 I'm Pam Walker. I'm a member of Central Vermont Refugee Action Committee. And the Envenitos, welcome to everyone. We had no idea we'd have so many people here tonight. But we do have plenty of cookies and cider and soda water for everybody. So this event we feel is very special. It's sponsored by CBCB Rand, Central Vermont Refugee Action Network, as well as the UU Church of Montevideo, where you are, where you're now sitting. And I think we're in for a very special evening because we have five speakers who are going to share your experiences, what it was like from different perspectives. And I'll tell you more shortly. And there are stories I know are going to be heartwarming and intriguing and inspiring. So I think we are going to have quite a time to talk. I just want to tell you a little bit more about Central Vermont Refugee Action Committee. We started about in 2015, a small group of people and fallen active. And we work to provide support to refugees, migrants, and immigrants, all over the state of Vermont. And we do it in various ways. We try to connect New Vermont, or says they're now called, instead of refugees. We try to call them the new kind of language would be New Vermonters. And we offer public presentations like this to raise our awareness about what's going on with immigrants and refugees and migrants. And we do legislative advocacy, language tutoring, conversation partners. We have a new friendship group. We provide educational materials with our money, camp scholarships to children of new Americans who can afford it, and welcome gifts to new arrivals. We also have a day of hospitality where we invite new arrivals to come to the state house and the history museum and to join us for a meal. And we do that about five times a year whenever we've got the energy and the money. And it's really exciting. We really enjoy that a lot. So that's all our CV ran. Our speakers are going to be. First of all, I'm going to introduce them a little bit more later, but Reverend Joan Havier-Deval, who's the minister of our church. And she's going to be talking about her experience traveling to Honduras, where she worked. She went with a pilgrimage to really discover the root causes of migration for the Hondurans. Why are so many Hondurans now starting to flee across the border? And then we have three women who gave a lot of their time and energy and went to El Paso for two weeks and they volunteered Annunciation House, which provides support to people coming across the border, passing through detention and seeking asylum. And you're going to hear about their experiences together in a few minutes. And most importantly, and lastly, we're going to be hearing from a Mexican, recent Mexican migrant. His name is Beto Sanchez. He's over here. And Will Landbeck is doing simultaneous translating. So if you hear mumbling going on over here, that's Will. Will Landbeck is a champion of human rights for migrants and a very hardworking organizer for the migrant justice. And you'll hear more about them in a minute. What else did I have to say first? Orca, it will be here filming and you'll see Jerome in the back. So if you want to see this again or you will have friends who missed it, it will be on Orca at some point, right Jerome? Yes, at some point. Bathrooms to this door. There's one in that room over there. There's one to my left. And then one right in the back of this room. So just a quick overview of what we all pretty much know about what's going on at the border in terms of the pressure of migration. I'm sorry, I've got to find the right page here. So we know the situation is dire. People are just flowing over the border for good reasons. We think good reasons. The Trump administration says no. They're just, you know, it's not important for them. Some facts I learned from the Pew Research Center in the last couple of days. Thanks to Abby. Border patrol agents apprehended 92,000 migrants in March alone at the border. That's the highest monthly total in 12 years. There were 361,000 apprehensions from his past October until March, 361,000. And Trump is just starting to talk about shutting down the border. We've all heard about that, right? And cutting off aid to the Northern Triangle countries, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Luckily, his threat to do that has not materialized. Families are now the majority of apprehensions. And this is very new. It's a big shift from the recent past when the arrests were generally for adults. And we all know that it's really straining, put a strain on federal authorities. The number of border patrol agents at the border, it's fallen since 2013, believe it or not. But there still are 16,608 at last count. Not including the Department of Defense mission sending National Guard, 4,000 National Guard troops. So let's hear from our speakers. So I'm going to introduce Joan DeVall. Joan Javier DeVall to you first. She began her ministry here at the UU Church of Montpelier in August of 2015. She comes from Chicago. And she's the daughter of immigrants from the Philippines. She has a strong dedication to social justice and economic justice, anti-racism, anti-oppression. And she's been a longtime community activist and political organizer. For those of us who've been to marches and protests and the Capitol steps, you've heard Joan speak before. So we welcome Reverend Joan. Thanks for everything. Thanks so much, Pam and the whole CVRAN team for putting this event together. And to all of you for dedicating your evening to being here. I'm going to flip my own slides. So as Pam mentioned, I had the privilege and opportunity to participate in an interfaith pilgrimage to Honduras in mid-March, which was about a week long, March 18th to 25th. The pilgrimage was sponsored by four different organizations based in the United States. Cher El Salvador, which for decades has been sponsoring pilgrimages primarily to El Salvador more recently to Honduras. They're based in California. The Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity also based in California, Berkeley. The Sisters of Mercy and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. So these were the four organizations who put the whole trip together. But I was invited to participate by our Unitarian Universalist College of Social Justice, which also does its own immersion learning programs and had in December done a week long trip to Honduras as well. And so had started to build a relationship with local organizations and people and wanted our UU religious leaders to be represented. So I was one of two clergy and four other lay people, Unitarian Universalists, who went on this trip. Locally in Honduras, we were hosted by an organization called Radio Procreso and ERIK, which stands for Equipo de Reflexión, Investigación y Comunicación, team of reflection investigation and communication. They're based in Procreso, which is outside of San Pedro Sula. Some of you who might be familiar with the geography of Honduras in the northwestern part of the country. And this is our delegation pictured here standing outside of the offices of Radio Procreso. About 70 people were on this trip from all around the country, as well as two nuns who were from Argentina and Chile and the other from Peru. So they joined our group, but otherwise were mostly from the U.S. And consisted of people of faith, but also community leaders and activists doing immigrant rights work in their local communities, many from California, but also from other parts of the country, including myself from Vermont. And I'll just say that Radio Procreso is, some of you, I was on WGDR yesterday talking with Joseph Gainsett and mentioned them. This is a community-run radio station in Procreso, which really stays connected to the community and grassroots journalism and has just been providing really life-saving journalism there in Honduras. So they're based in Procreso, but they have volunteers all around the country who are journalists covering what's happening politically and economically. And they also do a lot of community organizing and social services as well as research into human rights abuses and all