Wild times helping released detainees

Yesterday Dennis and I worked our shift at Aid-Northwest at the Northwest Detention Center, a large privately run immigration jail in Tacoma.  Our job is to assist those released with their short term plans usually traveling to their home or to family.  A number of detainees are usually released every day usually on some huge amount of bond (40K not uncommon), some granted asylum, a very few released.  They just dump them onto the Tacoma tide flats.  Our job is to greet them (we have a beat-up motor home), other families that might be waiting (and whoever else comes by) and help those released to get to where they are going next.  Usually they know but sometimes they don't.

You never know what's going to hit you.  We work on a Jewish affiliated group, first Monday of the month.  Dennis and I worked with two older adults yesterday.  We knew we were weak because we had no Spanish speaker that day.  Sometimes you don't need one.  But this time we did.  9 released including six from Cuba who had no English at all.  We agreed later that it might have helped if we had slowed down.  We used help from some Spanish speakers we could call, Google translate.  By this morning, we think everybody was on their way.  But some in this group couldn't communicate where they wanted to go; neither did they have money.  People released are in an odd liminal state, they are happy to be released but they're also dazed and sometimes don't know what to do next.  One Cuban woman, she knew she wanted to get to Miami but she had no idea how far away she was from Miami.  She did not know where she was located in the US.  When somebody showed her a map, she looked so crestfallen and worried.  She couldn't get hold of family.  How would she get to Miami??  We heard this morning that our part time director helped her with her travel plans.

Aid-NW also rents a small house with a part-time attendant for those who need short-term housing for those who need a little help.  We took two to the house including one man whose cousin was arranging for an Uber to take him to the bus station this morning.  Dennis worried that they would hook up but they did.  I took two to the bus station, one woman who looked like she had a flight to Miami but was very worried about the whole deal; one man wanting to take the Greyhound to LA.  By the end, even though it was a short time, we were all exhausted and not sure we had served our clients well.  But I think we did, it was just a hard slog this time.