 Again, thank you everybody for joining our Let Them In, Let Them Stay, Learning and Action webinar. This has been organized by Community Voices for Immigrant Rights here in Vermont, but also through an enormous amount of help and support through other organizations. I want to just frame this within a, what has been a really challenging, especially last few months, processing some of the news that we've been seeing around the world. It's been incredibly difficult to make sense of some of the things that we've been seeing, and I think that this is a wonderful opportunity for us to get some perspective on how American imperialist projects are, in so many cases, the motors that drive, the motor that's driving immigrant and refugee crises globally, and how we can take steps to fight back against that, both in short-term and long-term ways. So we're going to be discussing how that theme relates to four different places. We'll be starting with Ashley Smith, who'll be presenting on Afghanistan. We'll be then hearing from Mary Andrews, who'll be discussing the refugee and immigrant crisis at the Mexico-U.S. border. And third, we'll be hearing from Julia Papco and Priska Felix, sorry, Felix, who'll be discussing the situation in Haiti following so much environmental and political upheaval. We'll also then finally be hearing from Moffik Faur, who will be discussing issues related to displacement and justice in Palestine. So we'll be hearing from those four speakers tonight. They're incredible activists, incredibly knowledgeable people, and incredibly thoughtful, thoughtful activists. So I think we'll help us to better understand this issue. So I'm so, so grateful for all of you guys joining us tonight, as well as our speakers who will be helping shed some light on what we've been seeing. So we're going to be starting with Ashley Smith. Ashley Smith is a member of Community Voices for Immigrant Rights, a writer for Specter Tempest, Jacobine, a member of Democratic Socialists of America, and he'll be presenting for us about issues in Afghanistan. Thanks, Ashley. Thanks, Liz, so much for moderating or facilitating or chairing it, whatever we're calling it. So I have seven minutes to discuss the longest war in US history, that is the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which has come to an end in a catastrophic fashion, leaving behind a humanitarian disaster that has already caused an enormous refugee crisis and promises to cross an even bigger one in the coming months and years as the consequences of the occupation unfold. This war has been built on several lies to justify the invasion and occupation of the country. The first one was that the US was after al-Qaeda. In fact, the Taliban before the US invasion often offered to turn over bin Laden and negotiate some kind of peaceful resolution of the crisis before the war. The US refused to accept that offer and went to war. The other justification was that the US would be liberating women. And if you look at the condition of women in most of Afghanistan, which is outside of Kabul, conditions are actually worse for the majority of women. 70% of women live outside of Kabul. Only handfuls of women inside Kabul compared to the majority of the population of women benefited from the reforms that the US public government and US occupation implemented in Kabul, mainly. And thousands upon thousands of women and children were killed as so-called collateral damage in the war and occupation that the US engaged in over the last 20 years. And the third lie was that the US would engage in building a nation, building up Afghanistan, which had been occupied by the Soviet Union for a decade in the 1980s and then suffered a disastrous civil war followed by Taliban rule. So the US promised to build the country. In fact, the US destroyed Afghanistan. They killed over 240,000 Afghans in the war and occupation, 71,000 civilians who were not noncombatants and displaced as a result of the war, 2.5 million refugees out of the country and 3.5 million people inside the country. So a disastrous humanitarian crisis as a direct result of the US invasion and occupation. So the real reasons for the US war and occupation have nothing to do with those three lies. The real reasons that the US invaded and occupied Afghanistan was to use it as a stepping stone after 9-11 to invade and carry out regime changes beginning in Iraq and then moving on to several other countries that the Bush administration back then targeted, including Iran, Syria and many other countries. And the reason the US wanted to do that was to control the spigot of oil of the Middle East, which fuels most of the world's economy, not the US in the main, but the imperial rivals of the United States in particular China. So the reality was that those invasions and occupations in the Middle East, in particular in Iraq, ended in catastrophic defeats for the US and even worse catastrophes for the Iraqi population, which was devastated. And so the US asked after a decade of occupation, withdrew from the country. But under the Obama administration, the US actually escalated the occupation in Afghanistan with the so-called surge. But the US never defeated the Taliban. The Taliban basically melted away into Afghan society to buy its time to wait for the US to withdraw. And it rebuilt its forces with the support of countries like Pakistan to resturge as a powerful fighting force. And the increasingly the US military and its puppet government and its