God of all peoples, stretch your arms out to embrace all the children of this troubled world. As your children, grant us your abundant hope, grace, and peace. Teach us to love one another with constant compassion and love. Forgive us, Lord, when we let the policies of our government overshadow Your will for our nation. As your disciples, help us to take Your name throughout the entire world, so that all may know the love of Your Son, Jesus Christ, as their Lord and Savior. Amen.
I have struggled in recent years with America’s immigration policies, particularly those involving our southern border. My mind and heart are at odds with one another in terms of understanding why people want to come to this country, what they are willing to sacrifice to get here, and when here, how they are treated. We are supposed to be the land of the free, and yet, when these immigrants get here, legally or illegally, we give them onions. More troubling to me as a mother and a teacher is how children are ripped away from their parents by Department of Homeland Security agents, causing irreversible damage to their intellectual and emotional development. Their only crimes are being born in corrupt countries where violence, drugs, and crime have become everyday occurrences and being raised by parents who want a better life and world for their children to grow up in.
After reading “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy” by Jacob Soboroff, my sense of injustice for these courageous immigrants has troubled both my mind and my heart. While I acknowledge the necessity of enforcing and protecting our international borders, is it really necessary to separate families, children from parents, parents from their parents, as family members fear for their lives once they are incarcerated at border detention centers for days, weeks, and even months?
Using the Casa Padre center in Texas as an example, these are a few of the things that bother my soul. This center is the largest licensed child care facility in the country; it houses 1500 boys, ages 11 to 17. There are not enough beds for the boys to sleep in, and as centers around our country are overflowing with children, tent cities are starting to be set up by parties not licensed by the government to house more children. There is a phone in the complex that the boys may use to call various child service agencies, one of which is for child abuse and another for legal counsel. If the children are being taken care of properly, why do they need a phone like this? One child care worker told the journalists touring the facility that they were “to smile at the boys because they feel like animals in cages.” (Page 214) One manager at the site told his staff that they were not allowed to pick up a child or touch them to comfort them when they cried.
In an effort to stop illegal immigration, the current administration developed a zero-tolerance policy that approved the use of punishment, coercing, and intimidation to prevent Central American asylum seekers from entering our country. The conditions for most adult immigrants held at detention centers across the country are deplorable, unhealthy, and down right inhumane. Parents who could not read or understand English were being forced to sign papers saying that they wanted to be deported without their children. Now, their children have become wards of the government. When attempts were made to reunite families, the list containing important tracking information about families and children was almost destroyed by one of the governments’ highest officials. This was an attempt to cover-up the actual amount of immigrants being held in detention centers across the country.
Despite all of these issues and many more, immigrants still have to prove their reasons for coming here in a court of law, spend large amounts of money to move through each step towards citizenship,and are still willing to accept how they are being treated like criminals. Look into a criminals’ mind and you will not see a loving soul. Look into the minds of the vast amount of illegal immigrants and you will see a loving heart, wanting a place to call home and a place where their children can grow up without fear. Despite not being wanted here in America, these world travelers fight harder, are more determined, show unimaginable perseverance, and are more loving than many of our citizens who take our freedoms for-granted. I know because I worked with immigrants, some legal and some illegal, here in Wisconsin when I taught English as a second language. Many of the families I worked with worked on the large farms in the state, and many said they were willing to do whatever it takes to become an American citizen.
Am I right or wrong about immigration policies? I’m still trying to figure it out, but I am certain about one thing. The children of the world should never be pawns on the chess board of politics. They should never be treated like animals or thrown away like excrement. They are our future, and our futures need strong minds and kind hearts for humanity to survive. I want the children of the world to be able to run free, no matter what nationality they are. Jesus said, “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 19:14) In the words of my mother, “Every child has a right to be loved, and every parent has a duty to give that child a way to find love.”
Anna Hartt
