The Border Between Then & Now: A Conversation With People Threatened With Deportation

This Thursday, September 22nd, 2022, there will be a live-streaming event, sponsored by WNET 13 (PBS), called “The Border Between Then and Now” that continues the conversation about the US’s putative and draconian immigration policies. Perhaps forgotten by many as a relic of the Trump years, the debates around immigration stretch well into America’s past and are still with us today.

In recent days, for example, we have been following with a kind of bewildered horror the accounts of the Governors of Texas and Florida loading legally admitted immigrants onto buses and sending them to various liberal enclaves up north, a stunt that may play well with their base but is horrifying in its utter lack of humanity. We remember during the Trump years the assaults on DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival) and the camps set up by ICE that were used to house immigrants seeking refuge in the most inhumane conditions. It wasn’t until a ProPublica reporter released audio of the conditions in these camps, including the howls of children, that the general public began to realize what was being done in their name.

These issues seem to bubble up in the news now and then but they are an ongoing nightmare for countless families and migrants seeking some kind of stability.

In this course, the idea of the border, not to mention the question of documentation, is central to the way that we write about ourselves and the world. In this episode — which is the last in a series of events under the general title Sometimes We Must Interfere: Conversations on Confronting Inhumanity, a series curated by the brilliant Brian Tate — we hear from 3 asylum seekers who have for years pushed back against their own deportation, even while being subject to the humiliation and anxiety of ICE check-ins. Some of these people have been in the States for years, even decades. It is the only home they know. Hear their stories about the impact of living under this nightmare system and how to get involved in efforts to push back against them.

We will hear panelists Hüsniye Çöğür, Ravi Ragbir, and Naïscha Vilmé talk about their own painful and frustrating experiences navigating the immigration and asylum processes.

The event is online and free, but you do need to register, which you can do by clicking HERE