From the Border Report #12
On Sunday in Nogales, we met with Dr. Grania Marcus, a volunteer with bi-national border ministries, who works with migrants along the border. She submitted this important statement:
Statement of Dr. Grania Marcus
Washington, D.C. Border Tour,
Nogales, Arizona
Sunday, February 19, 2006
I thank the Border Action Network for inviting me here and thank especially those who have come a long way to hear us. I have served for two years as a Volunteer-in-Mission with Frontera de Cristo, one of seven bi-national border ministries that are partnerships of the Presbyterian Church USA and of the Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana de México. We have been a presence on the border for the past 20 years, and have therefore been in a position to experience directly the historic changes that US immigration policies have brought to our churches and communities during the past decade. Frontera’s two churches, in fact, have become microcosms of the consequences of US border policy.
By 1997, the new walls built on the border in California and Texas had shut down the traditional urban migrant crossing areas and had funneled the increasing economic migration from Mexico and Central America through Arizona. Douglas and Agua Prieta, as well as Nogales, Naco, and other border communities in Arizona and Sonora, were soon divided by their own walls, night-buster lights, sensors, rows of cameras, and clouds of dust caused by denuded desert and the constant dragging of tires. The noise of helicopters overhead at night interrupted our sleep. Border Patrol vehicles became omnipresent in our communities. The largest Border Patrol station in the country was built in the midst of pristine ranch land, bringing hundreds of new agents from all over the country. Little was done to prepare our communities for the consequences of this militarization of the border.
Did this increasingly ugly and divisive infrastructure stop migration? Not at all. A recent Pew Hispanic Center study found that more than two-thirds of undocumented immigrants came to the US less than 10 years ago. This policy of increasing enforcement has not only failed to stop undocumented migration, and fails to recognize its economic basis, but has also had serious consequences for our communities and churches.
Fear is perhaps the most virulent by-product of our border policy. In the mid-90s, when Arizona began to bear the brunt of undocumented migration, members of our churches, including many ranchers, began to fear those who crossed their land. The migrants left plastic trash that killed their cattle, cut their fences and water lines, hid in their outbuildings, and sometimes broke into their homes and stole from them in a desperate search for food. Long-time residents of Douglas also experienced thefts from their yards and houses. Richard and Ursula, for example, are active members of our Douglas church who have lived on their ranch for generations and lament the impact on their way of life. They fear for the lives of family members. Ursula told us, “When I see them [migrants], I give them food and water, but then I call the Border Patrol. Sometimes I feel like Judas.” Richard hopes greater enforcement measures will return the life they have lost. Another rancher, Guy, blames the Border Patrol for most of the destruction of his fences and loss of his cattle, and has given up his ranch on the border. He got tired of the constant repairs, with no end in sight. The increasing fears of these families, and the sense of helplessness in the face of forces than cannot control, have led them and some of their friends to support political candidates who advocate deploying the National Guard on the border, building more fences, deporting all undocumented immigrants, including those who have lived and worked in the US many years, preventing the undocumented from accessing health care and education, and building new prisons in the desert with no modern conveniences.
Racial profiling is another reality that many members of our communities and churches live with. A border policy that makes all people with brown skin in the Douglas area suspect breeds fear and anger. Although many members of our churches are citizens or legal residents, and many others were born here and have lived in our communities for decades, they feel they must carry their passports and documents with them at all times. They are frequently stopped and questioned by Border Patrol for no apparent reason.
Gabriel, for example, a US-born citizen who has lived in Douglas for 34 years, who is an active member of the local Catholic parish and a retired Federal government employee, has been stopped by Border Patrol on numerous occasions. When he asks why he is being stopped, the agents usually avoid answering. It is not unusual to see Border Patrol driving around residential neighborhoods in Douglas, a community that is approximately 90% Latino, chasing alleged undocumented migrants. Sometimes the agents even attempt to get residents of these neighborhoods to help them locate the alleged migrant being pursued, or request entry into the yards of residents to continue the pursuit. Few residents are aware of their rights and many are intimidated into cooperating. Others are angry at the way they are treated, but concerned that they will bring unwanted attention to their families. Those who are undocumented, but are in the US simply to be with family members, live in constant fear.
