Seeking Asylum

Around the world, asylum seekers go through horrific ordeals in order to escape from impossible circumstances and reach safety. That safety, however, cannot always be found. In the Americas, such migration usually means travelling north along routes which are well known to predatory cartels. Robbery, rape, kidnap, trafficking and murder are commonplace. It’s something which only desperate people would put themselves through. Nevertheless, at the border, a fresh struggle awaits.

Kensy is one of the lucky ones. She makes it to the border alive, and with her children alive. It has been exhausting. They had to walk through the mountains, sleeping outdoors or in abandoned houses. They were robbed and held to ransom, but at least her children were not raped. She thought that she had found salvation when she reached US soil, but found herself abruptly sent to wait in Tijuana whilst her case was processed. Naturally, there were gangsters there too. The only protection came from staying in a refuge where she and her children slept on the floor of a tiny shack for two months.

It’s in that shack that we first meet her as she goes through her few remaining possessions: a small wooden sculpture of a black Christ on a cross; a handkerchief featuring the Virgin of Guadeloupe, given to her by a friend; her children’s vaccination certificates and school records; her youngest child’s umbilical cord. Other precious items have been lost, including her phone with the only record of the death threat she was sent in Honduras, the reason for their flight. Courtesy of the US government, she is also equipped with a monitoring bracelet which is secured around her ankle. This makes it difficult to get work on either side of the border. People are quick to assume that she’s a criminal, just as US voters are quick to buy into claims that all immigrants are criminals.

There is discussion, here, of the global migration crisis brought on by political instability and the direct impacts of climate change. A short history lesson takes in the US’ 1980 Refugee Act and the country’s long history of taking in the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free – and then contrasts it with the hateful rhetoric of the past few years, with a new system under which very few asylum seekers are successful. The judges presiding over cases are no longer independent. Most applicants have no lawyers. One attorney speaking describes it as “handling death penalty cases in a traffic court system.”

Help comes from volunteer organisations working outside the system. Kensy’s husband migrated before her, with their eldest son, Kevin; they are settled in California, so the Jewish Family Service of San Diego steps in to offer pro bono assistance. Still, though some progress is made, we do not see a clear conclusion to the case – this could take as long as six years. Life gets better and the family is grateful for what it has. Kevin is diagnosed with autism, enabling him to access support which could transform his life – a far cry from the way he was treated in Honduras, where doctors blamed his difficulty fitting in the cartoons he watched. Kensy finds work washing cars. Her husband comes close to death from Covid; surviving, he pays tribute to her strength. She says that she wants her children to have the good lives she could never dream of for herself, but it seems likely that they will look back and wonder how they can ever live up to what she has achieved.

The shadow remains. Deportation could happen at any time – and most migrants never make it past that infamous wall. This film, expanded from director Rae Ceretto’s 2020 short We Do Not Live Here, is connected to a campaign aimed at raising awareness of the injustices which migrants face upon arriving at the US border. There have been a number of documentaries dealing with similar subject matter in the past, but in the battle for hearts and minds, numbers matter. Still, Ceratto wants to ensure that we do not see migrants themselves simply as statistics. She wants to put a face to the term ‘asylum seeker’, and, perhaps, give Kensy a chance to look back at those who view her as nothing.