sorts of other issues. So they're really just an incredibly dynamic organization. The leader, the head, the director of the organization is a Jesuit priest, Father Ishmael Moreno, affectionately known as Padre Melo. So I might refer to him as Padre Melo throughout this presentation. So why did we go on this pilgrimage as Pam already said some of the context in terms of the Central American migrant caravans that have been growing over the last year or more. And so this, the group of organizations that put on this pilgrimage have done previous trips to Honduras with this question of what really are the root causes of migration in mind. And this trip was kind of a follow-up. And initially when they first did their first trip maybe two years ago, the organizers sort of had in mind, what are the root causes of migration? Gang violence and poverty. We hear that over and over again. And on one of their delegations they started to hear more and more about the real interlocking and interconnected systems and political and economic as well as the long history that has been driving people out of the country over a long period of time. And also about some of the more recent conditions with which I will get into. So this is a photo from the AP of Central American migrants going, traveling through the Mexican state of Chiapas to just give a visual of the thousands of migrants who are making this journey. Pam mentioned this as well that Honduras is part of the Northern Triangle of Central America, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras being those bordering countries. And this is just a close-up of Honduras. And if you can see the capital of Tegucigalpa is sort of towards the bottom part of the country borders the Caribbean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean there. We, our pilgrimage started in San Pedro Sula, which is in kind of the northwestern part of the country. But we had, we were such a large group that we broke into three different subgroups, smaller groups, who, two of whom traveled to different parts of the country. So one group went northward towards what's, it's not labeled on this map, but it's called Bajo Aguan, which is on, is a coastal, indigenous coastal community. And I was part of the group that went kind of a little bit southwest of San Pedro Sula into a region called the Santa Barbara region. And then what the last group stayed in San Pedro Sula. So I will, I will speak very much to my experience traveling to the Santa Barbara region. And there were lots of other things that the delegation learned about in the other parts of the trip, which I will not be able to speak to as well. But I'll mention some of the other things that they learned. So this is just a photo of our whole delegation inside the offices of Radio Progesso being oriented, given some context about the country of Honduras by Patre Melo, who is standing to the left with his back to us. They had set out this beautiful mandala on the floor to describe the work that they do with Radio Progesso, Eric. And I don't have time to go into all the details of that, but that's, that's what that is pictured there. So a little context on Honduras. It is just land wise. It's about a little more than 43,000 square miles. And just for comparison, Vermont is just under 10,000 square miles. So I don't know, just four and a half. Is my math correct? Or half the times the size of Vermont, not that big, a population of about nine million. Although seven million in the country, two million outside of the country. And the question that Patre Melo put to us as he gave us, his orientation to the country, was a guava, thais, a bannock, to what country are you coming? And on the one hand, you know, he outlined some really positive and wonderful things about the country that it's rich in biodiversity, right? It's, it's a country that just is, has fertile land and rivers and forests and, you know, we have all species day coming up, right? All kinds of species throughout the country. So beautiful in that way. It's a majority mestizo population, meaning Spanish and indigenous. There are nine indigenous communities throughout Honduras. And that there has been a long history of both internal and regional migration. So migration on its own is not a big deal. It happens. It has happened all the time within the country, with other Central American countries. El Progreso, the, the town that we were in, that Radio Progreso was in, is 50% people from El Salvador, right? So it's not unusual for migration to happen. And these are just some photos. This is a photo of a road in La Presa, which I'll talk about this community later, just giving some glimpses of the beautiful communities. This is some school children who were teaching us La Sopa de Carical, it's a dance, Honduran dance. So on the trip, we just, you know, we're surrounded by song and dance and mucha, mucha alegría, a lot of joy. They invited, a lot of hospitality, they invited us to join in, right? La Sopa de Carical. But a cuáles baís bienes, to what country have we come? Honduras is also one of the poorest countries in Latin America. Three million people unemployed of seven million who are in the country. Highest income inequality in all of Latin America. With about 150 families who own 96% of the wealth of the country. So incredibly concentrated wealth in very few hands. It has one of the highest murder rates in the world. And the interlocking oppressions of class, race, and gender affecting so many women in this just dire situation around genocide, women especially being targeted and victims of sexual violence and assassination. So in the words of Father Melo, who is just so incredibly articulate, this is him. He just, he laid it out for us, right? Here's his truth telling. It is the alliances between oligarchic business and political elites and transnational capital backed by the U.S. Embassy, the armed forces and people from organized crime that create the caravans. And I'll just say, I mean, the, one of the things I was really, it took away from the trip and that will stay with me is the incredible, incredibly, incredibly sharp analysis that people have on the ground. People know why this is happening. And we need to, we, based in the U.S., we need to do more to educate ourselves on how this all works and what our role has been as a country. So it hurts of migration. I talked a bit already about poverty. And I'm just going to see if there are any other data points I want to mention. 68 percent of Hondurans live in poverty, 44 percent in extreme poverty. And of those who actually, who are able to earn money, to earn some kind of wage, 75 percent of them receive less than a subsistence wage or less than what you could just pay for the basics. You know, I should also say that, of course, the United States has a long history of intervention in Honduras as well as other Central American countries, which I'm not going to go into that long, long history. I'm going to assume that at least some of you know some of that history. And if you don't, I encourage you to learn more about it. I will say in more recent history, another root cause of migration has been political crisis. In 2009, there was a military coup, an ousting of President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, which was supported by our U.S. State Department. And it was after Manuel Zelaya had begun some economic reforms that he was thrown out. And then in 2017, so just very recently, and this has a lot to do with why this surge, why so many people in the last couple of years, there was a fraudulent election in which Juan Orlando Hernandez was re-elected as president, although the Honduran constitution says that there's only one term possible for president. And he was supported by their Supreme Court. And so since then, there has been ongoing protest against President Hernandez and continued political repression. And finally, violence with impunity. So people who are defending the land and human rights are increasingly criminalized. They face violence from the military, paramilitary, police. There's just no rule of law happening in the country. And