Last month, I led an educational immersion to the US-Mexico borderlands in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. My students, my co-chaperone, and I spent six days there learning about the realities of immigration and migration. For more info, including links to the organizations that hosted us, and pictures of our visits, please visit our school trip blog.
* * *
First things first, I wanted the group to go right up to the border wall.
We drove straight into Nogales from Phoenix with just a brief stop for lunch; we popped into our lodging for a moment to drop our belongings; we parked quickly in a downtown Nogales surface lot and got moving on foot. As we walked past a McDonalds, down a hill, and across the busy street that feeds right into the checkpoint, we rounded the corner to walk right up to the barrier. Comprised of steel poles that rise a few stories into the air, the wall separates the US from Mexico, dividing two towns that are virtually one. Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, straddle this international boundary, sometimes called ambos Nogales, or “both.” The Gadsden Purchase, Native American national lands, and centuries of geopolitical conflicts and resolutions landed this boundary here, separating a fairly sleepy town of 20,000 in America from a sprawling community of 200,000 in Mexico. The division not only looks obtrusive; it also feels silly. Yet there it stands, with demands to build it taller, longer, and better.
To begin our immersion, we observed courtroom proceedings in Tucson’s US District Court - District of Arizona, where an iteration of Operation Streamline handles recently detained migrants. This system was set up to process recently detained people who are charged with illegal crossing, formerly a civil offense but now considered a misdemeanor crime. Most migrants we saw had been in custody for just a few days. They had all met with appointed defense attorneys, chosen and compensated by the US Department of Justice, for about half an hour that morning; each attorney represented about a handful of clients that day. This system was designed to process large quantities of people quickly, and that afternoon as we observed, 69 people were processed in two hours. While illegal border crossings have decreased, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has insisted that first-time illegal crossers now be prosecuted, whereas formerly these people were often referred for voluntary deportation without criminal processing, something our host from a local justice group felt was a politically motivated change.
Detained people are brought out in groups of five to seven people. A recent legal battle won the detainees the right to appear before the judge without shackles, but many of them, just unshackled moments prior while in the holding area, cannot help but stand with their hands behind their backs as they present to the judge. Additionally, they appear just as they were when arrested, in street clothes, often with unkempt hair and still looking road-weary. I wondered if, especially when comparing these migrants to defendants in news clips with styled hair, careful makeup, and business dress, this was intentional on the part of law enforcement to mitigate pity or leniency.
Our judge that afternoon, Bruce McDonald, was deliberate and measured in a way not all judges reportedly are.1 And a court interpreter translated each line on the fly into headsets that each detainee wore.2 Piece by piece, he talked each group through their rights: they all will plead guilty to the petty offense of illegal entry; they forfeit their right to silence by pleading guilty; they all are citizens of another country (which they must prove this as part of process), entered by a point other than legal port of entry, and found without authorization to be here; they all could be sentenced to up to 6 months in prison and a fine of up to $5,000; they have fourteen days to appeal this ruling; they are not required to plead guilty and could instead go to trial, get a defense attorney, have their innocence presumed, call witnesses, give testimony, cross-examine prosecution’s witnesses, and subpoena others to appear; they all have the right to notify their country’s consulate. Then, the judge asked each defendant individually if they understood these rights, if they were in fact a citizen of another country, if they entered illegally (giving date and approximate site), and that they enter their plea. Those detained for a repeat illegal crossing offense had a felony charge and plea deal as part of their processing, which came with slightly different questions and proceedings.
At some points, the detained people did not understand the questions, particularly, when the judge asked about their crossing, saying something like, “did you cross illegally on April 15 at or near Sasabe?” When detainees didn’t understand, and the judge split the question up, asking separately about the date, and then the location, emphasizing that it could just be near that town.3 Moreover, the final question asking how each person pled sometimes didn’t go smoothly, as some would answer, “Yes,” rather than “guilty” or “not guilty.” The rapid fire of yes/no questions seemed to get them on a roll, and the judge had to reask carefully without putting the words of their plea (inevitably, culpable) in their mouths. These sidebars felt like lengthy detours in a proceeding that sentences people at such a pace, but each deviation off script really only took thirty seconds to a minute. Either way, these mixups illuminated how, despite having competent attorneys, it seemed like many migrants didn’t fully understand what was happening.
