The international accompaniment movement teaches us that to sustain an emergency response to state violence, we must build durable, collective and supportive structures now.
Targeted state violence and rising fascism are being met with creative organizing by people in Minneapolis and across the country, from mass marches to neighborhood mutual aid to ICE watch foot patrols. These are all beautiful manifestations of resistance that have kept many people safe and demonstrated widespread repudiation of the Trump administration’s policies.
Yet as state-sanctioned violence becomes more coordinated, normalized and national in scope, we must continue adapting our response systems to shifting needs. Emergency response structures set up in moments of crisis can often lead to isolated, reactive decision making with responsibility falling on a few shoulders, creating the conditions for burnout, security failures, movement fragmentation and individual and organizational missteps or even collapse.
Here we can draw on some hard-earned lessons from our predecessors in the decades-long international accompaniment movement, who witness, stand with and provide security support for human rights defenders, communities and activists under attack by authoritarian regimes in Latin America.In response to sometimes devastating losses, accompaniment organizations developed a set of skills and strategies over many years for collaborative, sustainable decision making to respond to security incidents while under conditions of constant threat. We ourselves learned these skills in our many years of working with accompaniment organizations in Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia from 2008 to 2022.
We share here principles and practices from this legacy, which we hope organizations and networks, whether formal or informal, can use to develop emergency response structures that are sustainable, don’t overly burden a few individuals with the difficult decision making, actively build collective capacity and shared analysis, and support skill-building for more people in our movements.
What we present here are suggestions, and we invite you to adapt them to particular organizations and situations. They may take a bit more planning and preparation than may seem available in moments of urgency. But if we want to sustain our movements for what, unfortunately, is likely to be a long struggle, we must begin now to put durable, collective and supportive structures into practice.
1. No one person decides alone
Decision making in emergency security situations is emotionally and mentally taxing. Stress can narrow our literal and metaphorical fields of vision. And because the weight of a decision can be incredibly heavy to bear — especially if things go wrong — no one ever made a decision alone in the accompaniment organizations of which we were a part. We had clearly established protocols for which people, based on their roles in the organization, would come together for specific emergency response decisions.
For example, we established regional subcommittees based on where a security incident occurred. Each subcommittee was composed of a security lead, a representative from the advocacy team and on-the-ground volunteers, who worked together to assess, analyze and respond to emergency situations.
Applying this principle in a U.S. context, organizers of a publicly advertised protest could set a team of folks who gather at an office or a home to monitor social media and news reports for security incidents or threats, and be ready to make decisions about emergency response.
2. Prepare decision-making structures and roles beforehand
Emergency response or crisis moments are when people are most activated and are also the most likely to lead to organizational, interpersonal or movement conflict. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, we are being subjected to situations of prolonged violence directed at ourselves and people we care for. We want to show up in the best way possible, yet often also feel frustration, impotence or rage.
In our accompaniment organizations, we mitigated stress and conflict (to the extent possible) by having clear processes and roles for decision making.
First, we frontloaded as many decisions as possible before an emergency, allowing us to focus on the situation at hand rather than spend time debating who would do what and delaying important support for the impacted individuals. Knowing who is going to be involved in emergency response reduces the need for conversation and shortens the response time.
The Peace Brigade International accompanies the Front of People in Defense of Land and Water in Amilcingo, Mexico. (Facebook/Peace Brigades International)
We have seen this play out in high-risk moments in our accompaniment work. For example, when we responded to nationwide protests that extended over months and saw daily murders of protesters by military and police forces, we set up a rotating decision-making group. Because roles and communication channels had already been agreed upon, colleagues didn’t have to debate who should verify information, call other allied organizations or set up our emergency response protocol. They could simply act.
Second, we made decisions in consensus. While clear decision-making structures are essential, that doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be hierarchical. We’ve found in our accompaniment work that decisions are easier to implement when everyone has a hand in shaping them. A consensus-based decision-making structure keeps any one person from carrying the whole mental load (see “No one person decides alone”) and lets us actually use the full brainpower in the room. We all come with different lived experiences, risk tolerances and ways of thinking, which means we’re bound to catch things others won’t and, luckily, vice versa.
This works best when folks talk it out together and create a clear timeline to decide. In the example above, if the group got stuck, they would start with a quick break to rest and regroup, and if that fails, go to a smaller predesignated subgroup — and, if even that doesn’t work, have a clear fallback decision-maker. Something else we’ve learned: Consensus tends to work better when we trust each other and each other’s criteria, so it helps to make the effort to get to know each other, grab a coffee or go for a walk before the emergencies happen.