there's increasing organized crime, but also organized crime is being used as sort of a scapegoat for security forces entering communities and sort of a ruse for increased security that is actually being used to crack down on human rights activists. And of course, we do hear a lot about the violence that's created by gangs and the extortion, you know, people having to be threatened. And if you don't pay us, you know, $2,000 by Friday, we're going to kill your family kinds of things. So that is definitely also happening without really any kind of law and order. So this I just wanted to highlight. Some of you might be familiar with their stochastic. I'm wearing the who's to see about a bit of t-shirt today, who was environmental activist, indigenous leader, who was, you know, recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015 gave a beautiful speech. And a year later was assassinated in her home. And since then, human rights abuses have continued under this current, what really folks refer to as a dictatorship. And let you know that's a really well known international case. This is a photo of a journalist from Radio Progreso, who whose life has been threatened for the work that he's been doing in the Bahá'u'lláguán region, which I mentioned. And so he's had to leave Bahá'u'lláguán and is seeking right now ways to get out of the country because his life is under threat. And he traveled with us to Santa Barbara. So I got to chat with him a little bit. Final set just of, you know, what is really leading to people fleeing now to forced migration. The causes that I got to see more up close and personal in the travel I did was a forced displacement combined with militarization. And so what that means is that because of the economic model that's really been used in Honduras of really exploitative economic model, that's all about extracting commodities and sending money away to foreign owned companies and leaving very little behind, this pushes people off their land. So whether it's agribusiness, which people might know, Honduras used to be called the original banana republic. It's not bananas anymore, it's sugar cane and palm oil. Mining, so mining of gold and, you know, other precious metals. Hydroelectric projects are really big and basically the government gives land away to foreign owned companies and they come in and just kick, you know, kick people off of their land. And this is one of the things that Benz-Becasitas was fighting against in her community. There's also tourism and real estate development. So all of this being, you know, multinational, foreign multinational corporations who are coming in and see an opportunity, quote unquote, right, to make money off of the beauty and the resources of Honduras but not leaving anything for the people. And then when people are organizing to try to defend their own rights, they're being targeted by the military and paramilitary security forces. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about some of the very specific communities and people that I got to meet. That was a little bit of an overview. Maybe someone can give me a time check. So the first place we went to was a community of La Prensa. This is the bridge that we had to cross, to cross the Tapa Lapa River to get to La Prensa. You can kind of see in the distance there the community who had been waiting for us for like three hours. I think just because they were so excited, we weren't that late, to meet with us, to tell us all about La Prensa. This is Benz. So in La Prensa, folks have been organizing for over a decade to resist a hydroelectric dam project. There are about 82 families that live in La Prensa. Every family in La Prensa has at least one family member who has migrated to the U.S. Only 20 families live in houses made of concrete. This is one of those houses. Everyone else lives in houses made of adobe or dirt or wood. I stayed in this house that's pictured here one night with the family who were very well off compared to everyone else because they did actually have an indoor toilet and they were able to have one television in the house. So they actually had electricity and a toilet. And this is the river up close, the Tapa Lapa. The one that I said recently in my eastern sermon reminded me of rivers in Vermont, besides all the trees which are different, the rocks and the rivers. Tapa Lapa means abundance from underground. We met people in the community of La Chinda who similarly, this is the Uluwa River, similarly are resisting hydroelectric dam projects in their community. And Betty Vasquez is pictured in the top left, who is similar to Bertha Gossadis, a feminist and an environmentalist. And again, this community, they have such an incredible analysis of what's going on and really understand that the economic model that's being propagated has led to a lot of the problems. And when we asked this community, what message do you want us to bring back to the United States? They said, stop sending military aid to Honduras. Again, another photo of some human rights and land defenders pictured here in the very front with our delegation. And I just want to say, I think maybe some people, since I've returned have asked, gosh, it seems so dire. What are people doing? And I just want to say, La Lucha Sige, people are the struggle continues and people are just incredibly persistent and filled with the fire to keep on making, to resist the forces that are working Honduras and are looking for solidarity. I mean, we got at that in La Chinda when people were sort of suspicious of us and said, why are you here? And we said, we're here to be in solidarity with you. We were greeted with applause, like rousing applause. Her sign says, the water is not to be sold. It's to be cared for and defended, no to extractivism. This young man's sign says, and I'm sorry, no, I'm going over my, so the last thing I want to say is about the continuing movement against the current presidency, which Hondurans many refer to as a dictatorship. People have been trying to reclaim the streets. And there's currently, I mean, just this week, there were political protests in which people were tear gassed. And I know from what I can tell from local news assassinations happening. And one of the important things we did as a delegation was to accompany people in this vigil, calling for the freedom of political prisoners, and use our bodies, our U.S. passport-protected bodies to offer some safety to people as they gathered in front of the U.S. embassy. So that's where we are in this photo. And we are also asked to tell the truth. So this is us meeting. There's no ambassador to Honduras right now. There's a Chard de Ferre, Heidi Fulton. This is our delegation meeting with Heidi Fulton and the human rights officer, accompanied by two people from Bahua Oguan who had been jailed and then released to share some of our truth and stories from our visit. You can, I can talk to you later about the Berta Gassadis Human Rights and Honduras Act. This is something that's currently been introduced to the U.S. Congress, which would suspend U.S. military and police aid. So this is one kind of aid that people would be glad to have stopped to Honduras because of a lot of conversation about aid. Military and police aid would be great if we were not contributing in that way to Honduras. Peter, Congress, and Peter Welch is a co-sponsor of this in case anyone's wondering. But it would be great to continue to encourage him and his staff and others to support that. So I'll just wrap up by saying if you want to learn more and support the work, there's a table over there where you can sign up for email alerts through the UU Service Committee or Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity and also to make a donation. We're hoping to organize a speaking tour to bring Hondurans to the U.S. to share their experiences so you can make a donation. You could buy a t-shirt which is also going to the organization and you can find out more at the table. So thank you all. Thanks so much, Joan. That was just really amazing. And for our first speaker, so everybody's trying to be the impossible by the way, which is we have three very intrepid volunteers that are going to try to talk in 20 minutes about their experience on the border in El Paso. And first of all is Abby Collahan, retired teacher from Ontario. She regularly volunteers for the community lunch and she's so eager to share what she's got to say here. She spent the two weeks in El Paso with the administration. Thank you. I'm starting with a map. I want you to notice how far Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are. Guatemala is 2,000 miles away from El Paso. So El Salvador and Honduras are even that much further. Long journeys for these people. Another map that shows many of the cities involved in the earth, in the news, you'll notice that every city has a sister city across the border. There is so much just economic activity that goes from El Paso to Juarez and that goes from Laredo to Nuevo Laredo every day. So when Trump talks about shutting down the border, he's really saying something that just can't happen because it would be an economic calamity. Every day in El Paso, 23,000 pedestrians cross. 