Back in her hometown in the state of Portuguesa, Venezuela, Magnaly Márquez had to make a choice: Buy her 3-year-old son a pair of shoes, or pizza. She didn’t have enough money for both—despite having studied business administration, working in a bank, and juggling side gigs for extra cash. Now, sitting in a charity hospital-turned-migrant shelter in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Márquez’s eyes welled with tears as she recounted her story. 

In November, the 30-year-old single mother decided to leave for the United States with her son, Milands, in tow. They trekked across the Darién Gap, a treacherous stretch of jungle at the Panama-Colombia border. The Gap lacks roads and cell service. Criminal groups run amok. Migrants frequently run out of food and water, relying on untreated streams at the risk of illness or severe dehydration. 

When I met her in mid-June, Márquez had been waiting in northern Mexico, just across the river from Brownsville, since February. She hopes to seek asylum, which will ultimately require her to prove she faced a form of persecution beyond financial deprivation. Her home country is engulfed in a long-running crisis that is both political and economic.

“Above all else, one asks for humanity,” Márquez said, sitting on a metal bench in the sweltering summer heat. “We are people too. We are warriors who just want a better life—to work—for our children.”

Márquez is one of thousands of migrants in limbo south of the Rio Grande, awaiting their fate. During Joe Biden’s presidency, seeking asylum has been a fraught and ever-changing process. For much of Biden’s term, ports of entry were effectively closed to most asylum-seekers under an archaic public health measure, Title 42. The administration has opened special pathways for immigrants from certain countries including Venezuela, Haiti, and Cuba. At the same time, Biden has limited the means of requesting asylum by pushing migrants to request lottery-style appointments through an app called CBPOne and clamping down on the well-established right to request asylum even after crossing the border illegally.

In his most dramatic action yet, Biden issued an executive order earlier this month that suspends asylum access between ports of entry when daily crossings exceed a certain threshold. Traditionally, as codified in U.S. law, migrants may request asylum “whether or not at a designated port of arrival.” This order, already challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union, could upend that status quo.

(Francesca D’Annunzio)

In each country she passed through, Márquez said, she and her toddler-aged son stopped so she could work. They needed more money to continue their journey north. Along the way, she sold arepas and worked in a grocery store and at a printing press. But in Tamaulipas, the state that borders South Texas from Brownsville to Laredo, she said she can’t work. It’s dangerous to leave the shelter. 

She said she knows from personal experience: Márquez told me she and her son were grabbed on a bus earlier this year and kidnapped by cartel members in Reynosa for extortion. Such incidents are commonplace in northern Mexico border towns.

Late last year, armed men kidnapped 32 migrants from a commercial bus before abandoning them in a Reynosa parking lot. During former President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, asylum-seekers were repeatedly unable to attend their U.S. court hearings because they were being kidnapped. On June 14, the U.S. Consulate General in Matamoros sent out a travel advisory, cautioning against travel in nearby Reynosa, across from the McAllen area, due to kidnappings on intercity buses. That advisory was directed at U.S. citizens and residents, but asylum-seekers are specifically targeted for extortion. 

As of mid-June, there are around 2,000 asylum-seekers stuck in Reynosa waiting to cross into Texas and an additional 2,000 in Matamoros, according to an estimate from the Sidewalk School, a humanitarian nonprofit that works with asylum-seekers in both cities. I requested estimates from Customs and Border Protection and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Migración but have not received responses. 

In the Matamoros hospital-turned-refuge, known as the Pumarejo shelter, asylum-seekers wait in limbo for their CBPOne appointments—wait times average several months—spending the day helping run the facility or lying in their tents. Children have the option of attending English, Spanish, and art classes held by the Sidewalk School, but they do not attend local government schools. The adults are often unable to get jobs off-site to earn money; the cartel kidnappings have made it dangerous for migrants to leave the shelter.

Some asylum-seekers in Matamoros find refuge in an impromptu tent camp abutting the Rio Grande, with a clear view of the U.S. border, lined with concertina wire as far as the eye can see. In the encampment, asylum-seekers sleep in makeshift hammocks tied to mesquite trees or tents covered with black and blue tarps. As of mid-June, the area was mostly cleared out. After the Pumarejo shelter opened last August, asylum-seekers sought safety there instead, but around a couple dozen migrants remain in the camp.

