Between Everything and Nothing by Joe Meno

Author:Joe Meno
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781640093157
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2020-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

19

Eleven months after fleeing Ghana, nearly three months after leaving Brazil, Razak reached the U.S. border and presented himself to a Customs and Border Protection officer to request asylum on August 6, 2013. Unable to produce any documents or identification, he was put in manacles and led away within moments of putting forth his plea.

In a separate interrogation room known as the Admissibility Enforcement Unit, CBP officers told Razak to take off his clothes, leaving him in his underwear. The officers then searched his entire body, forcing him to bend over, took the $600 he had hidden in his sock, and told him to get dressed. Among his only possessions was the pocket-size Koran, which he had carried with him throughout his travels.

Once dressed, he was handcuffed again and transferred to a holding cell to be processed. The cell was incredibly large and incredibly cold, institutional in its expansiveness, framed by floor-to-ceiling wire fences, fluorescent lights, metal benches, and concrete ground. The air conditioning blew constantly upon the migrants’ tired faces. There were no bunks, no cots, no beds. No windows or evidence of the world outside. It was like being underground or on the moon. Thirty other men—some of whom had been separated from their wives and families—sat on the benches, speaking in low tones to each other about the temperature, their treatment, and how long they had been waiting. Some of them, having passed through U.S. immigration before, warned that this was how the process worked.

Hours later, no longer sure what time it was, some of the men began to complain about not being given food or water. CBP officers appeared in the middle of the night and handed out Taco Bell. Razak ate the greasy food, unable to finish his share. The officers gave each man two thin blankets, which many put on the concrete floor or used to cover themselves, all of them shivering in the cold air.

During that long expanse of time, Razak wondered, Is this the United States? Am I in the right place? Is this a holding cell for criminals? Is this really what’s going to happen to me?

He glanced around and saw other men from Central America, from Africa, from Asia, and recognized he was with other asylum seekers, men without a home, people without a country, fallen into the hands of a nation that now held them with a fierce sense of suspicion.

The fluorescent lights, the cold air blowing, the suspension of belief and disbelief. Studying the persistent logic of your hands because there was nothing else to look at.

In the morning, there were burritos, a pulpy cup of lukewarm juice.

Razak soon learned, from speaking to the other asylum seekers, that in the United States, anyone could submit an asylum application either with an asylum officer or at a time of their choosing within one year of their arrival in the country as an affirmative request. If you presented yourself without a visa or passport, if you were detained at the border, or if you were apprehended somewhere in the U.

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