Last Monday, I stood in the sweltering heat of El
Paso, TX, wearing a heavy clerical stole that made the heat radiate even deeper
into my shoulders. I was with several hundred other faith leaders who had
answered the call of Rev. Dr. William Barber leader of Repairers of the Breach.
We were at the borders protesting the gross mistreatment of immigrants seeking
asylum, after literally running for their lives from countries where violence
and hunger are rife, only to be treated inhumanely and unjustly.
What’s happening at our borders is a travesty of
justice, a trampling of the 14th Amendment to our US Constition
which declares
“nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.”
Not
only is this detention of immigrants seeking asylum illegal according to our
own constitution, the UN Human Rights Office’s presences in Mexico and Central
America have documented numerous human rights violations and abuses against
migrants and refugees in transit, including the excessive use of force,
arbitrary deprivation of liberty, family separation, denial of access to
services, refoulement, and arbitrary expulsions.
This
isn’t a debate, but a debacle; not an issue, but an international crisis, not a
political power-play but people, real live people being irreparably harmed by
this administration’s policy, children being separated from their parents and
forced to sleep on concrete floors without access to adequate food, showers,
toothbrushes. The youngest of these is five months old.
I
was there with faith leaders because we cannot sit idly by and pretend this is
normal or somehow ok. We were there because our faith traditions demand it of
us.
Leviticus
19:33-34: “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not wrong
them. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as your citizens; you
shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of
Egypt: I am the Eternal your God.”
Matthew
25:35: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
Qur’an
4:99-100: “... as for the helpless men,
women and children who have neither the strength nor the means to escape, God
will pardon them. Surely God pardons and forgives. Those who migrate for the
sake of God shall find many places for refuge in the land in great abundance”
Humanism tells us we can do better than this. That our heartbeats and the inhale and exhale of our breath is a level playing ground; that inherent in our very humanity is a call to care for one another, for all people.
And
my own Unitarian Universalist tradition states belief in the inherent worth and
dignity of every human, regardless of where they were born, what color their
skin is, how much money is in their bank account.
No matter what our faith, we are called to action, to stand up for the oppressed, to protest the criminalization of people based on their skin color or their poverty or their fear.
We
heard inspiring speakers share how we’re called to look out for the poorest of
the poor, we marched to the gates of a detention center to demand, among other
things, an end to child detention, that all refugees seeking asylum be granted
the due process to do so, the preservation of human rights, and an end to
family separation. We asked for our rights as faith leaders to minister to
those detained. We were denied; the gates were locked.
We
will return. Our faith requires it; our Constitution calls us to.
Driving
out of El Paso, headed for home, I saw a flashing highway sign that said: It is
dangerous for children and pets to be in locked cars. If you see that, get
help.
It’s
also dangerous for children to be kept in locked, crowded prison cells. It’s
time to get help. It’s our moral obligation.
