We’ve all seen the images of people trying to get into the U.S. via our southern border. We’ve seen the “caravans” walking northward in Mexico from Guatemala, or hanging onto train cars, trucks, and so on. We shake our heads, change the channel, maybe whisper a silent prayer or explain to our children why this is wrong. We justify our birthright to this land, but piously deny others the same opportunities that we have. However you feel, though in the end, you can’t ignore the border crisis.
We’ve seen thousands of people camped out on the Mexico side of the border, crossing the river, facing the wall or snagged in the concertina wire. This week, almost 8,000 migrants, many asylum seekers crossed the U.S. southern border a day.
The issues facing the U.S. as far as massive migration to and across our borders is concerned cannot be understood unless they are viewed globally. In Europe, equal numbers of aliens try to cross the Mediterranean Sea by boat from north Africa to Italy or Spain; from Turkey to Greece, or north through the Balkans; from Hungary to Poland and so on. Peoples from North Africa are trying to escape famine and drought, made worse by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. People from Syria are hoping to save what’s left of their families from the Civil War, now twelve years old. People from Iraq and Afghanistan are hoping to avoid persecution for their religious beliefs, brutal repression and so on. So, social services on several different continents are stretched to the breaking point. England is attempting to forcibly deport migrants to Rwanda. And there are militant anti-migrant groups rising up to protest the presence of migrants even as some migrants are forming violent gains in countries such as France and Sweden. Democracy cannot srvive these stressors.
Entire cultures are in danger of being extinguished in the long term. But how does one weigh that against human life? Is it so wrong for a mother to want to provide food for her starving child?
Some parents have lost their children permanently
I remember how during the Trump Administration adults crossing the U.S. border were arrested and locked up. Their children were taken away from them. I read where a pastor in Dallas, Texas explained that you can’t send small children to jail to be with their parents. Understood. So, many children were locked in old military barracks, or in hangars with caged walls. You may recall that there were caravans of unaccompanied minors absent adults that crossed the borders back then. There children had to be immediately returned home, placed with relatives in the U.S., or with qualified foster parents. We could not warehouse them indefinitely. Nor could ordinary Americans wander amongst the children, picking one out to take home with them. The children had to be safe from older children and adults who had not yet been vetted. But the policy thrown together by the excutive branch and the courts unraveled in the most inconvenient places. At least 5,000 children were placed in temporary homes during President Trump’s Zero Tolerance policy with no provision in place to return them to their parents once the parents were freed. Records were lost. At least 1,000 migrant children remain in the U.S. and the government cannot not locate the parents (or the children.) Or, the child has been adopted by U.S. parents. As Caitlyn Dickerson of the Atlantic Magazine told PBS in an interview:
“This [often-nonexistent record keeping around family separations] is something that I focused on a lot in my reporting . . . and it’s been corroborated again and again. So that’s why it’s very difficult. And, in fact, an administration official told me: ‘We will never get to the point where we have a total number of separated families, and, thus, nor will we ever get to a point where every single separated family has been reunited,’ which is a very stark and, of course, troubling reality.”
We’ve critcized Russia for “kidnapping” Ukranian children for the purpose of adopting them out to Russian families for one reason or another and we’ve done it ourselves for another reason.
Who is to blame?
The blame for our chaos at the border does not lie with Barak Obama, Donald Trump or Joe Biden. It lies clearly with Congress which is charged with coming up with a coherent national policy on immigration. When Congress abdicates that responsibility, we see the sort of cruel policy that Texas has developed, so cruel in fact that at least one Department of Public Safety official of Texas, Nicholas Wingate, has spoken out about it. Wingate, apparently a Christian wrote as follows (in part) to his superior:
“On 6/25/23 we went on patrol to see how many gates were locked on the fence line south of the casualty wire at approximately 2200. In while doing so, we came across 120 people camped out along the fence line. In this group there was several small children and babies who were nursing. The entire group was exhausted hungry and tired. We called the shift officer in command, and we were given orders to push the people back into the water to go to Mexico. We decided that this was not the correct thing to do. With the very real potential of exhausted people drowning. We made contact with command again and expressed our concerns and we were given the order to tell them to go to Mexico and get into our vehicle and leave.
On 6/30/23 at approximately 2130 while patrolling the casualty wire near Pecan Farms we came across a 19 year-old female who was in obvious pain stuck in the casualty wire who was doubled over. We cut her out of the wire and medically assessed her. She was pregnant and was having a miscarriage. We promptly coordinated with Eagle Pass EMS and transferred care.
Lest there be any doubt about Wingate’s loyalties, he assures his superior:
“I truly believe in the mission of Operation Lone Star; I believe we a have stepped over a line into the in humane (sic). We need to operate it correctly in the eyes of God. We need to recognize that these are people who are made in the image of God and need to be treated as such. The casualty wire needs to provide protection to the state and provide a safe means of travel on solid land to proper collection points. The wire also needs to be manned and patrolled constantly to provide security for these families who are seeking refuge. . . The wire and barrels in the river needs to be taken out as this is nothing but a in humane trap in high water and low visibility. Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well. I also believe that forcing refugees to cross back into Mexico vs getting them to Border Patrol is putting them back in the hands of the Cartels where they are assaulted robbed and raped.”
The e-mail, itself in its entirely was reported in the Houston Chronicle.
The fact that one person put politics aside once he realized the human toll that policy cost led to changes in how the policy was enforced. There are people who likely owe Officer Wingate their lives. Currently, the state is appealing a court order to pull down its mid-river barrier altogether.
Parting thoughts
I’ve explained my personal thoughts on illegal immigration. We can’t take several million, or even hundreds of thousands unskilled, impoverished people a year into our country. On the other hand, until Congress makes immigration a priority, this sort of cruel, inhumane treatment will continue. Our elected leaders have sometimes branded illegal immigrants as people who are very dangerous and who carry deadly diseases. But recall that entire native American tribes were wiped out by a deadly disease (smallpox) carried to these shores by our ancestors who came here for many of the same reasons that the people on our southern border do. And our American ancestors were not exactly neighborly to the indigenous Americans either, as any memoir on the life of Andrew Jackson would illustrate.
There are legal things that we can do to help these folks and at least try to resolve the situation. We may not be able to achieve a complete resolution to the flow of undocumented aliens, but on the other hand, it wouldn’t be the festering sore that it is today.
