Just wanted to write to let you know how things are here in South Texas Family Residential Center, Dilley Texas. In a word: depressing. There are about 300 mothers here, all with young children. The mothers range from late teens to early twenties, and are from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Some of them speak indigenous languages, and only marginal Spanish, and all of them have suffered terribly. Many of them are fleeing terrible domestic violence, and report that the police in their home countries will not protect them, and even collude with their batterers. Many of them report that gangs threatened them or their children, including forcing them to pay large sums of money to prevent their children being kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery, and being threatened with their children’s murder if they fail to pay enough money.

We are working on Credible Fear Interviews – this is a preliminary requirement that a prospective asylmee demonstrate a credible fear of persecution upon return to their country of origin. We help clients review their stories so they can focus on the important points when they go before the ‘judge’ (immigration officer).

We are also assisting with bond reduction. A bond is placed once an applicant has demonstrated that they have a credible fear and the court determines that they need not be held in detention throughout the process. This is like bail. If bail is set too high, the applicant remains in detention, since no one here can help them get out. We help the applicants’ request and conduct hearings to reduce their bonds. Many bonds are set at $15000, $10000 and $7500. These are amounts of money well beyond what any friend or family member for these ladies has available to post. We ask the courts to reduce the bond so these women and their children don’t have to live in the detention center for months while their claim is adjudicated.

A lot of PTSD, a lot of tears, a lot of really cute kids with terrible teeth (no dental care – parents often let kids baby teeth rot since they’ll grow adult teeth anyway).

So…good group of attorneys. I got pretty sick yesterday and today, but took some cold meds and powered through (mostly), and feel we are able to be helpful, which is all anyone can ask for in this life.

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*Ahavya Deutsch is JWCR Fifth Lawyer to Assist Refugee Mothers & Children and one of the founders of Jewish Women for Child Refugees