Afghan army was losing in the war between the US and the Taliban forces. And the US realized very soon that the state had no popular support outside of Kabul, and the Afghan military was actually a military that had no political will to fight. And in fact, that the soldiers in the Afghan military were paid less than the Taliban pays its own soldiers. So there was no real political will to fight in the government. And all the CIA analysts basically recognized that as soon as the US withdrew, the Taliban army and state would, the Afghan army and state would collapse. So the US decided to withdraw despite all of this because it wanted to reorient its imperial project on confronting what it sees as its great power rival in China. And Biden has been explicit in all of his decisions about why he's leaving Afghanistan, why he left Afghanistan was to reorient the US imperial power on confronting China. This all began at the latter stages of the Obama administration through Trump and then through Biden's pronouncement of decision to end the occupation and reorient US priorities. Almost immediately as the US declared that it would withdraw its forces, that the Afghan military and the Afghan state collapsed and the Taliban surged into control of most of the country, which they now command. And the Taliban we should be clear as a reactionary Islamic fundamentalist regime now in power. It has absolutely reactionary ideas about all sorts of things. But the Afghan people actually saw it as a lesser evil compared to the US occupation and the puppet government, which had made a catastrophe in the lives of the vast majority of the population. But as I said, there's very little popular support for the Taliban government. So we'll see how this unfolds. Since the fall of the Afghan state and the seizure of power by the Taliban, we've seen an enormous crisis that the US has made worse. The US has frozen all of the economic assets of the Afghan state. So that is starving the country of funds to feed its people 14 of the 17 of the 37 million people 14 million of the 37 million people in Afghanistan are food insecure and largely dependent on humanitarian aid to meet their basic food needs. That's now put in jeopardy by the freezing of the assets assets on the Afghan state. So we'll see if other states step in to fund the Taliban government. Pakistan might do that. China might do that. It remains unclear at this point. But what is going to happen is an enormous refugee crisis that we has already been unfolding. Like I said, 2.5 million people have left the country as during the war over the last several years over the last two decades. There are 3.5 million people internally displaced. And the some 300,000 people that were on the US payroll over the last 20 years are now under threat from the new Taliban regime and likely targets for retribution for their support of the occupation. So those 300,000 people are desperate to flee. And it's unclear how many of them have actually gotten out. The Biden administration claims 123,000 people have been evacuated. Most of them to processing centers on various places around the region and into into the middle into the Middle East. So the question for us is what should we say about this crisis and what should we do about the refugee emergency that is now unfolding before our eyes? I think the first thing we have to say is we were right to oppose the war from the very beginning. It was a reactionary imperialist war, not one in the interests of the Afghan people, certainly not the interests of the people in the region, including those in the Middle Middle East. And we should say, yes, it's good that US is out of Afghanistan. But we should call for the unfreezing of all the humanitarian aid so that the 14 million people who are food insecure are not robbed of the ability to meet their basic needs. And we should support all the progressive forces within Afghanistan, like the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, who said very clearly from the early stages of the war that there were three enemies in Afghanistan for the Afghan population and particular women. Number one, the warlords that were at the heart of the new puppet government that the US built, the Taliban, which was another enemy they said of the Afghan people and Afghan women in particular, and the US occupation. And so they are saying it's good the occupation is over, but we have now two enemies to fight and we should support them in their struggle for liberation. We should also oppose what Biden has already promised to do, and that's continue the war of counterterrorism so-called in Afghanistan of bombs, special operations and drone strikes. And we should oppose the new rivalry with China that Biden is proposing. And instead, we should call for a change of US foreign policy, a withdrawal of US troops from all over the world, the ending of bases all over the world, in particular, in South Asia and in Central Asia and in the Middle East. And most importantly, for the refugees, we should demand, let them all in, all 300,000 that the US had on the payroll should be welcomed into the United States and resettled immediately and unconditionally. Biden has promised to resettle only 95,000 of those 300,000 people who are clamoring to be let into the country, and he's proposed a bill of around $6.4 billion. We should certainly support that, but we should demand the right of all 300,000 people to be resettled. Here in Vermont, the government is