Activists respond to ‘attacks’ on migrant caravan on steps of Fresno courthouse

Activist Gloria Hernandez and around two dozen others stood outside the U.S. District Court in Fresno on Friday, expressing their dissatisfaction of how asylum seekers at the U.S-Mexico border are being treated.

For Hernandez, it’s not enough simply to stand by and watch as the crisis continues to unfold.

“Silence is complicity,” she said. “If we don’t say anything, it means we accept it. I don’t accept that America.”

The Central Valley Immigrants Rights Committee, Comite Resistencia and local activists like Hernandez held a press conference Friday outside the federal courthouse.

Friday’s gathering was the latest in a series of actions by Valley organizations and activists to bring not only attention to the issue, but also draw assistance and donations.

The group also came together at the court in response to what they say are “attacks, negative statements and disinformation” targeting the Central American caravan, said Stan Santos, with the Central Valley Immigrants Rights Committee.

Asylum seekers, Santos said, are entitled to human and legal rights under doctrines and international laws, such as the 1948 UN’s Human Rights Declaration. One of those rights is to have the opportunity to seek and attain asylum in a country other than their country of origin.

They have “the right to recognition as a person before the law and equality of treatment,” he said. “In other words, due process, one that we speak (of) quite a bit in the United States.”

Members of the caravan should have the opportunity to at least be considered for credible fear interviews — part of the asylum process to see if they can establish a credible fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political affiliation or membership in a particular social group.

“They should be considered as protected. They have a right to be considered as an asylee,” Santos said. “No one should be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, exile nor should they be subject to torture, cruel and human degrading treatment or punishment, such as what we are seeing right now at the border.”

Local activist Leonel Flores said an image of a woman, fleeing the tear gas and hate from the government with her two daughters, hit close to home for him.

“I felt personally attacked,” he said, who has two young daughters himself.

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimates there’s about 2,300 children at the border, Santos said.

“They are starting to feel the conditions. They are starting to feel the weather, they have no protection,” he said. “They don’t have an adequate food supply, they don’t have running water available at all times. They don’t have sanitary facilities. They are living practically in the open.”

President Donald Trump is trying to divide the nation, Flores said. “We are not going to repeat what Trump says,” he said.

There’s a need for unity, the activists said.

Local activist Humberto M. Gomez, who traveled from Parlier to join Friday’s event, said it was important to get out the message, that the actions by the Trump administration aren’t acceptable.

“We are immigrants as well,” he said, adding that the caravan members must be given the opportunity to apply for asylum.

Hernandez traveled to Tijuana in October before the caravan began to arrive. She dropped off donations at a shelter called Caritas, which translates from Spanish to “small faces.”

The shelter was already assisting other migrants and was making room for about 80 members of the caravan who would arrive the following month. Seeing the families and their children was “heartbreaking,” Hernandez said.

“Desperation in the faces of the families,” she described, when asked what she saw during her visit.

To donate, visit: https://www.gofundme.com/love-amp-support-across-the-border?fbclid=IwAR2NSqtQeDju6EWbL1mbTuD7iJ5OACFr-X4aizd2GU4_ZbPwXFCzM1PPEv0

This story was originally published November 30, 2018 at 5:22 PM with the headline "Activists respond to ‘attacks’ on migrant caravan on steps of Fresno courthouse."