border crisis

Kelly Rissman 9-04-2019

Regardless of the test result, an asylum seeker will have to attend a court hearing before an immigration judge. However, if she failed the test by not convincing the official that she has a “credible fear” of returning to her country, she has more to prove in the court hearing — or face deportation.

Sarah Little 8-01-2019

The U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs convened this week to discuss the unprecedented number of migrants at the southern border. As the Senators assembled, three young women stood in unison wearing matching pink shirts and signs with the words “No Racism, No Hate” in bold letters. A police officer informed them they would be arrested if they didn’t sit down. Throughout the often-tense meeting, both Republicans and Democrats acknowledged the direness of the situation at the border, though the committee members diverged about the best way to address the crisis.

Undocumented immigrant families walk from a bus depot to a respite center after being released from detention in McAllen, Texas, U.S., July 4, 2018. REUTERS/Loren Elliott

The threatened raids have rattled immigrant communities and come after apprehensions of migrants on the southwest border hit a 13-year high in May before easing in June as Mexico increased immigration enforcement.

the Web Editors 6-28-2019

Checking in on the Boomers, Hong Kong protests, census politicization, an ESPY-nominated Catholic sister, and more in the Weekly Wrap.

Bekah McNeel 7-22-2018

Isabela, an asylum seeker from El Salvador, hugs her 17-year-old daughter Dayana outside a federal contracted shelter in Brownsville, Texas, shortly after being reunited with her following their separation at the U.S.-Mexico border. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Chad Belew, pastor of The Arsenal, a non-denominational church south of downtown San Antonio, understands the pressure to keep a low profile on political issues or run the risk of alienating his congregation. But he also believes that silence is deadly, spiritually speaking. He quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

FILE PHOTO: Rosayra Pablo-Cruz, a Guatemalan mother who had been separated from her two sons, exits the Cayuga Center after being reunited with them in New York City. July 13, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

On July 10, after examining how an initial wave of reunifications of young children had gone, Sabraw concluded that government vetting policies could be streamlined to speed the process. 

Jean Neely 7-03-2018

Photo by Nitish Meena on Unsplash

We in the church have clung too tightly to our country’s myths of exceptionalism. We’ve been too slow to name the real “terror within” and unwilling to listen to those telling us of terror all around. We’ve been reluctant to own up to our history and speak out against unjust policies . We don’t like to think or talk about it, but most of us know that our quality of life here comes directly at the expense of everyone else on the planet (not to mention the planet itself), millions of ordinary folks whose countries have been ravaged by centuries of colonialism and persistent neocolonial structures, who make our clothes and gadgets, grow our food and coffee, and pay in countless other ways for all our out-of-control consumption and addictions. Their problems are our problems. So we can’t set them aside.

Benjamin Perry 7-02-2018

Migrants arrive at Catholic Charities Rio Grande Valley. Photo by David Choy / Faith in Public Life

Last week, I joined a delegation of 14 women faith leaders, organized by Faith in Public Life, to speak with refugees and community activists about our government’s treatment of immigrants at the border. We went expecting to encounter a community’s pain, but I don’t think any of us were prepared for the trauma we found, nor the fierce resistance of those standing up for migrants’ humanity.

Christina Colón 7-01-2018

Protesters outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., June 30, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Tens of thousands gathered in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., Saturday to call for an end to family separation. Braving a scorching 95-degree heat, people had come from all over the country to attend the Families Belong Together event. Organizers had three demands for President Trump: Reunite families, end family detention, and reverse the “zero tolerance” policy.

Sojourners is encouraging more communities of faith to hold vigils around the country. We are calling on clergy, faith-based organizations, and Christians everywhere to lift up prayers and candles as a recommitment to the light that can hold back these dark times.

Jim Wallis 6-21-2018

People participate in a protest outside the Tornillo Tranit Centre, in Tornillo, Texas, U.S. June 17, 2018. REUTERS/Monica Lozano

Let’s be clear: All Trump did was decide to detain families together in prison camps going forward, and there is no clear plan yet to re-unify the more than 2,300 children who have already been orphaned and sent away from their parents under his administration’s cruel policy. Those separations could be forever if the enormous task of reunification is not carefully undertaken.

President Donald Trump looks back at DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen as he prepares to sign an executive order with Vice President Mike Pence at the White House., June 20, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

Trump signed an executive order requiring immigrant families be detained together when they are caught entering the country illegally for as long as their criminal proceedings take. While that may end a policy that drew a rebuke from Pope Francis and everyone else from human rights advocates to business leaders, it may also mean immigrant children remain in custody indefinitely. 

Children inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention facility at the Rio Grande Valley Centralized Processing Center in Texas. CBP/via REUTERS

The Trump administration on Monday defended its hardline immigration policy at the U.S.-Mexico border as criticism mounted over detained immigrant parents being separated from their children, including video of youngsters sitting in concrete-floored cages.

Rev. Thomas H. Smolich, president of the Jesuit Conference of the U.S. since June 2006. Courtesy Jesuit Conference of the U.S.

American Jesuits are pushing members of Congress who were educated at the Catholic order’s schools to pass aid for thousands of refugee children who have surged across the border in Texas in recent months, calling proposals to swiftly deport them “inhumane and an insult to American values.”