After each group completed its process, Judge McDonald would declare their sentence and send them off back into Border Patrol custody with a “Good luck to you.” It seemed genuine enough but felt weird. One US Marshall was especially gentle with the detainees, helping place headsets properly, for example, and offered to get a judge to come speak to us after the proceedings. A soon-to-retire judge named Bernie Velasco visited with us and shared some insights, about how money is immaterial in matters of national security, about how Obama’s “securing the border” to give cover for immigration reform devolved into Trump’s “Make America Great Again” purities, and how this process is swift but relatively just, since many migrants incriminate themselves in their first words to the Border Patrol agents. But most insightfully, he told us, “Just like the defendants are hostages to the prosecutors, so are the courts.” Until we change the laws and the systems and the culture, this is the most justice they can have. And this is why humanitarian aid and basic solidarity-driven charity is so necessary as we work for justice.
Walking in the Sonoran Desert gave us a small sense of what the desert crossing is like. The landscape is dotted with cacti and other dangerous plants, with elevation changes, both sudden and gradual, and with evidence of various creatures that don’t take kindly to human trespassers. And then all this was in the daytime, when it’s bright and easy to see, in the coolness of the mid-morning, before the burn of the mid-day desert heat, and at an easy walking pace, with no one on our tail, looking for us. Walking lightly worn trails, we found old cans, empty water bottles, and plenty of clothing. We’d wonder why they’d been discarded, and we learned that smugglers often insist on rapid action to meet a pickup car or make a checkpoint. So people must move quickly, leave behind their belongings and layered clothes, and be prepared to pile into a crowded vehicle at a moment’s notice. Worst of all, we found a tree whose branches held the torn remains of a woman’s bra. Our guide told us that humanitarian groups have found evidence and heard stories that about what has come to be known as “rape trees,” locations where men force themselves on vulnerable women as they make their journeys.
The wall is a misnomer, so we were told by Border Patrol. Our host agent from the public affairs division explained that walls are solid, with no space to look through; in Nogales, and in many places along the border, the barrier is a fence, a bollard fence to be exact. Even beyond semantics though, our agent all but said that we don’t need the wall President Trump campaigns on, even now in office. Given the differences in topography and terrain, a solid wall across the full border isn’t practical or necessary.
When it comes to the actual work of Border Patrol, I appreciated learning the depth behind the politicized stereotype. We learned how at thirty-four points in the desert region, Border Patrol has rescue towers, which migrants can visit to summon agents and voluntarily turn themselves in, especially if they need urgent help. Additionally, every agent is a first responder “plus,” with many even trained as full EMTs and a team of agents that function as a trauma team to respond to more acute emergencies. Though they ultimately have to perform their law enforcement duties upon detaining a person, they first perform medical triage, offer treatment, and seek to stabilize people. On a more local level, they try to partner with educators to help young people; for example, they found drug smugglers target young people -- and not just teens, even elementary-aged students -- so they have started intervention programming in schools.
The trouble for me began as we moved on with our tour. We were supposed to see the communications room, but a conflict with a training exercise kept us out in the hallway.4 That is supposed to be a highlight, as groups see screens and computers on par with blockbuster movies and cutting-edge video games. We did get to see the gear room, where our agent showed us firearms, night vision goggles, and riot gear. He let us pass around the items and take pictures, but I refused to handle the longarm rifle, for which the group and agent laughed at me. As someone who believes in reasonable gun control plus a little more, I didn’t feel right taking a weapon and glorifying its use, when it’s something that should be used seldomly, if at all. I wish we could socially settle into a good spot on the pendulum, where we can respect law enforcement officials without demonizing each decision they make OR blindly supporting their every action, which to me includes the everyday use of longarm rifles.
