Where is your line in the sand?

This photo of a Honduran child crying as her mother is arrested
won the WorldPress Photo of the Year,
at a ceremony held in Amsterdam on April 11, 2019.

© 2019 Christy K Robinson

In a world filled with terror and cruelty, we are called to be kind, compassionate, merciful, and fair. We help the helpless, we free those in cages, we protect the abused and neglected, we feed the hungry, we comfort the mourning, we reconcile the separated, we provide hospitality to the traveler and alien. These are virtues in every society, no matter which religion or denomination you espouse, or if you're a secular person. 

We know what is right and good.
We must do it.

We must do it, even if it means that we disobey a corrupt, vicious political authority. We find our humanity and our own healing when we open our hearts to the downtrodden. 

That is why I help with a loose-knit but well-organized network of volunteers, to feed, clothe, protect, and comfort the refugees coming from violent, corrupt Central American countries.

The following essay was written by an immigration attorney working in Colorado, and posted to Facebook on April 11, 2019. The bold highlights are mine, because I want to bring those to the attention of people who criticize the morals of the girls and young women who make up the majority of those we serve in the Phoenix area. "If they're good parents or love their kids, why would they subject their babies, toddlers, or older children to the dangers of a 2,500 mile journey?" Here's your answer. It's not like I haven't written it over and over again. But OK, if you want to talk "family values," "sexual abstinence," or "pro-life," then you need to read this.

Photo: The Guardian

by Eric Pavri

April 11 at 9:51 PM

I am an immigration lawyer (Colorado bar # 44591) at a nonprofit organization, and I wish to say something.

Recently, with the forcing out of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for not being “tough enough” on immigration, President Trump has resurrected the idea of separating families who arrive at the U.S./Mexico border to seek asylum, including those who present themselves at Ports of Entry to seek admission according to the proper procedures spelled out in U.S. immigration law.

This afternoon, I met with a single mother and her 14-year old daughter from Honduras. The daughter had a 4-month old baby boy, dressed in a purple dinosaur onesie, who grasped my finger and blew raspberries at me. 

The daughter had gotten pregnant at age 13 when five members of the MS-13 took turns raping her. They came three nights in a row before the mother finally fled to her sister’s house in another town. There, the mother went to ask police to help. But the police, who are themselves on the payroll of the gang, reported their location to the local gang hierarchy, who cross-checked with the MS-13 cell in their hometown and verified that they had tried to escape. In broad daylight, unmasked men with guns broke down the sister’s doors, dragged them into a car, drove them to an auto repair shop, and raped all three. 

Four months later, the mother had managed to borrow enough money from a cousin in the United States to pay a smuggler to take them through Guatemala to Mexico.

Two months later, in early December 2018, mother and daughter made it to the U.S. border in Laredo, Texas. The daughter was now seven months pregnant. They presented themselves at the Port of Entry and the mother said that they were afraid to go back to Honduras. They were put in separate rooms, where male Border Patrol officers interrogated both mother and daughter. They were then held in separate cells in what is known as the “hielera” (Spanish for “freezer”) for 4 days. Neither received news of the other.

The pregnant daughter was in a cold room where the only place to sleep was a concrete floor. She was given only a thin Mylar blanket that looked like aluminum foil. She and 10 other girls shared one toilet with no privacy curtain. The fluorescent lights were never turned off. She could not eat the food. She only drank water. The water came from a faucet on top of the shared toilet.

When the contractions began, she thought she just had stomach cramps. She was given aspirin. The next morning, when she was taken to a hospital, her mother was not informed. She did not give birth there. A male Border Patrol agent waited on a chair on the other side of the curtain in the emergency room waiting area. When the doctors determined that she was stable and released her, the agent drove her back to the concrete holding cell. One day later, mother and daughter were brought into a room together, given papers to sign, and driven to a local bus station where they were released. At that station, volunteers took them to a temporary shelter for migrants. They stayed there for one night until the same cousin arranged to buy tickets on a Greyhound bus. They traveled two days from Texas to reach Colorado.

Five days later, the girl gave birth. The baby was born at 7½ months. The two women don’t know the medical term for what is wrong with him. They just know that he has “a hole in his heart.” That is not a metaphor. The baby boy has a hole in the wall of one of the chambers of his heart.

This mother and child likely won’t win their asylum case. It doesn’t matter how unfair that seems to you, or if “that can’t be right,” or if you’re thinking any of the other phrases that most Americans who aren’t immigration lawyers (or immigrants) think when they hear stories like this and can’t believe them. The harm that these women suffered, and are likely to suffer again if they are deported to Honduras, is a “private harm.” They won’t be able to prove that it was perpetrated by a government actor or agent, specifically motivated by their membership in a particular social group, under the near-impossible standards for asylum made mandatory for all U.S. immigration judges by Attorney General Jeff Sessions (a political appointee and not a judge) in Matter of A-B- in June 2018. Nor will they be able to prove that their rapists were motivated by their (the victims’) race, religion, national origin, or political opinion.

In the perverse world of asylum law, what matters is not so much THAT you will be harmed, but WHO will harm you and WHY they will harm you. In a way, we are telling these two women that even here in the United States, the country that they believe will protect them, those men who hurt them are more important. Let me rephrase that. I had to tell them that, to their faces, today. I had to tell them in so many words that because their rapists didn’t rape them for the right reasons, they will likely be sent back to be hurt again.

For all those who say they should have come here legally: they did. There was no “line” for them to get into for a visa to immigrate to the United States. They didn’t have a U.S. citizen or Permanent Resident family member to petition for them, nor a U.S. employer to sponsor them. So they made the only lawful choice they could. They walked up to an official Port of Entry on the Texas border, stood in a line, and asked for protection. They did exactly what they were supposed to do under the law.

It seems to me that almost all evil in the world, from playground bullying to sexual abuse to genocide, results from valuing some human beings more than others. We repeatedly and willingly forget the most basic lesson that most of the world’s religions teach: that because every single human being is a child of God, every single human being has equal value. In fact, each human life has value far greater than we can comprehend, because God loves us all equally and infinitely – just as we love our own children beyond measure.

When we value a child born on one side of a human-drawn line on a map more than a child born on the other side, we have forgotten what every prophet through the ages has tried to teach us. We have failed both children.

_________ end of Pavri's essay _________ 

So, what do you think? Is this issue, repeated tens of thousands of times over the last two years, important enough for you to use the privilege of your citizenship, your race, your economic status, your political party affiliation, your very conscience, and resist the evil that you see in the world? If it's not enough, what is enough for you? What is your priority? Where is your line in the sand? Do you have one?

For other articles on refugees seeking asylum in this site, click here -->> https://christykrobinson.blogspot.com/search?q=asylum