“I ask you, as a leader, a parent, and a Catholic, to uphold an American tradition of which we are all proud,” the Rev. Thomas Smolich, head of the U.S. Jesuit conference, wrote to House Speaker John Boehner and 42 other House members who graduated from Jesuit high schools and colleges.

“We must welcome the refugee, the victim of trafficking, the child who has been abused or abandoned,” Smolich wrote in the July 29 letter. “Let us follow in the footsteps of Jesus when he said, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’”

Since last fall, more than 57,000 unaccompanied minors have flooded across the U.S.-Mexico border, mainly in south Texas, most of them from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The migrants are often driven out by endemic violence in their home countries and drawn to the U.S. by prospects of better economic opportunities or the chance to reunite with their families.

But the influx has created a humanitarian crisis that has become a political wedge issue.

Joey Longley 7-31-2014
Via United Methodist News Service

Rev. John L. McCullough of Church World Service arrested in front of the White House. Via United Methodist News Service

More than 100 faith leaders and immigration activists were arrested today during an act of civil disobedience outside of the White House. The activists were calling on President Barack Obama to take executive action to immediately stop deportations and to deal with the crisis of unaccompanied minors at the border.

"We have come to Washington, D.C., to tell to President Obama and Congress that kicking out suffering immigrant families and unaccompanied children is not the answer,” Bishop Minerva Carcaño, the United Methodist Bishop in Los Angeles, said. “Immediately stopping the deportations and extending due process to children escaping the violence of drug cartels, gangs and poverty is the just way to respond."

Other participants in the protest saw the struggle for immigration reform as part of a larger struggle for justice.

"As someone who has benefited from the courage and civil disobedience of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, I cannot stand idly by as I see unjust immigration laws damage our communities and our nation,” Rev. John L. McCullough, President and CEO of Church World Service, said. “It is a moral imperative that we take action now, particularly after the House Republican leadership has miserably failed to enact immigration reform that the majority of Americans roundly support."

This action comes while the Obama administration is conducting a review of deportation policies and pushing for emergency funding for the crisis of unaccompanied children arriving at the border.

Verity Jones 7-28-2014
Generosity with loaves and fishes. Image courtesy Antonio Gravante/shutterstock.

Generosity with loaves and fishes. Image courtesy Antonio Gravante/shutterstock.com.

What might happen if we were to look at the two goods of protection and hospitality not as competing goods in a world of scarcity, but as complimentary goods in a world of abundance? I think we might come up with new solutions that no one has yet imagined.

In June, reporters for The Washington Post described deplorable detention conditions of the border patrol station in McAllen, Texas.

“The sick are separated by flimsy strips of yellow police tape from the crying babies and expectant mothers. They subsist on bologna sandwiches and tacos, with portable toilets and no showers, and their wait can last for days," they wrote. 

Soon after, President Obama declared a “humanitarian crisis” at the Mexico-U.S. border, citing a massive increase of undocumented children from Central America crossing the border. Without enough resources to house and care for the tens of thousands of children while they wait for an immigration hearing, the border patrol has been overwhelmed.

When Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson visited the station in May, he asked one young girl, “Where’s your mother?”

“I don’t have a mother,” she replied tearfully.

Kenneth Tanner 7-27-2014
Attila JANDI / Shutterstock.com

Attila JANDI / Shutterstock.com

When the Word becomes flesh, when the Son of God becomes one who bleeds, Jesus demonstrates God's humble solidarity with human nature from Adam and Eve onward, to the last person born in history.

This vulnerability of God for us, this identification of Jesus with our collective human frailty, changes our perspective on everything. In the light that shines from the face of Jesus Christ, we at last see God and humanity with 20/20 vision.

Paul comes to this vision late in the day, well after the events of God in the flesh that reconcile the Father to God's creation. The vision of Jesus blinds him but when his eyes are healed, having seen Jesus, he sees God and humanity and the world very differently than he did before the vision of Christ that overwhelms him.

Years later, in a letter to the Corinthians, speaking about the church's worship with blest eyes he writes: "When we drink from the cup we ask God to bless, isn't that sharing in the blood of Christ? When we eat the bread we break, isn't that sharing in the body of Christ?"

Ivone Guillen 7-24-2014
Helping hands. Image courtesy Dr.G/shutterstock.com.

Helping hands. Image courtesy Dr.G/shutterstock.com.

The overwhelming concern and support among the faith community for these Central American refugees has been a huge blessing for these children both at the national and local level. If you are wondering how you can help with this urgent need, here are some options on where you can donate your money or time.

Joanna Foote 7-17-2014
Image of a bus. Image courtesy phipatbig/shutterstock.com

Image of a bus. Image courtesy phipatbig/shutterstock.com

“The United States is wonderful,” said one woman, after I helped get her oriented to what buses she would take from Tucson to Florida, gave food and snacks to her and her 8- and 9-year-old sons, and helped her find sweaters and a blanket to stay warm through the inevitably extreme air conditioning of the buses. In that moment, I thought about other U.S. towns passing laws to keep people like her out and protesters angrily blocking buses full of unaccompanied minors or mothers and their children.