A breath of fresh air came to us from Humane Borders, a humanitarian organization focused on creating and maintaining water stations in the desert. Their vice chairman, Bob Feinman, visited our group, and opened our discussion with some insightful foundational principles. As an organization, Bob explained that Humane Borders strives to work within the law, in a nonpartisan way. For example, they cannot transport migrants, so they travel in twos when servicing water stations; that way, if they see a migrant in need, one can stay with that person, and the other can seek help legally. Additionally, Border Patrol knows where each water station is located and cannot sit and monitor each one; in order to map desert fatalities and place stations in optimal areas, Humane Borders needs good relationships with the agents, with the governmental agencies, and with the county sheriff. They organizationally feel that due respect must be given to law enforcement agents, who work under risk of death. What’s more, Border Patrol and other groups are politicized by both sides as they seek optics that support their agenda and implement solutions that often come without consultation of local authorities, residents, or humanitarian groups.5 For example, many ranchers and patrol agents agree the wall is untenable; they instead would both support better radio towers, which are less obtrusive and expensive, to improve communications and responsiveness. Unfortunately, it’s not a sexy idea, and as my wise friend and co-chaperone, Maggie, pointed out, “BUILD MORE RADIO TOWERS!” doesn’t chant quite as well as the demand for a wall.
On the whole, Bob’s view, and that of his organization, could be summed up in this great quote: “Yes, these people are breaking the law by crossing the border without documents, but we don’t believe that’s a crime that should be punishable by death.” Over the years, Border Patrol has enacted a strategy called Prevention by Deterrence. By fortifying more urban and settled areas with more fencing, more agents and patrols, and more cameras and communication, migrants are forced into more remote areas to attempt crossing without being caught. In this part of Arizona, that more remote area is the Sonoran Desert, where the heat, animals, and dangerous plantlife take a major toll, even to the point of death. By focusing resources on higher traffic areas, migrants are funneled into these rough areas, where the elements serve as a deterrent, a major hazard, or executioner. Despite the dissuasion these elements and friends and family may provide, many attempt the crossing nonetheless, looking at their current life of economic hardship or violent threats and deciding, “I’d rather die trying.” Such indirectly brutal treatment feels so obviously inhumane, and samaritan charitable response is plainly needed as we work for greater justice.
As we visited some women at a temporary community home in Nogales, Sonora, they led us into a parlor and showed us a table full of bright hand-woven bracelets and beautiful beaded earrings. Translated loosely as “weavings of hope,” the table was full of handicrafts done by women who had lived in this home. Learning this art, many of them contribute some products and also take a portion of the proceeds as personal income for their next steps in life. The sister who ran the home humbly boasted of an indigenous woman who had come through recently. She was on her own and missing her disabled children, who she had sought to support by working in the US before her deportation. Since the woman was already familiar with the colors, styles, and patterns, she took to the crafting with ease and participated vigorously during her time there. Upon returning to her home region, a long distance away, she wanted to continue with this cooperative, so she kept creating new items at home, shipped them to the group, and received her portion back in the mail. Now, she had a means of earning some income to support her family’s needs, a way to do so that utilized her gifts, and the ability to do all this from her home.
The Kino Border Initiative works on both sides of the international border, with staff and offices in both Mexico and the United States. One of its ministries is the comedor, a facility on the Mexican side that supports people in transit. Anyone can come who has been freshly deported, using their repatriation papers to indicate their situation. Staff members process their guests, not to overly formalize things but in order to collect data and perspective on the state of things -- guests share their origin, their deportation details, and can self-report abuses by Mexican authorities, American authorities, or non-state entities like smugglers. KBI can then track the trends and seek to hold these organizations accountable; for example, using their data, they can easily tell that deportations of people who have been living in the US for many years are now on the rise, as an increasing number of arrivals are people who have lived in the US for many years or even decades.