21 million cars cross annually. El Paso is the safest city along the US-Mexico border and it has 600,000 plus people, almost the same number, or about the same number of people as all of Vermont. Now Sally's gonna, we're gonna sort of jump up and down. Hi, my name is Sally DeSigo. I live here in Montpelier. I went down with these two friends to El Paso and I stayed there almost three weeks. Here are some beautiful faces that we wanted to share with you. My little piece is going to be about what happens to the migrants when they reach the border. When they're on American soil, they have the right to request asylum and they turn themselves in and they're put in detention centers, which we didn't enter. We were not allowed to go into any of the detention centers. Usually from what we've heard, the people we met, they were in detention for three to five days and then released to a nonceation house. So I brought this Mylar blanket in case you want to feel it afterwards. This is what they're given. A Mylar blanket, a space on the floor, cold sandwiches. It's crowded. It's noisy. Many of our friends told us they got yelled at. The lights are kept on all night long. The air conditioning has turned up very high. The migrants call it the ice box. You've probably heard about this, some of you in the news. They remove their shoelaces, their belts, and they are released with a shackle on their ankle. I call it a shackle. It's an ankle bracelet that has a box on it that has their UPS there. No, where do you call it? GPS of where they're going. Oh, let me advance these slides. Here I am yanking away. I don't know. I haven't got this slide. It's awesome. It really shows what it's like. I think it was mentioned already that they are families. We saw families. A mom and a child or a dad and a child. Usually two. Two by two they came. You need to hear about Annunciation House because it's an incredible place. It doesn't look like much. This is Annunciation House started in 1976 by a group moved by the gospel to live with the poor as Christ had. When working with the poor, the initial volunteers realized that the most underserved were the undocumented as they weren't eligible for any other services in the city of El Paso. They were the neediest and the poorest. That has been where their focus has been. This is the inside of that building we just saw. Annunciation House has several buildings in El Paso. In each one, the volunteers live, the long-term volunteers. There are supplies that come from all over El Paso and Texas and the country. The rooms are just full of such supplies. Joe will talk about them later. This is another one of the Annunciation Houses. You'll know that on neither house was there any signage at all. It's just as plain as plain can be. This one was near the bus station. In this particular house, we visited it as our only day off, happened to correspond with Trump's visit to El Paso. What Ruben Garcia did, he's the man in the white hair, was he had a press conference and invited the press in town because he wanted to get the message out, not about how the migrants coming in were rapists or drug addicts, but he wanted to show the real face of these families and the families were interviewed. The man in the dark suit and the striped tie was a migrant. He came through in 1988 from El Salvador and after his parents had been assassinated, his parents are actually those pictured above the rainbow. He is now a tax-paying citizen in very good standing. I want to talk a little bit more about Ruben Garcia. As I said, he's been the director since the beginning, since 1976. He is involved in every part of an enunciation house. He doesn't have a secretary. He doesn't have an assistant. He is the one who drives to the fast food chicken place to pick up chicken for $300 to bring to each of the different pop-up sites. We were stationed in the La Quinta. There were probably five sites where the asylum seekers were housed when we were in El Paso. We were at one point in Las Cruces, but then we were transferred back. As I said, he doesn't have a secretary. The youth group at our church decided that they wanted to spend some of their money to donate to an enunciation house to purchase some bags. You'll see later on. Knowing from the website that there were several different addresses, I emailed to find out which address to send the bags to. I got an email back in 12 hours from Ruben himself. He has no secretary. He takes people to bus stations. He takes people to the hospital. As I said, he picks up chicken. He just does everything. None of the volunteers get paid. Yes, ICE calls him up three or four times a day. Ruben, can you take 100? Ruben, can you take 300? Ruben, I've got a family that needs to go to the hospital. Ruben, you know, they call him up all the time and he just says yes. He makes happen what happens. He said there's no faith tradition that isn't categorical about the commitment to the stranger than the collected, the rejected. He's an extremely religious man. This is a calling. He says since 9-11, the people in our country are harder, angrier, and less welcoming, but he's made it his mission to welcome those. I also was in El Paso for two weeks with Abby and Sally. What happens after detention, and Ruben gets that call in the morning, let's say at 11 o'clock, there are volunteers stationed in many and all of these sites. As Abby said, there's like six sites that are there all the time, and then they have to open up new sites at La Quinta Inns, and I will always stay at a La Quinta Inns from here on out, because even though they just got half paid for their rooms, they were tremendously welcoming to everyone, not just the volunteers, but mostly to the migrants. So at 11 o'clock, Ruben gets this call from the detention center, and then Ruben starts calling around to see where the spaces are, and if there aren't enough spaces, which in we were there, there were not, they open up a new site, a temporary site at a La Quinta Inn. This is a bus that came, so these buses come through daily, and we get anywhere from 50 to 130 migrants arriving for help after they come out of detention a day, just one site, just one site. And so they come out of, this is actually right in front of a La Quinta that we worked at, so they come out of the bus, they're escorted out of the bus, and the United States and detention and ICE says goodbye, and then they walk in and think of yourself in a hotel La Quinta breakfast area, okay? So 50, this is a bus that had 50 people that day, and they come in and they sit in the tables, they stand up, they sit on the floor, there's not enough space for everyone. And then there's a volunteer in each of these sites, and it has to be Spanish speaking. And there are messages, and they are welcomed. And at this point, I got really teary-eyed from what I heard from the welcome. Normally, we've been hearing, I don't know why I understood what he was saying, but in any event, maybe somebody, because they speak in Spanish, so maybe somebody translated it for me. But I got teary-eyed, and this is what they say. So if you want to, I invite you to close your eyes, put yourself in the space of a migrant, of a person with a family, with young children anywhere from pregnancy, infancy, to most of them six, seven, eight years old, girls and boys, and then some teenagers. And they say welcome. We welcome you here. You are safe here, and this is what they hear for the first time after that 2,000 mile journey. 