Rescuing an Alien

Sharing a happy ending here – so far – to my last post, and I apologize for taking so long to write it.

Early in June, Sofia, the asylum seeker I had attempted to sponsor, was released from detention! Yay! Thanks to the work of Las Americas – an immigrant advocacy nonprofit in El Paso that provides pro bono and low-cost legal services to asylum seekers. I serve on the board of directors of Las Americas, which is how I initially learned about Sofia’s situation.

I hadn’t mentioned it in my last post, more for her protection than anything, but Sofia was being held at Otero County Processing Center. A privately run facility known for its hellish conditions, Otero is located off a New Mexico desert highway about 40 miles northeast of El Paso. Approaching this windowless, concrete building surrounded by high fencing with barbed wire, you’d have to wonder if you’re at a “processing center” or the county prison next door.

No doubt about it. Otero is basically immigration jail.

So it makes sense that, after her nonsensical third denial for parole, Sofia was so distraught, she asked to be deported, willing to risk the death threats she’d received back home in Colombia rather than remain imprisoned and subjected to the hostility of her detention officer. Take that in for a moment. After all she’d been through, facing the threats back home felt no worse than what she was facing in detention.

_{Photo credit: The Otero County Processing Center on Jan. 4. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)}

Fortunately, the immigration judge did not act immediately on her request, and since Sofia is a client of Las Americas’, the nonprofit filed a complaint against this officer on her behalf, which prompted ICE to release her on bond, for a lesser amount than what’s usually requested.

Knowing that applying for bond from a local nonprofit would take several days, I offered to front the money and take her home with me. I’d get reimbursed later. The critical issue was to get Sofia out of there.

But releasing asylum seekers from detention is never quick nor simple.

It took about a day and a half of dealing with crass, curt, and intimidating ICE employees before everything was approved and Sofia was released to me. This included an unnecessary return trip to Otero the second morning to replace my check that ICE had mishandled.

It didn’t matter how inconvenient or unreasonable their request was. I had to comply. To not return would jeopardize Sofia’s freedom. They had all the power. They were in control of the life I wanted to free.

This experience gave me just a tiny taste of what immigration attorneys and paralegals handling asylum cases deal with every day. The terse and offensive responses from those in authority, the steady push upstream against a forceful tide of anti-refugee, anti-asylum decision makers. This is the system social justice and human rights advocates are working against. But no matter the frustration nor the seemingly impossible odds, they do it in exchange for something invaluable – the dignified life of another human being.

Welcoming Sofia into my home was a complete gift. Proof that a special bond can exist, even between two strangers.

During the three days she spent with me before moving on to stay with a relative while awaiting her court hearing, Sofia viewed everything with a child’s exuberance. From the moon and stars in the night sky, which she hadn’t seen for months, to a cheap new pair of shoes that I bought to replace the thin, blister-causing pair that she’d been given in detention. She praised the simple meal I prepared for her first evening and insisted on preparing a Colombian-style dinner for me the next, along with cleaning my floor and acting as my secretaria, wanting to do whatever she could to assist me. I met practically her entire family via FaceTime — husband, daughter, parents, mother-in-law, cousins. Their immense gratitude felt humbling.

Sofia is one of the lucky ones.

More than 80 percent of asylum seekers do not have legal representation and must simply languish in detention until their asylum case is decided. Most likely they’ll be deported. No matter how solid their credible fear case. It’s rare to win asylum without an attorney, especially if your case is decided in a state like Texas. Most asylum seekers are totally ill-prepared to legally represent themselves and they face intimidation from the ICE agent, from the judge, and from the government attorney questioning them as they attempt to defend their case while clad in detention-assigned prison garb.

I think of all the people who flee their country with legitimate fear of violence and death threats, only to be met at our ports of entry with such incredible resistance and dehumanization. Nowadays asylum seekers must be lucky enough to land an appointment through the CBP One app if they want to even be considered. It doesn’t matter what dangers you’re fleeing or what you’re facing while waiting in Mexico.

And then I think of the hundreds who make it here only to be locked up in detention facilities. They remain in the shadows, their voices unheard, their abuses often unnoticed.

(For more explicit information on the conditions in immigration detention, check out this El Paso Matters article on Otero: https://elpasomatters.org/2021/01/05/ice-detainees-at-el-paso-area-immigration-facility-face-systemic-torture-new-report-says/

That’s why being able to help release even one person, one “alien,” from immigration detention was a grace beyond description. And nonprofits like Las Americas are a true blessing.

So I’ll give Las Americas a plug here and say that the org doesn’t have nearly the funding it needs and is unable to take on more clients. No matter how desperate the person. If you’d like to support people like Sofia and the work of Las Americas, please donate at https://www.las-americas.org/donate

And remember:

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Hebrews 13)

No Good Behavior

I was driving down Route 33 in Greene County, in the middle of my visit to Virginia, when I spotted a call coming in on my mobile from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. I pulled over to talk to the agent.