promising in collaboration with the refugee resettlement agency to resettle 100 Afghans in Vermont. I think we should demand many, many more Afghans be welcomed to be resettled in our state. And I want to end by just saying, I think it's extremely important that we see this not as a moment of self congratulations for the United States and resettling the refugees. It's not resettling enough refugees, and there's an element of hypocrisy that's going on because while the US is resettling a portion of the Afghan refugees that want to come to the United States, it's not resettling them all, and it's expelling hundreds of thousands of people on the US-Mexico border. It's denying refugee applications from Haitians who are desperate to flee the earthquake and the storms that have devastated Haiti, and they're deporting Haitians. And in Palestine, the US state is supporting the ongoing colonization and displacement and creation of refugees that are fleeing the occupation of Israel, of Palestinian historic lands. So this is not the moment of self congratulations. It should be the moment where the US, we demand that it pay reparations for the damage it did to the Afghan people, that it resettle everybody, and we let the US state let everybody in, not just the Afghans in small numbers, but all the Afghans and all the people at the US-Mexico border that we let the migrants who are in the US stay and that we end the support for the Israeli state and its ongoing displacement and colonization of Palestinian land. So now's the time to say let them all in, let them stay, end US wars and occupations all around the world. Thank you so much, Ashley. I appreciate your contextualization of what we've been seeing in the news within a broader generation's long military history in Afghanistan and helping us understand what damage that's done to the culture of Afghanistan and to the people who live there. I'm just going to pull up a quick slide that I've prepared just jotting down some of the ideas that Ashley's provided us and this will go out to folks at the end of the webinar. I'll make sure to place it in the chat and also to share it with our email and our social media. This encompasses some of the broader ideas that we discussed including policy as well as revolutionary groups in Afghanistan that are promoting human rights for some of the most vulnerable there. We're going to now hear from Mary Andrews. Mary Andrews is going to speak about the immigrant and refugee crisis at the Mexico-US border. This stuff deals with Ashley's presentation perfectly because it has so much to do with the false notion of nation building and how the mining of cultural and environmental resources has the capacity to devastate cultures for years to come and how we are seeing the effects of that now at the US-Mexico border. Mary, thank you so much for joining us and we're looking forward to hearing. Thanks Liz. So as you probably know the US government has a long history of interference in Mexico, Central America, South America, and many Caribbean nations. Our actions have included overthrowing elected governments, propping up brutal dictators, and also deporting criminals from this country back to those areas. All of these have created an exacerbated dysfunction in many of the governments in the Western Hemisphere resulting in migrants fleeing justice, fleeing violence, injustice, poverty, and climate-related drought among many other issues. So what exactly has the Biden administration been doing on immigration policy? Well if we look at the steps that they've taken so far we can say that those steps in many cases have been very tentative and in many cases half measures. While the administration has revoked some of the Trump area immigration policies, the crisis at the US-Mexico border persists and in some cases is even worse. Some of the issues that I'd like to raise including include the continued use of Title 42 using the COVID pandemic as the public health justification to immediately expel migrants crossing the US-Mexico border. In August the CDC extended that policy indefinitely citing the spread of the Delta variant. What this does is effectively denies migrants the right to seek an asylum hearing. Everyone is simply removed across the border without any opportunity for legal process. It has been noted that many countries use health screening, COVID testing and quarantine to address the COVID risk from migrants at their borders and certainly immediate expulsion is not required to address the potential threat of migrants that may enter the country with COVID. In fact hundreds of thousands of people have been expelled at the southern border since January effectively denying them any kind of official deportation proceeding. In addition migrant children are still being held in shocking conditions in contract around detention centers. This is in violation of a 1997 court order prescribing standards of care and lengths of detention that are allowed for children. The New York Times recently reported that in early August 17,000 children were in detention in these absolutely deplorable conditions that I'm sure you've read about. Another issue on the US-Mexico border is the cap on refugees. The Trump administration placed a draconian cap on the number of refugees that would be admitted to the country each year. Under extensive pressure from many different sources, the Biden administration eventually I believe in May raised the cap of refugees that would be admitted to 62,500 