That’s why this month I’m sharing an article I wrote in response to the vicious and dangerous lies that the Texas Attorney General is spreading about the Catholic faith-based Annunciation House and its Executive Director Ruben Garcia. It’s something I’m definitely passionate about because this is personal to me.
Ruben Garcia, founder and director of Annunciation House, a network of migrants shelters in El Paso ,Texas, speaks with the media during a news conference, Friday, Feb. 23, 2024. Garcia is reacting to the lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that claims the Annunciation House “appears to be engaged in the business of human smuggling” and is threatening to terminate the nonprofit’s right to operate in Texas. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
But what’s happening in Texas is not unusual. Extremist politicians have infiltrated not only states, but the U.S. Congress, and are creating their own reality, and their own definitions of words like “immigrant,” “Catholic faith-based organization,” and “NGO” (nongovernmental organizations), and trying to force the rest of us to go along with them. Either through lies or laws they enact.
I used to think that practicing one’s faith or beliefs, practicing acts of kindness and mercy, were protected as one of my freedoms in the United States. Not sure I believe that anymore.
Dorothy Day, whose quote I use here, was a convert to Catholicism. She practiced her faith every day, including searching her own heart for her failings and weaknesses. She was humble and selfless. She, too, always put the other first. But she was labeled a socialist and a Communist in her day.
The abuse and twisting of language hasn’t changed. But it’s gotten bolder, more vicious, and more dangerous.
So be on alert. Because it soon migh be unlawful to be kind and compassionate towards the marginalized, the homeless, the immigrant, and the refugee. Some states, like Texas, are certainly working hard at making it so.
Every once in a while new folks come to town and remind me what I love about El Paso. Whether it’s someone volunteering for a year with the Annunciation House network or a college or church group wanting to experience a weeklong border orientation, people who visit El Paso for the first time always leave having been surprised by what they’ve discovered and changed by the experience.
This time her name was Theresa.
She came to El Paso, along with two other women, for several weeks of orientation with the Maryknoll lay missioner program before she was to leave on assignment in Kenya. Maryknoll is a Roman Catholic organization that accompanies people in foreign countries living on the margins. It promotes nonviolence, justice, compassion, and care for the earth. For years Maryknoll offered its orientation in New York. But this year they moved it to El Paso, which, for Theresa and her friends and family, was a concern.
Somehow going to Kenya didn’t seem to be as much of an issue.
When they discovered Theresa was headed for the southern border, her friends warned, “You won’t be safe there. El Paso is a mess.”
And she believed it, too.
After all, most Americans only know about El Paso through the news or social media, the sound bites that refer to “illegal invasions,” “criminal caravans,” and “drug cartels” flowing like wild, unmanageable streams through the Rio Grande into the U.S. TV images show poorly dressed, brown-skinned people cozying up on downtown streets under Red Cross blankets and makeshift homesteads. Or lining up outside Sacred Heart Church for the luncheon meal.
From what’s presented on your screen, it’s easy to think things are crazy and unsafe in El Paso.
Until you spend some time here.
Like I have. Here I am mashing potatoes as I join some of my many friends in preparing Sacred Heart’s annual Thanksgiving meal for the poor and the migrants.
It’s been nearly 10 years since I first came to El Paso to volunteer. More than 7 since I left my Virginia home and moved here. So I was anxious to hear what Theresa had to say about this community I easily came to love.
Tall and white, Theresa stands out in El Paso. She’s a minority here, as am I. She’s also older and has lived in various U.S. states, so she’s got some experience with different types of communities.
During their six weeks with us, Theresa and her little group participated in local events and ministries on both sides of the border. They visited some of the many humanitarian organizations, went to migrant shelters, listened to folks accompanying the marginalized, and participated in the everyday life of the culture.
As she was nearing the end of her stay, we gathered at a friend’s home, and I asked about her experience.
“El Paso is such a gentle place,” she offered.