His call wasn’t unexpected. In fact, I’d been waiting several days for him to question me about why I wanted to sponsor Sofia (not her real name), an asylum seeker from Colombia. Sofia is a 33-year-old wife and mother who could easily be my daughter. I’ve never met her, but we’ve had a giddy conversation on the phone, in which she promised to cook and clean for me if she was released from detention, so happy was she that I was willing to sponsor her.

I was beside myself with embarrassment.

Her situation had only brought home more keenly the luxurious freedoms I enjoy as a U.S. citizen and the immense unearned privilege I have over Sofia simply by being born in a different country. There was no way I felt she owed me anything.

On the contrary, I wanted to apologize to her, for the treatment she’d received in our hands.

Back in her country, Sofia had been politically active and outspoken against the reigning political party. That made her a target. She was violently attacked, sexually violated, lost her business, and finally was threatened to the point that she knew she had to leave or risk losing her life.

It had to come to that. Otherwise, she would never have left behind her husband and daughter – the two most important people in her life.

That’s a feeling I could relate to. My husband and son were my reason for living. I know what it’s like to be a wife and mother whose life is suddenly upended and uncertain beyond her control.

And yet, there’s no way I could compare my life to Sofia’s.

She had no safe alternative. No reasonable choices. Sofia fled to the U.S., to legally ask for asylum, believing that a country that values democracy, freedom, and human rights would harbor her. Like many before her, she did not expect to be put into a detention center, a locked facility surrounded by barbed wire, upon presenting herself at the border and requesting asylum.

Sadly, this is a story I’ve told over and over again.

But it’s getting worse.

For-profit immigration detention centers like the one currently holding Sofia are on the rise. Yet, we know little about how poorly people are treated behind the walls of these privatized prisons. There is no accountability and no public purview.

So when I discovered the opportunity to sponsor Sofia and get her out of the hellhole I know she’s in, I quickly jumped on it. I provided all the necessary financial and supporting info, along with a letter explaining why I felt connected to Sofia and wanted to sponsor her. Despite there being nothing questionable about my character or desire and ability to support her, in the end Sofia’s deportation officer denied her request.

What’s worse is I’ve since discovered just how cruel this officer is. And not only to Sofia, but to other women in her cell as well.

But why keep a woman with a legitimate asylum claim in prison when she’s asked for parole and has someone like me who’s agreed to give her shelter, be responsible for her, and is willing to support her while she awaits her case?

Because you can. Because you don’t have to answer to anyone for your behavior.

Profiteering off of suffering people is bad enough, but denying such a person basic rights is unconscionable. Even long-standing criminals in our prison system are eligible for parole with good behavior.

But there is no reasonable rule for good behavior in our immigration detention system. And Sofia, who is not a criminal, is being treated worse than one, with no rights and no voice. I worry about how she’ll persevere in her current situation. And what other suffering might be inflicted upon her.

Yet Sofia is only one of thousands of asylum seekers in our nation’s detention centers run by private companies who profit from the suffering of others. And are supported by our tax dollars.

It’s not coincidental that I was visiting my former home and small-town community when all this was unfolding. The 30 years spent in Virginia embody the best years of my life. My family circle expanded when we moved to Greene County. These are folks I truly care about, and they, me. The sweetness of that community still tugs on my heart.

But it was clear to me as I reconnected with friends, rejuvenated my spirit with the lush springtime of the Shenandoah Valley, filled my senses and delighted in memories, that what constitutes my circle of connection has expanded too far for me to return. No matter the love and beauty that surrounded me while there, I couldn’t let go of a young woman struggling in a detention center at the southern border.

NOTE: photo credits to Dr. Michael A. Milton (Blue Ridge Mountains), Jupi Lu (mother and child), and Barbara Rosner (detention facilities)

A Long Apprenticeship

During the early months of the pandemic, when people were dying regularly and COVID was still new enough that some news outlets attempted to publish the names and photos and brief bios of the dead, I started praying for those who had passed on, most likely, alone. I searched through the news clips, read their stories, and closed my eyes with their image in mind. Energetically, it felt right to accompany these souls as they transitioned. Unexplainably, it felt powerfully healing. A loving gesture offered to strangers. My own heart space softened and expanded in the process.

But, as COVID-infested months continued, that sweet spiritual practice dropped out of my daily ritual like a New Year’s diet resolution the second week in February. I forgot about it. I stopped striving to search for names and stories. I left the dying to make their own way into a peaceful transition. Or not.

It was easy to do. To lose the incentive to pray for and care about strangers. Not because I’m a cold-hearted person. But I’m human, and there’s a weak, self-centered, displeasing side of me that I’d prefer not to own. But here it is. Sometimes I’m lazy. Sometimes I lose focus. Sometimes I grow indifferent or even impatient with the demands of people dying and suffering, even if I’m the one who has placed those demands on myself.

And now it’s happening again. Showing up in something else that has been going on for a long time – a lot longer than COVID. Immigration at our southern border.

