Author: Marjorie Carlson

Batch one.

This is, believe it or not, my first time in Mexico!

We did training today. Tiring but really good. I have a lot of respect for the coordinators and volunteers.

The situation on the ground is changing really quickly and not always for the better, so it’s not 100% clear what I’ll be doing to help out from day to day. I’ll report in as I can, but we have to keep a lot of information private for the safety of everyone involved.

Happy new year everyone!

I just flew into San Diego to spend a week with Sanctuary Caravan, a group of volunteers providing services to the asylum-seekers in Tijuana.

The Sanctuary people normally run pro se legal clinics in NYC, helping asylum-seekers prepare to represent themselves through the asylum-seeking process.

They arrived a couple weeks ago in Tijuana and have already advised hundreds of folks in clinic, prepping them for the first screening process for asylum-seekers, the Credible Fear interview.

I’m here with my friend Jess, and tomorrow we’ll finish training and find out what our volunteer roles will be. I had hoped to help in the clinic itself, but they are only using 100% fluent Spanish speakers since they need to translate legalese and such.

It sounds like there’s no shortage of things that need doing, though! I’ll post more as I can.

I tried to put some ram board down to protect the flooring, but… It escaped, shouting “FREEEEDOOOOOOOM!”

We were in danger of having the plumber show up only to find there were no walls for him to put plumbing in. Luckily, Justin’s dad came out for most of a week and put up about a million walls. Whew!

We seem to be getting less and less house instead of more and more….

Got concrete poured on the basement plumbing this morning! I hope the plumbing is all in the right place now! (Don’t ask.)