Border Patrol Case

Students and staff at El Paso’s Bowie High School did not drop their legal action against the Border Patrol when Operation Blockade began, as you reported on April 14. The two sides reached an agreement that had nothing to do with Operation Blockade.

Among other things, the Border Patrol agreed to stop using school campuses for enforcement, stop harassing people because their skin is brown, institute a complaint process to hold agents accountable and train agents in constitutional rights.

Operation Blockade is no cure for Border Patrol abuse. When agents are let off the levee, as they surely must be someday, they will continue to abuse until systemic changes like those made possible under the Bowie settlement are taken seriously by the agency and monitored by the community.

Nor is the operation a cure for illegal immigration. Immigrants will continue to come by other routes because they flee political and economic conditions that would drive you and me to utter despair.

Let’s name the real enemies: not immigrants, but the governments and multinational corporations whose greed creates intolerable living conditions for them, and whose moral insensibility makes public scapegoats out of them when they flee oppression to seek a better life.

SUZAN KERN

El Paso Border Rights Coalition