Humanitarian crisis.
As you know, I live on the Texas/Mexico border. The Greyhound station in my city is currently overflowing with refugees from gang extortion and violence in Honduras, Nicaragua and San Salvador. There are literally hundreds of women and children sheltering there, many of the kids unaccompanied minors. They have no money. A large percentage have been dumped there by Wackenhut, the INS' s favorite for-profit corporate prison, where they had been held with minimum food and water, no bedding except plastic blankets, and almost no sanitary facilities. Conditions are so bad at Wackenhut that the Border Patrol union has complained that they're hazardous both to inmates and to the officers.
Who's helping them? Catholic Social Services, a Methodist non-profit that has been in operation here for over a century. Various other churches and private individuals are contributing on a smaller scale.
A Catholic shelter has taken on the responsibility of feeding the refugees. A Catholic school nearby has set up a call center with donated funds so that they can phone family members already in the States. The relatives are sending bus tickets so that these mothers and kids can join them in Chicago, Florida, wherever. The school and the Methodist center have been providing access to daily showers, while the Methodists are scrambling to make sure they all have cleanclothes available.
Where are the city and county governments? Four blocks away, with hands pressed over their eyes and ears. State government? We're talking about Rick Perry. The feds? The closest thing to federal help is individual Border Patrol agents who are donating diapers, bottled water and other necessities bought with their own money.
It's been a while since I was as angry about an injustice as I am about this. I'm posting this here because I don't want to have to deal with other posters who shall remain nameless and their predictable responses. This situation is an abject, flat on its face failure by governmental agencies. It should not be this way.
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