Day 4

Today was an action packed day for our group. We started off the day early in a district courtroom, and were able to attend a handful of online court sessions reviewing various cases. The common themes among the cases were ‘Re-entry into the United states after deportation’ and ‘Conspiring to import aliens’. Both of these cases were very interesting to hear about, as we were able to hear examples of maximum punishments for each of these offenses, and how these punishments changed between each different case. One prominent aspect of the punishments that a lot of us noticed was the prominent fines. For one case involving fentanyl, the court said that the maximum fine would be 5 million dollars. After all of the cases, the magistrate judge who was handling the docket gave us the opportunity to ask questions. When prompted about the fines, he stated that oftentimes the maximum fines aren’t even approached, and that sometimes fines aren’t even designated. 

After the court case, we got the opportunity to eat at a Mexican restaurant for lunch, and then we went to the Border Servant Corps hospitality center and attended a presentation by Leonardo Castañeda, on a broad range of topics about immigration and the border. Some of the things that stood out to me were three examples of detention centers in New Mexico: Cibola, Torrence, Otero. In the presentation, Castañeda showed us images of some of the detention centers, and talked to us about the conditions and situations that the people were living in. It was very surprising how neglected the people in the detention centers were. At one point, Castañeda told us that there were over 1000 untreated people with COVID, which is just one example of the inhumane conditions that the people in these densely populated detention centers were in. Overall, today was a long day but we learned lots of important information and we’re looking forward to talking with the Border Patrol agents tomorrow. Efe E.

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