in each year but that number is far short of the 125,000 that Biden had promised and Biden himself has acknowledged that it is very unlikely that anywhere near 62,000 refugees would be admitted this year primarily because there are major delays in processing and there's a huge backlog of people being processed through the system and as we have seen over the last few months that demand for refugee status has only grown and finally I'll talk a little bit about the remain in Mexico policy. The remain in Mexico policy is a Trump administration policy that is part of the migrant protection protocols. Needless to say, the protocols do anything but protect migrants. This policy requires migrants that are seeking asylum that is those migrants who fear persecution or death in their home country. It requires them to return to often dangerous Mexico border cities to await their legal hearing. Unfortunately, this often makes it extremely difficult or impossible for them to know if their hearing has been changed or rescheduled and often makes it extremely difficult or impossible for them to actually get to that hearing beyond the serious risks involved in just being in some of these places, border places. The Biden administration did rescind the remain in Mexico policy eventually but the states of Texas and Missouri challenged that rescission in court and on August 24th, the Supreme Court decision let stand a lower court ruling that had reinstated the remain in Mexico policy. As of now, it remains to be seen what the Biden administration will do in response to that decision of the Supreme Court. I want to turn now to some actions that you can take to support immigrants in your community. Two, in particular, that I'd like to flag is one, you can get involved in the no-mos polymigra campaign in your town. Many towns in Vermont have been actively exploiting loopholes in the state's fair and impartial policing policy and allowing their local police to turn undocumented immigrants over to ICE when they are stopped by the local police for any reason. However, some Vermont towns have been enacting stronger policies that forbid their police force from cooperating with ICE and turning over those who are detained by local police. So for further information about how you can get involved in the no-mos polymigra effort, we would refer you to the Migrant Justice website. Another way that you can get involved is to make your voice heard on the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act is a bill that was passed by the US House of Representatives last summer with very little recognition of the impact that it has on farm workers. In fact, what the bill does is requires farm workers that are seeking legal status to continue work in agriculture for up to eight years uninterrupted. Because the program is sponsored by employers, it effectively prevents farm workers from defending their rights by speaking out against abusive practices, by unionizing anything like that would risk they are being dismissed by their employer and then losing their eligibility for this program. The program also mandates the use of the Federal E-Verify system, but it does nothing to address labor exploitation and the many abuses that farm workers face. So there's a vote that will be coming up in the US Senate probably in the next month. What you could do is to call or write Senator Sanders and Leahy and ask them to oppose this bill from what I have heard. I believe Senator Sanders has not looked carefully at this legislation and does not appreciate that it is opposed by farm workers for some very strong reasons. Liz? Thanks so much, Mary. That was an incredibly comprehensive touching on all of the different issues that are tied up in the immigrant and refugee crisis that is culminating at the Mexico US border. We're seeing so much in the news right now about how the United States government is outsourcing so much of its policing at the border to Mexican military forces as a way of moving attention away from its own human rights abuses. And I think that furthermore, as Mary pointed out, so much of the forces that are causing folks to flee their homes in Central and South America have taken place at the hands of American government and military forces, whether that's been American-led CIA projects such as the Operation Condor, which overturned so many democratically elected leaders, whether it's climate change, whether it's trade policies that have completely left local economies destabilized. We see that people are facing the consequences of these abuses and seeking safety where they can. And it is our responsibility to open our borders to welcome them all in. And as Mary pointed out, offering an opportunity to access citizenship. I'm going to pull up my screen once more just to share with folks in my little summary. This is a handy list as well of some of the resources that you can use to guide your actions. The No Masked Polymigra link here is to learn more about the efforts across the state of Vermont of closing loopholes that allow the communication between ICE and police. