Square Foot Gardening Update

You may remember that almost 2 months ago, our local Roanoke Valley Master Gardeners Association hosted a Square Foot Gardening Symposium, where participants became certified Square Foot Gardening Instructors.  The timing of the symposium was scheduled so that the new instructors would be ready to build their own gardens and teach others how to do so in time for our usual late April and early May planting time for summer vegetables.  As part of the symposium, we planted our own garden, however the timing of the symposium put us a few weeks late for a normal cool season vegetable garden and several weeks early for a warm season summer garden.  We decided to plant a few cool season crops and see what happened, with an eye towards replanting it as a summer garden once May arrived.  This is how it looked the day we planted it:

Now, seven weeks later, I'd like to give an update.  We've actually lucked out in that the unusually cool weather we've had for the last three weeks or so has essentially extended the expected life of our garden.  Had it been warmer, our broccoli and lettuce may have bolted by now and our peas would have started to burn out.  As it is, both the lettuce and broccoli look great, and while we still may not get much out of the peas, they've done better than I expected.  We also have onions, Swiss chard, and carrots planted, each of which look fair.  The onions seem to have either been planted too deep, or simply settled into the soft planting mix, but should turn out fine.  The carrots are about 2/3 of the way through their 75 day to seed to harvest life cycle, but don't look too promising.  My experience growing carrots in the past has not been encouraging.  The Swiss chard is not quite ready to pick, but shouldn't be far off.  Here's how the garden looks today:

I harvested the lettuce and broccoli after taking this picture.  The lettuce will continue to grow of course, though it will slow once summer kicks in.  The broccoli may produce some side shoots, but it also fairs poorly in the heat.  It looks like we ready to fill some of these squares with summer crops!

We're also getting ready to install a square foot garden at the Roanoke Valley Farmers Market.  On Saturday, May 18th at 9:30 am, Master Gardener Betty Bianconi will present a square foot gardening workshop at the market.  Betty will explain the basics of the square foot gardening method and then show participants how to start a garden, by building and planting one at the market.  There is no charge for attending the workshop.  

Roanoke Valley Farmers Market Opens May 4th

The Roanoke Valley Farmers Market opens for 2013 on Saturday, May 4th.  We've been hard at work over the last few months to create a better market experience for this coming season, and we're very excited that opening day is just over a week a way.  Our vendors, the Halifax County Cooperative Extension staff, Halifax County Operations, Halifax County Health Department, county government, and other volunteers have really committed to improving the building and grounds and beautifying our market.  Some of the work has already been done, some will be completed during the coming week before we open this year, and some will continue throughout the 2013 market season.  While out at the market today with a few helpers (including my 6 year-old daughter who volunteered to be the camerawoman), I got the urge to give everyone a sneak peak at some of the work we've been doing.  Have a look:

Market hours for 2013:

Wednesday 8-6

Friday 8-6

Saturday 8-2

and Mondays (at Kirkwood Adams Center) 3-6

Gardening Tips 4/26/13: Miner bees not aggressive, help pollination

I've had so many calls this past week about miner bees, I simply couldn't write this week's Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald article about anything else, even if I had wanted to.  For more information about miner bees and other ground nesting bees (and wasps), see the following links:

Miner Bees

Ground Nesting Bees

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/ent/notes/Urban/horn-yj.htm

Gardening Tips 4/19/13: Gardening in the Southwest

We're back to talking about plants at Halifax Gardens, so here's last weeks Gardening Tips article from the Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald- a little bit about the plant life I encountered on my Arizona trip.

My Day in Mexico

On the last day of my trip, we crossed the border into Nogales, Sonora.  When I stood at the border on the Arizona side 6 days earlier, I noted how little difference there appeared to be between the two sides.  The topography was similar with rolling hills and small mountains visible on each side, businesses line either side of the wall, with a scattering of homes visible on the hills in the distance.  Once we actually made it across the border, it wasn’t long before I gained a different perspective.  On the immediate southern side of the border there were a number of shops, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses, but after driving for only a mile or two, we left the commercial district and entered a residential area.  Houses were very close together, small and sparse.  At the base of the mountains, makeshift walls made out of car tires terraced the slope of the mountains, allowing homes to be almost literally built on top of one another all the way up the mountain.  We were headed to an afterschool  center called HEPAC (Hogar de Esparanza y Paz- The Home of Hope and Peace), built halfway up the hill in the middle of this neighborhood.  In Nogales, children go to school either in the morning or afternoon.  They are able to come to HEPAC in order to get lunch and participate in some additional learning activities.  HEPAC also offers educational programs for adults, mainly teaching things like hairstyling and crafts that can be used by the adults to generate supplemental income.  They also make No Mas Muertes (No More Deaths) medallions to sell to fund the program.  During our visit to HEPAC, we heard a presentation and had lunch with students. 

