Reading the headlines nowadays, it’s so depressing, isn’t it? I hope it’s not just me. Seems like every day - multiple times a day - we’re hit with something.
Little Liam, for example, five-years-old, in his blue bunny hat.
Or the videos of kids afraid to go to school, taunted by their white classmates that they’ll be deported if they’re found, or fearing their parents will be gone when they get home.
Or U.S. citizen and nurse, Alex Pretti, shot and killed after trying to protect another legal observer, while the previous shooting deaths of Renee Good and Keith Porter are still fresh.
On one hand, these things are not new. Racism, hate, and violence hold a long history in our country. I saw a meme that said, “Black people sitting back watching white people realizing for the first time that the police can kill you and get away with it.”
No. Our country is no stranger to violence and oppression.
Unfortunately, Border Patrol and ICE violence is also not new. One time, back in 2019 or so, I was over the U.S./Mexico border with the Good Samaritans group. My guide took me to a memorial set up in the spot where a young man had been shot and killed by a Border Patrol officer. The officer at the time had been standing on the U.S. side of “the wall.” He shot this young man through the slats in the wall. And killed him where he stood.
As of today’s date, at least 6 migrants have died in immigration detention centers. Many more are sick, undernourished, and thirsty.
For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink...
Why does it seem so much worse now?
People say it’s because it’s all so visible with today’s technology and everyone recording, or it’s because white people are dying instead of only the migrants, but I think it’s something more.
I think it’s because we’ve lost all human decency.
Take little Liam, for example, with the blue bunny hat. Liam was used as bait to draw his father out. Then they were both detained. Liam, reportedly, is now very sick in detention. Someone pointed out that the Nazis didn’t have to use gas chambers to kill all of the Jews. In many cases, they just let illness do its work.
Or take Maher, who was the main caregiver for his adult son with severe disabilities. After he was detained by ICE, his son, Wael, passed away.
Native Americans have been harassed, beaten, and detained, even though their people were here long before ours (and we are on the land that was stolen from them).
I heard today a nursing mother was detained, separated from her 3-month-old infant.
There are also reports that refugee families, people who came here legally, who were accepted here after extensive screening and reviews, who were welcomed and told they would be safe, are now being rounded up and detained as well.
The ICE agent who shot a woman, a U.S. citizen I believe, 7 times with rubber bullets, resulting in her hospitalization, boasted about it on social media.
Witnesses report hearing ICE agents on the street in Minneapolis joking about how it’s “just like Call of Duty.” A witness to Pretti’s murder reports observing the agents manipulating his body after his death to count how many times they’d hit him.
Sidenote, ask yourself this: why has ICE only been going to Democratic-led states and cities, even though there are much higher numbers of undocumented people in places like Florida and Texas?
Unless this isn’t really about the undocumented at all…?
There have always been acts of indecency. Look at what we did to the Native Americans in this country, or to the slaves, or to the Black and African American community with the Jim Crow laws and mass incarceration. Instead of learning from our history and trying to do better, we are repeating the same cycles of white supremacist rhetoric and state-condoned violence. And people by and large are either being silent about it or justifying it rather than challenging it.
Where is our decency?
I wrote a blog sometime back about how we don’t think people deserve human rights if we don’t see them as human.
So, are they?
Little Liam? Alex Pretti? Maher and Wael? The nursing mother and her baby? Refugees? Native Americans?
Are they human?
Are they created in the image of God?
Are they infinitely loved by their Creator?
Church, are they our neighbors?
If they are these things... they deserve so much more than this.
The immigration system has long been broken. It needs reform. But this? This is something else. This is evil.
And the Church needs to call it out, or else be complicit in the evil that is being committed.
This is not the time to be silent and sit on the sidelines.
Jesus was not a sideliner. From His first proclamation that He came to “proclaim good news to the poor,” to feeding the hungry, to touching the untouchable, to flipping tables in the temple - Jesus acted. He got involved. He engaged with people. He stood for love and compassion and justice. He spoke harsh words to those who oppressed the poor or kept others from God with their rules and regulations. He even allowed His commitment to defend all of us to lead Him to the cross.
Loving your neighbor means wanting for them the same you want for yourself.
All your neighbors.
Regardless of their skin color, their country of origin, their documentation status, their religion, their gender, their ... their anything! There are no qualifiers in the command to love your neighbor.
Bring back human decency.
Bring back human rights.
Bring back compassion.
Be the Church.
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