cage with families piled on top of each other and having to sleep standing up due to the lack of room. During this process, many families were separated and we heard countless stories of women not knowing where their spouse or children were being held or if they had even survived the journey.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claims to “take very seriously the health, safety and welfare of those in our care”. Yet, in my short week in Dilley, I heard and observed countless stories of inadequate health care and intimidation tactics being used by ICE officials. Every single woman that I met with who had been at the detention center for more than a couple of days said that their children were experiencing coughing, fever, a running nose or loss of appetite. Many had attempted to receive medical attention from the staff provided and after waiting for hours to get helped the usual response was “drink more water”. One woman who had been detained for months shared that her two-year-old daughter suffered from asthma attacks and that she almost lost her daughter at the clinic because the medical staff did not know how to treat her. She was afraid of another attack and the only advice that I could give her was to not go to the medical clinic and to instead come to us so that we could call 911 for her.

Even the women who were about to see the light at the end of the tunnel and were soon to be released from Dilley were harassed, intimidated and met with obstacles. Many who had been issued bonds to be released were escorted into a court room to be misinformed and lied to by ICE officials. They told them that their only option for release was under the condition of wearing a GPS “ankle shackle” for an undetermined period of time. This “ankle shackle” criminalizes women who have done nothing wrong. It’s bulky, invasive and needs to be charged every few hours. Thus, the life of anyone wearing one will completely revolve around it. In addition, there are many rules that must be followed upon release which the agents continually neglected to inform the women of. We prepared many women with information about their options but they were often met by angry ICE officials upon refusing the ankle shackle. We even had cases where the women refused to be released under the “ankle shackle” terms and ICE coerced them to sign their release documents although legally they had the option to leave without one. This was yet another example of clear example of abuse of power by ICE officials and complete disregard for the women’s rights. Furthermore, many women were scheduled to be released on a given date and their families were instructed to purchase plane or bus tickets. However, most of the time, ICE was unable to release them on their predetermined date and the families lost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on unused tickets.

During my short week at Dilley, I got a firsthand view of the injustices and abuses of power that are perpetrated every day in our country. I am reminded about the power of being informed and my responsibility to question my own government. Over the course of my time at the detention center, it was obvious that our government is unable to adequately and humanely provide a fair, safe and timely process for these women and their children who are seeking asylum. Since I left Dilley, there has been momentum to end family detention all together. Although this is good news, I worry about how our government would go about closing these places down and hope that it is done quickly and humanely. Most importantly, the well-being of the women and children affected needs to be at the fore front of all decision making.

Even though this has been the most difficult year of my life, it does not even compare to what the women and children that I met at Dilley have endured and continue to experience. My passion to empower the most vulnerable people to overcome the injustices of our laws, systems and institutions has never been stronger. I am grateful for the sacrifices that my parents made when they brought me to this country in search of a better life. Their sacrifices resulted in my access to the privileges and opportunities that have resulted in my ability to help others navigate the intricacies of bureaucracy. I am truly privileged to have a job where helping others is at its core.

I know that not everyone has this privilege but I encourage you to identify the privileges and strengths that you do possess and use them to help others. We are all living off privilege that was garnered by the sacrifices of our ancestors. The concept that hard work is the only way to move up in the world is a myth because it assumes that we all start on an even playing field. There are many individuals and communities that can use a helping hand and could benefit from your privileges and strengths. Regardless of how small or how big your act of kindness is, I assure you that it will make our world a better place.