The comedor offers two meals a day, but the atmosphere of the meal is striking. Discard any typical notions you may have of a soup kitchen or a bread line; instead, imagine a family picnic, maybe under a shelter at a park or forest preserve. KBI seats its guests at tables, already set with dishes and silverware. Volunteers and staff plate the meal freshly and bring it out to them. Tortillas, salsa, drinks, and condiments are brought around to each table while the men and women can simply sit and relax a bit. Built around the two meals each day, the staff offers a lot of valuable support to their guests -- prayers over their meal and journey, talks about human rights and legal advocacy, safe phone calls to family that wonder about their safety, check-cashing for otherwise worthless American checks that converted their cash while in prison, triage and first aid for the trials of travel, and more. The many ways in which the dignity of these people was hurt or ignored is restored in small yet beautiful ways by the myriad of compassionate encounter enfleshed in the staff and volunteers at the comedor.
At Lourdes Catholic School that Friday, we joined an all-school, K-12 Mass. Standing with arms extended, we joined the school community in blessing its senior class, with graduation awaiting just a few weeks away. We then joined them for a lunch in the senior garden courtyard that they maintain and followed them to their high school pep rally for games day. Between the unity of the Mass, the picnic table conversations over pizza, and the silly gymnasium games our students played alongside these local students, one could see how easily the two cultures could not just coexist but intertwine. The prayers of the Mass, as well as the directions at the rally, switched seamlessly from English to Spanish to English; the mostly Latino students respected their white campus minister and doted on her as if she were their own abuela; the students engaged and conversed with each other as if they had met during a typical Friday night out. Most of the students at this school we visited cross daily from Mexico, attend to their school day, and then return home to Mexico afterwards. Sure, they have been interviewed and cleared for express entry, but in their steady routine, they show what could be possible. They pose no threat; they carry no malice; they respect and appreciate America and Mexico; they study and work hard and speak multiple languages. They, like the DACA dreamers and hard-working, law-abiding undocumented people, show the potential of more peaceable relations, grounded in solidarity and mutuality.
Living our faith in society calls us to do both charity and justice. Charity is the help that we provide when faced with an emergent need -- the sudden devastation of a natural disaster, the fallout of a tragic accident, the provision of basic needs for those who go without. Justice is what we seek to systemically change structures which prevent people from getting their due rights and dignity -- eliminating discrimination toward marginalized groups, reforming economic and financial policies to mitigate the rich-poor gap, securing models and funding that create equal access to quality education.
When faced with the rampant deaths of people in transit as they cross the desert, we must make water stations, preserve sanctuary sites, and sustain emergency beacons; given the emergent need of travel-weary migrants, immediate help must be available. But this charity needs its underlying justice to come. Immigration policies must change that criminalize border crossing, that create the faulty dilemma of deportation with a record or heavy jail time, that make asylum criteria incredibly strict for people with credible fear. We are extremizing our country in a way that spits on solidarity and ignores the human dignity of a lot of brothers and sisters.
I don’t think we can tear down every border barrier, dismantle every border checkpoint, and throw the doors open. However, we cannot adopt a fortress mentality that turns its back on our nation’s very roots in immigration. We need to analyze and extrapolate the successes of DACA; we need to construct a consensus around amnesty for law-abiding, tax-paying undocumented people; we need to liberalize our asylum, refugee, and legal visa programs; and we need to scrutinize and reform the legal processes for authorized immigration and naturalization so that we can reasonably secure our borders in good conscience. In the meantime, the many good humanitarians and samaritans in the desert will do their earnest work of charity. And they need all of us to dig in and work faithfully for real, greater justice.
* * *
First things first, I wanted the group to go right up to the border wall.
