A rare inside look inside the Southwest Key shelters where migrant children are sent after they're separated from their parents at the border under Trump's new "zero tolerance" policy.
Colleagues at a government-contracted shelter in Arizona had a specific request for Antar Davidson when three Brazilian migrant children arrived: “Tell them they can’t hug.”
Davidson, 32, is of Brazilian descent and speaks Portuguese. He said the siblings — ages 16, 10 and 6 — were distraught after being separated from their parents at the border. The children were “huddled together, tears streaming down their faces,” he said.
Officials had told them their parents were “lost,” which they interpreted to mean dead. Davidson said he told the children he didn’t know where their parents were, but that they had to be strong.
“The 16-year-old, he looks at me and says, ‘How?’” Davidson said. As he watched the youth cry, he thought, “This is not healthy.”
Davidson quit this week after being a youth care worker at the Tucson shelter, Estrella del Norte, for just a few months. He decided to speak out about his experiences there in hopes of improving a system often shielded from public scrutiny. His comments in a telephone interview offer a rare look into the operation of a migrant shelter.
[…]
The caseload is straining a facility he described as understaffed and unequipped to deal with children experiencing trauma, such as the three Brazilians. During his time at the shelter, children were running away, screaming, throwing furniture and attempting suicide, Davidson said. Several were being monitored this week because they were at risk of running away, self-harm and suicide, records show.
[…]
Davidson saw more and more confused and upset children, most from Latin America. There also were more of what staff call “tender age” children, those under 13. Some were as young as 4, he said.
“What was once a transient facility with a staff that was strained and struggling is now becoming a more permanent facility,” and more “prison-like,” Davidson said.
[…]
“They had no idea where their parents were. The case managers said it’s going to be a week until we even find their parents and another week until we talk to them. I just saw how they were bungling these cases,” he said. “At that point zero tolerance was in full swing and you could see the desperation: kids running down the hall, screaming for their moms.”
“Do not love half lovers Do not entertain half friends Do not indulge in works of the half talented Do not live half a life and do not die a half death If you choose silence, then be silent When you speak, do so until you are finished Do not silence yourself to say something And do not speak to be silent If you accept, then express it bluntly Do not mask it If you refuse then be clear about it for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance Do not accept half a solution Do not believe half truths Do not dream half a dream Do not fantasize about half hopes Half a drink will not quench your thirst Half a meal will not satiate your hunger Half the way will get you no where Half an idea will bear you no results Your other half is not the one you love It is you in another time yet in the same space It is you when you are not Half a life is a life you didn’t live, A word you have not said A smile you postponed A love you have not had A friendship you did not know To reach and not arrive Work and not work Attend only to be absent What makes you a stranger to them closest to you and they strangers to you The half is a mere moment of inability but you are able for you are not half a being You are a whole that exists to live a life not half a life.”
“I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.”
“It’s hard to explain the fickleness of the human emotion; one moment you’re on top of the clouds, in another you’re lying on the ocean floor with the weight of the entire water on your chest; sometimes I get so irritated I want to scratch my own skin off, and sometimes I want to set my own house ablaze. There are times I’m crying without reason- my throat double its size from the knot inside, and sometimes I find myself laughing at the air itself. The worst part of it all is that there are no external factors involved, nor any situation; just me and my madness at each other’s throats, sometimes embracing, sometimes making love, and sometimes huddled together in a corner shy from the world.”
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