It might be easier to understand why I feel this way if people were crossing illegally on my property and trashing it along the way. Or if I belonged to a far-right anti-immigration group. Or if I were just an average joe watching too much negative news about an inflated “crisis.”

But I’m none of those. Just the opposite. I’m someone who’s accompanied migrants and asylum seekers for nearly five years in El Paso. Someone who’s heard a myriad of painful, sometimes horrific, stories. Who’s seen the effects in fearful faces and bent bodies. And someone who’s been graced a million times over by encounters with these humble, lovely people blessing me with their gratitude and faith.

It’s been more than a year since I stepped inside one of our temporary shelters to accompany asylum- seeking families that have been vetted and are ready to move on to their sponsors. And now volunteers are needed again. And I’ve willingly and gladly agreed to go.

So, why has this side of me shown up? This internal tension?

I suspect it’s because, just like the commitment to strangers dying of COVID, what is being asked of me is unending. It’s neither comfortable nor convenient. Nor is the outcome within my control.

And it’s asking more of me than I fully realized when I said yes – yes to an open-ended commitment to love better, to be of service to my human family, to grow in spiritual maturity.

I am clearly still an apprentice.  

Yet, I’ve been fledgling along in this apprenticeship for more than 30 years, studying the path of my spiritual teachers. Teachers labeled mystics and saints, contemplatives and criminals. All of whom have been led to places they would rather not have gone.

Why should I be any different?

Still, I was disturbed by what I had been feeling, so I quieted myself and listened within.

“This tension is a holy thing.”

I heard, and I understood, that those far greater and more advanced than I am have experienced such tension. Why would I not feel tension as I struggle to say yes and put down my preferences?

And then I remembered a quote from Jacob Boehme, the 16^th century German mystic, that one of my spiritual teachers had given me. A quote that deeply resonated: “I, God, press through your branches, into the sap, and bear fruit on your boughs.”

Does that not sound like tension?

Just as the sun presses through the ground, creating the tension needed to bring forth the seedling buried under the surface. Just as the pressure of warming temperatures causes the sap to flow through “a wound or tap hole” in maple trees – (a description I found from a maple tree farm website. No kidding.)

All these metaphors arose to help me understand that the transformation of this apprentice will take what it takes. And it is God who makes manifest the fullness of love that lies latent within me.

No Separation

I’m waiting in a COVID-friendly line at the Las Cruces post office shifting the weight of the last box of snacks and supplies I’ll be priority mailing to Davis in Nome. Standing on the taped floor marking 6 feet ahead of me is a woman with her own large priority mail box, which she now places on the floor.

“It’s so heavy,” she tells me.

I smile as I look down and see it’s going to El Paso. Thoughts of El Paso always make me smile. But then I notice the addressee and exclaim aloud, “Hey, I know Taylor Levy!”

The woman turns to me for an explanation.

We both know Taylor through Annunciation House. And we both also know her as a devoted immigration attorney, now in her own practice, and an amazing humanitarian who continues to cross over the border to help her clients stuck waiting in Mexico.

This woman, apparently a teacher, tells me she has lots of notebooks and paper, pens and pencils, and bilingual children’s books that she’s donating to the immigrant children. She’s hoping she can contact Taylor to let her know this is coming. I offer a suggestion.

“Good idea,” she says. Then, before turning back around, she adds, “small world.”

Indeed.

Meeting this woman cheers me. She’s turned waiting in a socially-distanced line trailing out the door into something uplifting and gratifying. Gratifying because she reminds me of the goodness and kindness of strangers. Countless people I’ve encountered, not only in this border community, but from all around the country, who donated supplies and came to volunteer with us at our hospitality shelters.

She does indeed remind me how small the world is. And how decent, kind, and caring it can be.

It’s quite a contrast to what I experienced the other night. As I watched the new Netflix documentary, “Immigration Nation,” it induced a different memory. A disturbing one of only two summers ago, when I was standing smack in the middle of something evil.

The separation of families.

And, yes, calling it evil is entirely accurate. And necessary.

Because, to be detached, or worse, take pleasure in causing the pain and suffering of others is evil.

Watching that documentary brought it all back. What we witnessed in the people we accompanied in El Paso. The belittling and cruelty they’d experienced at the hands of CBP. The ways El Paso has been used as a testing ground for our administration’s new and unlawful policies.

I watched and listened to ICE agents’ demeaning sarcasm, to their justification for using family separation as a deterrent. To the dads sobbing for their children. To the young girl who, after being taken from her father, was told by the agent she would “never see him again.” To the Honduran grandmother I recognized who had fled to save her granddaughter’s life and came the legal and “right way” by asking for asylum at the port of entry, only to be separated from her granddaughter and detained for 17 months in the El Paso Processing Center before put on a plane and deported without the ability to notify her attorney or her family.

But as disturbing as it is, I hope many Americans will watch “Immigration Nation” and understand. Keeping your emotions out of doing your job to uphold the law is one thing. Doing that job with demeaning humor and glee, or numbness, while inflicting emotional pain, and worse, on others is quite something else.

