At the US-Mexico border, asylum seekers are trapped in a hostile environment.
By Justine van der Leun
The El Paso Processing Center, informally known as the Camp, is a sprawling, walled compound of low-lying cinder-block buildings and trailers tucked between the landing strip at El Paso International airport and the Lone Star golf club, a public course that sits just across the street. The camp houses around 800 immigrants at any given time – some awaiting deportation, some awaiting their hearings or appeals. Some pass through for a day; others stay for years.
Wassim Isaac, a 32-year-old Syrian with ginger hair and impeccable manners, had been at the Camp for over a year by the time we met, in December 2017 – his asylum denied, his appeal wending its way through the system. Isaac, who asked that I not use his real name, had been the owner of a pharmacy back in Syria, and described himself as a college-educated, law-abiding churchgoer. When he first arrived at the Camp, he asked himself how he had come to be incarcerated. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) designates the Camp as a “holding and processing facility”, but as far as Isaac could tell, it was a prison. “Like in the movies,” he said flatly.
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