Vigil will call for end to detention center conditions

As reports of overcrowded detention centers and family separations at the border continue to make headlines across the nation, community members are holding a vigil to express their frustration with conditions that exist at facilities along the border. 

This Friday at 7:45 p.m., Mano Amiga and local clergy will host a vigil at the Hays County Historic Courthouse as part of the Lights for Liberty international day of action, which calls for an end to concentration camps at the border. Several clergy members, including the Reverend Tim Bauerkemper, pastor at First Lutheran Church San Marcos, will speak at the candlelight vigil.  

Karen Muñoz, chair of Mano Amiga's board of directors, said she hopes the vigil will provide a space for community members to grieve the situation at the border. 

“So I hope to get people to process that anger and then move forward so we're not holding it in, and also moving forward in a positive direction to stop what's going on,” she said. 

On July 2, the Office of Inspector General released a report that called for the Department of Homeland Security to take immediate action to end overcrowding and prolonged detention of individuals in the Rio Grande Valley. Included in the report were photos of adults packed into cells and families crowded within the detention centers. 

“During the week of June 10, 2019, we traveled to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and again observed serious overcrowding and prolonged detention in Border Patrol facilities requiring immediate attention,” the report read. 

According to Bauerkemper, a crisis is occurring due to the way asylum seekers are being treated in an unjust and inhumane way. 

“I hope [the vigil] will draw attention to what is happening, particularly with children in detention who are being harmed, being traumatized,” he said. “We are creating decades and decades of consequences because of how our nation is treating people, and there is a moral cost to any person being placed in detention.”

Bauerkemper said his response to issues around immigration and asylum is a faith-commitment. He said he decided to speak at the vigil because he finds it offensive to see people treated with less than respect and human dignity at immigration detention centers. 

“For me, the bottom line of my faith is a call to empathy and a call to remembering my own story,” Bauerkemper said. “I think a lot of us have forgotten our story as immigrants and people descended from immigrants.”

The vigil in San Marcos is also meant to initiate more action to end the conditions that exist in detention centers, according to Muñoz. She said this involves getting involved at the local level as well. 

“If we come and we vent and we grieve then I don't think we're doing as much as we can with the devastation that's going on,” Muñoz said. We need to continue to act afterwards.”