Family separation is not over. Unjust cruelty heaped on those who seek refuge is still happening. It’s simply out of the limelight now.

And we as a society pay a dear price for this behavior.

As one former Border Patrol agent expressed in a 2109 article in The American Scholar:

“Where do we draw the line between our right as Americans to protect ourselves and our duty as human beings to treat others as we would hope to be treated in similar circumstances?”

 

It’s an important question to ask.

And he adds: “…all too often our fear of the other is an act of self-defeat more than an act of self-preservation.” (https://theamericanscholar.org/rape-trees-and-rosary-beads/#.XzxdnOhKjIV)

We delude ourselves into thinking that causing pain to others has no negative impact in our lives. That we are somehow separated from our thoughts and actions.

This illusion looms large in our culture today. Dividing ourselves into red and blue states, one political party pitted against the other, liberals vs. conservatives, citizens vs. immigrants, us vs. them…has turned into permission to be rude or hateful, or worse.

Some believe this is acceptable. No skin off their back.

But it is, in fact, an act of self-defeat. Because, in reality, we are not separate beings living in isolation.

As Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical Laudato Si: “Because all creatures are connected, each must be cherished with love and respect, for all of us as living creatures are dependent on one another.”

We are all interconnected in this web of life. And the threads we contribute to this web reverberate, throughout our culture, throughout our world.

In this moment, with so much at stake, Love calls us to reach higher. To dare to contribute loving energetic threads.

I dare to imagine what is possible if we did. As of yet, this remains mysterious to most of us. And may seem impossible to many.

But I consciously choose to contribute loving thoughts and actions to this web of life. And to be aware whenever I am offering anything that goes against this intention.

Remembering that, as Dorothy Day said, “Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up….If we love each other enough, we are going to light the fire in the hearts of others. And it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much.”

 

(For a review of the Netflix documentary “Immigration Nation” from the UK:  https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/immigration-nation-netflix-documentary-donald-trump-ice-572147)

 

 

 

Beauty and the Beast

The woman was pregnant with her second child when she started out, her 2-year-old daughter in tow. She knew her older sister would take her in, provide the comfort and safety she needed. The journey would be long and treacherous. But she was willing to take it. Her other options were not good, to put it mildly.

Unfortunately, she was not warned. Not told she’d have no options when she arrived at our port of entry requesting asylum. There had been no public service messages in her home country of Honduras. No warnings about the changes in US policy towards asylum seekers. Changes that had turned even crueler. No government money had been applied to educating vulnerable people about how nearly impossible the process of seeking asylum had become. No spreading of information that could actually assist people and prevent them from making such a journey. Only the spreading of false promises made by smugglers preying on desperate people. Promises assuring them they would reach the US border.

Whether the young mother paid a smuggler or not I do not know. I only know that when she arrived at the El Paso port of entry, now nearly 8 months pregnant, she and her daughter were whisked into a cold holding cell, processed and put in the queue to be deported.

But not back to Honduras.

Instead, thanks to what some in our administration have called a “beautiful” agreement known as ACA, or Asylum Cooperative Agreement, she and her little girl were to be flown to Guatemala where she would be required to seek asylum. Guatemala, a country with one of the highest rates of violent death and crimes against women in the world. A country where she knew no one. A country where she’d be alone and vulnerable, and soon to give birth.

severe poverty in Guatemala

The decision seems unbelievable. Unbelievable in the level of nonsensical cruelty being randomly inflicted on other human beings.

Certainly it is unconscionable.

Yet, this is happening. Often without our knowing. I only know about this woman because of my role on the board of directors of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.

And her story is one of the few that ends on a more positive note.

Through some act of grace, the woman’s sister in Houston discovered what was going to happen, found  Las Americas in El Paso and frantically called asking for help. Fortunately, one of the attorneys was able to intervene and stop the deportation.

This young woman’s story could have turned into something quite tragic. But she is only one among many vulnerable people seeking asylum who are now being flown to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador as part of the ACA. Countries where persecution, violence, and poverty are rampant. Countries in which people are being deposited without being told where they are. Or what they are supposed to do next.

And we do not know about their stories.

What has been disguised by our administration as a “beautiful” solution to the immigration problem is actually a cruel “beast” underneath.  Like the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast,” only in reverse, what appears before our eyes is not what it seems.

Nothing is as it seems.

And so I feel it necessary to return to the basics, to what I learned as a child in Catholic school religion class. The basic fact that a child of God is valued as a child of God, no matter their appearance, no matter where they’ve come from, no matter what they’ve done.

Honestly, this is much harder for me to live by in relation to some people rather than others.

But I know that what I was taught is true. Each one of us is created in the image of God and is a temple of the Holy. Therefore, each one of us deserves to be treated with basic human dignity, to be safe, to be loved.

Even the beast I find hidden in others. And in myself.

My prayer is to fully live and accept this teaching. And that others will join me.