The word “gentle” struck me. I’d not heard that adjective used to describe El Paso before.
She explained how she had thought her rural community back in Kentucky was the gentlest and warmest community she’d ever known.
Until she came to El Paso.
“People are even gentler and kinder here.”
She gave me one example that sounded very familiar.
Needing to buy some groceries last week, she’d gone to the local Albertsons with only $23 cash to spend. No credit card. When she got to the checkout, she realized she’d not estimated her costs well, because the total was $25 and change. She explained her situation to the cashier and asked to remove some items.
“Hold on,” the cashier said. “I’ve got my Albertson’s card. I can apply it to your bill and I bet that’ll take care of it.”
But even with the card, her new total was $23.57. Still more than she had on her.
Then the bagger stepped in. “I can take care of that,” he said. And he dished into his pocket for the needed change.
Theresa left the store with everything she’d intended to buy and genuine gratitude for the kindness of these two strangers.
“I couldn’t believe how both of them stepped in to help me,” she said. “I don’t know of anywhere else in the U.S. where this would happen.”
I heard the surprise and delight in her voice. And I was delighted with her.
Because, at a time when our country is sourly divided, when we teeter on the verge of denying “outsiders” the basic right to seek asylum, when our politicians can’t risk acting humanely for fear of losing their power and status, I find myself turning to El Paso with deep gratitude.
This is what I would like the world to look like. Generous, gentle, kind, and welcoming.
No, El Paso is not perfect, and, yes, it’s a bit messy. But it is not a mess.
Come to think of it, not unlike a stable in Bethlehem where a baby was born so many years ago.
Like Ebenezer Scrooge, this holiday I’ve been visited by images of Christmas past.
Reading this story was a Hovey family Christmas tradition
Christmas Eve 1993. My husband, mother, aunt/godmother, and a very pregnant version of myself climb the high stone steps of St. Anne’s Church, which towers above the city of Fall River, Massachusetts. The city of my birth and childhood. The city where my then-living family members gathered for Christmas.
It’s a windy night, and David grabs my petite 4’9” auntie’s arm to keep her from being whisked off into the sky like Mary Poppins.
I’m on my own.
But I feel so heavy, I doubt there’s any chance I’ll be lifted off anything. Inside the dimly lit church with familiar scents and statues of favorite saints, I’m reminded of my childhood. I attended Catholic high school up the block. And Mom worked at St. Anne’s Hospital across the street for years. This was my foundation. French ethnicity and strong Catholic roots. Mom’s faith meant everything to her. It carried her through a hellish ordeal and inspired me along the way.
During the service, as Mom stands on one side and David on the other singing carols in his beautiful baritone voice, I feel a wave of such love wash over me and settle in my belly. After Mass, Mom uncharacteristically pulls the priest over to bless me and the child I’m carrying. A miraculous conception. A child for whom I’d longed and prayed for years. And now, his arrival appears imminent.
I remember the priest’s outstretched hand, Mom’s eyes glistening with tears, her voice cracking with emotion, and my heart so full and warm, causing me to tear up as well. To be so graced with this gift of life inside of me, a gift I’d willingly surrendered to God, deepened my spiritual journey. And helped me toward the next threshold.
St. Anne’s Church
Christmas Eve 2008. I’m standing in another pew, in another church. This time in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I live with my little family of three. Flanked by my now 14-year-old son on one side and my husband on the other, I feel David reach for my hand as he croons Angels We Have Heard on High. My favorite Christmas carol. My heart swells with warmth, tenderness, and comfort. I know how blessed I am.
But I couldn’t have known that this would be our last Christmas together. And there’d soon be another threshold for me to cross. Another invitation to surrender what I couldn’t control.
Sometimes I think, what I wouldn’t give to hear David’s beautiful deep voice beside me again. But just like Dickens’s Scrooge, I am shaped by my past Christmases. By those whom I’ve loved and lost.