3. Some participants in decision making should be offsite
It might seem logical that those directly involved in the emergency response should be onsite, able to see the situation firsthand and respond immediately. In fact, we learned in our accompaniment work that involving folks offsite as advisors or even decision makers can provide essential perspective, bring in crucial information and further spread the decision-making burden.
In one protest scenario, while tensions escalated on the ground, an off-site team a few blocks away tracked both police staging and local news sources and relayed that information back to organizers. This wider view allowed on-the-ground leadership to make informed choices without relying only on what was immediately visible.
4. Rotate the decision makers
Holding a decision-making role in an emergency situation is not easy; it means putting your body on high alert, navigating complex situations and grappling with violence directed at our communities. This, unsurprisingly, takes a toll on us over an extended period of time (more on this below).
Even if we believe we can hold this indefinitely, the reality is that, without moments to regulate our nervous systems, our bodies normalize the constant alertness, making it harder to activate when necessary and to properly analyze what is truly an emergency. We want our emergency decision makers to be well-rested, regulated and connected — for their wellbeing and ours, too.
That’s why we recommend that the decision makers in an emergency situation shift on an agreed-upon rotation. Depending on organizational structure, the best rotation might be every protest or event, or it might be a time period, like a week. This not only gives us a chance to skill up more folks in emergency response (always a benefit for our movements!), but it also gives us decision makers a chance to rest and recharge.
In the protest scenario previously mentioned, once things settled for the day, the people who had been making decisions rotated out. Some went home to sleep; others took quiet time away from phones and updates. A few days later, once they were rested enough to look at what they’d learned and what might need to change next time, they checked back in for the follow-up stage.
5. Institute Urgency Guides
Prolonged emergency situations make it harder over time to accurately recognize urgency. When everything feels critical, true emergencies can become blurred. Clear guidelines help mediate this by providing structure and clarity for decision making under sustained stress. In our accompaniment work, we used the following guidelines to categorize our responses:
On alert (prior to emergency): The situation seems to be escalating. We have seen a few signs indicating the risk level may be increasing (increased presence of armed actors, state or non-state, counter-protesters gathering, surveillance signs, suspected infiltration, etc.). Start to notify the security team (on and offsite) and start to implement increased security measures.
Immediate response (minutes to hours after): The emergency situation is active; the threat has not yet passed and there is potential for the situation to escalate or repeat. The physical and emotional well-being of impacted individuals is prioritized immediately.
Rapid (24 to 48 hours after): The specific situation has passed, but there is potential of it repeating in the near future. This could be because we will go to the same location in the next few days, or the event we are hosting will continue, or the aggressor is still nearby or indicating potential harm to our communities.
Follow-up (a few days to weeks after): The situation has passed. Here we focus on analysis and whether we need to adapt our organizational and movement strategy. This is also a great time to broaden the analysis by including allies in answering questions like: What was the aggressor’s desired impact? Have we seen this strategy used before? What are the increased security measures we may need to implement based on this situation?
We have used this for years in accompaniment spaces, allowing us to clearly mark stages in our response and who had to be involved. For example, when activists we were supporting suffered an assassination attempt, the attention moved from split-second decisions (immediate response) to checking in with impacted participants, ensuring medical attention, locating others who could be targeted next and finding safe houses, to adjusting security plans for the next day and watching for signs the situation might flare up again (rapid response). Later still, the group circled back to look at what had happened and what it meant going forward (follow up).
6. Establish ways to take care of yourself and your team before and after taking on decision-making roles.
When stepping into an emergency response decision-making role, it is essential to shore up your emotional resources before an emergency and repair your heart and mind afterward. This will look different for everyone, but all organizations and networks should dedicate time and space for everyone involved in emergency response to do this. You might employ the same tools for shoring up and for repairing: They could include a nice walk with your dog, tea with a close friend, reading a good book or taking a bath.
Whatever you need to rest and recharge, identify those activities and build them into your plans. We know this is hard, and to be clear, this level of care has not always been consistently present within accompaniment organizations; its absence often contributes to rapid turnover and diminished response capacity. Naming this matters. After more than a decade of collective work in emergency accompaniment, we have seen clearly that constant crisis response is not sustainable if people’s nervous systems are never given real opportunities to rest and regulate.
This is why we believe it is so important to speak directly about intentional, collective care practices not as an ideal, but as a necessary condition for the longevity and effectiveness of accompaniment and emergency response itself.