In the meantime, to better educate yourself on the ACA, I invite you to read a more in-depth explanation from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: https://justiceforimmigrants.org/what-we-are-working-on/asylum/asylum-cooperative-agreement-backgrounder/

“A core Catholic social teaching is that every human being is created in the image of God and is therefore entitled to dignity and respect….Regardless of their legal status, migrants, like all persons, possess inherent human life that should be respected and protected.”

 

Being Truthful

“We hope your daughter’s funeral will be cheaper than paying us.”

It’s been so hard. I’ve sat down time and again to write a new post. I couldn’t do it. Months have passed.

The above words are from a note a Guatemalan family received when they could no longer pay the gang’s extortion money. They brought the note with them, along with other evidence, for their asylum case. The Border agent didn’t care.

Now they fearfully wait in Mexico. While our hospitality center remains nearly empty.

Larry, a fellow shelter volunteer, sheds tears easily over the people. Me, not so much.

But now I’m the one crying as I write this. These days I cannot even bring myself to think about writing a post without feeling emotional.

I wonder, will it matter to anyone? Who will even read this? And will these words touch someone’s heart?

These are the questions I carry as I feel disgusted by what is happening at our southern border.

I don’t go to the shelter anymore. Haven’t for months. Friends like Larry who do go tell me they are receiving maybe a dozen asylum seekers. Sometimes fewer.

One day they received none. Zero.

I think of these people. Still. Especially the Guatemalans, Hondurans, and El Salvadorans. The ones with whom I interacted regularly. The ones who faced so much hardship to get here. Because they are still suffering.

Even though we don’t see them, we know.

They’re still fleeing the violence in their countries – countries that we have forced to sign agreements to be so-called “safe third countries.” The idea of them being safe havens is preposterous.

But the climate in which we’re living is one of preposterous claims.

It’s a climate in which words have lost their true meaning. Where truth hides deep in the recesses of a person’s – like maybe a politician’s – soul. Where it’s hidden by the fear of losing power or financial gain, or some privilege that we imagine others don’t deserve.

I recently took a daylong retreat based on Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited.

I was struck by his faith that “the effects of truthfulness could be realized in the oppressor as well as the oppressed.”

I tell God I am waiting for that to happen. For truth to be realized.

And I hear, “I am waiting for you to be that voice of truthfulness.”

So here I am, trying again.

Trying to write about the truth. The truth that asylum seekers are still arriving. And being forced to sign papers that will either deport them or send them to wait in Mexico. And if they refuse to sign, a Border agent will illegally sign for them.

The truth that asylum seekers with legitimate cases have almost no chance of winning their case if they’re in Mexico. Yet if they go home, they have slim chances of surviving.

These are their choices.

A mother sits as children take part in class at “The Sidewalk School” for immigrant children at a camp for asylum seekers in Matamoros, Mexico. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

At the border in Arizona, migrants sent into Nogales, Mexico, are told they will have to travel to El Paso for their court date. People with no money will somehow have to get bus fare for themselves and their children, travel through dangerous Juarez to enter at the port of entry in El Paso for their initial hearing, and then return to Nogales to wait.

It does not matter how ridiculous, impossible, or life-threatening this is. ICE does not care. Our government does not care.

It’s true, as Thurman said, that the lives of the disinherited do not matter to the powerful.

Why else would we be spending billions on building a steel structure that will cause such irreparable harm – environmentally and socially – rather than on supporting programs and policies for mutually beneficial and humanitarian changes?

I turn to the retreat’s reflection questions. I can’t get past this one:

“What do you believe is God’s prayer for the disinherited: for racial, ethnic, social, and religious groups, refugees, immigrants, and people who still live with their backs against the wall?”

This is when the tears come. I know the answer. I am God’s prayer for the disinherited. And so are people like me.

And the truthfulness I am asked to share comes through the voices of vulnerable people. So, I share these testimonies collected by the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales from the migrants they served: https://www.kinoborderinitiative.org/testimonies-from-mpp/

     “We left Guatemala because the gangs were targeting my daughter. She is only 11….They followed her everywhere. When this happens, the girls become the property of the gangs, they are raped and disappeared. I had the proof that her life was in danger when I got to the border. I showed it to the agent but he didn’t care. He said I either had to return to Mexico and wait there or return to Guatemala. I said I didn’t want to do either. He said I had to, and that if I didn’t sign the papers, he would sign them for me and no one would know it wasn’t me. I never did sign any papers but here I am. He signed my name for me.”

“I told the [Border] official I didn’t know what to do when I got back to Mexico. He said, ‘you can ask your God if he will let you into the U.S.’”

“We’re not safe in Mexico. We didn’t want to come here. But to return to Guatemala would have meant the death of my husband and daughter.”

If my life is to be a prayer, as I believe it is meant to be, then certainly my voice must be a voice for the disinherited.

Over the Bridge

Image by Larisa Koshkina from Pixabay

On Thursday I ventured over the Bridge of the Americas into Juarez. Not quite like over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house.

