unaccompanied minors
Asylum seeking migrants from Central America await transport on March 12, 2021 after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico. REUTERS/Adrees Latif
This March, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents encountered nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children at the U.S.-Mexico border — a record high. To many, this number was shocking; media outlets used militaristic language to describe the arriving minors as a “surge.” However, this influx is not surprising given seasonal migration patterns and the horrific immigration policies instated by the Trump administration — policies the Biden administration has not yet repealed. The current administration must address the immediate needs of people seeking refuge at the southern border while also tackling the root causes of forced displacement and migration: U.S. imperialism.
Karl_Sonnenberg / Shutterstock.com
The United States, in particular, is abandoning our founding principles and those that have sustained our position as the aspirational bastion of freedom and opportunity. Our failure is reprehensible: Even as we fail to protect children, we are daily compounding their trauma and harm through policies detention and separation. History will remember the cruelty of this administration, the atrophy of moral leadership, and the apathy of the American people.
Activists hold candles vigil outside the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, June 25, 2019. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez
Before the finger pointing and blaming begins let me be clear: This is not a partisan issue. This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue. We have a moral responsibility to ensure that the conditions for every child are not just adequate but are as good as any parent would expect for their own children.
In this season of preparing for Christmas, there is a growing number of unaccompanied children arriving on the U.S. southwestern border. The numbers have been increasing in the last few months, enough to move government offices to prepare for their coming. National security continues to be the most important governmental concern, but even then, laws require that migrant children detained by our government be fed and sheltered until they can be released to a legal sponsor. It leads me to wonder: If governmental offices are preparing to receive these unaccompanied children, then what are we Christians doing to prepare to receive them?
Every Christmas as the story of the birth of Jesus our Lord is read in congregations and in homes there are always the laments about how sad and even cruel it was that there was no place for Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. Where was the loving and caring welcome for them? We cannot change the most unwelcome reception the Christ Child received at his birth, but we can learn from it.
Not since the World War II have United States politicians exercised such an extreme level of xenophobia, nationalism, and unapologetic bent toward fascism. Trump is calling Americans to break faith with our own constitution, which guarantees the protection of all faith traditions within our borders. This is not only un-American: It is ungodly. All humanity, regardless of religious affiliation, is made in the image of God. As such every human being is worthy of respect, dignity, and equal protection of the law. To scapegoat Muslim people is to scapegoat the image of God on earth.
There is a real threat, but it does not come from Islam. It comes from a relatively small band of misguided extremists who are leveraging our fear in order to destroy us — from within.
Religious leaders and immigration advocates marched toward the White House on July 31, 2014. Photo via Adelle M. Banks/RNS.
In the face of an imploding immigration system, an exploding political debate and a deadlock on reform in Washington, it was religious leaders who rallied to form a humanitarian response to the surge of unaccompanied children crossing the border to the United States this summer.
The number of migrants crossing the border began its steady rise in 2011, but it escaped the Obama administration’s notice until spring, when the rise became a wave.
By September, 66,127 unaccompanied children and 66,142 Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran families had crossed into the Southwest, mostly into the Rio Grande Valley. The flood contributed to a backlog in U.S. immigration courts of nearly 400,000 cases.
Nowhere was the religious leadership more apparent than in McAllen, Texas, where churches and local government forged an effective and compassionate response to the crisis.
Mirror, MorganStudio / Shutterstock.com
St. Paul once reminded the argumentative folks in the ancient Corinthian congregation that they were as people gazing dimly into a mirror (1 Corinthians 13:12), hardly able to make out their faces staring back at them. His point was simply that the things we think we “see” really well in this life we actually see and understand rather poorly. And misinterpreted reality is the result.
The past several years have seen the release of two excellent films aimed at helping the Christian community understand immigration and the need for immigration reform. Gospel without Borders, produced by EthicsDaily.com, and the just-released The Stranger film by the Evangelical Immigration Table, are two great presentations Christian groups and others should view and discuss.
LUCHA Ministries, the faith-based group that I work with in Fredericksburg, Va., recently screened The Stranger film for about 50 people in our community. Like Gospel without Borders, this film features vignettes of families and individuals crushed by our nation’s merciless and nonsensical immigration system. Both also interview religious and secular advocates who affirm the need to fix the system in a way that respects human life and dignity, guarantees secure borders, and creates a pathway to citizenship.
I watch these films and listen to their appeals and wonder why we can’t get immigration reform done. It all seems so obvious. Perhaps Paul gives us some insight here. Perhaps it’s because, like all things including immigration reform, what we think we see has little to do with reality.
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.
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.
Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston and seven other bishops celebrate mass. Creative Commons: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston
Pope Francis on Tuesday waded into the controversy of the wave of unaccompanied minors arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, calling for an end to racism against migrants and pushing the U.S. to offer greater protection for young children entering the country illegally.
“Many of their rights are violated, they are obliged to separate from their families and, unfortunately, continue to be the subject of racist and xenophobic attitudes.”
The Argentine pontiff said a different approach is needed to tackling what he called a “humanitarian emergency” as growing numbers of unaccompanied children are migrating to the U.S. from Central America and Mexico.
With the growing crisis of undocumented minors coming to the United States without a parent or guardian, the National Latino Evangelical Coalition (NaLEC) urged the government to allow them to provide compassionate care to these at-risk youth.
NaLEC president Rev. Gabriel Salguero is confident that the church will play a crucial role in solving this humanitarian crisis, just like it supports people through so many crises.
“It is incomprehensible to us that faith leaders and relief agencies who are at the forefront of responding to natural disasters, foster-care, and even ministry to detainees across the nation and world, are being kept from doing what we do best, compassionate service. The U.S. should create policies that facilitate this partnership,” Rev. Salguero said in a news release.
The influx of unaccompanied minors into the United States is primarily caused by drug-related violence in Central America, which leaves children looking for a safe haven. Hispanic evangelical churches are already working with partners in Central America to fight against this violence.
“We are working with our faith partners in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala to respond to some of the core causes like increased gang-violence and issues of deprivation. Any exclusion of communities who are ready to help is creating an unnecessary obstacle with a great track record of humanitarian responses,” Rev. Salugero added in the release.