On Saturday, one year will have passed since the widely-condemned 'Remain in Mexico' policy was brought into place.
As an Air Force veteran who enlisted straight after high school and went on to serve her country for more than a decade, Pam Campos-Palma has seen a lot in her 32 years. Having been deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan, where she specialized in counter-violence and extremism as an intelligence analyst, she says:"I've seen the worst of the worst."
"It's like a warzone with no one in charge," Campos-Palma said."I saw lines of about, let's say 35 people, including parents holding babies, just waiting in line to get two bananas that had been donated. It was overwhelming." As of Saturday, a year will have passed since the policy came into place, despite immigration and human rights groups repeatedly warning that the rule has put the lives of tens of thousands of asylum seekers in danger.
Pam Campos-Palma, an Air Force veteran and Sean Horgan, a USMC vet, both members of Veterans for American Ideals and Kennji Kizuka of Human Rights First walk through the camp of asylum seekers forced to wait in Matamoros, Mexico due to the Trump administration's 'Remain in Mexico' policy.The danger asylum seekers face in Matamoros, Campos-Palma said, is something that she could feel as soon as she entered the camp.
"There were times when I felt cartel members were around, watching us," she said."There was one man whose face I probably won't ever forget. He looked like he had been beaten. His face was really disfigured and he looked at me in the way that the military had trained me to look out for. I remember us registering that, that this guy is working, whether willingly or not, for the cartels.
The fact that children, women and men are being kidnapped, raped, physically beaten and extorted, she said, should not come as a surprise."It's common knowledge that this is happening and that these children are not only living in inhumane conditions but that they are in danger.
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