After lunch, we visited a maquila (factory) formerly run by the Legacy Ink company.  Legacy had been one of the better maquilas to work in, as they paid $7 per day, compared to the minimum wage of $5.  Not per hour but per day.  Legacy closed the maquila February 5^th, giving no word to their 160 employees, who showed up for work first thing Monday morning to a building with changed locks, vacated and emptied of all but the least valuable equipment.  They’d set up a temporary camp outside the maquila- a few tents, some folding chairs, and some blankets, protesting the company’s decision, demanding the pay they are owed, and barricading anyone from taking away the remaining equipment.  They have received support from the local Nogales government, also upset at the company’s abandonment.  However, two months later, it seems the best result for these workers will be to sell the remaining, low value equipment, and split whatever proceeds result among them.

Following this, we went to Grupos Beta, an organization that provides support for migrants preparing to cross the border.  We separated into small groups and talked to a number of people preparing to attempt to cross the border.  The man I spoke to was about to cross for the 6^th time, trying to get to New Jersey to live with his brother.  Another group spoke to someone who said he was crossing for the 80^th time.  Many crossers use a guide called a coyote in order to get across and pay a fee to do so.  The man I talked to said he paid $2000 to his coyote.  While some coyotes are trustworthy, many are not.  The first time he had tried to cross, he made it to Phoenix, where the people the coyote had led him to held him hostage until his brother sent another $5000.  Once they received the money they let him go, and he was almost immediately captured by border patrol.  Despite the cost, peril, and uncertainty of crossing, the people we spoke to were all determined to continue trying until the reunited with their families or found the opportunity they were seeking. 

Our short-lived attempt to cross by foot

We drove back toward the border to head home, and there was a long line of cars waiting to cross.  Our group leader told us it would be about 45 minutes wait, so we got out of the van and briefly passed through some of the shops at the border.  Many people cross just to shop on one side or the other, and there is actually a crossing station for foot traffic as well as vehicle traffic.  We knew then, that if the van made it across before we were finished shopping, we could simply cross by foot.  This led to a funny scene: we initially didn’t see the van when we finished shopping, so we assumed it had crossed and got in the foot traffic line, which turned out to be very long and very slow.  We probably would have waited in that line for an hour or more, when we finally saw the van, still on the Mexico side of the border, with only one vehicle in front of it.  The ten of us sprinted around the block trying to make it to the van in time, and we were sure that the sight of all of us sprinting towards the border would get us into some type of trouble with the border patrol, but we made it across without hassle, after about five minutes and a few questions about the nature of our trip.

The view as I ran to the border to catch our van (The one to the right with the black luggage rack)

  

Here you can see the large black vessels that store water for use in the homes

One of many the many walls made out of old tires

The thing that was most apparent to me from my trip to Nogales, Sonora was the level of poverty that so many of the people there live in.  Often when we talk of poverty in other countries, we hear people point out that there is poverty here in the United States as well.  While this is certainly true, there is simply no comparison.  The neighborhood surrounding HEPAC, built in the middle of a municipal waste site, is made entirely out of homes built out of old care tires, rolled up and dried newspaper, and other items rescued from the dump.   The houses there have no heat and no cooling, and thus are brutally hot during the desert summer, and bitingly cold in the dead of winter.   Toilets inside the home don’t flush because there is no running water.  Even at HEPAC, the bathrooms were essentially indoor port-a-potties.  We were told to put toilet paper in the trash can and sprinkle sawdust in the commode after we were finished if we used the bathroom.  In Nogales, mothers and fathers work full days in one of the maquilas and most are paid  the country's $5 minimum daily wage for their work.  They lose a third of this pay to be transported to and from the factories they work in.  There is no opportunity for advancement, those who have spent 15 years in the factory make the same as those in their first year.  And we wonder why they come.  When they can make more in an hour in the United States then they do in a day, maybe two in Mexico? 

There are no easy solutions to the immigration issue, and who knows what will change for better or worse if the proposed immigration reform bill passes, but what this trip taught me more than anything else is that there are many more facets to the issue than most ever consider.   There are real people who are affected by this issue, on both sides, good and bad, and to have them reduced to numbers and statistics in an ongoing battle seems to be a convenient way to gloss over this fact.  I don’t have answers to the problem and it’s not my duty to change anyone’s position on the issue, but I would urge anyone who has the opportunity to explore a more nuanced look at it, such as I was lucky to have earlier this month, to do so.  It may not change your position on the issue, but it will undoubtedly open your eyes and broaden your perspective. 

My first look at Mexico, earlier in the week, was from this Burger King parking lot, and one of my last views from Mexico was of the Burger King sign peeking over the border wall.  

Desert walk: Immigration and the Environment

Dan Millis of the Sierra Club speaks to our group as we start our desert walk

The sixth day of our trip was the last day that we spent in Arizona, as our final day would be spent in Mexico.  As it was Sunday, the morning was relaxing and most of the group spent in at Southside Presbyterian Church, the home church of Ken Kennon, who spoke to us yesterday.  We met back at BorderLinks for lunch, where we had a presentation from Dan Millis of the Sierra Club.  Dan spoke to us primarily about environmental concerns due to immigration and the wall erected at the U.S.-Mexico border.  To be honest, this was something I had never once thought about even though, largely due to the nature of my profession, I typically am very concerned about environmental issues.

Dan spoke to us first about the wall.  We had heard from several people throughout the week about the wall and how it has affected migration.  One of the saddest aspects of the wall is that, because it is very expensive to build (anywhere from $4 to $20 million per mile, depending on the terrain and location) and because it is not continuous along the border, it has only been erected in strategic locations, such as in population centers like Nogales or in historic crossing routes.  As a result, those attempting to cross have been forced to go through harsher terrain, such as desert and mountains, where there is no wall and less border patrol presence.  While this strategy (along with a lagging U.S. economy, an economy in Mexico that has been slowly improving, and several other factors) has led to fewer attempted crossings over the last 5-8 years, it has also led to an increasing number of people dying as they attempt to cross.  That is why people like Mike Wilson and groups like No More Deaths have felt compelled to help by giving water to migrants.  The wall, and the shift in the nature and pattern of migration due to the wall has also led to several environmental impacts, which the Sierra Club summarizes here.

A discarded backpack on a migrant trail south of Green Valley, AZ

Dan essentially categorized the environmental impacts into three levels.  At the first level, there is the damage caused by foot traffic from migrants and border control, and the trash left behind by migrants on their journey.  Trash primarily includes discarded water bottles, food wrappers, clothes, and backpacks.  While this is perhaps the most obvious effect, Dan considered it the easiest to deal with as many groups regularly go through migrant trails in the desert and clean up this debris.

The border wall in Nogales

At the second level is new roads created and vehicle traffic that has indirectly impacted soil structure, water flow, plant life, and erosion.  The third level effect is the wall itself.  He cited migratory patterns of animals that have been disrupted by the physical barrier as well as flooding concerns.  Though the desert is generally dry, their are many places along the border where there is a late summer monsoon season, during which heavy rains are quite common.  In many of these areas, the wall acts as a levee and has led to significant flooding.  This is true even in areas such as Nogales where the wall is not solid- it has openings more like a steel fence, but those openings are easily clogged by debris blown into it by the high desert winds.  He showed us slides of flooding in Nogales during a monsoon rain in which the water on the Mexico side of the wall rose up over six feet, causing millions of dollars of damage to buildings, vehicles, and the wall itself, as well as 2 deaths.  The images looked just like what we saw in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.  In other areas, sections of the wall have collapsed after the soil supporting it was washed away by rushing waters that were diverted from their natural path by the wall following heavy rains.

The beginning of our border walk

A jumping cholla, or jumping cactus

After his talk, we drove to a migrant trail in order to get a sense for what a migrant experiences as he or she is crossing the border.  The spot we drove to was about 20 miles North of Nogales and, because the trail is not a straight line from point A to point B, it would represent about 35 miles of walking from their point of origin.  I think sometimes people think that there is a line of officers at the actual border and if a migrant somehow makes it across the line they are home free, but in reality the border patrol covers all of southern Arizona (and presumably functions the same in other states), and the journey of the migrant is not over until they reach whatever city they are going to, whether it be Tucson, 75 miles North of the border, or wherever else.  Dan mentioned encountering migrants on the trails while he was doing cleanup who asked him "How much farther to Minnesota?"

Cintia lost her shoe real quick when she felt the Jumping cholla poke through

We walked for about a mile along the trail in the heat of the day.  Being the first week of April, it was in the mid 80s during the time we were out there.  On one side of the trail was a barbed wire fence that ran along the perimeter of a ranch and all along both sides of the trail were various types of cactus, velvet mesquite trees, and brush.  Every plant out on the trail was sharp, capable of piercing your skin or ripping your clothes.  Three different people in our group of 13 managed to step on or brush against a jumping cholla, or jumping cactus, so named for it's tendency to separate itself from the body of the cactus and follow along on anything or anyone who brushes against it.

The loose rock and gravel on this slope complicated things

While the beginning of our walk was on a fairly wide, straight, and flat section of trail, it wasn't long before we got to a hillier area where we found ourselves walking down and then up a rather steep hill.  The path was rocky and several in our group slipped or struggled.  The trail got narrower too and we had to take care not to be poked or scraped by a cactus or shrub in the tight quarters.  It was not an easy walk, and we were doing it in the light of day.  Knowing that most migrants will walk during the night, without flashlights, to try to avoid detection, it was hard to imagine how anyone could do the walk without suffering some serious scrapes and cuts, along with the dehydration that would come from spending so much time in the desert without enough water.  It was also easy to see how slower members could easily be separated from a group and left behind to find their own way. 

Another discarded backpack

Along the way we saw a few discarded items.  I counted a handful of backpacks, a few items of clothing, a toothbrush, and several water bottles.  We were not far from the highway and there was a rest area near where we entered.  Many migrants who travel this particular path will try to meet someone at the rest stop to take them to their next location.  At one point in the walk we came to a spot Dan identified as the final gathering place before the group heads to the rest stop.  Here the coyote, the guide of the group, would instruct people to drop their backpacks and any other belongings that might identify them as a border crosser.  As such, this is where the cleanup crews generally see the most trash, however when we were there it was pretty clean. 

The world's worst water bottle

On the way back to our van, several of us noticed  a strange looking thing, which turned out to be a shriveled up cactus.  Dan explained to us that this particular type of cactus holds a great amount of water inside of it, and migrants desperate for water will often cut them and try to drink from it.  It's hard to imagine being desperate enough to hold something as menacing as a cactus in your hands and drink water from it, but that is the reality for many of those who make the full walk that we just sampled.  Whatever you think of those who attempt this journey, don't mistake them for cowards or weaklings, as the trek they make is challenging, strenuous, long, and unforgiving.
 

The Garden Kitchen

 

Water collecting cistern at The Garden Kitchen- "A family in harmony will prosper in everything"

On Saturday, we returned to the Cooperative Extension element of our trip by visiting The Garden Kitchen, a weekly Saturday morning cooking demonstration given by agents at Pima County Cooperative Extension.  Each week of the year, the Garden Kitchen offers a 60 to 90 minute cooking demonstration, each one featuring different ingredients, cooking styles, or recipes.  On this day, the theme was rice.  We started by trying 8 different rices, each of which had been steamed, in order to get a sense of the different tastes and textures each offered.  I was amazed by how different one was from the next; some were very sticky, others were loose; some were soft, others were hard, and some were sort of gummy.  Of course, it turned out there were reasons for the different textures.  For instance, rices with a lot of amylose, an unblanched form of starch are not sticky, but those with a lot of amylopectin, a blanched starch, are sticky.  These characteristics help determine what type of cooking style each rice is best suited for. 

After trying each type, the main part of the demonstration started.  The agent showed us how to make three different dishes- rice pilaf, coconut forbidden rice pudding, and risotto.  It was especially interesting to see the risotto being made.  After seeing many cooking show contestants fail at making risotto, I always assumed it was incredibly difficult, however we were told it is very simple, it just demands nearly constant stirring in order to get the proper texture.  Contestants and home chefs alike who try to cook risotto while doing another dish or two almost always fail by not achieving the proper texture. 

Our chef for the morning, stirring the risotto as she taught

The most interesting part of the cooking demonstration came after it finished.  We had a brief tour of the location, a former privately owned restaurant that is now owned by Pima County.  Apparently after the restaurant closed, the local branch of the Hells Angels had tried to buy the restaurant in order to establish a local headquarters.  The county decided to purchase the building and grounds in order to prevent this, but it took several years before they decided how they would use the property.  Eventually Pima County Cooperative Extension proposed the Kitchen Garden program we saw and took over control of the building.  They created a raised bed garden on the grounds, in which they grow vegetables and herbs for use in the kitchen.  The demonstration we saw was the first of the year on their summer schedule- a 60 minute class starting at 10 am.  During fall and winter when it is cooler, they hold a 90 minute class starting at 11 am.  There were about 35 people in attendance for our class and they said they have as many as 50-60 for some classes. 

After lunch, we had two speakers who offered pretty different perspectives on border and immigration issues.  The first was Ken Kennon of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson who spoke about what is called the Sanctuary Movement.  In 1980, a group of 35 Salvadorians were caught crossing the border in Pima County, Arizona.  The group sought asylum from a country that was frought with war at the time.  Someone within the Pima County sheriff's office contacted the church and each refugee was placed with a church family to avoid deportation.  Ken said he was drawn to help the refugees because he had recently lost a 23 year old son in an accident and wanted to help families who were losing their children to violence.  By 1985, approximately 60 churches were offering sanctuary to refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala in a similar manner.  11 of the 60 were put on trial in November of 1985, and 8 were found guilty of harboring and assisting illegal aliens, however by the end of the trial 600 churches now declared themselves as sanctuaries.  A later case, American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh was filed against the U.S. attorney general.  When it was settled in 1991, many of the 500,000 refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala who were originally denied asylum were now given the opportunity to seek asylum in the U.S.  Ken later helped start BorderLinks, the organization that hosted our group and facilitated our tour. 

Our next speaker was Mike Wilson from the Tohono O'odham Indian tribe.  The Tohono O'odham nation is split by the U.S.-Mexico border, and many immigrants will go through tribal land attempting to cross the border.  While many activist groups such as No More Deaths place water in areas where migrants travel, they are not allowed on tribal land.  Mike has taken up placing water throughout the tribal lands for migrants desperate for water as they cross.  While some within the tribe support Mike, others feel that his water stations attract migrants and thus have taken to shooting or slashing the barrels.  Mike argued that the migrants were passing through the land before he started putting out water for them and that by giving them water he is not only helping the migrants, but saving the tribe from incurring medical bills due to treatment of injured or dying migrants captured on their land. 

Both speakers were impressive to me because of the compassion they showed for the migrants they encountered.  Neither had sought out this cause, they just found themselves in a position where they had to make a choice and chose to show compassion for people in need.  When we hear immigration discussed in the news media, we often simply hear only numbers and facts as they are used to support the argument of one side or the other.  We don't hear the human stories that give this issue its true depth.  It was nice to hear two people speak about the issue in compassionate, humane terms.

