Over the past few weeks, social media has exploded with outrage over the treatment of undocumented immigrants, particularly young women and children, in border facilities. With little accountability for these privatized federal facilities and anyone from politicians to pediatricians to journalists to Homeland Security officials to 93 year old Holocaust survivors expressing concern over the conditions or labeling facilities as concentration camps (not to be confused with death camps), outrage is an understatement.
Every true believer and decent human being should feel outrage and instinctive empathy when reading stories about children in overcrowded facilities without access to showers, clean clothes, and hot meals leading many to be rushed to emergency care in hospitals. Or reports of thousands of children abused by government employees meant to protect them. When a private CBP Facebook group revealed thousands of employees mocking and degrading immigrants, the mindset is disturbing. All of this should rock even the most hardened human to the core. While some churches are acting as the hands and feet of Jesus, nationwide support from believers has been found lacking and unfortunately, the opposite reaction of dismissal or castigation has become the norm.
Below are seven responses believers could have instead toward the border crisis and toward undocumented immigrants in general. The first five are informative and fact based. The final two are a moral and faith based.
- Asylum Seekers and Refugees Are Legal. Believe it or not, I engaged in a fierce debate only a couple of years ago with another believer in which I expressed outrage towards refugees and considered them all illegal aliens regardless of what the law actually stated. I used to be hardcore right-wing nut job. For the most part, I was ruled by fear, callousness, and an unwillingness to put myself in the shoes of others. It was only when I began to do my own research when news reports of facilities surfaced last year that my thinking began to evolve. Like how our own laws guarantee protection to refugees and asylum seekers. Researching more extensively into psychology, I began to empathize all the more regarding undocumented immigrants.
- Poverty Influences Action. Recent psychological studies paired with neuroscience have unearthed how much childhood poverty affects the brain’s many regions impacting cognitive thought, emotional processing, and rational decision making. Add in to this mixture any danger or violence and you have an explosive combination. When desperation from either or both these circumstances prompts parents to send children across the border or for a father to cross a river with his two-year-old girl, why do we vilify the people or parents and not seek to understand the root of their desperation and resolve to change the circumstances? Immigration reform seekers continue to ask this.
- Undocumented Immigrant Crime Rates Are Lower. Consider this: does it make any rational sense for someone who desperately desires to remain in a healthy, safe, and positive environment to create trouble which could draw attention to themselves or their families that would end in their deportation? No, it doesn’t. While there have been handfuls of undocumented immigrants who have committed horrific crimes, they do not make up the majority. On the contrary, recent reports have shown that undocumented immigrants are 47% less likely to commit crimes. (2nd Link, 3rd Link) .With knowledge of the profiles of sex buyers and sex traffickers from years of research, this is not difficult for me to grasp.
- Undocumented Immigrants Work Our Farms. The Department of Agriculture estimates that half of the nation’s farm workers are undocumented immigrants. Forgive me, but I simply can’t imagine a college graduate or collegiate of the selfie generation snapping a photo with their iPhones while picking produce off trees and bushes under the hot sun with sweat down their back. Every time I go to my local pizza place, there’s a teenager behind the counter swiping their smart phone or with headphones on. Our economy in-fact depends on undocumented workers who make up a good portion of our labor force from corruption to maids to cleaners.
- Trafficking Does Not Look Like Undocumented Immigrants. The true face of Trafficking is not at the border. While some children are definitively the result of traffickers smuggling at the border, the International Labor Organization proved in the 2019 Human Trafficking in Persons Report that “traffickers exploit 77% of victims within their own countries of residences”, not crossing those lines. The same UNODC report also found that the clear majority of traffickers were citizens of the countries where they were convicted. And reveals how traffickers are organized and arrange for visas, passports, worker welfare funds, applications, legal fees and more after luring girls with promises of a better life. Hence why airlines implement human trafficking awareness training. Overall, only 15,000 people overall are trafficked into the USA while 400,000 children alone are trafficked within our own borders, 240-300,000 at risk.
- Human Rights and Resources. Regardless of your beliefs over the previous four points, no one can argue that the border crisis is a humanitarian one and should transcend politics. A demand for basic human rights with access to hygiene products, sanitary conditions, blankets, and safety for innocent children has prompted nationwide protests and rightly so. From politicians to working people wonder where the 750$ per person per day is going. While some may debate the lack of resources, I can’t in good conscience support such a notion. The same God who called Adam and Eve to fill the earth, subdue it, and multiply and enjoy every good thing wishes that for every human being. However, when our nation throws away millions of pounds of food every year and spends 92 million dollars one day’s holiday in one city, we must ask ourselves is it truly a lack of resources or just a matter of sacrificing selfish indulgences for the greater good?
- The Irony of Hypocrisy. While I applaud the efforts of non-profit religious and secular organizations, concerned citizen donations, social justice groups, and the efforts of every CBP employee who has common decency and morality, I find the hypocrisy of the faith-based crowd disturbing, barring those leaders and churches who have spoken out. When stereotypes regarding foreigners prevail and extreme rare cases are cited as evidence for the majority with silence in the face of abuse of children and unsanitary medical conditions that lead children straight to the doors of an emergency room or worse, it does not reflect the same Jesus who healed a Palestinian woman’s child. It does not reflect the Jesus who criticized popular religious leaders of his day while spending time with the lowly, the shamed, the diseased, the prostitutes, the mentally ill, the woman leaking blood, and the little children he did not turn away. It does not reflect the Jesus of Matthew 25, who stated that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
So, how should believers frame all of this information?
It is now a red flag for me when a church can spend millions of dollars on a brand-new building or thousands sending people overseas to South America for one week while dismissing or ignoring the humanitarian crisis at the border. With a former undocumented immigrant in my own family now separated for years from his US citizens’ wife and children, children for whom I am a part-time caretaker, I cannot remain silent anymore. Not as an aunt loving on her half-Mexican, mocha-skinned niece and nephews. Not as an anti-trafficking advocate seeking justice for the abused. And certainly not as a believer who desires to follow the Biblical mandate of “love your neighbor” and “care for the widows and orphans”. I’d say teen mothers rocking undernourished infants in these centers qualifies.
For anyone interested in helping, below is a list of several different organizations dedicated to helping the border crisis.