The Kaleo International Shelter, a partnership between a Christian missionary organization and the Sidewalk School, is accessible by an unpaved dirt path, tucked away in a sparsely populated Reynosa neighborhood beside a park that’s home to mesquite, nopales, and wild pigs. The property is surrounded by concrete walls and enclosed behind a corrugated metal door. 

When I visited, 39-year-old Jorel Bien Aimé was sitting inside waiting to see a doctor. He was suffering from chronic neck and back pain, he said in Spanish. He’d traveled a long road to Reynosa from his hometown in Haiti, spending a few years in Chile, working various jobs to send remittances back to his family. He cleaned streets and plazas and picked blueberries and apples, but his wages often weren’t enough to actually send money home. Now, not having seen his family in six years, he felt depression setting in too.

“I feel very weak—physically, mentally, economically,” he said, covering his face as his hands began to tremble. He said he’s been waiting on his CBPOne appointment, where he will make his case for asylum, for seven months. The Kaleo Shelter mostly houses Haitian migrants.

(Francesca D’Annunzio)

Wadely Ostin, a former police officer in the Legislative Palace in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, spent months in Reynosa but did not stay at Kaleo. He told me he never wanted to leave his home country. But, in October 2022, he said he started receiving threats to his family. His wife and son fled to the Dominican Republic, where Haitians face widespread discrimination and deportation. One evening as he was leaving work in Haiti, Ostin said members of a criminal gang tried to kill him, shooting at his car as he sped away.

Ostin said he waited close to a year for a CBPOne appointment. Each day, he checked his phone to see if he was selected. Last week, he finally had his appointment and was allowed to enter the United States, where he’ll pursue an asylum claim. After crossing, he sent me a picture of himself inside a car, grinning with his family, in Hidalgo, Texas.

In a phone call earlier this week, Ostin said he was enjoying the most peace he had felt in his life. As we chatted, I could hear his toddler son watching cartoons on a tablet. Now in a small, sleepy city on the Arkansas-Oklahoma border, he sees neighbors chatting and kids playing soccer outside well into the evening—simple pleasures that aren’t safe when it’s dark out in Port-au-Prince or Reynosa. 

Here, he said, “I’m not afraid of anything.”

Days before New York City’s final budget for the next fiscal year is due, both advocates and City Council members are urging that funding be maintained to reach a similar number of students served in the fiscal year that is about to end on July 1.

For New Yorkers over the age of 16 who are not enrolled in school and who can’t speak, read, and/or write English well enough to participate in an English-language education or training program, adult literacy classes are a key option.

Students who participated in the Chinese-American Planning Council’s adult literacy programs shared in a survey that their lives changed after these classes. “Of course it improved my life,” reads one of the responses in Spanish, shared with City Limits from an internal survey of students who recently completed the organization’s programs.

“Now I can write a little bit of English, read, or go out on the street and read words, know what they say when someone speaks, and be able to understand a little bit. I felt like I was going out blind or deaf,” the respondent said. Now, it “is like not going out blind and deaf anymore,” they added.

For years, the city’ Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) has been working with community organizations to develop an adult literacy system that provides reading, writing, English, and math classes.  

Now, just days before New York City’s final budget for the next fiscal year is due, both advocates and City Council members are urging that funding be maintained to reach a similar number of students served in the fiscal year that is about to end on July 1.

The city budgeted $16.8 million for DYCD to bid on adult literacy programs through requests for proposals (RFPs) during the current fiscal year 2024. In the upcoming fiscal year, the Literacy Services RFP is baselined at $11.8 million, a $6 million reduction from previous years, or a cut of nearly 30 percent.

“Programs already only serve a very small fraction of students who need adult literacy skills,” Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) Chief Policy and Public Affairs Officer Carlyn Cowen said.

”There are 2.2 million adults with limited English proficiency or who do not have a high school diploma. Last year, DYCD was only able to serve about 1 percent of these adults,” Cowen added. “With such a low percentage of need being served, with programs already critically underfunded, it is difficult to understand how DYCD and the city are able to make such draconian cuts to essential community programs.”