95%, excuse me, and then after detention, where one thing that was not said is that they told us that, did you see that picture with all the space blankets, that the people who work in the detention center see them as almost like animals on a farm. It's feeding time, and that's what they call them. It's feeding time for the numbers, that's what they say. So here they arrive and are given the message you are safe here. There is enough food for you here. We have food for you. We have water for you to drink, and we have a place for you to shower. Take care of your body. We have medicine here, and you will be warm here. You are welcomed and respected here, and we are so thankful that you are here. And volunteers will do their best to support you on your journey. So at which point we feed them, and someone from the group gets up and says a prayer, a very long prayer to God, and there are many people from different countries, but also different languages. So I don't know who's understanding what, but it was very wonderful to be in that moment, time with them. Very hopeful, very bright, hopeful people. Maybe because they were just so thankful to reach at least this destination where someone was willing to say we're glad you're here. Then after that it's time for intake. When we first arrived, we were supposed to get an orientation. There was no orientation literally within five minutes. We walked through the door into this La Quinta site, and the volunteers are many, there are many, many nuns from all over the world who come into community service, sisters of all sorts of orders, and there are people all over the United States and other countries coming. We were working with people from Ontario, and so it's now time to provide intake. So they get off the bus, they're lined up against a wall, and sometimes this wait, the second week we were there, we got the most in one day, which was 130 minutes, a lot of people. And by the way, these people are cycling out within 24 hours, they're gone. So a lot needs to take place. And so you can see the different colors. I would be the, I would be the rumus, I served the roles of rumusiner, and Abby was the runner. Sally was the clothing and destination bad person. And so I was literally taught. So a mother and a father, a mother comes in with the let's say a son, and I had to assign a room. So pink is one day, let's say Monday, blue is the next day, and yellow is the third day. And this is the only way we know where people are. My goodness. So you have to assign them, and it's two families to a room. So sometimes it's five people into two double beds. There was no such thing as queen size beds, I guess, for Quinta. And so you assign them and you have to make sure that you're putting female with female, male with male. And there's only a certain number of rooms that we have to make work. So there's a lot of shuffling around. So they go in and the people, the volunteers who do speak Spanish, this is all done in bedrooms at the La Quinta. So one bedroom is the central office. And there's two sites in that room. And so I would escort one family into one site and then another. And they are now doing intake. The information that they need, they fill out these slips of paper, which identifies who they are. Without this slip of paper, they're just lost. We just don't know who they are, where they are, and where they are at La Quinta and where they're destined to. And it's basically getting the names and ages of their children and them. And apparently, I didn't realize this, everyone had a destination. Everyone had somebody in the United States that was going to sponsor them. And they had their name and their phone number. And at that point, they're recording that information. And they immediately, in that moment, get on the phone with the sponsor from all over. There was even someone from Vermont. So one of these families, when we were there, came to Vermont. And one drove down from Maine and picked them up. Many followed them and most of them go on planes or go on buses. So this sponsor gets called and says, okay, we're here. Please make a reservation on a bus or a plane to get them to you. And do that within the next four hours. Then call us back and tell us what the plane flight number is in the day and the time. So a lot is happening during this time. The migrant actually talks on the phone and says, you know, we're here. And thank you very much just so they understand that this is really happening. So then there's I assign them a room, room number. And then after I sign in the room number, they're given a toothpaste and a toothbrush. I think that's it. And soap and shampoo, if we have it. And then in baggies. So that's one thing that we do. We prepare those bags beforehand and have them ready for them. And then I asked them in English to wait for Abby so she can run, so she can go to the room and show them their room. So Abby is called the runner. So they move from here. I must have said the word asparagus a million times. I'm still not saying it right. I don't speak Spanish. And so they have to wait for Abby. And so then Abby comes takes them to the room number and teaches them how to open up the door, how to use the water, how to use the toilet and to make sure that they not put the toilet paper in the basket or the garbage that they can flush it down the toilet, how to do the showers, make sure you're downstairs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at these times. And so then they leave. And then Abby leaves, comes back, and there's like five more families for her to scuttle around. And I think we walked like four miles a day just being there. And we need to go back. Okay. So then, and this is the medicine room. And so this, there's a medicine room. There's a clothing room. There's the clothing. They come in and everybody gets one pair of a new underwear and a new pair of underwear and a new pair of socks. Go ahead. And shoelaces. And shoelaces. So they need it. And then they're the medicine room is there, there were families there with mumps and scabies and colds and lots of, you know, lip problems. And there isn't any medical person there, except one of these, the nuns usually is a nurse. But one day there was nobody there who knew anything about medicine. And we called central office and I said we just don't have a volunteer for it. So we were providing medicine. Okay. And these are volunteers. Oh, so then anyway, so then you take that slip of paper and you put it on another board all over the room. And it says departures today and departures tomorrow. It's two boards. And then on one side of today is who's going away by playing and who's going away by bus, date, time and place. There are thousands of volunteers. All right, hundreds. No, I would say hundreds of volunteers, everything from providing food, all the churches, the Rotary clubs, church of Latter-day Saints, Catholic churches, Protestant churches, Unitarian churches, families who just come together as a family and provide food for 100, 200 people at a time. And, and then there's people who actually do this transportation. So you got to get people who have cars, big cars to carry many, many people to buses. And it's almost like half of them that arrive are gone by the next morning. And that's a lot of transporting. Not to mention that these people don't even know, they don't speak English, they have to make, you know, buses and things like many buses. And then there is a room with supplies. And a lot of what the volunteers do and what we did was actually prepare these destination bags and in it, you know, three sandwiches per person, three sandwiches a day, three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or