We drove straight into Nogales from Phoenix with just a brief stop for lunch; we popped into our lodging for a moment to drop our belongings; we parked quickly in a downtown Nogales surface lot and got moving on foot. As we walked past a McDonalds, down a hill, and across the busy street that feeds right into the checkpoint, we rounded the corner to walk right up to the barrier. Comprised of steel poles that rise a few stories into the air, the wall separates the US from Mexico, dividing two towns that are virtually one. Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, straddle this international boundary, sometimes called ambos Nogales, or “both.” The Gadsden Purchase, Native American national lands, and centuries of geopolitical conflicts and resolutions landed this boundary here, separating a fairly sleepy town of 20,000 in America from a sprawling community of 200,000 in Mexico. The division not only looks obtrusive; it also feels silly. Yet there it stands, with demands to build it taller, longer, and better.
Detained people are brought out in groups of five to seven people. A recent legal battle won the detainees the right to appear before the judge without shackles, but many of them, just unshackled moments prior while in the holding area, cannot help but stand with their hands behind their backs as they present to the judge. Additionally, they appear just as they were when arrested, in street clothes, often with unkempt hair and still looking road-weary. I wondered if, especially when comparing these migrants to defendants in news clips with styled hair, careful makeup, and business dress, this was intentional on the part of law enforcement to mitigate pity or leniency.
Our judge that afternoon, Bruce McDonald, was deliberate and measured in a way not all judges reportedly are.1 And a court interpreter translated each line on the fly into headsets that each detainee wore.2 Piece by piece, he talked each group through their rights: they all will plead guilty to the petty offense of illegal entry; they forfeit their right to silence by pleading guilty; they all are citizens of another country (which they must prove this as part of process), entered by a point other than legal port of entry, and found without authorization to be here; they all could be sentenced to up to 6 months in prison and a fine of up to $5,000; they have fourteen days to appeal this ruling; they are not required to plead guilty and could instead go to trial, get a defense attorney, have their innocence presumed, call witnesses, give testimony, cross-examine prosecution’s witnesses, and subpoena others to appear; they all have the right to notify their country’s consulate. Then, the judge asked each defendant individually if they understood these rights, if they were in fact a citizen of another country, if they entered illegally (giving date and approximate site), and that they enter their plea. Those detained for a repeat illegal crossing offense had a felony charge and plea deal as part of their processing, which came with slightly different questions and proceedings.
At some points, the detained people did not understand the questions, particularly, when the judge asked about their crossing, saying something like, “did you cross illegally on April 15 at or near Sasabe?” When detainees didn’t understand, and the judge split the question up, asking separately about the date, and then the location, emphasizing that it could just be near that town.3 Moreover, the final question asking how each person pled sometimes didn’t go smoothly, as some would answer, “Yes,” rather than “guilty” or “not guilty.” The rapid fire of yes/no questions seemed to get them on a roll, and the judge had to reask carefully without putting the words of their plea (inevitably, culpable) in their mouths. These sidebars felt like lengthy detours in a proceeding that sentences people at such a pace, but each deviation off script really only took thirty seconds to a minute. Either way, these mixups illuminated how, despite having competent attorneys, it seemed like many migrants didn’t fully understand what was happening.
After each group completed its process, Judge McDonald would declare their sentence and send them off back into Border Patrol custody with a “Good luck to you.” It seemed genuine enough but felt weird. One US Marshall was especially gentle with the detainees, helping place headsets properly, for example, and offered to get a judge to come speak to us after the proceedings. A soon-to-retire judge named Bernie Velasco visited with us and shared some insights, about how money is immaterial in matters of national security, about how Obama’s “securing the border” to give cover for immigration reform devolved into Trump’s “Make America Great Again” purities, and how this process is swift but relatively just, since many migrants incriminate themselves in their first words to the Border Patrol agents. But most insightfully, he told us, “Just like the defendants are hostages to the prosecutors, so are the courts.” Until we change the laws and the systems and the culture, this is the most justice they can have. And this is why humanitarian aid and basic solidarity-driven charity is so necessary as we work for justice.
