In Tornillo, Texas, in rows of pale yellow tents, some 1,600 children
who were forcefully taken from their families sleep in lined-up bunks,
boys separated from the girls. The children, who are between the ages of
thirteen and seventeen, have limited access to legal services. They are
not schooled. They are given workbooks but they are not obliged to
complete them. The tent city in Tornillo is unregulated, except for
guidelines from the Department of Health and Human Services. Physical
conditions seem humane. The children at Tornillo spend most of the day
in air-conditioned tents, where they receive their meals and are offered
recreational activities. Three workers look after groups of twenty
children each. The children are permitted to make two phone calls per
week to their family members or sponsors, and are made to wear belts
with phone numbers written out for their emergency contacts.
However, the children’s psychological conditions are anything but
humane. At least two dozen of the children who arrived in Tornillo were
given just a few hours’ notice in their previous detention center before
they were taken away—any longer than that, according to one of the
workers at Tornillo, and the children may have panicked and tried to
escape. Because of these circumstances, the children of Tornillo are
inevitably subjected to emotional trauma. After their release (the date
of which has not yet been settled), they will certainly be left with
emotional scars, and no one can expect these children to ever feel
anything but gut hatred for the country that condemned them to this
unjust imprisonment.
The workers at the Tornillo camp, which was expanded
in September to a capacity of 3,800, say that the longer a child
remains in custody, the more likely he or she is to become traumatized
or enter a state of depression. There are strict rules
at such facilities: “Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not
share your food. Do not use nicknames. Do not touch another child, even
if that child is your hermanito or hermanita [younger
sibling]. Also, it is best not to cry. Doing so might hurt your case.”
Can we imagine our own children being forced to go without hugging or
being hugged, or even touching or sharing with their little brothers or
sisters?
Federal officials will not let reporters interview the children and
have tightly controlled access to the camp, but almost daily reports
have filtered through to the press. Tornillo, though unique—even among
the hundred-plus US detention facilities for migrant children—in its
treatment of minors, is part of a general atmosphere of repression and
persecution that threatens to get worse. The US government is detaining
more than 13,000 migrant children, the highest number ever; as of last
month, some 250 “tender age” children aged twelve or under had not yet
been reunited with their parents. Recently, the president has vowed to
“put tents up all over the place” for migrants.
This generation will be remembered for having allowed for
concentration camps for children to be built on “the land of the free
and the home of the brave.” This is happening here and now, but not in
our names.
Rabih Alameddine
Jon Lee Anderson
Margaret Atwood
Paul Auster
Andrea Bajani
Alessandro Baricco
Elif Batuman
Neil Bissoondath
José Burucúa
Giovanna Calvino
Emmanuel Carrère
Javier Cercas
Christopher Cerf
Roger Chartier
Michael Cunningham
William Dalrymple
Robert Darnton
Deborah Eisenberg
Mona Eltahawy
Álvaro Enrigue
Richard Ford
Edwin Frank
Garth Greenwell
Andrew Sean Greer
Linda Gregerson
Ethel Groffier
Helon Habila
Rawi Hage
Aleksandar Hemon
Edward Hirsch
Siri Hustvedt
Tahar Ben Jalloun
Arthur Japin
Daniel Kehlmann
Etgar Keret
Peter Kimani
Binnie Kirshenbaum
Khaled Al Khamissi
Dany Laferrière
Jhumpa Lahiri
Laila Lalami
Herb Leibowitz
Barry Lopez
Valeria Luiselli
Norman Manea
Alberto Manguel
Yann Martel
Guillermo Martínez
Diana Matar
Hisham Matar
Maaza Mengiste
Rohinton Mistry
Benjamin Moser
José Luis Moure
Azar Nafisi
Guadalupe Nettel
Mukoma Wa Ngugi
Ruth Padel
Rajesh Parameswaran
Dawit L. Petros
Caryl Phillips
Nelida Piñon
Francine Prose
Sergio Ramírez
David Rieff
Salman Rushdie
Alberto Ruy Sánchez
Aurora Juana Schreiber
Wallace Shawn
Sjón
Patti Smith
Susan Swan
Santiago Sylvester
Madeleine Thien
Colm Tóibín
Kirmen Uribe
Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Juan Villoro
Susan Yankowitz
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen