REfugees
ticket through a sponsor, which might be a church organization, friend or family member elsewhere in the U.S. As they travel to meet with their sponsors while awaiting court decisions on their immigration or asylum status, the immigrants have to wear ICE monitoring bracelets on their ankles. They can go days without eating because, unlike the Jackson one, Greyhound stations in other cities often forbid MIRA’s counterparts from offering aid. The City of Jackson owns the Greyhound station where MIRA helps refugees. “None of the people we’ve encountered since we began this project at the end of (last) October, with one exception, even speaks English,” Chandler said. “So we have to interpret for them. Most have no idea where they are when they get off the bus in Jackson. They’ve never heard of Jackson. They’ve never heard of Mississippi. And they’re here on the way to connect with their family, or friends or church organization in various cities across the country.”
them in Mississippi, and sternly rebuked then-President Barack Obama in a letter. “Illegal aliens—many unaccompanied children—are flooding into our country in record numbers. … I am also writing to inform you that, to the extent permitted by law, I intend to prohibit the federal government or its agents from housing large numbers of new illegal immigrants in the State of Mississippi,” Bryant wrote in the July 2014 letter—11 months before Trump would launch a longshot bid for the presidency. In 2015, after the U.S. announced that it would take in 10,000 Syrian families and children who were fleeing war in their home country, where their own government was gassing tens of thousands of its own citizens, Bryant again
spoke against accepting refugees. “I will do everything humanly possible to stop any plans from the Obama Administration to put Syrian refugees in Mississippi,” the governor wrote in a November 2015 Facebook post, but the governor does not have any actual powers to stop federally accepted refugees from entering the state. ‘I Came With My Family’ ICE first began housing asylum seekers in Mississippi at the state’s Tallahatchie Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, in the Delta, sometime last year. Until then, the facility, which is also run by CoreCivic, held 1,300 criminals from California. But when California ended its contract as part of an effort to phase out the state’s use of private prisons, CoreCivic sought
‘The Guys Is a First-Class Racist’ Chandler told the Jackson Free Press that this treatment of non-white refugees did not begin with Trump. “The guy is a first-class racist, but many of his ideas come from people like Phil Bryant, who preceded Trump in his xenophobia and racism,” Chandler said of Mississippi’s governor. Bryant has recently gone to the Mexican border to express support for Trump’s policies. Chandler pointed back to 2014, when a wave of undocumented and unaccompanied South American children first appeared at the border, fleeing violence and war in their homelands. Bryant vowed to block all efforts to house
more REBUILDING from p. 7 Cities of Service is doing revitalization work in neighborhoods through their Love Your Block program, which gives city governments the opportunity to better engage citizens on the problems they are experiencing in their neighborhood. “The basic formula is the city government will offer a small mini-grant to community groups to activate local volunteers,” Rosalind Becker, senior program manager, said. Becker said the program would allow a city to pilot a new initiative in city hall, but it is not long-term. “We want to feed it and see it kick things off, demonstrate the value of it and let the city take it over,” she said. The grants focus on low-income neighborhoods, and the group places Americo Vista members in city governments to help facilitate the program. Last year, the organization awarded $25,000 grants to 10 cities. The program lasts two years and the mini grants can be used
to fund physical projects like cleanups, lot reactivations, community gardens or home repair, she said. Huntington, W.Va., is one of the cities participating in the Love Your Block program. Breanna Shell, planning director of the City of Huntington, told the Jackson Free Press that the grant is focused on the West Huntington community, which the city has been looking at for years. “We already had some momentum and wanted to show this could be a pilot project with the hope we could expand it to other neighborhoods,” she said. Shell said the neighborhood decides what they want to fix or spend the money on and has a selection process for spending the mini-grants and implementing them for the next three to six months. She said because there is an aging housing stock, the city did a lot of demolitions and had a lot of vacant lots. One of the projects they funded was the transformation of a lot into a pocket park, which came about from a partnership with the Children’s Home Society,
a new contract—and found it with ICE. Quietly, the contractor and the agency signed an agreement last June to house up to 1,350 detained refugees there. In addition, ICE has also opened several facilities in Louisiana. In May, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit alleging that the rate of parole approval for asylum seekers within the jurisdiction of the New Orleans ICE field office dropped from 76% in 2016 to only 1.5% in 2018. The New Orleans office covers Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. In 2016, ICE held just 2,000 immigrants between Mississippi and Louisiana. Since Trump came into office, that number has swelled past 10,000. At the July 12 protest, Brenda Chambliss, a MIRA attorney, criticized “family values” politicians for standing by or supporting Trump’s policies. “Where are the family values that everyone is speaking of? Where is the humanity? Where are these children? These questions need to be asked over and over again because we’re not getting answers. No one is being held to the standards and the values that they claim to have. I am really, really concerned with these children. We have private entities that are holding them in concentration camps—and that is exactly what they are being held in,” she said. “We should be horrified by this as a country. We claim to be the example for the world; I don’t see that. And the behavior and the manner in which we’re dealing with this situation, there is no humanity. There is no accountability.” Follow State Reporter Ashton Pittman on Twitter @ashtonpittman. Send tips to ashton@jacksonfreepress.com.
she said. “They set up fruit trees, a couple of paths and a bench, a free library and a blessing box with free food for people to make it more engaging. Before, it was an overgrown lot with weeds and trash,” Shell said. Other projects included the repainting of some street signs and two mini home-repair projects that included replacing gutters, fixing stairs and pressure washing. “We’re a city that’s really trying to be innovative and think outside the box. We know we have struggles, but we really are trying our best to make our city better,” Shell said. She said neighborhood revitalization is important because it makes sure those who have the least options to change their living environment have the best quality of life, especially those in low-income neighborhoods. “If we can make someone’s neighborhood safer to live in or closer to a park or a more tight-knit community, that’s the thing that can make them healthier and happier,” Shell said.
August 7 - 20, 2019 • jfp.ms
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