A Medicine Without Borders: Treating Asylum Seekers at the U.S. Border

His foot kept tapping the ground. I could sense he was nervous. When he glanced around the circle and saw others sink into their chairs, he opened himself up to receive treatment. After spending the last year traveling by foot across 13 countries, enduring up to 9 days in the jungle without food, wading across alligator-infested rivers, he arrived at the border ... with nowhere to go. But before he can set foot into the U.S. and legally wage an asylum claim, he and many others are forced to wait—sometimes weeks or months. In that time many sleep by the international bridges that connect Matamoros and Mexico to Brownsville, Texas.

Immigration in the U.S.

This past January a group of volunteers from Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB) responded to the growing immigration crisis. A team of eight strangers, myself included, gathered from Texas, Georgia, New Mexico and Maryland at the first Acupuncture Trauma-Relief Clinic in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV).

We partnered with local volunteer groups like Angry Tías y Abuelas of the RGV and Team Brownsville who assist asylum seekers with food, water, clothes, toiletries, and legal aid resources. Over the course of three days, we offered four clinics using the NADA Acudetox bilateral 5-point protocol, which can help alleviate stress, insomnia, anxiety, depression, PTSD and secondary trauma symptoms.

The History of NADA

NADA was born in 1970 out of The New York Lincoln Detox Center: The People’s Drug Program, when members of the Young Lords, Black Panthers, Health Revolutionary Unity Movement, and Lincoln Collective literally walked in and took over the Lincoln Hospital and refused to leave. They, like the local RGV volunteer groups, grew tired of waiting for public and government entities to provide effective services and solutions for the community. Under the leadership of acupuncturist Dr. Mutulu Shakur (current political prisoner), the Lincoln Detox program was recognized as the most effective by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, National Acupuncture Research Society, and World Academic Society of Acupuncture. They didn’t just focus on drug addiction recovery, they made high-quality, low-cost healthcare available to the community.

Releasing Trauma

In the RGV, we saw the needles in action as they physiologically bypassed the language block that occurs in many trauma survivors, in order to relax the central nervous system so they can process out the experience that has been suppressed within their minds, bodies and spirits.

We witnessed the intimate and emotional process of many people releasing their trauma and making space for healing. We heard stories of resilience, radical love and humanity that are not reflected in the mainstream media. We offered ear seed treatment to children, and brought bubbles, crayons and sidewalk chalk—so that for a moment in time, they could return to the joy of just being children again.

A Land of Immigrants

As the product of refugee parents who fled the American war in Viet Nam in 1975, the only difference I see is that my parents arrived to this country during a time where the national policy and patriotic sentiment openly embraced them.

That's not to say their generation was not discriminated against, but they benefited from the "model minority" myth, a racist tactic that elevated Asian immigrants as "harder working" or "more deserving" than Black and Brown immigrants. I often reflect on all the oceans my parents crossed to ensure a better future for me, and what may have happened if they got stuck between borders, like the families now trapped between Texas and Mexico.

I have to wonder, had these walls been constructed decades ago, would any of us be able to enjoy the healing benefits of acupuncture and TCM—a medicine brought to the U.S. by immigrants.