Over a thousand protestors gathered in San Ysidro to protest harsh conditions in borderlands refugee detention centers, including Southwestern College Trustee Roberto Alcantar, who called for an end to “atrocities” against migrants and refugees.
SWC students joined the protest after Democratic Congressional leaders visited the centers and called them “concentration camps.” Elected officials described squalid conditions where detainees had no running water, children were separated from their parents and thousands slept on filthy concrete floors.
“A lot of us who are engaged politically and who follow current events, we know about the atrocities, but a lot of folks do not,” he said. “So the goal here is (to help) folks who may not have been paying attention to see the atrocities done in the name of our government.”
Alcantar said it is essential that more Americans speak up.
Alcantar said the detention controversy has become a global issue “about our morals and our values of who we are as people.” He urged communities to unite and push members of Congress to do more.
“They’re in a position of power where they can have influence over this,” he said. “They can bring up these issues in committees, they can question the agencies. We need to hold our elected officials accountable to make sure they are doing everything they can to advocate against this issue.”
Pedro Ruiz, program director of the American Friends Service Committee, said refugees are being used as pawns in a fraught political climate.
“I’ve seen the process of militarization (of the border) where basic civil and human rights protection are being trampled by the U.S. government,” he said. “Human rights abuses are taking place on U.S. soil and they’re being perpetrated by agents of the U.S government, namely CPP agents and ICE agents.”
Ruiz said Mexico is complicit in the crisis.
“The U.S. and Mexican governments aren’t doing enough to address the humanitarian issues associated with the fact that (refugees) are being pushed around to other countries,” he said.
Four counter-protesters rallied at the human rights marchers, including a supporter of President Donald Trump who said Mexico has a dismal human rights record.
“(Mexican officials) don’t worry about the real children that die in the process, in the train, that they are kidnapped,” said the Trump supporter, who refused to give her name. “You go to the train station or bus station and you see the walls pasted with lost children or lost people because they were coming this way, because they were kidnapped by the cartels for ransom. (Mexican officials) don’t care (but) they try to manipulate the spublic information for the Americans that are naive and they have open borders.”