Not at all.

I was on a mission. And I didn’t have a song in my heart or a pumpkin pie in my lap. I simply carried the two things I knew I would need: my passport and my willingness.

It turned out to be more than enough.

We rode in a nondescript white van – myself and two fellow female volunteers. Our driver, a 29-year-old Peace Lutheran volunteer and grad student, had crammed boxes filled with satchels of toiletries and packages of new underwear for adults and children into the back. Insulated bags of warm burritos sat on the floor behind me.

Our destination – no shelter of warmth, but pop-up campsites just over the border where dozens of families had erected tents while they await their “turn” to cross the bridge and request asylum.

These “campers” were mostly Mexican nationals fleeing violence in their home states. Places like Michoacán, Zacatecas, and Guerrero, where cartels seemed to be especially powerful. Places where they’d left behind family homes. Maybe a small farm or herd of animals. Maybe not much of anything. Except their fears about keeping themselves and their children safe.

But Customs and Border Protection agents stop them before they can cross one of the international bridges. They’re told CBP can’t handle them. They’ll have to put their names on a list and wait until their number is called. A process called “metering.”

Over the months since this practice has been put into place, asylum-seeking families, afraid to lose their place in line, have pitched tents close to the bridges. And they wait.

In the meantime, church groups from El Paso all the way to Las Cruces have been bringing food over almost daily. Lutherans, Methodists, Catholics, Unitarians…they come to feed the people stranded here.

This was to be my first experience witnessing these campsites.

I didn’t know what to expect.

So my prayer before starting out that morning had been that I would have eyes to “see.” That I would be open to whatever I would encounter at the tent “city” where we were to deliver these donations.

The camp is easy to spot. A nest of tents encircling a small park. Wet clothing hanging from atop fences and trees.

One of the little tent encampments we visited

As soon as we park and unload, people start lining up. They are used to this routine.

But, once they see the goodies I have in these boxes, it doesn’t take long before any semblance of a line dissolves. Eager children surround me.

I finally stop trying to tell the children to get in line. I let go of my desire to make it more orderly, each one waiting his or her turn. I simply give everything away until the boxes are empty.

Afterwards, while another volunteer pours extra water into people’s empty containers, I speak with a couple of the women. How long have you been waiting to be called, I want to know? Two months, they both say.

Two months! Just to cross over and be processed!

I want to ask if they’re aware they will have to come back here and wait again. Unless they are lucky enough to be released to their family sponsors.

I want to ask if they know how slim their chances are.

Maybe they do. Maybe they know that, especially for Mexicans, the chances of winning asylum are remote.

But maybe they have no place else to go. Maybe they figure even a glimmer of hope is worth holding onto while they sleep on the ground.

As I listen, I realize that I have never known such desperation. I cannot identify with these women living in little tents covered with plastic garbage bags in a crowded and dangerous city. I have nothing to compare it to. I feel so disconnected.

Later, reflecting on this experience, I remember my intention. My willingness to see.

So, I look up the definition of “connection.”

The relationship among people and objects across the barrier of space.

 

And then I remember something. Words that come in so clearly in the middle of my meditation:

“Have you been with me this long and still do not see me? Not know me?”

Humbled by how blind I am, I say again, “I want to see.”

 

It had seemed like such a small action. This crossing the bridge to hand out food and new underwear.

But it wasn’t. Not for them. And certainly not for me.

Because taking this small step has shown me. Your love is the bridge. Your love is the connection to recovering my sight.

And I know the way by heart.

 

 

 

Spiritually Fed

The “little sanctuary” at Sevenoaks in Madison, Virginia

I’ve recently returned from a week-long visit back east. My Virginia friends will probably wonder why I didn’t tell them I was coming. But this trip was solely for a reunion at Sevenoaks Retreat Center in Madison.

At least that’s what I thought when I started planning it. However, God had other plans.

Before long nearly 100 middle schoolers had entered the picture.  But more on that in a moment.

First, I need to express how spiritually nourished I felt being back at Sevenoaks. The minute I stepped on that 130-acre wooded property again, I began to remember the many graces I’d received throughout my years there.

Sevenoaks is a special place where I and these now very close friends had first met and gathered more than 10 years ago, to begin some deep work together. It was a journey towards healing and transformation.  With lots of pain, and pleasure, too, along the way.  The opportunity came at a time when I was ready, and in need of taking that journey. I started this program only months before David died.

Sometimes, because I lived only minutes away, I would come over just to spend time on the land. To be alone in the sacredness of nature. And to listen to God speak to my inner being. And it was there in the silence of nature and in the depth of that program that I had begun to understand that God had placed a new calling on my heart.

And now here I was again surrounded and held by Mother Earth, the forests, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the rich, red earth. Whether standing amidst a grove of cedars, meditatively walking the labyrinth under a canopy of trees, or praying in the little sanctuary in the woods, all of it filled my heart and soul with gratitude.