maybe ham and cheese sandwiches that a church might offer. You never know. By the way, everything just shows up, it's a miracle. There weren't enough bags, so we had our own money, went to a dollar store and bought 100 bags. And then they take these bags with a bottle of water for each person and some sandwiches and some granola bars and they are literally driven away. You say goodbye. And like I said, that happens. So then we have these are volunteers. And and there is a volunteer who's supposed to be in charge of every shelter building in La Quinta, let's say. And and they're wonderful. These are nurses. These are three nurses. I mean, three nuns. They're just wonderful. And two of them were like in their 90s. And literally our days were like 11 hour days. And when it was time for us to actually go to sleep, we said we're going. We're leaving because it could have gone on forever. And the need. And Abby said, and I have to agree, I never felt more needed in my life. And then you're going to talk. And then we're going to talk about what it's like when they're on their way home. I didn't go to the bus station with any of the travelers, but Joe and I, I mean, I did spend a morning helping them get through security and then get on planes. And then a few days later, Joe and I actually were on our own plane back home. And we first went to Chicago. And lo and behold, there were we got them through security. And there were 10 families on our plane. So we got to wait with them. And one thing that you'll notice here is just the happy faces. And if you remember back to one of the first pictures where the Border Patrol agent was there with the kid looking up like this here, the people know that they're on their journey journey. And they're very, very excited. This is one picture I didn't take. We were sort of encouraged not to take pictures. And this I found on a Facebook site, and I'm very sorry I don't know the person who took this picture. But the reason I want to show it to you is the father and daughter reminded me very much of a father and daughter who were actually the first people who I took to a room when we were in Las Cruces. And the daughter was about the same age. She had a genetic disease called itchosis, I think. She had not this girl, but she had extremely dry scalp, extremely dry skin. Her fingernails were all cracking. Her eyelids were all red. But we learned that her name was Milagros. And Milagros means miracle. And it was just a miracle that they had arrived. And the joy that we had in meeting them was miraculous. And, you know, it was a joy that we experienced for the next two weeks. But just, you know, as I got to know this family over, you know, the 24 or 36 hours that they were with us, you know, I said earlier when I spoke, you get to know these families. You meet them at the door. You serve them lunch. You serve them dinner. You give them clothing at the clothing room. You, you know, give them medicine. You see them five or six or seven times in 24 hours. And you just really feel that you know them. Their smiles, their warm gratitude, their just thankfulness, their, I don't know, their hope. And it just, it comes back to you and, you know, all these wonderful feelings. And so there were miracles coming to us every day. And I really felt them with Milagros. And all of a sudden the word miracle started coming into our vocabulary. And Sally and I started seeing miracles everywhere. And she's going to tell you about some of them. Well, there were so many. I want to tell you one particular one that happened at the very beginning of our journey. We were in the lobby with some migrants waiting for transportation to the bus. And there was one woman there who was going to a cold city, maybe New York. You can't remember. So we were talking with her and we were at a lock into hotels. So there were guests at the hotel, you know, regular normal hotel guests. And this woman was checking out, this guest at the hotel. She was checking out and she looked over at this migrant woman and she said, I don't need this. And she took her coat off, her beautiful black coat and gave it to this woman. And it fit her perfectly. So that was just one small example of it. It still might be a crime. Give a hand to these amazing volunteers. Now we're going to hear from Pustizia de Migrante or the migrant justice folks. And I think we probably have two translators. But let me just say a little bit more about Beto Sanchez. He's a farm worker. I think I'm going to have said in Addison County and from Mexico, I don't know where, but what part of Mexico, Beto? In the far south. So he's been here in Vermont for the last four years. He was arrested by ICE just past December. Some of you may have read about it. And he spent months in immigration detention center, which you may tell you about. He was finally released and he was granted asylum. So it's a great victory for him. So he's a leader in the migrant justice community and also in the LGBTQ community. Okay, Pero and Will. Thanks everybody for being here and happy May Day. So my name is Cruz Alberto Sanchez Perez. Everybody knows me as Beto. And I came to Vermont in 2015 and March 20th. I came like all other immigrants. I know walking through the desert. I walked for three long days until I got to San Antonio, Texas. And I came to Vermont because I had family members and friends here and they recommended that I work on a dairy farm here. And so those of us who emigrate and come to the United States, we come with this idea that the U.S. is the country of second chances of the new opportunity for us. So all of us who come to the United States come for distinct reasons, but with the same basic motivation, which is out of necessity. In my case, I came seeking political asylum. And so in 2016, I put in my application for political asylum thanks to the support of the organization, Migrant Justice. And so when we get here, those of us who work on the farms, we usually live on the farms. And many of us don't have good accommodations or good housing. Some of us even live in the same buildings along the way they're next to the cows. And so nobody feels free to be able to speak up and ask for the things that we need to ask for a day off or ask not to work so many hours because you're scared that if you speak out, you'll be fired, you'll be run off the farm. And because if we live where we work, we feel very isolated. And then those of us who are immigrant workers, we don't have a social life outside of work. It's just from work to your housing, back to work. And then if you have a day off, then you use that to go to the store. And that's why Migrant Justice exists. And that's why Migrant Justice exists. So Migrant Justice was formed and founded by farm workers in Vermont. And the organization was founded after the death of a young dairy worker named Jose Obe who died in a work accident. And so those of us who live and work on the farms started to come together to meet in community assemblies to try to find solutions to our problems. And so through that, we have wage campaigns. And a lot of these campaigns have had great success. So one early success was the driver's license campaign. Before this, if you were driving and got pulled over by the police, you had a lot of problems if you didn't have a license. But we had success so that now we can get driver's licenses. And then we've also won campaigns for milk with dignity and campaigns against the collaboration between police and immigration or what we call the poli migra. I'm a little nervous, this is one of the few times I've spoken in public. So I want to share a little something. Right now I feel really excited and happy because I've been granted asylum. And naturally thanks to people who shared the petition for my case and that generated over a thousand letters of support from people here in Vermont. For that to happen, I spent three months behind bars in jail while I fought for my asylum case. These were three really difficult months for me because I was alone. But at the same time, a lot of people showed their support for me and this is the first opportunity I've