We don’t need to reinvent the wheel
These tools aren’t a panacea for the real risks presented by escalating state violence. They won’t stop all arrests, injuries, raids, deportations or assassinations. They won’t undo the harm already done or bring back the people we’ve lost. But the more we incorporate skillful emergency response tools into our repertoire, the more we can stay connected to one another under pressure, reduce preventable harm, and keep showing up again and again without burning out, fragmenting or turning on each other.
None of this work is new. We are drawing from the accumulated knowledge of mentors, organizers, human rights defenders, journalists, accompaniers, medics, lawyers and movement elders who have spent decades responding to fascist and authoritarian governments across regions and generations. From underground networks resisting military dictatorships, to civil rights organizers facing state-sanctioned terror, Indigenous land defenders, abolitionists, anti-colonial movements and transnational solidarity networks, people have long been building collective security, emergency response and care structures under conditions that mirror in many ways what we are facing now.
Luckily, this means we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We just need to know how to look to the past, to other contexts and to each other for guidance and support. The more intentional we are,the better we’ll be able to keep up the struggle so that, one day soon, we will not just have survived fascism but defeated it.
Explanation: Ever wonder what it would look like to crack open the Sun? The Egg Nebula, a dying Sun-like star, can unscramble this question. Pictured is a combination of several visible and infrared images of the nebula (also known as RAFGL 2688 or CRL 2688) taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The star has shed its outer layers, and a bright, hot core (or “yolk”) now illuminates the milky “egg white” shells of gas and dust surrounding the center. The central lobes and rings are structures of gas and dust recently ejected into space, with the dust being dense enough to block our view of the stellar core. Light beams emanate from that blocked core, escaping through holes carved in the older ejected material by newer, faster jets expelled from the star’s poles. Astronomers are still trying to figure out what causes the disks, lobes, and jets during this short (only a few thousand years!) phase of the star’s evolution, making this an egg-cellent image to study!
A 5-year-old girl detained in Dilley drew herself and her family trapped in a cage.Credit: Courtesy / Eric Lee
A 9-year-old girl detained in Dilley’s South Texas Family Residential Center says she wants to die, according to family attorney Eric Lee, who recently went viral when a protest erupted inside the facility as he tried to visit his clients.
“The 9-year-old has expressed that she wishes she was no longer alive,” Lee said in a Wednesday phone interview with the Current.
Lee said the mother conveyed her child’s alarming wish to him in a recent a phone call from within the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility an hour southwest of San Antonio, which houses over 1,400 people, including hundreds of children.
Lee represents a family of five, consisting of the 9-year-old along with 5-year-old twin sisters, a 16-year old brother, an 18-year-old sister and her mother. All are Egyptian citizens, and all have had birthdays inside the facility. The minors are not named in this article to protect their identities.
The family, which immigrated from Kuwait, has been detained in Dilley for eight months for what Lee calls “political retribution” from the Trump administration for the alleged crimes of the family’s patriarch, Mohamed Soliman. Soliman became a suspect in an anti-Semitic attack in Boulder, Colorado last June using Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower.
The attack left seven people injured. One 82-year-old woman died from injuries relating to the attack 24 days later. Soliman received 12 counts of federal hate crime and 118 state criminal charges.
When the attack occurred, Soliman had been estranged from the family for at least a year, living in his car over an hour away and working as an Uber driver, according to Lee. Soliman only saw his family once a week at most, the attorney added, saying they had no knowledge of his plans. The family has spoken out condemning the attack and the mother, Hayam El Gamal, is now seeking a divorce.
Over the months of detainment, their mental health has deteriorated, Lee said.
On a previous visit, the 9-year old daughter gave Lee a picture she drew inside Dilley. The drawing is of the Colorado house she hasn’t seen in the months she’s been in detention.
A 9-year-old child detained in Dilley for months drew this picture of her one-time home.Credit: Courtesy / Eric Lee
One of the five-year-old twins also gave Lee a drawing, which depicts her and her family in a cage. She told Lee that she had a dream that she was trying to run away from a wild animal.
“But she’s stuck in a cage and can’t get out,” Lee said.
The family’s younger kids also have begun skipping meals, “which they hadn’t been doing before,” Lee added.
People detained at the Dilley site have complained that the food inside sometimes is served with bugs, worms and mold. Lee described the water there as “putrid.”
The 16-year-old boy at one point suffered from appendicitis and was told to simply take a pain reliever before collapsing and being rushed to the hospital.
