Action at the National Border Patrol Museum
- Tornillo: The Occupation -
 
The protest at the Border Patrol Museum in El Paso was a
collaboration between local residents and activists from around
the country. Recognizing the interlocking nature of all our
struggles, we staged an intervention to uplift and remember both
the experiences of migrant families and the many lives that have
been lost. Since its inception in 1924 the United States Border
Patrol has expanded a colonial system that inflicts violence and
death along the U.S.-Mexico border.
 We believe that the Border
Patrol and U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) should be held accountable for their
human rights violations. We believe all migrants deserve to be
treated with dignity and respect. We assert the only crisis on
the border is the experiences of vulnerable migrant and
undocumented populations bearing the weight of U.S. immigration
and foreign policy and Indigenous peoples who have been
terrorized and harassed by Customs and Border Patrol on Tribal
lands. We stand behind all migrant indigenous families exercising
their ancestral claim to migration in the Americas.
We took action because the museum and spaces like it
exhibit a
one-sided perspective of what is happening on the border. Nowhere
in the museum would you find the problematic reality of the
Border Patrol and its history of oppressive treatment towards
Indigenous peoples of this land, asylum seekers, and migrants.
Our presence in the space was to centre the voices that were
missing from this memorial and the human rights violations
inflicted upon them: Jakelin Caal Maquín, Felipe Gómez
Alonzo,
Claudia Patricia Gómez González, and the more than 100
others who
have died as a consequence of Border Patrol violence. They died
because of the action of Border Patrol. They deserve to be
remembered in Border Patrol spaces.
We are in a crisis of the consciousness of this country.
A
path towards reconciliation cannot begin unless institutions
responsible for telling this country's story take that
responsibility seriously and tell its whole truth. We must, as we
have historically, fight for the sanctity of black and brown
lives. It is irresponsible for any institution to claim to be
apolitical while erasing the entire history of a people and using
politically charged words, like "illegal alien" in their
exhibits.
We recognize that an injustice anywhere is an injustice
everywhere. Therefore, we will continue to resist
state-sanctioned violence that places the lives and memories of
law enforcement above those who have died as a result of systems
of oppression, whether it be at the U.S. Borders, in Palestine,
or in the streets of Ferguson, El Paso, Albuquerque/Tiwa
Territory, or Tucson. No one is free until we all are
free.
Protesters from Museum Action Face Criminal
Charges
Sixteen activists are facing criminal charges stemming
from a
February 2019 protest at the National Border Patrol Museum in El
Paso, Texas. The activists were part of a coalition of various
struggles that traveled from across the U.S. to El Paso to bring
attention to the inhumane detention of children at the
now-infamous Tornillo detention facility.
The sixteen activists are facing felony and misdemeanor
charges and warrants have been issued for their arrest. El Paso
police have grossly inflated the charges from this nonviolent
protest in an apparent attempt to intimidate these individuals
and stop others from standing up and speaking out against the
human rights abuses being committed at the southern
border. These sixteen activists are facing potential prison
time for their nonviolent protest. Meanwhile, the true criminals,
the people separating families and putting children in cages,
have not been brought to justice.
Stand with these advocates who are exposing the Trump
administration's violence and donate what you can here.
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