In addition to less funding overall, after years of advocating for a new price per participant (PPP) rate, the city agreed to change the per student per year rate from $900 to $1,300—which in turn would also reduce the number of students who can take part.

The New York City Coalition for Adult Literacy (NYCCAL) anticipates serving approximately 17,722 students this year. With the possible reduction in the budget, and considering the new PPP rate, they expect to reach just 9,118 students in the year ahead, a 48.5 percent reduction.

This cut would come at a time when providers of these programs have seen increased demand for classes, as more than 200,000 migrants and asylum seekers have arrived in the city in the last two years, tens of thousands of whom remain in the shelter system.

“This is coming at a time when the waitlist and demand for adult literacy programs has significantly increased citywide,” Cowen said, adding that there are hundreds of people on a waiting list for these classes, and many of them have recently arrived in the city.

To cover a population similar to what community-based organizations (CBOs) served this year, NYCCAL is asking for an additional $11 million: $6 million to cover what was previously allocated and $5 million to reach a similar number of students under the new per-student rate that will take effect in fiscal year 2025.

“Adult literacy is foundational programming for immigrants in our city. You can’t find a job, housing, education, health care, the list goes on, if you can’t fill out, read, or access the required documents,” said Councilmember Alexa Avilés, chair of the City Council’s Committee on Immigration. The Council is asking for an additional $10 million for DYCD programs. 

“$10 million is a drop in the bucket, and it has never been a question of if we have the money. We have it and then some. It’s entirely up to Mayor Adams and his administration to recognize that literacy is a lifeline for newly arrived New Yorkers, and must be a priority for this city,” Avilés said.

DYCD said that the city is working closely with the Council to support the priorities of both parties and will have more to say soon, adding that If additional funding is provided, they will increase the number of slots served.

“The Adams administration is committed to bringing equity to all New Yorkers, which is why DYCD developed a new RFP funding formula that incorporated poverty rates and expanded newly funded Adult Basic Education programs to communities such as East Harlem, Concourse Village, and Soundview,” DYCD Commissioner Keith Howard said in a statement. 

“DYCD continues to make sure communities previously without literacy programs are getting the services they need, and our administration is working with the Council to support our mutual priorities in the adopted budget.”

While the CBOs say the RFP reformulation looks good on paper—it used data from the 2020 American Community Survey to identify areas with higher rates of poverty, lower educational attainment, and limited English proficiency, which are called “Neighborhood Tabulation Areas”—in practice, the reality is more complicated.

According to NYCCAL, many Neighborhood Tabulation Areas (NTA) have no existing DYCD-funded literacy, and while organizations can apply for funding even when they’re outside these areas, they fear they will only be considered if there are no viable proposals from programs within the zone. 

“While the RFP was amended after a huge outcry to allow CBOs outside of the NTA to apply, it was also set up to prioritize organizations within the NTA, de facto creating barriers for organizations that have been doing this work in communities for decades,” Cowen said.

DYCD has been notifying CBOs since Friday on whether they won funding under the new RFP, but did not specify how many programs are expected to operate in fiscal year 2025 and how it compares to previous years, saying the number of programs will be available after all RFP awards are finalized. 

“The recent RFP has been difficult on providers,” J.T. Falcone, United Neighborhood Houses’ communications director, wrote via email. “Some awards have been made at this point, but a lack of clear communication from DYCD has created a destabilizing environment where contracts are set to end at the end of the month, but we don’t know where the new ones will be going forward.”

Program providers who spoke to City Limits fear that between budget cuts and the new formula for awarding contracts, the city’s adult literacy program system will undergo a multi-level restructuring that will ultimately affect those who need these classes. 

“We anticipate some providers who aren’t awarded new contracts will have to do layoffs, but we still don’t have clear guidance from the City on how to handle those, which has been difficult,” Falcone added.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Daniel@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

Reggie Jackson is still hitting them out of the park.

Not since the former Yankee slugger clouted three home runs in a World Series game against the Dodgers in 1977 has Jackson done more with a pitch in the strike zone.