And had not grief and unexpected deaths visited me, I wouldn’t have discovered the strength of the courage and confidence, fortitude and faith that I have now. I would not be the woman I am. Nor would I live where I do.
It seems my heart had to be broken to enlarge its borders. To expand my family circle to include the larger human family.
Which brings me to Christmas past, 2022.
Two days before Christmas, I’m standing not in a church pew but in a seemingly endless snake of a line at the Seattle International Airport. My third long line since arriving here, nearly 24 hours earlier. I’ve endured two canceled flights, slept in a chair overnight in terminal C, lost track of my checked luggage complete with Christmas gifts, and am swiftly losing hope that I will even make it to my son, Davis, by Christmas Day.
But I’m not alone. There are hundreds of other travelers in this airport, just as tired, frustrated, and anxious as I am to get to their loved ones. I notice a single mom trying to keep her two boys under 7 entertained as we barely crawl forward. An elderly woman with a cane sits on the luggage scale since there’s no place else to sit except on the floor. We’ve been here since 3 p.m. and it’s now almost 9:30!
During these 6 1/2 hours, I’ve turned to my spiritual practices time and again. Leaned on my willingness to accept what is before me and out of my power to change. In the process, another image has come to my awareness.
An image of a line even more uncertain than this one. A line of thinly clad people who aren’t waiting in a warm, enclosed shelter with bathrooms and food options. A line of migrants I’d left behind in downtown El Paso, on the streets outside Sacred Heart Church. And, even more concerning, a line that has formed on the other side of concertina wire waiting for Border Patrol. They sleep on the cement along the Rio Grande and light tiny fires as they attempt to keep warm overnight, remaining hopeful they’ll be able to enter the U.S.
These people have no other options. They have no home to return to. They are poor and powerless in ways I’ve never experienced.
A line of migrants waiting to be processed
Of course I’m not denying I would have felt huge disappointment and melancholy had I spent Christmas Eve in a hotel room alone. But these disturbing images put things in perspective.
And reminded me again of a powerful Love that was born among the poor more than 2,000 years ago. The ultimate surrender into uncertainty.
At the end of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge vowed to keep the spirit of Christmas in his heart and to live it all the year ‘round. May I have the same intention. To carry the light and love of Christmas into whatever situation I find myself. And to willingly accept the next threshold.
This is a story about hunger. A longing for something we often can’t name, yet know we can’t live without. It didn’t occur exactly as it’s laid out here, but it did unfold, not so long ago, in a far and distant land known as El Paso. And it continues to unfold. Even now.
Hunger wakes him.
The gnawing sensation in his belly is surprising and strong. But not as strong as it had been over the past several weeks on his journey north, before he’d arrived at Casa Nazareth. Thanks to exhaustion and tranquility, Diego had slept for several hours before craving roused him. A night spent on a cot off the desert and concrete holding cell floors, covered by a blanket, in a warm room, his little hija asleep on the cot alongside his, attributed to the feeling he’d landed in a safe harbor despite the uncertainty that still loomed large.
Yesterday afternoon when the ICE agent ushered Diego and 6-year-old Gabriela, along with 42 other migrants, through the door of our shelter, his body had visibly relaxed. Now, in this half-dream state, Diego remembers where he is, rises to kneel on the bedroom floor, and utters silent prayers of gratitude and protection for family members left behind.
Gabriela stirs on her cot, scrunching deeper under the gray blanket covering her small form. She exhales, that soft breath of a child secure in her bed. Diego feels his heart will burst with love.
He’s grateful that, only hours earlier, they’d devoured a home-cooked dinner served by a local parish. When he stood at the buffet line, he’d watched Gabriela’s delight as a server heaped meat sauce over their noodles until it trickled across their plates. An abundance of food, complete with dessert and lemonade. He even returned for seconds. An option he’d never had in his life. Later he’d retired to his assigned room with Gabriela, satisfied and speechless. He’d never known such generosity. Such kindness.
