Power in Stories: An Internship with LAIAC
Guest Contributor: Tess Deane
More than numbers, graphs, or charts, stories have the power to connect one human to another and radically change the status quo, challenging a person to be empathetic. Although I agreed with this before my internship with LAIAC, at the time I didn’t fully understand why. However, internships are all about getting those early experiences that inform our values and give us a framework to understand nuanced problems. With LAIAC I was not only able to affirm that the legal path was right for me, but had the unexpected experience of connecting with and learning from real people in unimaginably difficult situations. Their resilience has been an inspiration, and sharing their stories has been a privilege.
The biggest part of my semester-long internship with LAIAC was interviewing people who were being detained at the Otero Processing Center in New Mexico. The aim was to ask them questions about the conditions of their detention and use their stories in the promotion of human rights and an end of detention for civil immigration violations. I think the memory of the first interview I did will stay with me forever. I had little knowledge of what immigrant detention centers were like or how someone may experience them. I spoke for over an hour with a woman who had been detained for months and felt my heart drop with every answer. She explained how she didn’t understand her rights, how she had limited access to fresh air, the unsanitary conditions, the verbal abuse from guards, the lack of transparency, the hunger, and, more than anything else, the wait.
Throughout the 25 surveys there were a wide variety of experiences, but the thread that connected them all was an anxiety-inducing wait. Detainees are left in a liminal space for sometimes months on end, a problem that is exacerbated by a backlog of asylum cases post-Covid. Their livelihood dangles precariously on a thread in front of them; whether they will be able to start a safer life and be reconnected with their families, or whether they will be sent back to their homes where they face persecution will be decided by judges overwhelmed with cases almost identical to their own. With no legal right to a lawyer and a complex legal code written in a foreign language, navigating the US legal system is an uphill battle. Again and again, I was told about teary, sleepless nights spent wondering whether they made the right choice to come here, if they would see their family again, if they have a future. With little entertainment and derogatory comments from guards, each day is a test of patience and faith. Some will ask to be deported to end the mental anguish, few will be granted asylum, but most will wait it out for months and still be sent home.
While, in my opinion, the very notion that people legally seeking asylum should be detained is inhumane, based on interviews with detainees I’ve learned about conditions of detention that we can attempt to address now. At the end of my internship, we compiled the stories of the interviewed detainees and noticed some common issues. Here are some of the recurring themes: There needs to be a more expedited process through the legal system, better equipped mental health facilities, more effective complaint systems and accountability measures, more food of greater variety, and gender equality within processing centers. To achieve this end, our country requires more awareness and dialogue about these inhumane conditions, and to learn to recognize immigrants/asylum seekers as worthy and valuable members of society, and not political bargaining chips. We need to listen to their stories and champion the voices of the voiceless. I’m thankful for my time with LAIAC for giving me the opportunity to learn more about the immigration system and share these important stories.