Flautas de pollo at Casa Mariposa

For dinner that night, we attended a fundraiser at Casa Mariposa, a house that offers temporary shelter to migrant families in need.  Currently, a Honduran family was staying at the house.  Several members of the family were apprehended by border patrol, however the women and children were released (by released, they were dropped at the nearest Greyhound station) while the men remain in detention awaiting a deportation hearing.  Since it could be several months before the hearing is held, and the men may or may not end up being deported, the Casa Mariposa fundraiser was to help raise enough money to pay the first month's rent at a house or apartment for the family.  The family cooked a nice dinner for us, flautas de pollo (pollo being chicken and flautas being a sort of slender taco shell). 

Operation Streamline

Friday was a hard day, probably the hardest of the trip.  We started the day with a presentation by Isabel Garcia of Derechos Humanos, the organization that Patricia volunteers for.  Isabel spoke of how legislation has impacted immigration and how she felt politicians on both sides of the aisle had largely failed on this issue.

Following that, we spent the afternoon at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Tucson watching Operation Streamline proceedings.  Operation Streamline is a zero tolerance immigration program aimed at deporting 100 people per day in each border city in which it is implemented.  Entering the court room, we saw 63 defendants- 61 men and 2 women, each wearing the clothes they had on when they were apprehended, each with shackles around their wrists and ankles, with their wrists bound to their waists.  Each wore a pair of headphones, through which they would hear a Spanish interpretation of the court proceedings.  There was a federal judge, a federal prosecutor, and approximately 10 public defenders.  The judge addressed the court, stating that each of the 63 were charged with entering the United States illegally,  stating that they had the right to remain silent but by entering a plea arrangement, as each of them had, they had forfeited that right and would be forced to answer questions.  She asked the defendants to stand if they could not hear what she was saying, or if they did not understand English or Spanish. 

Then, in groups of five, the defendants were brought to the front of the court to stand in front of the judge and answer her questions.  One by one, she asked each of the five which country they were  residents of, if they had attempted to cross the US- Mexico border on the stated date, if they had done so at an official United States border inspection station, and how they plead.  One by one each stated their home country (55 of the 63 were from Mexico, the other 8 from Guatemala), and answered si, no, and culpable (yes, no, and guilty), respectively.  The judge then asked if the lawyers had anything to add.  Other than a few exceptions (two Guatemalans asked permission to speak to the Guatemalan consulate and a handful of other defendants asked permission to serve their sentence in a particular city or state), none spoke. 

The judge then asked the defendants if any of them wanted to speak.  All said no.  She then handed out the sentences, anywhere from 30 to 180 days, stating in each of the cases where she'd been asked that she would recommend the sentence be served in the city requested.  When each group of five was finished, the next 5 were called up and the process repeated. 

A few things about the process stood out.  First it was incredibly robotic.  With the monotony of the questions and answers repeating one after the next, with almost no variation, with nearly all the lawyers quiet, rendered almost unnecessary, the proceedings had the feel that everything was entirely determined far before what we were witnessing happened.  Because of the nature of the proceedings, the few outlying events stood out starkly for their uniqueness.  However, these outlying events were almost completely heartbreaking.  One defendant was forced to sit down when he nearly passed out as he stood before the judge.  When he couldn’t get back up the judge rescheduled his sentencing for two weeks later.  Another defendant whispered in his lawyer’s ear for a good minute, before his lawyer asked the judge of he could receive a medical checkup as soon after the hearing as possible, for he had been wandering in the desert for ten days before being captured and feared he had done severe damage to his body.   
 

I found myself searching for any small differences between defendants in order to humanize them, as the shackles they were held in robbed them of their humanity.  I watched a few of them consult with their lawyers between questions, their lawyers awkwardly tugging their earphones off their ear in order to speak directly to them.   I listened as several responded to the question “What is your home country?” by saying “Sonora,” which is a state in Mexico (the state where Nogales is located), indicating to me that they didn’t entirely understand the questions they were being asked. I wondered what else about their situation they didn't understand.  When one lawyer told the judge his Guatemalan client spoke the indigenous language Mam rather than Spanish, I wondered what, if anything, he understood about the process he was going through or the agreement he had made.   

After the final group concluded we exited the courtroom and took a few minutes to collect ourselves before heading across the plaza to another building where we would meet with a public defender who would explain exactly what we had just seen.   

Prior to Operation Streamline, crossing the border illegally or living in the United States without proper documentation was treated as a civil infraction.  Deportations were legally called voluntary returns. Operation Streamline changed this civil infraction to a criminal charge.  Crossing the first time became a misdemeanor and the second time a felony.  