Why now then is he awakened with this familiar sensation of hunger? It surprises him that he could be hungry for more.
Hours later, I, too, am surprised when I catch him in the breakfast line outside el comedor 20 minutes early. Our guests know that breakfast isn’t served until 8 a.m. Yet Diego isn’t the only early arrival. At least a dozen folks have joined him, standing two and three abreast, adults shifting their feet, children giggling and squirming against their parent’s arms attempting to enfold them. Everyone looks tidy and refreshed, yet surprisingly anxious to eat.
I venture over and ask Diego if he’s hungry.
“Si!” He smiles, seemingly embarrassed to admit this. He lowers his eyes, focusing intently on the top of his daughter’s head.
“Breakfast is almost ready,” I say in Spanish.
“Si, gracias a Dios.” As if wanting to explain, Diego says he doesn’t know why he’s hungry again so soon. We fed him well yesterday.
I wonder about Diego and the expectant others. Are they afraid there won’t be enough? Do they not believe we’ll serve breakfast at 8? That they will once again fill their bellies?
I want to reassure him, let him know he need not worry. Throughout this day and tomorrow, Diego, as long as you are with us, we will feed you. You will not go hungry again.
Diego may hear my words, but it may be a while before his body can trust. It can take time when someone’s gone for days, weeks, even longer, not able to satiate hunger pangs that have settled in like an incessant beggar.
I’ve never tasted the hunger Diego has experienced.
But there are many kinds of hunger.
I, too, have hungered during the night. Awakened with a wrenching sensation that surprises me.
A hunger for the physical presence of a loved one no longer with me. Hunger for evidence that tomorrow will bring some relief from the pain. Hunger that my longing for the Beloved will be satiated.
And, just as I long to reassure Diego that he will be fed, that he is safe and will not go hungry, God longs to reassure me. You will be given your daily bread, my dear. I am here. Why do you doubt me?
It’s a fair question.
For I’ve been fed well today, just as I have been for a zillion yesterdays. Gifted with grace upon undeserved grace, at every turn, sometimes, surprisingly, at exactly the moment that my apprehension rises to fever pitch.
In that silent darkness of my longing, a Presence makes itself known. It arrives on the breath of something inexplicable, recognized only by slowing my breathing and being still enough to take it in. A love that desires to soothe me, like Gabriela, into a restful sleep, intuitively aware of a loving parent by her side.
Yes, there is manna in the desert today.
Yet hunger can rise up during the night without warning. Without explanation. No matter how often I’ve been fed.
Why do I always seem to want more of you, God, when you are forever here, waiting to fill me?
I am like Rumi’s white cow on a small, green island that grows fat every day from the abundance God provides, and lean every night from the fear that she will not have what she needs tomorrow. Lean with fear, fat with blessing. Back and forth she goes, every night making herself miserable over what’s to come, or not to come. Worrying if she will be fed each day. Not pausing to recognize that You have been feeding her all along.
There is a small green island
where one white cow lives alone, a meadow of an island.
The cow grazes till nightfall, full and fat,
but during the night she panics
and grows thin as a single hair.
What shall I eat tomorrow? There is nothing left.
By dawn the grass has grown up again, waist-high.
The cow starts eating and by dark
the meadow is clipped short.
She is full of strength and energy, but she panics
in the dark as before and grows abnormally thin overnight.
The cow does this over and over,
and this is all she does.
She never thinks, This meadow has never failed
to grow back. Why should I be afraid every night
that it won’t? The cow is the bodily soul.
The island field is this world that grows
lean with fear and fat with blessing, lean and fat.
Last week, just before the holiday season began, workers with the U.S. Border Patrol finished placing their gift to El Paso across several miles of its border wall. Razor wire.
