On Deportations

Dear Community,

They never saw it coming. It is like being in a car crash. The light is green and your car is in the middle of the intersection. The car that hits you has a red light, but ignores it for whatever reason and crashes into your car. Even though you are not at fault, you are damaged. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was following the rules. He trusted the country he was in, the USA, and also was following the rules in our democracy…“home of the free and the brave, a country of justice and rule of law. He was arrested and sent to El Salvador’s torture prison, the infamous CECOT. But wait, surely the USA, the leader of the countries of the free world, would correct the mistake, as the government of our USA said that it was an “administrative error”. The government said it was wrong. He surely would be sent back. No, the government claims it has no recourse. They can falsely send a person to another country’s horrendous prison where people have a good possibility of dying, but they cannot bring a person back.

Does this have any relevance to a person in Sierra County? How does it not have relevance to a person to Sierra County? We are no more protected than a person in New York (Abrego Garcia) fleeing a gang in El Salvador, or one in Florida (Andry Hernandez Romero), who exclaimed as he was arrested that he was gay (which was why he fled Venezuela and applied for asylum in the US), and a barber, and not a gang member. Or Mervin Jose Yamarte Fernandez, with no gang membership or tattoos nor criminal record.

No one swept up for the trip to El Salvador was given the opportunity to make their case or present their evidence to a court that they were not a gang member and should not be deported to El Salvador. Seven known students have been arrested for voicing their conscience in the country of the “free and the brave”. They were not citizens, though in the USA they believed that they could voice their opinion about issues that affected them. Or, maybe they thought that their green card meant they were safe from gangs or government forces sent to take them away to another part of the world and a notorious prison (CECOT) where one might not survive for long. Not to worry. We live in the USA, the “home of the free and the brave”. We can be that country. It takes all of us to make the country we want…. All of us.

Buenos Dias, Shalom, Aloha,

Linda Guffin

Downieville