Saul Soto, Outside the Border Network’s Office on Myrtle Street
“I was studying computers at Community College in 2000 when I first started to work with the Border Network for Human Rights. We were knocking on doors, asking people if they felt their human rights were being abused, and most people said no, but then they’d start thinking about it – the police are doing this, the Border Patrol are doing that – and abuse had become so common that people thought it was normal.
“We document cases where people’s fourth amendment rights are being abused and we create reports and present them to the officials and try to make them more accountable, and we work for more humane legislation and policies.
“The Border is different from the rest of America. Treaties like NAFTA benefit the rest of the country, but at the expense of the border. Sometimes it feels like the Constitution or the Bill of Rights doesn’t exist here. The U.S. is built on immigration, but immigrants are stigmatized and abused, and their contributions aren’t recognized. Whole families are treated like second-class citizens because they are undocumented, and they feel they have no rights, they’re afraid, and we help them rid themselves of that.” – Saul Soto
Previous Installments of Frontier Justice:
1. Ray Ybarra
2. Martha Chavez
3. Carlos Marentes
4. Micaela Guthrie
5. Selena Solis
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Baron may be reached at rbaron47@hotmail.com.