Entrance to my favorite path at Sevenoaks

I thought I was spiritually filled up.

And then I headed to Raleigh.

My plan had been that, on the tail end of my trip, I would drive down with my friend Rob and spend the remainder of my time with him and his wife before flying out of Raleigh the next day. It was unusual for me to book an afternoon flight when traveling back to El Paso from the East Coast. Especially with the 2-hour time difference. But at the time I didn’t think much about why I hadn’t scheduled a morning flight.

Not until weeks later when the “coincidence” surfaced.

Rob discovered that Lucy, a family friend and teacher of World History and Language Arts at a private middle school in the Raleigh area, was offering her 7th graders a long-term program focusing on the various issues of immigration and refugees. When Rob told her where I lived and what I did, she wanted to know if I’d come speak to her classes about El Paso and my experiences at our border.

I didn’t hesitate to say yes.

What has been so difficult for those of us living in El Paso these days is not being able to do much in the face of the alarming and false anti-immigrant narrative and policies that are sending asylum seekers to wait in dangerous Juarez. Most Americans have no understanding of the border reality. I had been praying and asking God, what can I do now in the service of love? Making PB&J sandwiches didn’t seem to be enough. I had turned back to writing more.

And then I received Lucy’s invitation.

If I was willing, she wanted me to give presentations to all four classes, back to back, enabling me to reach all 7th graders. That meant I would have to be there the entire morning.

Now I understood why I had delayed my flight. I could say yes to Lucy. And yes to what I clearly felt was Spirit’s response to my prayer.

After standing before students for 3 ½ hours, my mouth dry, my mind feeling like mush, I realized I had never spoken so long in my life. And never so effortlessly and smoothly. Never had I taken follow-up questions so easily. Clearly I had gotten myself out of the way and let Spirit take over. Clearly it wasn’t “me” doing the talking.

I had simply asked to be a voice, an instrument, through which Spirit could reach the hearts of these youths.

And the best part was I could tell they were listening. They were engaged. By their surprised expressions and concerned questions, I knew that they were learning about something they had had no clear understanding of beforehand.

Afterwards, Lucy and her colleague Matt were so appreciative of my willingness to do this. But they have no idea how thankful I am for them. How grateful I am to know there are teachers like this who want to educate youth about all sides of such an important issue, help them think for themselves, and learn empathy along the way.

Certainly they have no clue how I was spiritually fed that morning. How they allowed me to be a voice for those God has clearly put on my heart. And to have had it be part of my journey back to Sevenoaks seems especially mystical.

The journey of following the star led from Sevenoaks to El Paso

 

Manna in the Desert

Sunset over my desert home

Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a metaphor. Or a Bible story.

There’s a desert. Grumbling. (That would be me.) Perceived lack of food and water.

And, always, brown dust. The promise of a strong sun.

Sun rising over Las Cruces mountain range

 

And more.

The sufferings of those around me. Those who make their way through the desert. Remembered Bible stories fuel their hope. Stories of manna in the desert. From a God who never abandons them. A God who provides unusual food. Water from an unlikely source.

Sometimes that source is people I know. People at a shelter that waits for them to arrive. Empty cots longing to caress them into sleep. Give them dreams beyond imaginations held in their homelands. Dreams that only come when a rock transforms into a pillow.

This God source has provided in other ways as well.

With provisions for times when it feels as though the desert takes too much. Too great a toll of flesh demanded for the promised freedom. Too great a toll on desperate travelers forced into a more desperate Juarez. Too great a toll on exhausted, hungry children arriving with abuelas, tίas and tίos. They are taken from the only family they know. Pulled away and placed in shelters far from the desert, in rural American countrysides, hidden from view.

The toll seems unforgivable. Unimaginable to us who remain in the desert, watching, bearing witness to the inhumanity.

“Where is God in this?” we ask.

Where is God in the long aridity? When it feels like provisions are lacking?

In asking the question, the answers come.

I begin to notice provisions for the journey. The gifts in the sand.

The tireless female attorneys, mothers themselves, crossing the port of entry daily. Checking on clients. Seeking those with hearings in unsympathetic El Paso courtrooms. Holding up in the heat, the long lines at the bridge. No matter how few asylum cases they will win. Unfaltering despite the odds.

Manna in the form of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. El Paso volunteers now prepare these sandwiches for migrants waiting in Mexico to be processed. The people are hungry.

And Mexican federal immigration officials do not have the provisions to feed so many before releasing these families to shelters. Or worse – the streets of Juarez. The migrants – and the Mexican agents – welcome PB&J manna with smiles.

Provisions of friendship. The gift of camaraderie – of soul friends committed to the refugee, to the hurting, to those fleeing enslavement, a life of extortion.

We come together, share food and drink. Sing songs of a world we know is possible. The gift of laughter lightens the burdens. Our common prayer rises to the “column of cloud” guiding our journey.