had to be able to publicly give my thanks. And this is something important that migrant justice does to wage campaigns when people like me are detained to fight for their freedom. So I want to thank all of you here who have been in solidarity with us. And my experience in jail was very difficult. It would be hard for me to say that I had a good day while I was behind bars. This is a country that has a lot of abundance that has plenty of food but not inside. There were more than 45 of us were being held in a room smaller than what we're in now. And I came to this country looking for asylum because of discrimination I faced and persecution that I faced in my home country. And then when I was in jail, I found that same discrimination. I'm very thankful and thank you for listening to me. Welcome to your question. So anybody have a question for the panelists? And if you could speak up so everybody can hear you. Regarding the Mexican border and the people that spoke earlier, I thought you were saying all of those people were applicants for asylum. Is that right? All the people coming through? Yes. And so what happens to these applications? I mean they're only in detention for a couple of days. Yeah. They were each given paperwork. I mean we don't know exactly the best answers but they were all given paperwork that told them a date that they would have to report back to meet some kind of judge. And then from there who knows. But it was within a three-month window. But my sense was that they had to check in. But then there would be another date given and then another date given. One of the problems has been that people sometimes think that they have to report back to El Paso. So they might be in New York unless they asked a lawyer to change the locale, then they do have to go back to El Paso. But if they have the wherewithal, if the sponsor has the wherewithal, they can get the next court hearing actually in the city where they are. And as far as I know, if you have a lawyer, you have about a 60% chance of being granted asylum, at least at one point when I read an article. But if you don't have legal representation, your chance is almost negligible. So that's a problem. I just want to add to that that my understanding is that places like Annunciation House only take in people who have officially presented themselves to Border Patrol and who are going through a formal sort of sanctioned process right through our immigration authorities. And that they have to have a sponsor as well. So the whole ankle bracelet. So anyone who might have crossed not through an official, you know, border entry and is outside of the system isn't going to end up at Annunciation House. I also just want to give a little plug that there's a group of folks in Vermont, mostly Chittenden County and Central Vermont, who have been working on over the last year on sanctuary issues and are organizing a workshop for probably June 16th to look more at how we can support accompaniment of people seeking asylum, which will be hosted here at the Unitarian Church. Other questions? The sponsors. Who are the sponsors? Family members for the most part. Four friends. In other words, if any of you wanted to do that, then you could get that information to the Annunciation House and get help from the churches. And just to add to that, this is a change in policy that we've seen under the Trump administration that of course for many people who are entering the country, the family members who would sponsor them would be undocumented themselves. And there was sort of a policy to keep those systems separate. But under the Trump administration, there have been many arrests of sponsors. So there's a real chilling effect happening where family members who are stepping up to sponsor folks who are coming and asking for asylum are being put at risk themselves. And that's a change that we've seen really just in the past six months. Yes, sir? Do you, you had such good relationships with people that I wondered whether some of them knew that they could stay in touch with you in any way without any danger in their safety. So I wondered whether any of them, you know, that your hearts went out to could contact you and tell you how they're doing. It was very clear to the volunteers that we were not to go there, not ask their stories and not take pictures and not become bad at all. So no. Yes? I noticed on the church calendar for Friday night that there's a no more deaths film screening. And so that might be something that might interest a lot of people in the, because that's obviously a border issue. Yeah, thank you for that. So on Friday, we are in solidarity with the organization no more deaths. They work in Arizona and they are having a call of action. So here in Montpelia, it's the art walk. So you want to look at beautiful art. We're going to have art talking about the people that cross the border and disappear and they don't make it. And we're going to be from the state house through this street with special art. And then we'll come to the church and we'll show this movie called Andeterre, which is about the story of this organization that it's helping people and also shows about the disappearance of people too. And later we're going to have a discussion. So please come because we want to tell you that now all these things that are coming up that happen in the south border are starting to happen in the northern border here in Vermont. It's not in the news yet, but we have to get ready and not allow this to happen. What time? So it starts at 4.30, but it's going to go from 4.30 to 5.00 to 6.00 that we're going to walk. In 6.30 the movie is going to be shown at 6.00 here. You mentioned, and I might get the number wrong, that 16,000 federal soldiers have been deployed to the border. Is that, you know, there were 4,000 national guard troops, 4,000. 16,000 border patrol agents are currently on the border. Okay, thank you for that. And that's the entire border, not just Texas. I believe so. So you can see the strain on the border patrol, right, to contain, you know, illegal immigrants. It is tremendous with so many people trying to cross it illegally. I guess 16,000 sounds like a lot to me, but apparently it's a long border. It's a long border. I wanted to ask about the logistics of your volunteer work, and in particular, how did you manage housing and food and stuff like that? I was thrilled to see your group had gone because I was trying to figure out a way to go, and then didn't really want to go alone, didn't know how it would work, and then I saw, oh, here's an entire group that went. So we volunteered through Annunciation House. It was actually coordinated by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, or the College of Social Justice, and there's an application over there. You can go for a two-week stint. We had our housing at the La Quinta where we were volunteering. You can either, you know, stay, no, we didn't expect to actually, we had an Airbnb all lined up, but then when they sent us to Las Cruces, they said, oh, we'll provide for you, and we had our meals there as well. So room and board are free. The asylum, if they have a lawyer, they're 60 percent more likely to be successful in that application, and in the Vermont legislature last year, we passed some legislation that said that defense attorneys could advise their clients on just immigration matters, but the underlying as it had originally been introduced actually would have guaranteed legal representation for anyone forcing deportation, or I think even a status hearing. I'm wondering if people who are really familiar with what's happening here locally could talk about how often deportations are coming up for people living in Vermont and how useful, like really ensuring legal representation, which is a policy in other jurisdictions, like in New York that has been really successful. How much should we be fighting for that here in Vermont? Yeah, thank you for the question. So just recognize representatives, I mean Colburn's here and Representative Gina as well, and thank you both for being here and for your leadership on that bill, which