President Carlisle’ s 9th Annual Breakfast Spotlights the Need for Heightened Immigration Reform( continued)
and investigative reporter for NPR. She currently is a feature writer at The Atlantic, covering immigration. She was born in Los Angeles, grew up in Merced, and is a graduate of Cal State Long Beach.
Dickerson began covering immigration in Merced, and in her self-intro, she added a kicker in describing the surroundings where she grew up.“ For those of you who don’ t know Merced, suffice it to say it’ s nothing like LA. It’ s an agricultural hub for the entire nation, among the top producers of produce and dairy in the country. Basically, what you need to do is to picture vast stretches of farmland and the pungent smell of cow manure permeating day to day life. That was how I grew up, she said.”
Merced is an immigrant community.“ I grew up sitting in the backseat of my parents’ car on the way to school and seeing out the window, migrant workers picking produce rain or shine every single day. I understood from a young age that same produce was what we purchased in the grocery store, that ended up on our dinner table and those of many American households. And I don’ t bring that up to reduce the contribution that immigrants make to this country by their labor, of course, but to point out just one of many examples of how immigration is not as it’ s often depicted as a one-way street, as much as our elected officials sometimes resist acknowledging. Our relationship with immigration in this country is a symbiotic one with give and take that appears on all sides,” she said.
“ In a functioning democracy, we need people whose job it is to simply tell us the truth.” She turned to the audience.“ And from there, your job, your end of the bargain is to decide what to do about it. And that’ s what today is about, right? What are you going to do about it? That can mean vote, protest, volunteer, invest, divest, challenge or support,” she advised the crowd.
She spoke the language of the newsroom to the audience.“ Very often, I broke a lot of front-page stories about rapid fire historic changes that we all remember to immigration enforcement policies. But I think even more important was the impact that these policies had. One example is when new public charge regulations were introduced, my colleagues and I started to hear about the soaring number of women, both documented and undocumented, who started arriving in emergency rooms in the state of Texas. They were in labor and hadn’ t had a single appointment for prenatal care because they feared being deported,” she explained. She then narrated a series of images superimposed on a large theatre-sized screen displayed behind her.
Here are examples of Dickerson’ s stories:“ Brittany is standing outside of the trailer where she lived in South Texas with her husband and his family. She actually had a pending green card application through her father, but she decided not to seek prenatal care when she became pregnant because her family wasn’ t able to put together enough money for her to pay for her healthcare in cash. Brittany did qualify for free medical care in the state of Texas. But she didn’ t want to risk it.
“ She worried that ICE officials might somehow get her phone number through Texas State Records and that she or her husband’ s family, many of whom were undocumented, could be targeted for deportation. Brittany had two major scares during pregnancy that involved waking up in the middle of the night, bleeding heavily. The second time she relented when ER staff urged her to go and see an obstetrician. It was a decision they made together as a family, but it was a very difficult one. And Brittany’ s relatives spent the rest of her pregnancy terrified that ICE might show up at their door one day. Her mother-in-law said to me,‘ they put you between a rock and a hard place. It’ s your baby or your immigration status’.”
A report from the detention center front.“ A lot of the stories that I’ ve done have had real impact. In 2019 I reported on this detention center in Clint, Texas, where I found out that hundreds of immigrant children were being held without public knowledge. A group of lawyers entered this facility and what they saw was children whose clothes were caked with snot and tears who did not have adequate food or water, who had not been able to brush their teeth. Who did not have soap, who couldn’ t pay for care since they’ ve been arrested at the border. The lead officer, a career Border Patrol official who was overseeing this facility, ended up being transferred out of Texas and soon after, actually forced out of the Border Patrol after the reporting that we did on this facility.
( To the audience)“ But as I’ m sure many of you know, there are still lots of issues with health and safety conditions inside immigration detention centers, and the number of children who have died in immigration detention centers.
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 6