Walking in the Sonoran Desert gave us a small sense of what the desert crossing is like. The landscape is dotted with cacti and other dangerous plants, with elevation changes, both sudden and gradual, and with evidence of various creatures that don’t take kindly to human trespassers. And then all this was in the daytime, when it’s bright and easy to see, in the coolness of the mid-morning, before the burn of the mid-day desert heat, and at an easy walking pace, with no one on our tail, looking for us. Walking lightly worn trails, we found old cans, empty water bottles, and plenty of clothing. We’d wonder why they’d been discarded, and we learned that smugglers often insist on rapid action to meet a pickup car or make a checkpoint. So people must move quickly, leave behind their belongings and layered clothes, and be prepared to pile into a crowded vehicle at a moment’s notice. Worst of all, we found a tree whose branches held the torn remains of a woman’s bra. Our guide told us that humanitarian groups have found evidence and heard stories that about what has come to be known as “rape trees,” locations where men force themselves on vulnerable women as they make their journeys.
The wall is a misnomer, so we were told by Border Patrol. Our host agent from the public affairs division explained that walls are solid, with no space to look through; in Nogales, and in many places along the border, the barrier is a fence, a bollard fence to be exact. Even beyond semantics though, our agent all but said that we don’t need the wall President Trump campaigns on, even now in office. Given the differences in topography and terrain, a solid wall across the full border isn’t practical or necessary.When it comes to the actual work of Border Patrol, I appreciated learning the depth behind the politicized stereotype. We learned how at thirty-four points in the desert region, Border Patrol has rescue towers, which migrants can visit to summon agents and voluntarily turn themselves in, especially if they need urgent help. Additionally, every agent is a first responder “plus,” with many even trained as full EMTs and a team of agents that function as a trauma team to respond to more acute emergencies. Though they ultimately have to perform their law enforcement duties upon detaining a person, they first perform medical triage, offer treatment, and seek to stabilize people. On a more local level, they try to partner with educators to help young people; for example, they found drug smugglers target young people -- and not just teens, even elementary-aged students -- so they have started intervention programming in schools.
The trouble for me began as we moved on with our tour. We were supposed to see the communications room, but a conflict with a training exercise kept us out in the hallway.4 That is supposed to be a highlight, as groups see screens and computers on par with blockbuster movies and cutting-edge video games. We did get to see the gear room, where our agent showed us firearms, night vision goggles, and riot gear. He let us pass around the items and take pictures, but I refused to handle the longarm rifle, for which the group and agent laughed at me. As someone who believes in reasonable gun control plus a little more, I didn’t feel right taking a weapon and glorifying its use, when it’s something that should be used seldomly, if at all. I wish we could socially settle into a good spot on the pendulum, where we can respect law enforcement officials without demonizing each decision they make OR blindly supporting their every action, which to me includes the everyday use of longarm rifles.
A breath of fresh air came to us from Humane Borders, a humanitarian organization focused on creating and maintaining water stations in the desert. Their vice chairman, Bob Feinman, visited our group, and opened our discussion with some insightful foundational principles. As an organization, Bob explained that Humane Borders strives to work within the law, in a nonpartisan way. For example, they cannot transport migrants, so they travel in twos when servicing water stations; that way, if they see a migrant in need, one can stay with that person, and the other can seek help legally. Additionally, Border Patrol knows where each water station is located and cannot sit and monitor each one; in order to map desert fatalities and place stations in optimal areas, Humane Borders needs good relationships with the agents, with the governmental agencies, and with the county sheriff. They organizationally feel that due respect must be given to law enforcement agents, who work under risk of death. What’s more, Border Patrol and other groups are politicized by both sides as they seek optics that support their agenda and implement solutions that often come without consultation of local authorities, residents, or humanitarian groups.5 For example, many ranchers and patrol agents agree the wall is untenable; they instead would both support better radio towers, which are less obtrusive and expensive, to improve communications and responsiveness. Unfortunately, it’s not a sexy idea, and as my wise friend and co-chaperone, Maggie, pointed out, “BUILD MORE RADIO TOWERS!” doesn’t chant quite as well as the demand for a wall.
