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July 22, 2019
Father Gerald D. Coleman, PSS
San Francisco is the birthplace of anti-immigration law. In the 1800s, the Chinese were the first targets described as subhuman, unclean, criminal invaders out to steal American jobs. A wave of anti-immigration propaganda followed. The San Francisco Call newspaper cartooned the Irish as backward apes. Italians, Germans, Japanese and Latinos had their turns as well. Whatever the group, those who have experienced immigrant discrimination are shamed, dehumanized, and never fully recover.
The current immigration crisis along the southern border of the United States is ruled by a “zero-tolerance policy” regarding illegal immigration. All unauthorized immigrants who cross the U.S. border are prosecuted as criminals, resulting in the separation of parents and children. Parents are placed in detention centers under the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, and their children are housed in juvenile facilities. These children under 18 years of age, as well as those who cross without adults (considered “unaccompanied,”) become the responsibility of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. Parents and children are consequently subjected to two different legal systems. This separation is considered by some as a “tough deterrent” against immigrating illegally. Many have called this separation the “functional equivalent to kidnapping.”
If migrant children have no family, friend or foster care to sponsor them, shortly before midnight on their 18th birthday an officer will come to the youth center, take the “child” in handcuffs, and transfer him or her to an adult detention facility. The Clerics of St. Viator are dedicated to helping these children but admit that after 18 year of age “they’re pretty much treated as if they are criminals.”
In June 2019, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security released a startling report about the El Paso Del Norte processing center: 76 people in a cell designed for 12; 155 people in a cell designed for 35; 41 in a cell designed for 8. Similar conditions are reported to exist in other facilities. The report indicates that this “dangerous overcrowding” leads to dehumanization, the spread of illness and disease, and rising tensions among detainees. Ursula Detention Center in Texas is nicknamed the “dog kennel” due to the chain link cages used to detail migrants.
The average temperature at the McAllen Border Patrol station in Texas is 99 degrees. A border patrol officer visiting there in mid-July with vice president Pence said that “the stench was horrendous.” In most of these detention facilities, lights are on all night long, and children are sleeping on concrete with an aluminum foil blanket. Many of the guards carry guns and wear face masks to protect them from unsanitary conditions.
These centers can rightly be classified as concentration camps involving mass detention of civilians without trial. It is perhaps not accidental that nearly 41,000 immigrant children now held in custody will be moved to Fort Sill Army Base in Oklahoma which was once used as a Japanese internment camp in the 1940s. A growing number of sick and disabled veterans in desperate need of housing express anger and resentment since they are not permitted to live on bases. It is “insulting,” they insist, to “host undocumented migrants there.”
The situation at the border station in Clint, Texas, has been described by lawyers who visited the site as “a chaotic scene of filth:” children as young as 7 and 8 “wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, toddlers without diapers relieving themselves in their pants, and teenage mothers wearing clothes stained with breast milk … There is a stench and the overwhelming majority of children have not bathed since they crossed the border.” The children receive the same meals every day – instant oats for breakfast, instant noodles for lunch, a frozen burrito for dinner, along with a few cookies and juice packets.
Henry A. Moak Jr., chief accountability officer for Customs and Border Protection denies the harsh environment: “In general, minors receive regular meals and snacks, have access to drinking water, have functioning toilets, and rooms with adequate temperature control, along with access to emergency medical assistance if needed.”
Reckless adult migrants are often responsible for putting children in peril in the first place. But nothing absolves the United States of a basic responsibility to keep vulnerable people, children above all, in the most humane conditions possible when their detention is required. The harsh reality of border enforcement tends to breed callousness and prejudice.
Opposing these camps should be a pro-life priority. The Second Vatican Council taught that there are “varieties of crime” that are “criminal” and “poison civilization.” One example is “subhuman living conditions” (“The Church in the Modern World,” no. 27) Pope St. John Paul II named this crime always evil. (“Veritatis splendor,” no. 80)
Why would anyone choose to flee their country knowing of the horrible conditions ahead? Major reasons include traumas from political unrest, and ever-present gang presence and violence. One source cites the torment brought about by gangs, for example, join the gang or be killed. Teenagers are often forced to join the government military which in dictatorships enforce harsh rules. Many Central Americans are fleeing abject poverty and the constant threat of roaming gangs.
We need a system equipped to appropriately care for refugees and asylum seekers, and with all appropriate speed, to process their claims. Care, not punishment, is what they deserve. We need decent food, medical care, safe shelters, playgrounds, language services and legal counsel.
Only a callous person could dismiss the misery at the border. Only a desensitized nation could continue to permit separation of children from their parents – and detaining all of them in atrocious conditions – as a morally acceptable form of deterrence.
Sulpician Father Gerald D. Coleman is adjunct professor, Graduate Department of Pastoral Ministries, Santa Clara University.