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act is something that is absolutely worth acting on now because it is under review by Congress. And we included our link to our webinar from a couple of weeks ago where you can learn more about it from a human rights perspective. And then in the middle I included some just a reminder that the Budget Reconciliation Act has a clause in it that would open a opportunity for pathway to citizenship for all currently and all immigrants currently living in the United States, which would be an enormous, an enormous win for our country in our growth as a nation, developing our culture, our economy, and our families that are looking to reconnect after having been brutally separated. So this is a broad and expansive set of initiatives and resources and calling for a just implementation of a pathway to citizenship. One that's inclusive is so important. So I'm gonna show that to you guys and then we'll share that later with folks. So thank you so much for joining us in this exploration of so many different stories across the globe and how imperialist projects tie them together and how we can fight back. So I'm gonna pass now the proverbial mic to Wafik. Wafik Fauer is a leader in the Vermonters for Justice in Palestine group and an activist here as well with Community Voices for Immigrants. Did an incredible job speaking at our car rally not too long ago at the Ice Data Center here in Williston. And so thank you Wafik and we're excited to hear from you about the situation in Palestine. Thank you. Salam alaikum. My name is Wafik. I'm a member of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine. Thank you everybody. Ashley, Mary, and thank you Liz very much for this. I'm not going to repeat what the speakers before me said already and I agree but I want to talk about the question of refugees and migrants from different angle. There is nobody because I born and grow up as refugee in a refugee camp in Lebanon from two parents became refugees in 1948. So 12 years later I born in a refugee camp and I moved in two other refugee camps until 17 years old when I came to college here in the United States. So from Palestinian refugee who's still in contact with his family who are refugees and meeting other refugees when I visit every two years. More refugees coming from Syria or stopping in Europe meeting their refugees mainly in Germany. I can tell you there is nobody leaves their home willingly. They are not happy to be uprooted and move them. So if we look on Latin America or Africa because of global warming and the poverty we have to understand basic things in this world with the very small exceptions. There is no poor country existed in the world but there is a poor people existed in the world. So why and we can we can talk about that a lot. Each country including the Afghanistan or Latin America and South America. They all have enough resources to be self-sufficient and to be rich country and to help their government. I don't use the word every time I speak that colonialists and imperialists and we have to look at it. In one hand they want to take these resources. That's why they keep overthrow government after government and they train military officers here in school of America in Georgia and other places to do the job that United States of America government want them to do. On another hand that the migration and the coming to this country or the cause of the refugees that on the Middle East the war-torn Middle East and Syria and Iraq have been created because in both situations because this country needs the labor. When you talk about millions of our migrants here in United States they came over here and we know where they are. What farms they are working otherwise your mega farms and slaughterhouses will be close tomorrow if they disappear. The government knows about it but what is the difference between both and why they make it harder the government and they create laws to not make it easier to our siblings to work with dignity on this country because this country built on slavery built on oppressing people and we have a modern day slavery by accepting the employees to come in with lower than minimum wage and they living on a fear and they living with no minimum rights because the government created laws to make it like this. I respect what Mary and what Ashley and call your congressman and do this and we're going to do it and we have to do it but the bottom line is this country wouldn't be the same if 10 millions or 12 millions labor forces will leave tomorrow because you're going to go to your neighborhood Shahs and Haniford and you cannot afford the lettuce you are buying or the milk the gallon of milk. Come back to and I hope all the activists will keep working the same way we work and not becoming like the NGOs which is they are covers for this criminal war happening if it is in the Middle East or it's happening on Afghanistan or everywhere we wouldn't we shouldn't become that kind of supporters to this kind of conspiracy happening over there. The Palestinian refugees they are asking for simple things they want to go home. I can go to the refugee camps I left 40 years ago and I see their faces and I meet them and the same people went to me to primary school they are waiting to go home. So what we are doing here as Palestinians because we don't differentiate the act of aggression happening happening by Israel between its policy and United States policy because Israel wouldn't dare do what they are do without the cover of the United States and the silence of the people of the United States and the acceptance of the politicians of the United States. We have to break that kind of wall in front of us as Palestinians here locally with the help of many many organizations for the Palestinian rights here in Burlington we are trying to introduce a resolution a recognition