Read on Twitter
Some personal news:
People only care what I have to say on Twitter because of a single tweet thread I sent in 2018 about family separation. It blew up, followers followed, and here we are. 14k potential sets of eyes. 400k-3M monthly impressions.
On Jan. 21, I'm handing it over.
People only care what I have to say on Twitter because of a single tweet thread I sent in 2018 about family separation. It blew up, followers followed, and here we are. 14k potential sets of eyes. 400k-3M monthly impressions.
On Jan. 21, I'm handing it over.
Directly affected folks & their experiences get tokenized and ground to dust by well-meaning advocacy, strategy, litigation.
I can't be part of that anymore & feel okay about it.
So this Twitter audience will soon belong to a collective of visionary people fighting to survive
I can't be part of that anymore & feel okay about it.
So this Twitter audience will soon belong to a collective of visionary people fighting to survive
My hope is that they'll share their truths about migrant prisons, border cruelty, kangaroo immigration courts, and criminalization in ways that are far more powerful, resonant, and true than the secondhand experiences I try to share.
Hope you'll stick around and get involved.
Hope you'll stick around and get involved.
For my fellow immigration lawyers On Here, I wonder what it'd look like if we empowered those of our clients who want the chance and understand the risks to take over and share their voices and perspectives.
Even if it's for a day, every once in a while.
In case it helps, I came to this decision after spending time at a freedom house in La. where I'd spent time with three men who'd just been released from an ICE prison. The wisdom they shared about surviving what the corrupt governments of the world threw at them is liberating.
One man shared how @AlOtroLado_Org helped him win parts of his immigration case and make an excellent record for appeal by helping him understand the opaque, obscure, and unjust asylum system. His analysis that IJs lack basic knowledge of other legal systems was transformative.
This is a man from the subcontinent who's just left a slavery-era relic in which black and brown bodies are commoditized and their labor exploited in an attempt to profit from their involuntary mvmt. His IJ had roughly the same level of knowledge of his govt as the enslavers.
He pointed out that the IJ's attempts to discredit him based on the IJ's claim that going to a magistrate isn't the same as going to a prosecutor.
Anyone else and that might have worked.
But this man was law-trained. So he was able to explain, in detail, the IJ's mistake.
Anyone else and that might have worked.
But this man was law-trained. So he was able to explain, in detail, the IJ's mistake.
He reminded me we have to decolonize the law.
A second man who I could only communicate with using my translate app fled home after his wife was killed. He hadn’t seen his child, who was just a baby when he left, in 2 years.
I shared this message with him. He said in English: I understand. He put his hand over his heart.
I shared this message with him. He said in English: I understand. He put his hand over his heart.
Then he held up three fingers. He told me in the best English he’s learned in ICE custody for the past year and a half that he didn’t for three months to protest the brutality inside.
Each of these two men had been helped by some of my best friends in this work—organizations and individuals who had joined together on this tapestry of community support to help make the world a tiny bit better.
There’s this vast international community of welcoming support.
There’s this vast international community of welcoming support.
And it’s time that community include and center the voices of people we say we’re focused on helping to the extent those people want that sort of platform. I thought about what the world would be like if more people could see and hear and experience these transitions to freedom.
Here’s some art people have left behind as a token of gratitude for having a safe, welcoming space to emerge from imprisonment to freedom.
And here’s how to support my friends and this space: https://www.aplos.com/aws/give/CIVIC/Jenahouse
