immigrant families
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
EVERY EMPIRE IN human history has used the tactics of fear. This fear is evident in the fact that for generations a dark skin hue has automatically made a person at best suspect, at worst a criminal. The empire identifies those whose language and nationality are different as less than human. Dehumanization becomes a tool to justify heinous laws, promoting them as necessary to protect citizens from a horde of savages, criminals, rapists, thugs, or whatever new word is used to instill fear.
Our sacred texts tell the stories of emperors, rulers, and pharaohs who justified mass extermination to maintain power. Herod the Great is one example. Herod was a ruler so deranged and paranoid about losing power that he had his wife, brother-in-law, and three sons murdered to wipe away any trace of royal blood who might challenge his throne.
It is under Herod’s rule that we encounter the revolutionary words of Mary as she proclaims her song of praise, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). For generations, Christians have reduced the Magnificat to a simplistic, spiritual song from a docile, obedient girl chosen by God. The political undertones and demands for justice against rulers and laws that oppress God’s people are rarely elevated.
Undocumented immigrant families walk from a bus depot to a respite center after being released from detention in McAllen, Texas, U.S., July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Loren Elliott
"Imagine your family ripped apart. That’s going to have reverberations across family members for years to come."
Undocumented immigrant families walk from a bus depot to a respite center after being released from detention in McAllen, Texas, July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Loren Elliott
Lawsuits can force the government to change its policies, as has now happened with the apparent end to the family separation policy. But lawsuits do not always achieve the results intended. Since legal proceedings usually take years to adjudicate, they are often settled before running their course – well out of public view.
Maria Marroquin Perdomo and her 11-year-old son Abisai drive away from the Casa Padre facility in the backseat of her attorney's truck minutes after mother and son were reunified in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., July 14, 2018. Abisai was held at Casa Padre while his mother was detained at the Port Isabel detention facility. REUTERS/Loren Elliott
Marroquin Perdomo gave her son a set of colorful handmade cards she had made for him in detention. On one of them, she had drawn flowers surrounding a Bible verse – Salmos (Psalms) 121:8.
It reads in English: “The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.”
A Customs and Border Protection facility is shown in Chula Vista, California, U.S. in this picture taken July 17, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake
A woman named Leydi, held in Chula Vista, Calif., described watching young children trying to touch their parents through metal fences.
“The mothers tried to reach their children, and I saw children pressing up against the fence of the cage to try to reach out," she said. "But officials pulled the children away and yelled at their mothers."
Walter Armando Jimenez Melendez, an asylum seeker from El Salvador, arrives with his four year-old son Jeremy at La Posada Providencia shelter in San Benito, Texas, U.S., shortly after he said they were reunited following separation since late May while in detention July 10, 2018. REUTERS/Loren Elliott
"They took the children from us without any explanation," said Isabela, who asked that only her first name be used. "I felt I had lost her, that I could not find her."
Detainees sleep in a holding cell at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility, in Brownsville, Texas June 18, 2014. REUTERS/Eric Gay/Pool/
Are locked in detention as part of some plan,
May we be reminded that you love them, too;
They’re made in your image; they’re precious to you.
Image via Reuters//Loren Elliott/
O God, we pray for children
And families coming here
Now facing separation,
And filled with grief and fear.
For children, loved and treasured,
Are ripped from loving kin.
This deed, by any measure,
Is torture. It’s a sin!
An undocumented Honduran immigrant and her son, recently released from detention through "catch and release" immigration policy, pass time at the Catholic Charities relief center in McAllen, Texas, U.S., April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Loren Elliott/File Photo
In some instances, these parents are saying they don’t know where their children are or how they will be reunited with their kids. Marco Antonio Muñoz took his own life in a Texas jail soon after the government “separated” the Honduran man, his wife and their 3-year-old son. The undocumented family had entered the U.S. to seek political asylum.
A child traveling with a caravan of migrants from Central America sits at a camp near the San Ysidro checkpoint, after U.S. border authorities allowed the first small group of women and children entry from Mexico overnight, in Tijuana, Mexico May 1, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido
"The fact that you have people coming from countries experiencing violence and might be subject to persecution by gangs and other criminal violence, would certainly ... give them the right to receive international protection," Spindler said.
Image via Fibonacci Blue / Flickr
The study “highlights how policies can have effects far beyond, perhaps, the individuals that are targeted by those policies,” Samantha Artiga, director of Kaiser’s Disparities Policy Project and co-author of the study, said. “We really hear how those feelings of fear and uncertainty have impacts on their health.”
Image via The Big Sick trailer
But really, the best performance in the film belongs to Nanjiani —no surprise, since it’s partly his own story. The affection he feels for his parents makes him afraid to upset them, but to really come into his own as a person, and as a comedian, he has to be honest with them about what he wants for his life.
I got up at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning to fly to Phoenix, Arizona, to speak at a press conference and rally at the State Capitol at the invitation of the state's clergy and other leaders in the immigration reform movement.