of Palestinian human rights Palestinian equal rights and Palestinian rights to speak up and to call for boycott divest and sanction to all Israeli product until they recognize the right of the Palestinians the indigenous people of that land and to that resolution has no we're against this or we're a product it's very simple based on human rights and equal rights I'm surprised half an hour ago I just read an article from the diggers that our four rabbis of Burlington writing and giving a completely wrong impressions of what this resolution about and they making it as political and anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish for that they are using the fear by saying oh we are scared our students in UVM scared etc etc which is the opposite exactly the canary mission that existed against our students in every campus across the country is Zionist Israeli mission paid by the Israeli consulate and embassies and every time you say Palestinian human rights and equal rights you will face doxing and canary mission and you will never find a job on this country you will never go to grad school on this country so people of faith they come and they lie about a resolution calling for the right of the Palestinian should be resisted on this city because not because they are a bunch of rabbis and they are pro-Zionist they can say whatever they can say and they can send letters send letters to our council members threatening them just because they dare to speak out they dare to speak out this mentality to make us they think that we go and to live on fear they are wrong and we going to educate everybody on this community that a Zionist as ideology we oppose people of a Jewish faith we're going to stand where I'm not saying anti-Semitism doesn't exist but they are directing their eyes on the wrong direction when they act the same way as white supremacists using the fear as a weapon you see them in your demonstrations for the migrants you see them on every demonstration for a black life matters they call everybody for indigenous people here but when it comes to the Palestinians they put their heads on the sand you should do something about it thank you thank you so much we feed for your powerful words I I want to remind folks that this coming Monday the 13th there is a rally at Burlington City Hall at 6 p.m. which will be just before the the City Hall meeting that includes a vote on the passage of the Palestine resolution which would make Burlington's opposition to settlements in Palestine explicit and its commitment to the human rights of Palestinians explicit which would be an enormous step in furthering our our support of the human rights of Palestinians and divestment throughout Vermont and the country we've seen an enormous success with Ben and Jerry's recently in the news which should absolutely be celebrated and we hope that this is just the beginning I also so appreciate with the drawing attention to the importance of placing reverence for and support of indigenous cultures at the center of this conversation as Ashley spoke to this is not an opportunity to celebrate or pat on the back American government for accepting refugees from the same places that it has damaged deeply for decades family unification and community empowerment must be at the center of our conversations and institutional violence it cannot be cannot be tolerated I want to remind folks that we have some resources here that will be helpful for finding the news webinars events that so many of our speakers have shared with us and recommended we have here from with feaks presentation info on the palestine resolution rally on the 13th and you can read more about the palestine resolution here as well as watch the webinar from the Fletcher free library that with feak and city counselor Ali ding led okay awesome I am so grateful for everybody's presence and commitment to explain some really complex themes and so we're going to close with our fourth presentation and we are going to hear from two activists and then from that will share about Haiti and then we'll have the opportunity to share questions comments reflections as we kind of process this and and then we'll we'll go from there so I want to introduce again Prisca Felix and Julia Pupko who are two activists and affiliated both with Vermont and Haiti and they'll be speaking on some of the recent events in Haiti and how they connect to some of the themes that we've been talking about tonight and how we can take action to support human rights and the liberation of Haitian people as they look toward the future so thank you so much Prisca and Julia hello just going to get the screen share going all right so I'm Julia my connection to Haiti is through a lot of community building and doing some reforestation work with a very dear friend in one of the communities that we're going to be kind of focusing on a little bit tonight later in the presentation we'll be talking about deportation and natural disaster effects and I am Prisca I am a student from Haiti and I requested the camera off because political activists from Haiti has been deported and or now targeted and that is why I requested for the camera to be off all right so I am going to oh I forgot to change the slide sorry there we go I'm going to start with a little bit of historical context so there's a lot here and I could probably spend way over seven minutes talking about this alone so I'm going to try and keep this brief the United States has a long