The program originated in Texas in 2005 and first came to Arizona in 2007.  100 captured immigrants are deported daily, Monday through Friday, in each of five cities across Texas, two in New Mexico, and in Yuma, Az.  In Tucson, only 70 are deported per day, meaning the proceedings cannot be formally called Operation Streamline, though it follows the same legal process.  Instead it is formally referred to as the Arizona Admission Denial Initiative, though everyone involved will casually refer to as Operation Streamline.  Since it started in Tucson in January 2008, the program has focused on first time violators, those who have no record of previous border crossing attempts.  Under the terms of their plea agreements, defendants processed would be immediately returned to their home country with no jail time served with the understanding that if they were captured a second time, they would automatically be charged with a felony and prosecuted.  Within the past month, the focus of the program has shifted.  No longer is the program targeting first time crossers, instead they are targeting repeat offenders; not necessarily those who have been processed through Operation Streamline previously, but those who had a prior record of entering the United States without documentation.  Now, when these repeat offenders are processed under Operation Streamline, they are given a plea deal where they would serve up to 6 months in a border patrol detention facility or a private prison for the misdemeanor charge of entering the country illegally rather than being prosecuted for the felony charge of illegal re-entry, but would be charged with a felony if captured again. 

A couple questions arise.  Why 100 deportations per day (or 70 in the case of Tucson)?  Cities like Tucson regularly saw 1000 immigrants captured attempting to cross the border illegally in the mid 2000’s, though that number sits at about 300 per day now.  So why would this program run for only 100 of those captures?  What happens to the others and who decides whether a particular capture is processed through Operation Streamline or some other means?  While only the border patrol knows the answer to these questions, the presumption is that the border patrol agents have a lot of personal autonomy in deciding how a particular capture is treated.  Someone who is old, weak, or female is more likely to be simply returned to their home country- essentially treated as a voluntary return.  Those who are younger and male may be treated as voluntary returns, may be forced to sign a deportation document by the border patrol agent who captured them, or will be processed through Operation Streamline and this appears to be almost entirely up to the discretion of the capturing agent.  Obviously Operation Streamline is the least desirable of these options as it attaches a criminal record to those processed this way, while others are still treated as having committed a civil infraction. 

What determines the length of each person’s sentence?  We saw defendants sentenced to anywhere between 30 and 180 days.  The public defender explained that those who were sentenced to 30 days had no other violations except for their one previous re-entry attempt.  Anyone sentenced to longer terms either had multiple previous illegal entries or had other civil infractions such as driving without a license.  None of those processed through Operation Streamline have serious criminal charges on their record such as violent crime or drug trafficking, as those offenses would send them into an entirely different court proceeding. 

We asked about the relative monotony of the process and the lack of defense offered by the lawyers.  She said that for the lawyers it is the worst type of trial to take part in.  Each defender has to serve one day in Operation Streamline every 6 weeks.  They have three hours to meet with their clients and each lawyer is usually assigned 5 or 6 clients.  The defender meets with all of his or her clients at once.  In that time, the lawyers have to determine what, if any, English their client speaks, explain to them what they are being charged with, give them their options, and figure out whether or not they want to accept the plea deal.  Sentencing occurs later that day.   

Public defenders are generally very uncomfortable with this arrangement because for any other criminal trial, the defendant would have an arraignment, a bond hearing, several pre-trial hearings, the formal trial, and the sentencing hearing, all of which would happen over the process of several months, during which the lawyer and defendant would meet several times.  In all but rare cases, the lawyers represent a single client in each case. In Operation Streamline, each lawyer has multiple clients, there is no bond, there is limited time for consultation, and the arraignment, trial, and sentencing are all held in one mass proceeding held on the day following their capture (in the court room, the judge asked each defendant when they crossed and we heard answers ranging from March 26th to April 4th, however this was simply the date they crossed the physical border, not the date they were actually captured, which would have been April 4th in all cases).  

Public defenders have some constitutional objections to the nature of these proceedings, but found when Operation Streamline was targeting first time offenders, the defendants all refused to go to trial.  When faced with the option of going home that very day, albeit with the guarantee of felony charges should they later be caught returning, or sitting in jail indefinitely while facing misdemeanor charges and a likely punishment followed by deportation, and still the guarantee of felony charges if caught returning, the defenders quickly found there really was no option.  Every single defendant accepted the deal.  Even when the focus shifted to repeat offenders and sentences up to 6 months were levied, the deal was preferable to the certainty of a felony conviction.  The defender spoke of the fighting spirit that lawyers have, saying that we’d all seen that on display in court proceedings depicted in movie and television, but this system handcuffed all involved, leaving the cold, robotic proceeding we witnessed. 

We couldn't help but laugh at a few of the details of the proceedings as the public defender explained them to us.  "Please stand if you cannot hear me," the judge says during the proceedings.  "Please stand if you do not understand English or Spanish," she says later.  The question of how anyone would know to stand if they could not hear or understand the judge's instructions to do so was unanswerable. Learning the fact that the room we watched Operation Streamline from, the Special Proceedings Room, was previously used to perform naturalization ceremonies recognizing immigrants who were becoming legal United States citizens, and was now used solely to criminalize and deport people who wanted to live here was a laugh so that you don't cry moment. 

Our group all left the courthouse that day with mixed emotions from confusion to sadness to anger.  We wondered how 30 or even 180 days would deter someone who was willing to make what is often a deadly journey through the desert in search of a better life for their family.  Unfortunately, that was one of many unanswered questions.  We cleared our heads with dinner and drinks at a local Mexican restaurant and prepared for a lighter day with a return to Pima County Cooperative Extension on Saturday.    

