I have not seen anything more painful or broken than watching grown men cry in the presence of their family members at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in rural Virginia.
Some of their stories I know, some I will never know. The only crime many have committed was being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. They — or someone who loved them more than their own freedom — tried to better their situation.
Some crossed a border as a baby. Some remember a sweltering journey across an unforgiving desert. When we look at a concept like immigration, we get fixated on the whole, on the largeness of the issue. We have to start smaller. We have to look at the face of a young man around my age, wearing black-rimmed glasses just like mine, hugging a small, sobbing girl in a corner of a plain room. We have to look at the one tear on the cheek of a strong man standing by a woman and two small children. He’s wearing orange, the color of nonviolent crime.
We have to know the smaller stories because it’s in the bigger message that things get twisted, that we miss the humanity of the very real people we are fighting about. We use their stories as weapons for personal prejudices and political agendas. We forget the little girls holding their brothers’ hands behind every news story, government-issued number or mandate by a prominent politician. This is not a Republican or Democratic cause. Both parties have failed our foreign communities. We have failed our families, students and our nation of immigrants we are so proud of.
The worldwide migration situation is worsening. Legal channels are getting narrower. Our neighbors are living in fear. We have a choice of how we will respond. Will we welcome our neighbors? Or will we tell them, quite simply: “No room?”
We know what happens when we call people dehumanizing terms. We see historically what it means to compare children to animals. Do not let greed, fear and hate blind you to your neighbors.
No one needs your pity or your debates right now. They just need to be able to live normally without people undermining them every five minutes. Let people be who they were created to be. We must allow our communities to live and thrive.
Update:
I wrote this piece after my visit to an ICE detention center several years ago. I wish I could say things were improving, that we had become a more humane society. But if you’ve watched any news report in the past week, you know it isn’t the case. Have you listened to the cries of children? Have you read about kids locked in cages? Perhaps you have debated what defines a cage. Maybe you’ve made the argument that this is the way things have always been and will always be.
At this moment, I do not care about your stance on the issue. I do not care where you come from or who your political party is.
Children are in cages in my state, in the place I love and call home. I do not care if this is the way it has always been. I do not care whose fault it is. I do not care how many laws you have consulted. I do not care about the article you read or the TV program you watched. I do not need to give you another history lesson. You will not listen anyway.
No.
It is not time for pleasant debate.
It is time to fight.
It is time to reach for our neighbors and hold their children close. It’s time to donate our time and money and any resources possible.
Organizations you can help:
Help politically:
Consult United We Dream
Help financially:
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