On the whole, Bob’s view, and that of his organization, could be summed up in this great quote: “Yes, these people are breaking the law by crossing the border without documents, but we don’t believe that’s a crime that should be punishable by death.” Over the years, Border Patrol has enacted a strategy called Prevention by Deterrence. By fortifying more urban and settled areas with more fencing, more agents and patrols, and more cameras and communication, migrants are forced into more remote areas to attempt crossing without being caught. In this part of Arizona, that more remote area is the Sonoran Desert, where the heat, animals, and dangerous plantlife take a major toll, even to the point of death. By focusing resources on higher traffic areas, migrants are funneled into these rough areas, where the elements serve as a deterrent, a major hazard, or executioner. Despite the dissuasion these elements and friends and family may provide, many attempt the crossing nonetheless, looking at their current life of economic hardship or violent threats and deciding, “I’d rather die trying.” Such indirectly brutal treatment feels so obviously inhumane, and samaritan charitable response is plainly needed as we work for greater justice.
As we visited some women at a temporary community home in Nogales, Sonora, they led us into a parlor and showed us a table full of bright hand-woven bracelets and beautiful beaded earrings. Translated loosely as “weavings of hope,” the table was full of handicrafts done by women who had lived in this home. Learning this art, many of them contribute some products and also take a portion of the proceeds as personal income for their next steps in life. The sister who ran the home humbly boasted of an indigenous woman who had come through recently. She was on her own and missing her disabled children, who she had sought to support by working in the US before her deportation. Since the woman was already familiar with the colors, styles, and patterns, she took to the crafting with ease and participated vigorously during her time there. Upon returning to her home region, a long distance away, she wanted to continue with this cooperative, so she kept creating new items at home, shipped them to the group, and received her portion back in the mail. Now, she had a means of earning some income to support her family’s needs, a way to do so that utilized her gifts, and the ability to do all this from her home.
The Kino Border Initiative works on both sides of the international border, with staff and offices in both Mexico and the United States. One of its ministries is the comedor, a facility on the Mexican side that supports people in transit. Anyone can come who has been freshly deported, using their repatriation papers to indicate their situation. Staff members process their guests, not to overly formalize things but in order to collect data and perspective on the state of things -- guests share their origin, their deportation details, and can self-report abuses by Mexican authorities, American authorities, or non-state entities like smugglers. KBI can then track the trends and seek to hold these organizations accountable; for example, using their data, they can easily tell that deportations of people who have been living in the US for many years are now on the rise, as an increasing number of arrivals are people who have lived in the US for many years or even decades.
The comedor offers two meals a day, but the atmosphere of the meal is striking. Discard any typical notions you may have of a soup kitchen or a bread line; instead, imagine a family picnic, maybe under a shelter at a park or forest preserve. KBI seats its guests at tables, already set with dishes and silverware. Volunteers and staff plate the meal freshly and bring it out to them. Tortillas, salsa, drinks, and condiments are brought around to each table while the men and women can simply sit and relax a bit. Built around the two meals each day, the staff offers a lot of valuable support to their guests -- prayers over their meal and journey, talks about human rights and legal advocacy, safe phone calls to family that wonder about their safety, check-cashing for otherwise worthless American checks that converted their cash while in prison, triage and first aid for the trials of travel, and more. The many ways in which the dignity of these people was hurt or ignored is restored in small yet beautiful ways by the myriad of compassionate encounter enfleshed in the staff and volunteers at the comedor.