 

The Story of Patricia and Elvia

On Thursday night we had our home stay visit.  Our group of ten was divided into 3 small groups, each staying at a different home.  Tracy, Cynthia, and I went to stay with Patricia and her daughter Elvia in South Tucson.  Patricia works as a dishwasher at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Tucson and Elvia is a junior in high school.  We arrived at the house at just a few minutes past 6.  We were met by Baby, the family dog, who looked intimidating but was very sweet.  Elvia came outside to greet us and let us know that her mom was still at work, but would be home by 7:30.  Patricia had already cooked for us, but we thought we'd wait to eat until she got home to eat, so we sat and talked to Elvia for awhile.

Elvia is a sweet girl. She is bilingual, loves Taylor Swift and hopes to be an oncologist.  Her family first came to Arizona just after she was born.  Her father was offered a job by an American company and came to Tucson on a work visa.  Unfortunately, he wasn't able to bring Patricia, Elvia, or her two older brothers with him under the terms of the visa.  Because of that, the rest of the family came to the United States illegally.  Patricia came first, travelling over the border through an underground sewer in one of the border towns.  She had to alternately crawl and walk through the underground tunnel and as she was traveling it began to rain and the sewer flooded.  As the water got higher and higher she finally reached the storm drain where she was to exit.  She pushed it open, was met by a man who gave her some dry clothes, changed, and walked away, beginning her life of trying to fit in. Elvia and her brothers were later brought into the country in a car by a documented relative when Elvia was one.  As Elvia was telling the story of her crossing she mentioned the movie La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon), in which a young child crosses the border to reunite with his mother in California after his grandmother who had been caring for him died unexpectedly.  The boy crosses with an American student visiting Mexico by hiding in a storage box under the backseat of her van.  You can see the video of the border crossing scene from La Misma Luna here.  I got the impression that her experience had been similar, although without the complication that arises in the film. 

She told us a bit about her life growing up in Tucson. She learned English before Spanish; in fact she didn't begin learning Spanish until first grade, after some other Hispanic children had teased her for not knowing Spanish.  She does well in school and really enjoys english and history class, but doesn't care much for geometry.  As we talked, she got a call from her mom, telling us she'd been asked to stay late at the hotel and wouldn't be home until 8:30 or 9.  At around the same time, two of Elvia's cousins from Nogales, Mexico stopped by.  Elvia shared with us that her parents had recently separated and that her and her mother lived together in the house we were at, while her father and one brother lived in a separate house.  Her father drinks a lot and has some anger issues, which eventually led to the separation.  It has been hard on Elvia, as she's not only changed homes but schools (they moved 2 months ago, so the change of schools happened right in the middle of the school year), however she said that she is happier in her new location.

Eventually we decided to eat because Patricia kept getting delayed at work.  Dinner was wonderful- beef mole with rice and beans and delicious corn tortillas.  It was nice to have another sampling of Mexican cuisine after the carne asada lunch at the ranch the previous day.  As we ate, Elvia talked to us a bit about her mother.  In addition to working at the hotel, Patricia volunteers for Derechos Humanos (Human Rights, an organization that provides support for migrants) and a few other organizations.  Her work at Derechos Humanos is particularly difficult, as her main task is helping families track down missing relatives.  Ultimately, she ends up telling many of the families that the person they are searching for has either died, been deported, or is detained by border patrol and facing deportation.  Obviously this work is very hard on her emotionally, but she feels that it is important work because she is often the only connection many of these families have to their missing relatives.  We asked how Patricia gets to and from her jobs and volunteer work without documentation, without a license.  Elvia said that she drives without a license, knowing that if she is stopped the police officer may contact border patrol if they find her without the proper documentation.  Not all officers will do this, but they have the right to under state law.

The questions many people have when hearing stories like this is why do these people come to the United States if they face such hardship and uncertainty once here as undocumented residents and why don't they come here through legal channels?  The answer to both of these questions is complex and I promised earlier that I would avoid the overt politics of immigration as much as possible, but in order to provide some context here are a few simple explanations.

Why do they come?  Mexico and many other Latin American countries face extreme poverty.  In many of these countries there is little or no middle class, citizens are either rich or poor.  Imagine trying to raise a family and not having enough food for everyone, or not enough clothes.  At the same time, a country like the United States has jobs available that most Americans are not willing to do- farm work, landscaping, cooking and cleaning.  The sense of family and the duty to provide for them is very strong and the opportunities for work so clearly available across the border that it is an easy decision for many to cross, even knowing the risks involved.  And make no mistake, they do understand that there are risks involved in crossing, from being arrested and deported if caught to dying during the journey through the desert.

Why don't they come through legal channels?  Quite simply, the opportunities for legal immigration to the United States are much fewer than most of us realize.  Sure, there are some opportunities for work visas, but these are so few compared to the demand, and I mean that from both sides of the border.  There is a demand Latin Americans for these visas so that they can come here, but there is also the demand from the United States for the workers.  The legal channels that are available for immigration are so limited, and so backlogged (10+ years in many cases), that if you are desperate enough, you simply don't feel you have the luxury to wait for such an opportunity to manifest itself.