“He could have died,” Lee said.
But, if deported, the family could face certain death in Egypt, Lee claims, for cooperating with the FBI and speaking out against their patriarch.
The Detroit attorney says after months of detention, the Soliman family’s optimism began to rapidly decline in January.
“They really believed that the immigration judge was going to give them a fair hearing after he granted them bond in September,” Lee said. “And so they were hopeful, they were hopeful that they were going to be released through that process, and they weren’t.”
Meanwhile, even the older siblings have shown signs of worsening mental health, despite attempting to hold it together for their family, the attorney added.
“[T]he 16 year old, who’s been kind of, you know, rock solid, taking on the role of man of the house — his attitude has really begun to change,” Lee said. “And that goes for all of them.”
The oldest daughter, Habiba Soliman, was separated from her family once she turned 18 as punishment for talking to the press, Lee asserted. Separated from her family, she’s also been denied religious exemptions, he added.
“They’ve been calling me less in the last week or so, which I think is because they’re just sort of despondent and depressed,” Lee said of his clients. “That’s been the goal from the start, to ruin these children’s lives. And they didn’t do anything.”
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, who wrote the fiery opinion releasing 5-year-old Minneapolis boy Liam Conejo Ramos from the same facility, will consider the family’s third habeas case, but Lee doesn’t know when.
“It’s a deplorable situation. There’s really no silver lining,” Lee added.
Ron has not said much but I know he is not pleased because I waited too late to cook and heat up the bags of french fries and chicken parts. But even if I did I couldn’t eat a bite. In a few minutes I will soon go to bed. Sorry for not posting more. I have to carefully check my blood sugar to inject the correct amount of insulin. I respect and love those who come here with love and acceptance in their being. So very soon I am going to bed. But I have to do better. Hugs
ICE was desperate not to have another death in their concentration camps especailly a baby. This was a dilerberat attempt to kill the child. They left them stranded on the other side of the border. Think of it. They were lucky they were allowed to keep the money they had because I have read of ICE people taking the money before releasing the person. How can anyone support this? But maga wont know about this because right wing media won’t report on it and maga doesn’t go outside their media bubble. How can we live with this? How do the people who did this live with themselves? Do they have no humanity, no empathy? I am tearing up simply posting this, they did the act. A two month old child might well die do to the actions of the US government and the gang thugs they hire. Deep sadness. Hugs
Juan Nicolás had ended up in the hospital while in ICE detention. Now he’s in Mexico.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
ICE has deported 2-month-old Juan Nicolás with his mother and father to Mexico, despite the baby suffering from bronchitis while in ICE detention.
Nicolás’s mother spoke to Univision’s Lidia Terrezas by phone Tuesday, saying that they were left at the Mexican border with no phone and only the money they had in their commissary at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, an ICE facility where they were previously detained.
Terrezas said in an Instagram post that Nicolás is still sick and that his mother was only able to contact her because someone in the street let her use their phone.
“She is in distress, she’s panicking. They were sent to the same place they fled from,” Terrezas said.
In a follow-up post, Terrezas said that the family was able to pay for a hotel with their commissary money, adding that a GoFundMe is in the works to assist them. Texas Representative Joaquin Castro, who has been advocating for Nicolás and his family, said that he spoke with the family’s attorney and that they had just $190, in a post on X.
“To unnecessarily deport a sick baby and his entire family is heinous. My staff and I are in contact with Juan’s family. We are laser-focused on tracking them down, holding ICE accountable for this monstrous action, demanding specific details on their whereabouts and wellbeing, and ensuring their safety,” Castro said.
Nicolás had been vomiting and experiencing breathing issues while detained in an ICE facility known for unsanitary conditions, which also had a measles outbreak earlier this month. While the baby was sent to a hospital late Monday night, he was guarded by armed federal agents and released after only one day. His mother had to appear before an immigration judge the same day, where she was told they would be deported. Now Nicolás and his family have to fend for themselves.
This is horrific that a young person has had to live with racism all his life and now has to protect his family and others from a racist gang of thugs who only want to hurt brown people like him. He is doing a great thing but he shouldn’t need to do this in the land of the free. Hugs.
