Thoughts on "The Fence" - Documentary

By Norman Cervantes 

Write up for The Fence

I really liked the movie, The Fence, because it informs the viewer about the fence running along the US and Mexican border and how it has impacted life in the surrounding area and. One of the very first things I noticed about the fence is that it is very ineffective, costly, and poorly thought out. According to the movie, the flow of drugs and undocumented individuals into the states has not decreased at all. Moreover, the poorly thought out fence is very expensive as it costs about $1.8 million per mile and the lack of consistency in its’ construction is a jarring sore to one’s eyes with its many gaps and varying heights along the border. In my honest opinion, the wall is such a waste of taxpayer’s money and is the farthest thing from being an effective means of winning the war against “drugs”, “terrorists”, “illegals”, etc. However, the fence also has other effects that are not related necessarily to “national security”.

The environment and the lives of migrants have been affected as well. Since 1995, the rate of deaths for migrants trying to cross the border has risen sharply resulting with the death of about 300 migrants yearly. Moreover, the Minutemen that patrol the border often lack feelings of humanity towards the migrants as they often “hunt” them down with the aid of Border Patrol. If this wasn’t enough loss of life, animals are affected by it as well. Certain parts of the fence have cut through national animal refuges which disturb the natural environment of animals cutting access to food and water. Other environmental issues include inundations along border towns and access to clean water.

Overall, the construction of the fence has only added permanence to the unfounded hatred towards immigrants which has only fueled construction of the fence in the first place. Only time will tell if our future president will decide to revitalize the Border Fence Act of 2006.

Visit to Stewart Detention Center

By Claire Shin & Linghan Wang

Advancing Justice-Atlanta staff and Interns visited Stewart Detention Center, located in Lumpkin, GA, a three-hour drive from Atlanta. Operated under the Corrections Corporation of America-a company that owns and manages private prisons and detention centers. The Center is a corporate-run and for-profit facility, currently detaining approximately 1,700 men. The Center only holds males, whose families, if they lived or traveled with them, were separated from them and sent to other detention facilities.

The staffs and interns arrived at Lumpkin, GA around noon. We were welcomed by El Refugio, a hospitality house serving family members who came to visit their loved ones in Stewart Detention Center. Anton Flores-Maisonet, one of the volunteers there, introduced to us the history and the situation of Stewart Detention Center whilst giving us instructions of how to communicate with the inmates.

Each one of us was paired up with a detainee who had written request letters for visitors. The detainees spoke different languages, including Spanish, Bengali, Arabic, Nepalese, Hindi, Chinese, etc. After a long wait at the visitors’ area, we were eventually able to meet with our friends in the detention center. Several of the detainees had never had any visitors before us; separated by a plexiglass wall we could only talk with them through a telephone set on each side of the partition.

From the conversations we had, we learned that many of the detainees fled their countries in fear of political persecution or police brutality. They came to the U.S. with families and friends and turned themselves in at the U.S. border to seek asylum. However, upon detainment they were placed in Stewart and became separated from their families, who were detained in other detention centers. Other detainees were people who outstayed their visas or undocumented immigrants who were arrested by law enforcement for minor offenses, such as running a red light. Detainees stay in the facility for long periods of time that ranges from several months to two years or more, though 93% of them are eventually deported.

People spend the one-hour recreational time on working within the facility for $1 to $4 payment per day. They wash laundry, clean, work at the supermarket, etc. Each detainee has only one hour of visitation time each week, during which they are allowed to meet with their families and friends. For this reason, many families came to Stewart Detention Center on Saturday we visited to see their loved ones. They would then stay over at El Refugio in order to have another visit on Sunday.

Currently, there are Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Nepali speakers in the detention center. Our group got to know them as they wrote request letters for visitors, from which Anton assigned us a friend to speak to in the Center. There might be other language speakers who had not done so due to language barriers and other reasons.

The people at Stewart Detention Center appreciate visitations and friends to speak to, and El Refugio depends entirely on volunteers. If you are interested in visiting the detention center or helping out at El Refugio, visit El Refugio’s website at http://elrefugiostewart.org/ for more information. It was a meaningful experience for us to become aware of the system of detaining immigrants for profit as well as to learn about the experiences of the detainees there.

Check back with us as we will share more stories from the visit to the Stewart Detention Center.

Review of The Fence

By Claire Shin & Linghan Wang


On Thursday, July 16, we watched an HBO documentary called The Fence. On October 2006, President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act of 2006 that started a project to build a fence hundreds of miles along the US-Mexico border. According to the documentary, the project utilized 12 designs, hired 19 construction companies, 350 engineers and more than 7,000 construction workers.


So what project was this exactly? Was it an economic stimulus plan that created new jobs through construction of the fence? Aside from any economic function that the construction might serve, the fence was primarily built with the goal to prevent terrorism, drug smuggling and illegal immigration from entering into the United States from the US-Mexico border.


Quoted during the documentary, President Kennedy once proudly said, “we [had] yet to build a wall” to impede free human migration within and across the United States and other countries; now the US government decided to build a wall due to concerns that immigrants that crossed the border illegally posed a threat to the national security.


However, the fence project was not properly equipped with the technical capacity to perform the designated function. The U.S. government had spent 30 years at Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge building an inhabitable and vital living space for wildlife animals. Despite reiterating several times that it would try its best to protect wildlife, the U.S. government ate its words by building the fence right through the refuge, separating many animals from their sources of food and water.

It was unsurprising that damages were incurred not just to animals. During the rainy season, a portion of the fence in Arizona became a virtual dam that withheld water on the Mexican side and impeded the water flow into U.S. territory. With 20 feet of water drowning the town, compared to only 6 inches on the U.S. side, many family businesses were destroyed or forced to relocate to other areas.

Compared to the insurmountable costs of construction of the fence, was it adequately executing the task of preventing terrorism, narcotics or illegal immigration? In actuality, the government might be aiming at a false target. Of the 29 people who committed terrorist acts in the United States in the last quarter of century, 24 arrived through plane and 5 were born on native soil. Sadly the fence was unable to effectively prevent either drug smuggling or illegal immigration, as the criminal groups were always able to find new ways to respond to the barriers positioned to stop them.

On August 8, the staff and interns will be visiting Stewart Detention Center at Lumpkin, GA, where many undocumented immigrants and many people who overstayed their visas are detained. We will be able to meet the detainees in person and might also be able to provide them with language assistance. Many Mexicans attempted to cross the border into this country carrying the hope for better living conditions and more optimal occupational opportunities. Though many have lived in the detention center for years, each and every one of them deserved proper human dignity as a birthright, and Asian American Advancing Justice -Atlanta is determined to help them preserve that right.

Infograph on Asian Americans, DACA/DAPA, and Georgia

May 19th 2015, would have been the day that USCIS began accepting applications for 

Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA)

 but their plans and dreams are on hold. Every day that Expanded DACA and DAPA are delayed, our families and our communities suffer!

Check out the info graph below to find out more!