Erika Pinheiro: What's really happening at the US-Mexico border -- and how we can do better

未能成功加载,请稍后再试
0/0

Twice a week,I drive from my home near Tijuana,Mexico,over the US border, to my office in San Diego.

The stark contrast between the poverty and desperation on one side of the border and the conspicuous wealth on the other always feels jarring.

But what makes this contrast feel even starker is when I pass by the building that those of us who work on the border unaffectionately refer to as the black hole.

The black hole is the Customs and Border Protection,or CBP facility, at the San Ysidro port of entry,right next to a luxury outlet mall.

It's also where,at any one time,there's likely 800 immigrants locked in freezing,filthy, concrete cells below the building.

Up top: shopping bags and frappuccinos.

Downstairs: the reality of the US immigration system.

And it's where,one day in September of 2018, I found myself trying to reach Anna,a woman who CBP had recently separated from her seven-year-old son.

I'm an immigration attorney and the policy and litigation director of Al Otro Lado, a binational nonprofit helping immigrants on both sides of the US-Mexico border.

We'd met Anna several weeks earlier at our Tijuana office, where she explained that she feared she and her son would be killed in Mexico.

下载全新《每日英语听力》客户端,查看完整内容