white women watching

[lauradi7dw]

Today was my first time volunteering as an "accompanier" with the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network (BIJAN). It's a weird coinage, but accompanist means something else. It also isn't exactly accurate much of the time. The point is to have interested parties sitting in the gallery (audience?) at immigration court hearings. Often, though, the detainee is not there to be accompanied. At the South Bay Detention center (a branch of the Suffolk County house of correction) and in courtrooms at the JFK building in Government Center, there are video conference set-ups, so that the detainees can virtually be in court without leaving their building. Apparently, for final things (deportation yes/no, for example) they are there in person, but for something like a bond hearing, they aren't. Still, sometimes their lawyers or families or the detainees themselves feel that it would be a good thing to have sympathetic folks in the room, so volunteers show up. And sit. And sit. Despite my subject line, here is no age, gender, or race requirement, but after a scan of the sign-up sheet, almost every volunteer has a traditionally female name, and the three of us there for our person this morning were all white women in our 60s. All of the cases in each room are assigned either 8 AM or 1:30 PM, so you don't know in advance exactly when your person will be called. I feel that I learned a lot from the various cases, and have a list of legal terms to look up. We also all felt that the system is trying to be fair. As an example, there was a guy who "entered without inspection" many years ago to get away from the gang in Mexico in which he was a member as a teenager. That is a phrase that I gather means snuck in. (By definition, "crossing the US-Mexico or US-Canada border without having any contact with an immigration official" - uslegal.com) He's led a pretty exemplary life in the US since then, but never tried to do much about his gang tattoos. He was nabbed at Haymarket Station, waiting for a bus. There was no warrant for him, no criminal record, no reason to believe that he was still part of the gang, but ICE can seemingly just nab people. I need to find out more about that. The government lawyer (the same one for every case, the entire morning. He came in with two full bins of folders, in a cart) said that he is a threat, because if he quit the gang, why does he still have the tattoos? Tat guy's lawyer named the arresting officer, and pointed out that he is well known for incredibly detailed reports. No report packet was submitted, so there must have been no evidence that he was still in a gang. The judge recognized the officer's name and agreed, and granted bond. So, a nice outcome, except that he shouldn't have been nabbed to begin with, in my opinion. Any visa work will have to happen in the future.
Also, in keeping with my customary opinion, f*ck alcohol. In multiple cases, the person who had been living a quiet life in the US for years was arrested for driving drunk (which in some cases revealed no license or a fake name), and now is considered a danger to the community, sensible to deport. I agree that driving under the influence is dangerous (Arthur's mother was once excused from jury duty in a drunk driving case because she said she could not be impartial - her brother was killed as a pedestrian by a drunk driver), but is it a good enough reason to deport someone who has been here for ages? I think they should stay here, but spent a little while on the opposite fantasy - what if every drunken driver was deported, citizen or not? Where would we send them?
The judge seemed to find AA attendance a good sign to grant bond (the eventual deportation or not is a separate case), but we've known people for whom AA is just not what they need. What else might be as convincing?

Comments

[nosrednayduj]

There is an organization called Secular Organization for Sobriety, which is a "competitor" to AA, and does not require believing in a Higher Power. Their schtick is instead "the Sobriety Priority", where you have to consider every action you take as "will this help or harm my sobriety".

Valerie has tried for years to get a Boston chapter started, but not really made any progress. Occasionally she tries but usually it's just her and another 30-year-sober guy sitting around waiting for clients and she gives up after a couple of months. They have a national newsletter (for which she writes a column) and a website and stuff.

[lauradi7dw]

The late cartoonist John Callahan wrote about AA in his autobiography. His sponsor was an atheist, and renamed the higher power Chucky, after the horror movie character.
I remember the line "we'll just have to turn that over to Chucky." Whatever works. But 12 step programs of any sort aren't for everybody, apparently.

[nosrednayduj]

SOS isn't any sort of "12 step" program. It has some different model. Never having actually been through it, but only having read an article or two from their newsletter, I really don't know how it works. It probably isn't for everyone either, but in case anyone's reading this I thought I'd clear up any misconceptions....