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