DILLEY, Texas (RNS and Texas Tribune) — Roughly two dozen immigration advocates, faith leaders, Japanese internment camp survivors and their descendants completed a four-day, 45-mile pilgrimage Saturday to an immigrant detention facility outside of Dilley.
The activists demanded the closure of the only federal family detention center, described by a Japanese internment survivor as inhumane and a tragic “repetition of American history.”
Free Families, a national coalition of organizations advocating for immigrant families, organized the pilgrimage with Texas Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministries, Grassroots Leadership and Tsuru for Solidarity, a group of Japanese American concentration camp survivors and descendants who work to end detention. The goal of the pilgrimage was “to shut down Dilley, end family detention in its entirety, and stop family separation caused by ICE targeting and detention.”
Action was a central theme of the pilgrimage. “Join us everywhere,” said Mike Ishii, executive director and co-founder of Tsuru for Solidarity. “March in solidarity, walk in spiritual faith and strength, just as we are doing today.”
“Together, as a country, we will transform the violence, and we will open the future to a new path,” he said.
The pilgrimage began Wednesday morning at the Crystal City Concentration Camp, where Japanese American families were imprisoned in Texas during World War II.
Walking up to 12 miles each morning, the group arrived at Dilley’s South Texas Family Residential Center around 10 a.m. Saturday.
Interfaith leaders and activists prayed, delivered a meditative chant and tied chains of multicolored origami cranes to the facility’s 10-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire.
The paper cranes were folded by Japanese American concentration camp survivors and their descendants.
“We bring [these cranes] on their behalf and in solidarity with the children and the families being subjected to violence inside of Dilley and in every detention site across the country,” Ishii said. “The message from us is this must stop.”
“We will transform the violence,” Ishii said as 16-wheelers barreled down the nearby …