history of exploiting Haiti and blocking Haitian citizens from entering the United States when a lot of times the reason why Haitian citizens are trying to get into the US is because of political and economic instability that has been directly caused by US interference um Haiti actually used to be a um a location where a destination for migrants because after Haiti became recognized as an independent sovereign nation in 1804 the Haitian government sent out a statement saying that it welcomed any black or indigenous refugees seeking freedom to come to Haiti and receive um citizenship after only living there for a year while these policies changed a bit over time um this was kept up essentially until 1915 when the United States came in and occupied Haiti until 1934 causing a ton of damage including creating the current Haitian military which would was utilized by the Duvalier dictatorships and both the United States during occupation and then the Duvaliers once the US had pulled back um murdered thousands and thousands of people Haitian immigration to the US began in earnest in 1965 while the Duvaliers uh Papadoc specifically was still in power um following the heart seller immigration act which abolished discriminatory national origin quotas that had been part of US immigration policy since the 1920s um and then this immigration continued and increased through the 1970s and then really increased in the early 1990s after Aristide the first like truly democratically elected Haitian president was ousted by a military coup which was likely backed by the CIA um so then fast-forwarding a little bit there was a massive earthquake in Haiti in 2010 which uh caused over 200 000 people to lose their lives and Haiti has still not recovered from that earthquake following this the US government put in temporary protected status and halted all deportations to Haiti for a year but then in the middle of a cholera epidemic when Haiti had still not recovered from um the earthquake in 2010 in 2011 they began deportations again to Haiti and at least one Haitian national if not more died in a detention center in Haiti from cholera after being deported from the US um moving forward more um I want to note between 2010 and the current there are many Haitian citizens that are stuck at the border in Mexico because many Haitians following the earthquake went to both Brazil and Chile and then due to xenophobia racism unemployment and other political issues they began trying to get out of the countries that they had left to and come to the United States and they are also stuck at the border in Mexico and all of the changes which I guess I should say the few changes that Biden has made to immigration to allow some people into the country from Mexico does not include Haitians who are stuck there um and then continuing on in 2016 Hurricane Matthew occurred and while Obama stopped deportations for a very brief period of time they continued and roughly 270 Haitians were deported weekly at the same time the US government put Moise Chauvinel Moise who's recently assassinated in power and he is he operated as a dictator for his time as president um in 2018 uh Trump revoked or tried to revoke Haiti's temporary protected status standing which got stuck in courts not allowing that to go through which enabled TPS to continue so TPS is still in place then in 2020 as was already talked about Title 42 was invoked which very much affects Haitian immigrants and another thing that came out in 2020 was the Department of Homeland Security was secretly detaining um unaccompanied minors and families at hotels in McAllen Texas many of whom were Haitian and these families were stuck in very horrible conditions were not allowed to talk to attorneys were not allowed to oftentimes even bathe while held in these detention centers and then would be taken in the middle of the night to the airport and deported to Haiti um also there were some stories of people being forced to ice cubes during the pandemic to lower their temperature so they could get deported um so then focusing in a little bit on Biden and what's been happening recently um Biden as I said did revoke parts of Trump's stay in Mexico policy but this does not apply to the Haitian citizens stuck in Mexico additionally the title 42 is still in place which has been used to deport many Haitians while temporary protected status was extended in May to February of 2023 um Haitian Haitians in America have continued to be deported and sorry I don't know why my computer is freaking out right now um uh anyway so um there have been more people deported to Haiti during the first half a year of Biden's presidency than there were in the entire fiscal year of 2020 and people are getting sent back to extremely unsafe conditions there was um the assassination of the president in July and then the earthquake that just happened and Biden's promise to prioritize student visas has also not been a thing that's been happening which we have been dealing with recently um so recently in Haiti there's been a lot of political issues with kidnapping and violent protests and gang violence a few months ago there was a gang attack on one of the towns in Haiti called Matisa and the town is totally wiped out from everything and the government did not do anything about it all of the people from that town had moved to parks and other places on the streets and they had nowhere to sleep but to sleep on the streets they had no food no water because their homes