The pesky, prickly, lethal metal contraption now glints in the desert sun atop what has become a 30-foot barrier between downtown El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. Their reason, according to a U.S. Customs and border Protection spokesperson is “to dissuade individuals from scaling the border wall and to reduce the risk of injuries sustained from falling off the barrier.”
Border Patrol admits that 18- and even 30-foot fencing is NOT an insurmountable obstacle. That’s why they’ve added the razor wire. It buys them time to get to the wall before the scalers make it over. And, they say, it will help deter “illegal entries.”
Yes, that’s their reasoning, as absurd as it may sound. They’re hoping it will “dissuade” them, but they know it will not stop the migrants from coming.
It’s important to note that since COVID began, we’ve closed our ports of entry to asylum seekers, thereby removing any legal way of entering. That means more people have resorted to riskier routes, including scaling this monstrous freakin’ metal wall. We’ve been seeing this happen more frequently over the past several months. Some get over unscathed. Others suffer broken bones or a broken back. For some, the practice has ended in death when they slip or are pushed over.
Now they’re going to maneuver through razor wire.
Because I’m sure the smugglers to whom migrants pay outrageous fees to help them across will bring wire cutters along. These smugglers are already placing camouflage ladders on the Mexico side, and at the right moment, directing their human cargo to scale the 18- to 30-ft wall.
In my book, any reasonable, intelligent, mildly compassionate human being would observe this situation and wonder why we’re continuing to waste billions of dollars – not millions but billions – on outdated barriers that don’t work. Are we not in the 21st century – a technological, digital, Drone-crazy age? An age of unprecedented advances in which we could make other, more logical, cost-effective and efficient options? An age in which enough intelligence and resources exist to devise more humane options?
What is particularly disturbing to me is how hellbent we are on keeping “these people” out. So much so that we’re willing to construct a steel structure that obstructs the natural flow of migration along the southern border, adversely affects wildlife and the environment, allows government to forcibly acquire private land through eminent domain, destroys natural habitats, and forces desperate people to make harrowing decisions. All this to build an ineffective, ugly, cruel symbol of so-called security that will never accomplish its intention.
Yes, it’s true – I have a strong opinion about this. I’ve seen its harmful effects. Its costly futility.
And I know that desperate folks do desperate things.
I ask you to consider, when you’re standing on the edge of a precipice, with a drop into the unknown before you, or a life of despair and fear over your shoulder, what choice will you make?
I’ll admit that I have taken more than a few risks in my lifetime. I’ve stood on the edges of despair and sadness. Been forced off a cliff into the unknown and the unexpected. Even dared to jump off into the abyss.
But I’ve never known the kind of desperation that these people I’ve encountered have faced. I’ve never stood on the edge of having to choose between a life of hopeless, abject poverty or the high stakes required to get me out of that hell.
Nor have I lived through the effects of back-to-back hurricanes like the category 5 storms of Eta and Iota that recently stormed through El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, eradicating entire villages, leaving millions homeless and starving, with no assistance from government. The double whammy hurricanes flooded homes and shelters, wiped out crops and other livelihoods, and followed on the heels of a pandemic that had already challenged their ability to survive.
I suspect we will see more Central Americans forced to leave home to find other means of survival. Seeing the aftermath, aid workers in these countries are already predicting the migration. According to an article in The Daily Beast, “The hurricanes come on top of a COVID-19-related economic depression, which added to some of the world’s highest levels of criminal violence, in one of the world’s regions most susceptible to the impact of climate change.”
As I look upon the ugliness and cruelty of our border wall, I know that this is not the total picture. Nor is it the end of the story. Hundreds of thousands of folks across the country – seen and unseen – have walked in solidarity with us to accompany these migrants and refugees over the past several years.
What I have witnessed in this ever-expanding community gives me hope.
And reminds me, in this time of Advent — this season of hopeful waiting — that justice and mercy, hope and faith, kindness and righteousness will meet, and brotherly/sisterly love will prevail.