That is the situation that Elvia and her family found themselves in 16 years ago, and they are still dealing with the ramifications.  Her mother is undocumented and Elvia and her brothers are as well. Patricia has few options to achieve any type of recognized legal status under current U.S. law, however Elvia and her brothers have applied for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status.  Under the DACA memo, signed by President Obama on June 15th, 2012, undocumented immigrants below the age of 31 who were brought to the United States before their 16th birthday and who have lived in the United States continuously for more than 5 years, can be granted a two year exemption from deportation, a work permit, and, in most states, eligibility for a driver's license.  In Arizona, however, Governor Jan Brewer issued a counter-order stating that DACA recipients would not be allowed to obtain any state services, meaning that they would not be eligible for driver's licenses. 

When Patricia finally arrived home from work, we had a few minutes to talk with her before she had to drive the two cousins to her ex-husband's house.  She returned a few minutes later, clearly exhausted.  We told her to go to bed and that we would chat in the morning.  We also met the third member of the house, Hendrix, a student from Earlham College in Indiana who was staying with the family as part of a study abroad program.  Hendrix was studying Hispanic issues in one of her courses and also working at a local farm. 

The next morning, we had a few minutes to chat with Patricia as she cooked breakfast, before she took Elvia to school.  She came back and we ate together, just as our van arrived to pick us up.  We talked a little about her recent experience with moving and how it had affected the family.  She said that Elvia had been really depressed and struggling in the old house and has been better since the move.  Both her and Elvia have been seeing a therapist, and Hendrix, who's parents had also divorced had been a great help to Elvia.

The home stay experience was very valuable, as we got to see the human side of the immigration issue.   It's easy to get swept up in the hysteria on one side or the other and forget that these, of course, are real people with real problems, many not so different than ours.  Having a chance to talk with Elvia and Patricia, even for a short time, helped put this in perspective and I am very greatful for the hospitality they showed us for those few hours.     

Tucson Village Farm

The second part of our visit to the Pima County Extension office was a tour of the Tucson Village Farm.  Tucson Village Farm is a working urban farm built by and for the youth of Pima County.  The farm is overseen by the Pima County 4-H office and offers a number of different programs.  Our visit coincided with the Growing Forward program, in which 100 youth visit the farm every Tuesday and Thursday all year round.  Two Tucson schools, Miles Exploratory Learning Center and Fruchthendler Elementary were visiting while we were there.

The cow milking station

The Growing Forward program is very interactive and aims at connecting the visiting students with agriculture.  The students cycle through a number of stations, each of which shows them a different piece of the food production puzzle.  At various stations they'll learn about food production, building healthy soils, composting, vermiculture, nutrition, pollination, and more. There are also stations where the children watch a cooking demonstraion, milk a replica cow, and move around and be physically active.  Other programs at the farm include the Digging Deeper Middle and High School Service Learning program, and Family Fun Fridays,which offers farm activities, a family friendly movie, and popcorn made from corn grown on the farm.

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Tucson Village Farm is funded through grants, donations, and the $4 per child charge for Growing Forward program and also relies heavily on volunteers. I was very impressed by how many people throughout Tucson supported the farm, and it's a testament to how good the programs at Tucson Village Farm are that so many want to be part of it.  As just one example, students at the University of Arizona (in I believe the Graphic Arts department) made signs for a number of vegetables grown within the farm that are colorful, descriptive and contain a QR code, which when scanned takes you to a recipe highlighting that vegetable on the Tucson Village Farm website.  Try it if you're phone has a QR app, or just click here.  

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I was also impressed by how every part of the program we saw had an educational component and everything was connected together.  For instance, after the students handled the worms, they had to be sure to clean their hands before going to the next station, where they'd be making popcorn.  Because water is scarce in Arizona and particularly important to the function of the farm.  Tucson Village Farm managed to turn this in a teaching opportunity by building a handwashing station with a drainage basin.  Water collects in the bottom of the basin and is diverted through a pipe to the fruit tree section, so each time a group of students wash their hands, which is 8 times per day every Tuesday and Thursday, the fruit trees get a 1-2 minute long watering through their drip irrigation system.

It was also interesting how the farm incorporated local culture.  After receiving some grant money, a mural was built on the farm, depicting skeletons breaking open a pinata containing fruits and vegetables instead of candy.  The skeletons are a reference to the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) holiday, which celebrates and honors the dead.  It is an important holiday in Mexican cultures, observed on November 1st.  Each year Tucson celebrates Dia de los muertos with the All Souls street processional, an event where anyone can participate as a means to honor their deceased loved ones.  The fruits and vegetables in the pinata in this mural are meant to show a healthy alternative to the candy that would normally be inside.  I walked away from Tucson Village Farm very impressed by the thought and effort that went into all parts of the farm and its operation.

A close up of a section of the Dia de los Muertos mural, giving bilingual recommendations for healthy eating.