were attacked by gang members and most of them were shot and dead some of them lost families lots of orphans and the government did not do anything about it they didn't even think about providing shelters for none of these people and it has all it has also been really bad in Port-au-Prince also with the manifestations of gangs and tires burning and they also said that they will not allow school to reopen in October and on August 14th after the hurricane Biden also deported about a hundred people back to Haiti not thinking about do these people have homes to go back to and do these people have family left to go back to and about 1,300 people died from that earthquake in the southwestern peninsula and in Dushiti Haiti where there is a vocational school and a primary school I've also heard about and about 25 children from that primary school their parents are dead and they do not have any funds or anything to go back to school in October and also the people need in the southwestern peninsula they need access to clean water and also materials to rebuild homes because people are living out on the streets and tents and especially after the hurricane that occurred right after the earthquake the situation is really bad the waters are dirty and toxic due to animals that died and people that died and other toxic things that are that make the water unusable for people to stay and currently there are still aftershocks from this week in the past week making the damage homes not safe for people to stay in and most people a lot of people have been trying to get to the US in little boats and some of them got in and Biden also said he's not letting any more people in so it is really difficult for them right now and they've also said that what they really need is shelter to stay with their family and access to clean water yeah and oops so moving forward the hopefully this fundraiser link will be shared out with people I can also pop it in the chat but this is a fundraiser that we are using to send funds directly to the community of Dushiti it's going to community members who both of us know and work with and they are making sure that that gets distributed to people additionally pressuring calling your local representatives and trying to get people to put pressure on the Biden administration to extend TPS and deportations which would be following through with Biden's campaign promise that he is not followed through with and revoking title 42 in addition to just supporting the Haitian people for once instead of the US the US's imperialist interest in Haiti even though I have very little faith in politics I'm not sure what else to do so on that note we're hoping at some point to do a longer presentation on all of this and I both of us are super open to brainstorming. Prisca and Juliet thank you so much for your presentation and your activism and your resilience and your strength and it sounds like the work that you have already facilitated and I imagine Prisca that you have yet to lead will will be an enormous benefit to Haiti and to the people globally and so I'm so glad that we got to share this I think that there were some technical difficulties on there but I am so honored that we were able to hear from them. I also am so appreciative to bring up a point that I think that we have just kind of gotten to which is that there's so often a division between immigrant issues relating to Central and South America and the Caribbean but in reality so often those policies have an effect on people from all across the world seeking refugee status and oftentimes we we make invisible the refugees that that are seeking safety from other other parts of the world that have suffered injustices at the hands of the United States and violence and we saw in Georgia not long ago at the Irwin County Immigration Center that there were women whose bodies were receiving they were receiving unsolicited surgeries unnecessary surgeries and that is an extension of the war and violence that women especially Black women and Brown women have suffered for thousands of years and and we need to acknowledge that Haitian women are part of that in our detention centers and and so I I'm glad that we got to see that connection between the the different immigrant populations that are imprisoned in our detention centers in the name of in the name of policy or logistics because truly the human rights violations there cannot cannot cannot stand. I want to take this time now to I want to make sure that we have space to share reflections and comments and any thoughts that folks have is there processing or any questions that might arise and feel free to I think I think it's okay if because we're a smaller group I think if people want to unmute like unmute rather and I think that that would work just fine. I think I might be called Ashley Smith now but Julianne Prisker back sorry my computer restarted part of the way through so I we said everything but if anyone has any further questions since we dropped off really suddenly. Yeah if you wanted to I I think just I if you want to close up with any with any thoughts that you might not have gotten in before the technical difficulty kitchen feel free but if if if you don't need to add anything that's fine too. I think the the end of the sentence was just working group for trying to do something effectively to support the Haitian people whatever that may look like direct action campaigns etc very here for that and please email or share thoughts.