Cesar Vasquez, who has supported families of undocumented immigrants since age 14, has become a community lifeline – and a known ICE target
While most 18-year-olds worry about college papers and spring break plans, Cesar Vasquez drives through coastal California farm towns scanning for unmarked SUVs before dawn. He flips down his driver’s seat visor to look at a taped list of license plates he has already identified as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles, and jots down a few new ones he suspects could be. His phone buzzes constantly – tips from neighbors, text chains from volunteers alerting to ICE activity – all in an attempt to keep his community safe from being swept up in federal agents’ widening dragnet.
This is what organizing looks like for this son of undocumented immigrants. In his home town of Santa Maria, a small farming town on California’s central coast where over 80% of farm workers are undocumented, Vasquez has become both a crucial community lifeline and a known target of federal immigration enforcement.
Outside the ICE office in Santa Maria, California, Cesar Vasquez and a group of activists gather to decide who will patrol each neighborhood.
Vasquez began volunteering with the 805 Immigrant Rapid Response Network as a high school senior. Last August, he was hired full-time as a rapid response organizer, covering North Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, overseeing volunteers, supporting families and tracking ICE activity.
Routinely, he visits the families of detained immigrants. “There have been so many occasions where I walked through the door, and a kid was expecting their father or mother,” Vasquez said wistfully. “And it was just me, and I had to explain what happened to their parents.”
Other times, for Vasquez, the reality is personal. He recalled in December, speaking with families waiting for news about their detained relatives outside the immigration enforcement office in Santa Maria, when an ICE vehicle slowed down in front of them. The agent’s voice crackled from the car’s speaker, loud enough to carry through the open window: “How’s your mother, Cesar? We’ll go visit her soon.”
Vasquez drove straight home and found his mother washing clothes.
“I took her car keys and told her to stop everything she’s doing. My hands were shaking,” Vasquez said. “I then moved her to a secret location that I have precisely for this moment.”
As the sun rises in Santa Maria, Vasquez continues monitoring ICE activity in his neighborhood. The 18-year-old says he spends more time in his car than anywhere else these days.
Growing up as a birthright citizen of undocumented parents
Vasquez’s mother is one of the thousands of undocumented farm workers in Santa Maria whom he is trying to protect. She left her home in a tiny town in Mexico to cross the US-Mexico border at age 13 in search of a better life. Vasquez’s biological father was one of the first people she encountered – a Guatemalan American whose family was settled in California and who held US citizenship. He was also abusive and never legally married her, keeping her from accessing US citizenship, Vasquez said. When Vasquez was an infant, his mother ran away with her three children to Santa Maria, a town about 150 miles (240km) north of Los Angeles, where she found work in the strawberry fields. She has been trying to secure documentation for more than a dozen years now.
Vasquez distributes flyers on immigration rights to farmworkers in Santa Maria on 6 February.
Strawberry picking is physically demanding work, and the pay is minimal. Pickers spend hours bent over in the fields under the California sun, with no benefits, no sick days and no guaranteed work once the season slows between October and March. Climate change has made the labor even more precarious, disrupting growing cycles and shrinking paychecks. Rising costs of living – rent, food, transportation – have squeezed families further. In Santa Maria, where a two-bedroom apartment can cost $3,000 a month, many families crowd into single rooms or garages.
Built on an economy of strawberries, lettuce and wine grapes, Santa Maria has long depended on undocumented labor while rendering those workers largely invisible. Many arrived during waves of Mexican migration in the 1980s and 90s, settling into a community where immigration enforcement and workplace exploitation became routine. Before Donald Trump’s recent immigration priorities, ICE enforcement in the region tended to be more targeted – focusing on people with criminal convictions or referrals from local jails, rather than broad community sweeps. ICE didn’t even have a holding facility in Santa Maria until 2015.
But since 2025, enforcement has intensified dramatically with rapid‑response trackers documenting more than 620 immigration arrests across Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties, with Santa Maria often at the center of daily apprehensions. These high‑profile raids – often carried out with unmarked vehicles and tactical gear, drawing protests and criticism from community leaders – reflect a broader national surge in immigration enforcement under Trump.
Vasquez holds his mother along the river in Santa Maria. He keeps a feather with him, which he says brings spiritual cleansing when he burns sage.
When Trump was first elected, Vasquez was only nine years old. He was already well-acquainted with the repercussions of growing up in a mixed-status household.
“I mean, it’s common for most children of immigrants to be doing things for their parents like filling out their legal forms, right?” Vasquez said. “But in fourth grade, I had to learn what a warrant looked like and what rights I had.”