This time, it was Alex Rodriguez, of all people, serving up the fast ball.

The occasion was a nationally televised major league game last week honoring Willie Mays and the Birmingham, Alabama, ball field where the baseball legend began his professional career in the Negro Leagues.

Mays, one of the few players to hit more home runs than Jackson, had just died a couple of days before at the age of 93, which only added to the poignancy of a very emotional day.

Rodriguez, another former Yankees slugger, asked Jackson during the Fox Sports broadcast how he felt about returning to Birmingham’s historic Rickwood Field, where he played in the minor leagues.

What followed was more than three minutes of brutal, painful honesty, and a clip to rival any of Jackson’s home run highlight reels.

Jackson, who played in Birmingham, spoke of the racism he endured with the Athletics’ Double-A team in 1967 before he was called up to the big leagues later that year.

“Coming back here is not easy,” Jackson said. “The racism when I played here, the difficulty of going through different places where we traveled. Fortunately, I had a manager and I had players on the team that helped me get through it. But I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”

Jackson didn’t leave out any details.

“I walked into restaurants, and they would point at me and say, ‘The n—r can’t eat here,’” Jackson said. “I would go to a hotel, and they would say, ‘The n—r can’t stay here.’”

Jackson said they went to team owner Charlie Finley’s country club for a welcome home dinner.

“They pointed me out with the N-word: ‘He can’t come in here,’” Jackson recalled. “Finley marched the whole team out. He said, ‘We’re going to go to the diner and eat hamburgers. We’ll go where we’re wanted.’”

In his 21 big league seasons, Jackson was hit by a pitch 96 times. None of them stung more than what he endured during the 114 games he played for the Birmingham A’s.

“Fortunately, I had a manager in Johnny McNamara that, if I couldn’t eat in the place, nobody would eat,” Jackson said.

“We’d get food to travel. If I couldn’t stay in a hotel, they’d drive to the next hotel and find a place where I could stay. Had it not been for Rollie Fingers, Johnny McNamara, Dave Duncan, Joe and Sharon Rudi, I slept on their couch three, four nights a week for about a month and a half. Finally, they were threatened that they would burn our apartment complex down unless I got out. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

Fans who like their history in neat little boxes like to think that it was only Jackie Robinson who had to endure the racist taunts. Many understand that players like Mays and Henry Aaron. former Negro leaguers, also paid a price to pave the way for others.

But few would associate Reggie Jackson — who famously fought with Billy Martin, and clashed with Thurman Munson — with pioneers who suffered so future Black players could thrive in the game.

Much has been said about greatness in the days since Mays died. There have been endless highlight reels and a trove of warm tributes.

But no one, no one, did a better job of honoring Willie and Hank and Jackie, and Birmingham than the man known as Mr. October.

“People said to me today, ‘Do you think you’re a better person?’” Jackson said. “‘Do you think you won when you played here and conquered?’ I said, ‘You know, I would never want to do it again.’

Leonard Greene writes a column for New York Daily News.

Related Articles

Stephen L. Carter: Crime labs are drowning in work. That hurts us all

Noah Feldman: It just got easier to be convicted of a crime

Abbie E. Goldberg: As conservatives target same-sex marriage, its power is only getting clearer

Trudy Rubin: Ukraine’s head of military intelligence is behind Kyiv’s biggest victories this year. He sees no point in peace talks

Noah Feldman: Supreme Court’s right faces a free-speech problem

In 2013, a chemist named Annie Dookhan pleaded guilty to multiple charges relating to allegations that she’d falsified results while working at a laboratory that performed drug tests for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. After her downfall, the lab where she worked was closed, and other staff chemists were investigated. Tens of thousands of drug cases were dismissed.

Here’s the kicker: At the time, some commentators argued that Dookhan’s misconduct might represent fallout from a 2009 Supreme Court ruling that when a forensic analyst performs tests that are used against criminal defendants –there was cocaine in his system; the blood alcohol was thus-and-so level — the technician must testify at trial, rather than, as in the past, submitting a written report. Because analysts were now forced to spend so much time in court, critics warned, they would have less time to run tests. Of course they’d cut corners.

