Alberto Castañeda Mondragón Did Not Fracture His Own Skull

ON JAN. 8, Alberto Castañeda Mondragón was taken to an emergency room in Edina, Minn., with head injuries. It was a few hours after he’d been stopped and detained by Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents. He was then transferred to the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. According to the Associated Press, “The officers told nurses Castañeda Mondragón ‘purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall.’” But AP consulted with a doctor who confirmed that his injuries—including eight skull fractures on the front, back, and both sides of his head and five brain hemorrhages—were inconsistent with walls or falls. Castañeda Mondragón recalled “ICE officers striking him with the same metal rod used to break the windows of the vehicle he was in.”

How do we find truth, much less lift it up, when lies and violence press on every side?

This report reminded me of an incident in my family: For a few years when I was young, I thought an elderly relative of mine had died by falling out of an airplane. When the family gathered for his funeral, my preschool self heard them tell of how a person in authority—a doctor or police officer—had suggested that our relative had been injured from falling down. And that a nurse who overheard this later told a family member, “If your daddy fell, he fell from an airplane.” (Only that last bit stuck with me.) The truth, or a version of it, which an uncle got from a visit to a cop friend: They knew what weapon had delivered the blunt force trauma and had a good idea of who did it. But law enforcement didn’t pursue the matter further. It only now occurs to me that it is possible that someone connected to the police was implicated.

The only similarities between Castañeda Mondragón and my relative are brutal head injuries and false stories told by people with power. Still, it reminded me of how power, violence, and lies go together—they always have. The unhinged violence of federal force on local communities, done under pretense of immigration enforcement, is a daily and obvious example. But we also live right now under an official reign of lies about nearly everything. “Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood” (Proverbs 6:17) abound.

I’m not naive—governments and politicians, even ones who also do good things, have always hidden or twisted some facts. But the current administration doesn’t do this occasionally: It is the core of its operation. That modus operandi covers up physical and spiritual violence and aims to normalize and even aggrandize it.

Power, violence, and lies go together—they always have.

Still, the truth will set us free. Which can seem almost like a taunt some days—how do we find truth, much less lift it up, when lies and violence press on every side? When I can do nothing else, I look to where compassion and mercy lead. I think about Castañeda Mondragón’s 10-year-old daughter back in Mexico and how brain injuries have taken some of her father’s memories, balance, and ability to do his former roofing work. I think of my aunt, decades later, saying of our relative’s death, “You just don’t want to see one of your own done like that.” I don’t want to see one of my own or anyone’s done like that—not my family, not my friends, and not my enemies. And I won’t believe the lies.