He was in a Halloween costume shop, age 14, when it clicked that his fears and concerns weren’t just his own. He overheard a woman at the register, saying she had saved all year to buy her son a costume, but it didn’t fit. The store wouldn’t take it back. Her shirt was stained with strawberries, her exhaustion visible. He’d seen his own mother do the same thing countless times, so he offered to buy the woman’s son the costume.
Building a network at 14
At age 14, Vasquez founded La Cultura Del Mundo, an entirely youth-led organization that eliminates what he calls the “red tape” associated with traditional aid. They prioritize direct, unrestricted support to families in need, asking, “How much do you need?” rather than requiring forms. The group then rapidly mobilizes whatever the family requests, whether that’s cash assistance, groceries, rent help or other essential support.
In August, La Cultura Del Mundo drew national attention when Vasquez organized La Marcha De La Puebla, a national protest against ICE raids that involved nearly 30 cities across 17 states, drawing about 10,000 participants.
Seventeen-year-old Claudia Santos is one of the many young people Vasquez has inspired. “My sister and I heard about a school walkout and just decided to go. After that, Cesar told us about a meeting at city hall, and that’s how I got involved,” Santos said. “I did it because I feel like the kids coming here from Mexico deserve a good future too.”
Vasquez packs up flyers to hand out to the immigrant community as they head to work in Santa Maria.
While Vasquez was organizing in high school, he was simultaneously struggling with his own mental health. He commuted by bus an hour each way to a school in a predominantly white neighborhood with good academic prospects.
When he told his counselor that he had anxiety, “she couldn’t understand that I was uncomfortable because I was brown in a white school, where the principal was racist and the students were racist. It led me to become really suicidal.”
Being misunderstood drove him closer to his community. He transferred to his local school and graduated early. Despite being accepted into San Diego State University, he deferred enrollment.
Most kids who grow up in Santa Maria look forward to leaving. One of Vasquez’s older sisters became a teacher in Los Angeles, the other a graduate student in the UK. But Vasquez likes that the impact of his work is immediate.
Tina van den Heever, one of his teachers from Santa Maria high school, said it was clear Vasquez was a leader with great potential: “To be honest, I worry about his safety, because as we’re seeing, the United States tends to silence people who stand up in the way that he does.”
‘I think about the kids being left behind’
During a four-day raid in late December, Vasquez’s uncle was among the 118 people detained.
“I think about the kids being left behind,” Vasquez said. “The children home for winter break whose parents never returned because of the December raids. And there was no way to know what happened to them because school didn’t reopen until days later.”
Vasquez distributes flyers on immigration rights to parents.
During the raids, flower vendors disappeared from the streets. When Vasquez later visited the area, the children of a family he had gotten close to told him they had gone inside after hearing his warning. They were safe.
The work – the constant alertness, the phone calls at all hours, the weight of knowing families depend on his network – has taken a toll. But he sees no alternative.
“I’m continuously preparing for the worst,” Vasquez said. He keeps a “to-go bag”, extra clothes and cash in his car.
Every time ICE picks up someone in the Central Coast valley, Vasquez plays the same song in his car: Hasta La Piel (Down to My Skin) by the Mexican American artist Carla Morrison. The lyrics speak to having and losing, wanting and not being able to say, intense love and desperate fear of loss – an homage to those who have been detained.
“They want us to be afraid,” he said. “But fear is what keeps people isolated.”
In the back seat of his car, a whiteboard filled with encouraging messages for Vasquez sits alongside an American flag.
Jennifer Chowdhury reported this story while participating in the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s Kristy Hammam Fund for Health Journalism
I follow Allison Gill’s Daily Beans morning audio podcast which gives the news from the prior day with the sources to verify it. This is one of the stories they cover deeply. They now have a video version called Beans Talk on the YouTube channel MSW. I do recommend them as a valid news source. Hugs
As many here can imagine this was hard for me to post. I am shaking and crying but the post is important to get out. Children as property was how I was seen. I was going to put it on the roundup page, but it just doesn’t belong there; it does belong here. Thank you. Hugs
It is a fact that most mass shooters are males, mostly white males. But right wing media are so desperate to slander and smear trans people the same way it was tried to before the internet with other media against gay people. The know what they are creating is false but they don’t care because they know that others will believe it and repeat it everywhere. It is a sickness and curse to want to create that much hate and chaos against the most vulnerable communities in society. Hugs
A 5-year-old girl detained in Dilley drew herself and her family trapped in a cage.Credit: Courtesy / Eric Lee
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Cesar Vasquez, who has supported families of undocumented immigrants since age 14, has become a community lifeline – and a known ICE target
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