All of which brings us to Friday’s decision in Smith v. Arizona, another narcotics prosecution, where the analyst whose tests determined that Joseph Smith possessed methamphetamines and other drugs didn’t appear at trial. (The court writes that “for unknown reasons” the tech “disappeared from the scene.” Yikes.) Another tech from the lab used the absent analyst’s notes as the basis of expert testimony. (Experts have broad freedom to rest their opinions on otherwise inadmissible evidence.) Smith was convicted.

The Supreme Court unanimously vacated the conviction, and although not all the justices agreed with the reasoning, Justice Elena Kagan’s majority opinion does seem to double down on the still-controversial rule that the tech who performs the test must come to court and be cross-examined — no matter what pressure this puts in the lab.

Some basics: The Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants the right to confront the witnesses against them. For most of the nation’s history, the requirement was relatively toothless. In 2004, however, the court revived the so-called Confrontation Clause, holding that when a wife who’d witnessed an alleged crime committed by her husband refused to testify against him, the prosecutions could not admit as a substitute her recorded statement to police about the incident. Why? Because her refusal to take the stand made it impossible for her husband to cross-examine her about her “testimonial” statement.

This revolutionary development, led jointly and defended fiercely by the late Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was swiftly expanded, until, in 2009, the court held that a laboratory analyst who performed the tests on the substance deemed to be cocaine had to appear and be cross-examined. A sworn affidavit would not suffice. Along the way, the court rejected the claim that forensic technicians are simply performing “neutral” science.

Prosecutors who wanted the techs to stay in the labs tried various end-runs. Could a lab supervisor testify about the results, while the techs stayed in the lab, doing their work? The justices said no. OK, how about letting an expert witness rely on the tests — could the expert opine about the results without testimony from the tech? After all, experts are allowed to rest their opinions on evidence that’s not admissible. The justices said, um, well, er, we can’t actually get five votes for any answer.

But the answer matters enormously. True, the empirical evidence seems not to bear out the existence of what’s come to be known as the “CSI Effect” — the belief by jurors in the almost magical power of forensic science. (One study found that regular CSI viewers might actually be more skeptical than others about forensic testimony.) At the same time, forensic analysis — DNA, fingerprints, toolmarks, all the rest — remains crucial to many a criminal prosecution.

Unfortunately, crime labs aren’t much like what we see on television, where heroic detectives and idiosyncratic forensic experts have time to chat, play gags, protect each other from hired guns, and even date each other. In real life, forensic lab technicians regularly report high levels of stress. Due to their often gruesome work, many suffer PTSD-type symptoms. Crime labs are overworked pretty much everywhere. The pandemic shutdowns made things much worse.

Which leads us back to this week’s decision in Smith v. Arizona, where the court was expected to clear up the confusion. Instead, Justice Kagan’s majority opinion gives only half of the answer. When one tech testifies as an expert and relies on the work of another, writes Kagan, the jury is being asked to treat the absent analyst’s notes as true. That makes it hearsay. But the Confrontation Clause bars the expert’s opinion only if the notes are also testimonial — a term the justices have never rigorously defined, but which depends, Kagan tells us, on how the statements relate “to a future criminal proceeding.” Alas, the majority concluded that it didn’t have enough information to reach a decision on whether the absent analyst’s notes were testimonial, and sent the case back for further proceedings.

As for Dookhan, she’s out of prison, but continues to serve as Exhibit A for those who think the justices are right in their decade-and-a-half insistence that defense attorneys should have the chance to cross-examine lab techs. But although I’m glad the Supreme Court has revived the Confrontation Clause, the Dookhan scandal also suggests that cross-examination isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Over the three years before her arrest, Dookhan testified in more than 150 trials. No lawyer ever caught her in a lie.

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

Related Articles

Noah Feldman: It just got easier to be convicted of a crime

Abbie E. Goldberg: As conservatives target same-sex marriage, its power is only getting clearer

Trudy Rubin: Ukraine’s head of military intelligence is behind Kyiv’s biggest victories this year. He sees no point in peace talks

Noah Feldman: Supreme Court’s right faces a free-speech problem

David French: Clarence Thomas and John Roberts are at a fork in the road