At Lourdes Catholic School that Friday, we joined an all-school, K-12 Mass. Standing with arms extended, we joined the school community in blessing its senior class, with graduation awaiting just a few weeks away. We then joined them for a lunch in the senior garden courtyard that they maintain and followed them to their high school pep rally for games day. Between the unity of the Mass, the picnic table conversations over pizza, and the silly gymnasium games our students played alongside these local students, one could see how easily the two cultures could not just coexist but intertwine. The prayers of the Mass, as well as the directions at the rally, switched seamlessly from English to Spanish to English; the mostly Latino students respected their white campus minister and doted on her as if she were their own abuela; the students engaged and conversed with each other as if they had met during a typical Friday night out. Most of the students at this school we visited cross daily from Mexico, attend to their school day, and then return home to Mexico afterwards. Sure, they have been interviewed and cleared for express entry, but in their steady routine, they show what could be possible. They pose no threat; they carry no malice; they respect and appreciate America and Mexico; they study and work hard and speak multiple languages. They, like the DACA dreamers and hard-working, law-abiding undocumented people, show the potential of more peaceable relations, grounded in solidarity and mutuality.Living our faith in society calls us to do both charity and justice. Charity is the help that we provide when faced with an emergent need -- the sudden devastation of a natural disaster, the fallout of a tragic accident, the provision of basic needs for those who go without. Justice is what we seek to systemically change structures which prevent people from getting their due rights and dignity -- eliminating discrimination toward marginalized groups, reforming economic and financial policies to mitigate the rich-poor gap, securing models and funding that create equal access to quality education.
When faced with the rampant deaths of people in transit as they cross the desert, we must make water stations, preserve sanctuary sites, and sustain emergency beacons; given the emergent need of travel-weary migrants, immediate help must be available. But this charity needs its underlying justice to come. Immigration policies must change that criminalize border crossing, that create the faulty dilemma of deportation with a record or heavy jail time, that make asylum criteria incredibly strict for people with credible fear. We are extremizing our country in a way that spits on solidarity and ignores the human dignity of a lot of brothers and sisters.
I don’t think we can tear down every border barrier, dismantle every border checkpoint, and throw the doors open. However, we cannot adopt a fortress mentality that turns its back on our nation’s very roots in immigration. We need to analyze and extrapolate the successes of DACA; we need to construct a consensus around amnesty for law-abiding, tax-paying undocumented people; we need to liberalize our asylum, refugee, and legal visa programs; and we need to scrutinize and reform the legal processes for authorized immigration and naturalization so that we can reasonably secure our borders in good conscience. In the meantime, the many good humanitarians and samaritans in the desert will do their earnest work of charity. And they need all of us to dig in and work faithfully for real, greater justice.
1 These daily proceedings can handle up to 70 people per day, and a day’s sentencings can sometimes unfold in as little as 30 minutes. The judge quoted in that link is the same judge I refer to later in this article; his remarks come off as cold in reading, but in meeting and talking to him, he is just more of a “matter-of-fact” personality and actually holds deep criticisms of the justice system and hamstrung roles of judges.
↩
2 All but one of these 69 people elected to use the court interpreter and headset; just one man elected to speak in English. A handful of others had their defense attorneys make note on the record that their primary language was actually an indigenous language, so, while they understood to some extent, Spanish was not their main language.↩
3 Migrants often have little sense of the geography of the region or of the US generally. Coyotes, or smugglers, often hand-draw inaccurate maps that claim cities like Atlanta, Chicago, or even Phoenix are just a short walk from the border. So, asking about smaller border towns that may be near the point of illegal crossing sometimes didn’t go smoothly.
↩
4 Turns out that National Guard troops had already begun to report, and they were being briefed in the comm room. We learned that guardsmen have no authority to arrest or take legal action on behalf of Border Patrol. They are simply there as manpower, to join patrols and redouble presence as well as manage duties outside the field.
↩
5 Bob weighed in also on a recent scandal. A local humanitarian group released footage of Border Patrol agents destroying water stations in the desert. Bob says this group was performing medica triage in the desert but exceeded first aid and went into medical procedures that were unsafe to be doing out there. After being raided by CBP and unlawfully detaining the patients, the group was upset and unearthed and released years-old footage of these agents’ actions. Those agents were disciplined, and obviously, they are a few bad eggs on a big force.
↩
No comments:
Post a Comment