unfortunately didn't go as far as we wanted it to at the outset. It is incredibly important. People will be surprised to hear that there is not a single attorney in the state of Vermont who will represent people in deportation proceedings when they're in custody. There's not one lawyer in Vermont who represents immigrations in deportation proceedings when they're in detention. So there's a tremendous need for legal resources, and the best way to do that would be for the state of Vermont to empower and fund the Defender General's Office to be able to provide that resource. It's something that the public defenders want to do. Many of them are qualified to do it, but they don't have the authority or the funding to do it. So that's something that everybody can and should be supporting. There's a tremendous need for immigration lawyers in Vermont. There are great immigration lawyers in Vermont, but are just limited in the services that they provide, and the need is great and growing. We regularly have cases of people who are in detention and who need lawyers for detention, a removal procedure for bail, for asylum, for a number of things. So yeah, thank you for raising that important issue. And then in terms of certain numbers of people, it fluctuates. It's been as high in the past couple years as one a week of people who are being arrested in Vermont and put into removal proceedings. It's a little less than that right now, but we're seeing more arrests of people on the border by border patrol. Those cases tend to take somewhat of a separate route, but also need legal resources. At first, I heard you say that no attorney in Vermont would represent, and then I heard you say they're qualified attorneys in Vermont, but they can't represent, so you can explain why that is. Sure. So yeah, there are no immigration lawyers in Vermont who represent people in deportation proceedings or in removal proceedings, as they're called, if they're in detention. And what I've said is that the Public Defender's Office or the Defender General's Office have attorneys on staff who are trained immigration lawyers, who would be able to represent people, but they don't have the authority or the funding to do so. So they're limited to represent people in criminal proceedings, which is a different court, different body of law. So that's why the bill that was introduced was so important and hopefully in the future will be passed. That will allow public defenders, people who work for the state of Vermont, to represent immigrants in deportation proceedings. Yeah, the style of the grantee. There was other people, you know, the 40 percent or the 100 percent of those who don't have attorneys. What then happens to the people that we saw who were sent up to the North or to a friend or whatever? They become deporting. So if you're denied your asylum claim, you have to wait 30 days in order to be able to appeal your case or sign for what's called voluntary removal to be sent back to your country. And then if your petition for voluntary removal is denied as well, then in another 30 days you'll be deported. Good question for her. The impression that those countries in Central America were going through climate change and as a result, and drought as a result, crop failures as a result, another reason to leave. That's true. So Sally was asking me, she's under the impression that climate change is a big factor in drought and other reasons people are leaving. And yes, I heard that a few times and asked about it directly once with some of the community groups. And people did name it, you know, they said the little land that they do have or might have to grow their own food on, you know, that because of drought they're able to grow less and less. And people, what we really thought, people being forced out of the countryside into cities, to cities where there's the gang violence and then they leave. But it wasn't an issue that was at top of mind, right, that those weren't the most pressing, most urgent issue that wasn't that that people could name, although it's I think pretty evident that that is a major factor. In terms of how milk with dignity is doing in terms of improvement of life for migrant workers. Yes, we have migrant justice that's been fighting grassroots organization. One thing that we have is the milk with dignity program that brings corporations to pay a better price for the milk. We know that the dairy industry is suffering incredible. Farmers are not making what they need to make, which is creating more pressure to the workers. So they cannot pay a minimum wage, they cannot improve the housing, they cannot keep good schedules or days off. We hear that the farmers are struggling to, but also that brings more like mistreatment or worse conditions in the farms. So with the milk with dignity program what we do is in this case we have Ben and Jerry's, the first company that signed they are paying money to the farmers that's going to be used to comply with better like living conditions and working conditions. So wages are going to go up to the minimum state wage that that's not like if you know the law agricultural workers are exempt for getting like state minimum wage. So if they are under the program they are going to get that and then there are plans for improving the housing and there are plans for maybe getting a day off depending on the needs of the worker. There's a whole court of conduct with different things that are under the law and beyond the law. So this program is bringing this kind of change and dignified living conditions and working conditions. We're looking to expand this because we only have Ben and Jerry's for now it's been a year since the program has happened and we see the difference. When we receive a call from a farm that's under the program there is a group of investigators they can solve that they are independent of migrant justice they talk between farmers and workers so they are the bridge. When we receive a call that is not under the program we can have different options we can go and talk to the farmer but we cannot enforce anything and they can say we don't have the money. We can go to the Department of Labor and ask for wages like theft if happen or wages that are delayed but the Department of Labor is only going to send a letter twice. There are no investigators they call it's difficult to enforce this thing. So that's why we believe in the medical entity program that's a solution that the work is created and it's not waiting for new laws or it's not waiting for the government it's just bringing economic justice who's making the profit and really paying a better price for the month. I just wanted to thank everyone for being here tonight. I know all of us members of the audience are in deep support of all of the organizations and at the same time I just wanted to expand the focus a tiny bit and remind ourselves that here in Vermont there's an extraordinary problem that we're all struggling with and that is we have our own migrant community our own folks who are becoming invisibilized homeless folks in here in Montpelier and all across the state there's hundreds and hundreds of folks who don't have jobs who don't have homes and our need of great support so as we support migrant justice and all of the great work that the UU Church is doing let's also remember we also have folks here in Vermont that need our time and attention. So tonight's program is a fundraiser for Annunciation House and for the Honduran Human Rights Speakers Tour so I invite you all to look at the literature on the table which can give you an idea of things that you can do to get involved and to actively help. There's a sign-up sheet if you want more information about the Central Vermont Refugee Action Network and there are refreshments so please help yourself. So any money that you provide to go to the Annunciation House we can unequivocally say it will go directly to Ruben Garcia and it will go directly to the frontline sites. There's no administration costs there's no volunteer in Annunciation Network of Charity that gets paid including Ruben Garcia. Thank you all so much for coming tonight.