Concluding Thoughts
I
return from the U.S. - Mexico border conflicted and problematized by our trip.
How should we view the border? Specifically, what should be our response to
immigration? The costs are staggering: Texas spends $13 million per month to
deploy the National Guard and $10 million to send the Texas Rangers to patrol
the border. In Eagle Pass, Texas, the new metallic border fence cost $10 million
for just two miles. The cement border wall in Hildago County alone was
constructed for $12.5 million per mile. It covers 22.5 miles. Michael
Chertoff, then-U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, noted that the only thing a
wall does is give people an obstacle to climb over or tunnel under. The average
adult male can scale a border wall like the one in Hildago County in under 30
seconds.
Working at Sacred Heart Relief
Center in McAllen, Texas, humanized the issue for me: vulnerable young men and
women travel alone, or with children, for weeks from Central America (El
Salvador, Honduras) and end up here, dropped off and deserted by the U.S.
Border Patrol to buy bus tickets and try to get to their families across the
United States. One family was on their way to Chicago, another to Maryland and
Virginia. They are not looking to "take our jobs" or "drain our
economy;" in fact, the jobs that most refugees end up finding are those
that we Americans refuse---manual labor, food service, housekeeping.
Should we continue spending billions
of dollars on policing and detainment? The Border Patrol Detention Centers are
legendary: refugees are picked up at the border and subjected to freezing
temperatures (thermostats are purposely set low), cheap mattresses lying on concrete
floors, animal-type cells, subsistence-level food, and only the most basic
medical attention. They arrive in McAllen exhausted and dirty, still wearing
the same clothes (except their jackets, which the Border Patrol confiscates in
order to keep the refugees cold) they have had on since leaving their home
countries.
Thank God that Sacred Heart's
volunteers are there to meet these families at the bus station and offer them
human compassion. Sacred Heart extends to refugees the basic dignity of a hot
meal, a shower, and clean clothes for the next leg of their journey. Sacred
Heart is, quite literally, a life saver for these innocent victims of a system
designed to vilify and criminalize them.
Faith and community organizations
like Sacred Heart do not receive one penny of government aid. Those dollars go
to the veritable army of State Troopers amassed at places like the river front
park in McAllen. We were confronted by dozens of cruisers there clogging the
roadway. One trooper, his automatic weapon in hand, sat on a bench near the
river (see photo). This is a point of departure for the Texas Highway river
patrols. Mexico was so close across the Rio Grande that we could hear the music
and laughter of those across the shore. Within minutes, two high-powered and
heavily-armed Texas Highway Patrol speed boats raced around a bend in the river
and moved toward us. Our tour guide cautioned us against taking photos of the
troopers' faces. Mexican drug cartels, she explained, "would like nothing
more than to kill their (the troopers') wives and children." The boats
stopped long enough to pick up their waiting comrade, then moved back across
the Rio Grande toward Mexico (see photo).
 |
| Texas
state trooper awaits his unit, holding rifle. Mexico is just across the river. |
 |
| Texas
Highway Patrol boat on the Rio Grande (note guns). Mexico is on the right. |
Whose
view of the borderlands is accurate? The tour guide's tale of Mexican drug
"demons" (her word) murdering innocent Americans, or our own
experience of serving South American refugees who have been victimized by
cartel and gang violence in their own countries? Should we welcome those
fleeing unspeakable violence and grant them asylum? Or object them to the
dehumanization of our detention centers, "holding institutes," and
family prisons run by the state? Should Texas spend millions in taxpayer money
to send Texas Rangers to protect our shores and arm the Texas Highway Patrol to
shoot and kill on the Rio Grande? Or should we allocate those funds for
comprehensive immigration reform and invest taxpayer money in covering basic
human needs? I cannot answer these questions simply, for I doubt there are any
straight-forward responses.
What I do not doubt is that our
current policy is not working. One would think the
borderlands history (illustrated by Levario and others) would caution us
against increased militarism, but the opposite is apparent. As a former
congressional aide, I am torn between what I know to be necessary---i.e., that
the law says undocumented immigrants are to be reported to those authorities
tasked with handling them---and what I have seen. Our compassion for humanity
(the "tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free") seems
all but forgotten.
Yesterday night we debriefed with
Dr. Cuéllar about our trip. The borderlands, he explained, create a third
space, where our Western/ American impulse to get to the "root cause"
of a systemic problem (e.g., "addressing the issue" of
immigration) is dissolved. Living into the conflict reality of the Borderlands
is the beginning of understanding the nature of the border itself---and the
nature of God.
God, Dr. Cuéllar reminded us, is the
Borderlands, a liminal and amorphous space where our traditional understandings
of "right" and "wrong" do not apply. In the end, there is
no one correct opinion of the border. Our tour guide's view is just as
legitimate as that of a newly-arrived refugee. Rather, as a fellow student
suggested, perhaps the "forced unity" that this human crisis creates
between people of different backgrounds, ideas, and experiences holds the key
to unlocking deeper truths about ourselves, our world, and our faith.
Mark Horner