I know that something better IS POSSIBLE. And I am willing to take the risk, to walk on the edges of society, to bring it to fruition.
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?”
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.”
A pool of blood surrounds her head, bubbling and seeping into the desert floor, drowning her hope of freedom.
The young woman lies where she fell from the 18-ft wall, before the sun rose over El Paso. The ground beneath her already teeming with heat.
Unbelievably, she attempted to scale these slats of steel. With nothing to grab onto. No secure way to lower herself to the ground on the other side. Yet she’s not the only one stupid enough to do it, for “stupid” is indeed what many will call her. This young one whose desperation emboldened her to take such a risk.
It hardly seems routine – attempting to climb such a monstrosity – and yet it is. Here in the Borderlands, where migrants risk their deaths rather than remain in the desperate place they call home.
How does the rational mind understand such actions? We can’t. Instead we throw out opinions. Blame. Judge the unexplainable. Separate ourselves from the suffering. It’s what the mind does.
Unknown to the Border agents bending over her, transporting her, radioing her details to the hospital, she becomes “Jane Doe.” Another unidentified migrant who will be added to the icy cooler of remains waiting to be claimed.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Guatemala, a mother awaits news about her daughter. Suffers torment as the weeks grow longer. The unbearable not knowing.
Maybe her name is Kata. Or Yamileth. Like the names of so many brown-skinned mothers I’ve met on the journey.
She joins hundreds of thousands of others who wonder about their children’s fate. Some have had their children taken from them. Forcibly.
Yes, not so surprisingly, separation of mothers and children still happens at our borders. A mother gets locked in detention. Her child is sent to a large, unmarked building down the street, right here in El Paso. A place that houses an unknown number of children. Don’t ask how many. It’s all very secretive.
And there are other kinds of separations of mothers from their children. Mothers of this nation, with darker skin, whose children also lie in their own blood. Mothers with names like Sybrina. And Crystal.
Crystal, whose 11-year-old son was a promising young football star. Getting out of the car in a gang-infested neighborhood at the wrong time, he got caught by a stray bullet. The irony of it – Crystal is a mother working as a “violence interrupter.”
Some will call this “stupid” too. Throw out opinions. About her son’s fate in a black neighborhood. About the Black Lives Matter movement. More judgments. More blame.
But those who are devoted to the cause of fully living, of being fully alive to our feelings, come up against a raw humanity – the deeper pain and grief of mothers without their children. Deep and consuming, like an undertow that steals your breath.
Sometimes it’s hard to be with all that pain. We can get angry, feel frustrated, hopeless.
But that’s not what I’m called to do – get sucked into the undertow of pain and helplessness.
Instead I ground myself and turn to my breath. To the Love that breathes me into existence. And breathes through me, connecting me in solidarity with all suffering mothers. With all who are wounded and in pain.
Breathing in, I fill up with Infinite Love. Breathing out, I let Love flow to those who are finding it difficult to breathe in this moment. Like a Tonglen practice, I sit with the suffering and offer blessing and healing wherever it’s needed. I let Love go where it will. Let it change or heal a situation without my knowing how.
When I say “yes” in this surrendered solidarity, I become a conduit of Infinite Love breathing through me. In that space, “I” no longer seek to fix or control the situation. I simply focus on my breath.
I may not be able to be present to the migrant mothers here at our border as I used to be, nor am I able to change our country’s racial injustices singlehandedly, but I can help carry their burden in solidarity.
Breathe, Kata. Breathe, Crystal. Breathe, mommas of children taken. And I will breathe with you, for you, in you. Like a buoy, keeping you from drowning.
Go with the pain. Let it take you. Open your palms and your body to the pain. […]With a deep breath—it has to be as deep as the pain—one reaches a kind of inner freedom from pain, as though the pain that you experience were not yours, but your body’s. The spirit lays the body on the altar. (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)
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.
“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.”
“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 prayerfor 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.
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.
A Journey of the Heart 