Provisions of expression, of expelling the grief. Lisa offers the gift of her therapist skills, a free-will offering to those of us “living on the cusp,” living in the midst of the atrocious effects of the pharaoh’s dictates. She desires to help us. Her provisions fall like manna from the sky, alighting on our souls so in need of nourishment.

This heart I’ve been given – this too is a gift, a “talent” I’ve been asked to magnify on the journey. Even though it sometimes feels like a curse. A weakness. A vulnerability that needs alteration.

Then Brother Lalo gifts me with the words of St. Paul: “It is when I am weak that I am strong.” He tells me this is what comes to him when he thinks of me.

His supportive words, another provision in this desert. A reminder of another Bible story. The weak will befuddle the strong.

Yes, I call these “provisions for the journey.” And I hear God ask, can you trust that you’ll be given what you need? Just for today? Can you trust that I’ll be with you again tomorrow? Even when night descends?

 

 

 

Beautiful Connections

The Uber driver pulled up right on time, at the impossibly early hour of 4:50 a.m. I stood under the white spotlights of the overhang at the front entrance of my niece’s apartment building outside Washington, DC. A sole figure with two suitcases by her side. He could not have missed me. Only the birds announcing their predawn celebration accompanied me.

The tall, brown-skinned man introduced himself before lifting my heavy load into the trunk of his car. Already, in just the few words we had spoken, I thought I recognized Tedor’s accent. After we chatted a bit, I felt comfortable enough to ask his country of origin. He wanted me to guess and tried to give me a geography lesson, which doesn’t work well with me. But after I incorrectly guessed Kenya, and he revealed that it was a neighboring country, I knew my first inclination had been correct. He was from Ethiopia – the same country as my young friend whom I’d been visiting in detention for over a year in El Paso.

I so appreciated the connection that I began to share a bit of Abdinoor’s story. (I have been using the pseudonym Mathias in my blog posts to protect my friend, Abdinoor, and I am happy to finally be able to reveal his real name. Sweet, intelligent, upstanding young Abdinoor has entered Canada, where he is receiving refugee status and is no longer being treated like a criminal. Now he can finally go visit his mother in Kenya.  Although I am thrilled for him, I feel it is our loss.  And our shame.)

Then Tedor and I shared a little of our own stories.  I learned he had been living in the Washington area for three years, along with his family. When I told him I’d lived in Virginia for 30 years, he expressed great surprise. “But you look so young! I thought you were only in your 30’s!”

It had been quite dark when he’d picked me up, so I figured he must not have seen my face clearly. Still, I was really liking this guy.

“You look young because you have love in your heart,” he explained, after I’d revealed my age. “That’s important. To have love in your heart.”

I agreed, of course.

Tedor said he appreciated my kindness, noting that few people he picked up spoke to him. Some don’t even say hello or good morning. They keep their eyes cast downward, gazing into their phone screens during the entire ride.

I tried to imagine that – someone not even acknowledging another human being inside that small, confined space.  I remembered how, as much as I loved the diversity in the DC metro area, the congestion and stressful lifestyle could make it hard to connect.

But what a sweet connection I had made with this stranger in the shorter than 15-minute ride to the airport. Isn’t this what it’s really all about, I thought, as I left his little red car feeling much better than I’d had when I’d dragged myself out to the curb that morning? And Tedor clearly was in good spirits, too.

Isn’t it about kindness and connection? About recognizing our common humanity? About seeing how we are really more alike than anything?

Not the exact words I saw, but close enough

Later, as my jet rose above the Washington National Monument, I glanced out the window to say goodbye to my beloved Virginia when I noticed an incredible message displayed on the lawn.

Incredible, because of how it spoke to my heart.

There, beaming up at me were the words: “You are not alone. No estás solo.”

Talk about connection! Who had created this message, I wondered? For whom and what was it intended?

It didn’t matter, because in that moment, it was surely meant for me.  Meant to carry my spirit forward, to face the growing challenges of our work at the border and to comfort me in the further letting go that I’d experienced on this trip to Virginia.

I had just let go of my son – again.  Let go of many special things we’d put aside for when he moved into his own place in the lower 48 – something he’d decided was not going to happen anytime soon. So we’d had to let things go for a song, or even less. And I had to let go of the idea that he would live a little closer than the ridiculously long and challenging time it takes to get to Nome by plane.

I let go of the boy, but kept the story books and the rocking chair

But because that message was also in Spanish, I felt it calling me back to El Paso. To the migrants we accompany, who face far more grievous ways of letting go than I ever will. Asylum seekers, like Abdinoor, stuck in detention, far away from families and anything familiar. And mothers who are still separated from their children, toddlers, and even their babies.

Their forced “letting go” makes mine pale in comparison. My connection with them helps me keep things in perspective.

And if all that wasn’t enough, when I got down the escalator at the El Paso airport, I unexpectedly ran into someone I knew.

Not just anyone.

Sr. Fran was the woman who’d made my first volunteer experience here possible back in 2014. We greeted each other with surprised smiles and warm hugs, genuinely glad to see each other.

I knew I was home.