Family separation has also taken a toll on the lives of our church members on both sides of the border. Family members used to cross back and forth quite easily, and those working in the US could return to Mexico to visit family there and return to their jobs. Most working in the US were building their ranchitos in their communities in Mexico and planning to retire there with their families. Now, the high cost and extreme hardships of the journey force lengthy, and sometimes permanent, separations. Some families in our churches who live on both sides of the border have been divided, no longer able to cross to see their children, parents, or relatives. Broken families occur here much more frequently than in the past. Family relationships are also strained when one partner to a marriage is undocumented and the other is a citizen of the US. We even know of cases where Border Patrol and Customs agents have on-going relationships with undocumented partners. These differences force decisions about where to live, where to work, how to be together, whether to marry, and where to send children to school that are dictated by the circumstances of birth and US immigration policy, not the needs of the family. They impose a life of deception. The stresses to family life are immeasurable, and we see them in the faces of the innocent children that suffer from these policies.
The rising death and injury toll among migrants has entered our churches in particularly compelling ways. In the late 90s, we began to meet migrants who had barely survived their attempted journeys, and to learn of others whose family members had died from dehydration, hyperthermia and other environmentally-related causes. Some family members just disappeared, and their families were left to suffer the agony of not knowing their fate. Others desperately seek our help locating a family member who has made the journey to the US and has not been heard from. The death toll has risen sharply during the past decade, bringing a new record every year. In FY 2005, 467 migrants died on the US/Mexican border, 282 of them in Arizona alone.
Ricardo Bernal, a thirty-five year old father of four from Vera Cruz, showed up a few years ago at the Lily of the Valley Church in Agua Prieta. He had found himself vomiting profusely by the side of Hwy 80 north of Portal. He thought he was going to die and each time a car would come by, he would struggle to his knees. But car after car passed him by, including Border Patrol vehicles. Finally, a little white truck driven by one of “God’s angels,” picked him up and took him for medical care. The man that picked him up told him that “he could lose his truck or be put in jail” for helping him, but that “it was his obligation as a Christian to help those in need.” Ricardo’s angel had evidently taken seriously Jesus words in Matthew 25—that as Christians we are to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, and welcome the stranger. Jesus teaches us to emulate the Samaritan who stopped and helped the wounded man on the side of the road, while the religious leaders and keepers of the law passed him by. This is the fundamental issue for faith communities on the border: Is it legal to be a Christian? And it is a question that challenges us at the heart of our beliefs and shapes our responses.
Many churches on the national level, most notably the Catholic Church, but also the Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Mennonite, Quakers and others, have called for comprehensive immigration reform, and some have specifically endorsed the Kennedy-McCain bill. Other church judicatories, communities of faith, and individuals of faith have endorsed the Faith-based Principles for Immigration Reform, five principles that outline the basic requirements of a humane and just immigration policy. All of these statements have been promulgated in recognition of the many people victimized by our current policies, and of the need to shift from an increasingly punitive enforcement policy to one that recognizes the economic basis of migration and the contributions of some 11 million undocumented workers in our country. The churches on the national level are attempting to take their call to be a “prophetic voice” seriously, in the face of a national debate informed mainly by ignorance, hate and fear.
On the local level, however, i.e. in the pews, our churches are, for the most part, silent. Pastors, priests and their congregations want to remain a “family,” while at the same time severely buffeted by the extremes we experience here: fears of an alien “invasion,” recognition of the suffering on our border, the costs to our education and health services, environmental depredation, the racist and punitive platforms of some of our local and state politicians, increased vigilante activity, and an overwhelming helplessness in face of the perceived inevitability of the negative consequences of our “enforcement-only” immigration policy and increased economic migration. We know our churches are split and we know our congregations have strong feelings that, in the open, might produce permanent fissures.
In my own church, the First Presbyterian Church in Douglas, a 2004 effort to create a short-term “respite” place for migrants recuperating from illnesses and accidents forced a discussion that expressed sympathy for the suffering migrants, and all the fear, pain and frustration of a seemingly intractable situation. Many members attended an open meeting of the congregation, including ranchers, humanitarian aid workers, educators, Latino immigrants and Border Patrol. Some wrote their feelings in an effort not to get into verbal arguments with those that disagreed. In the end, the proposal actually passed, by one vote. The governing body of the church then voted it down on the grounds that it would split the church. Several abstained from voting. Most were simply relieved that they had not lost any members.
Most border churches in the Douglas area have been much less direct. They have resorted to limited efforts to help such as collecting blankets or cans of food to donate to the migrant centers in Agua Prieta, efforts that do not require them to take a public stand. In some cases, they have carried out extensive ministries to the poor in Agua Prieta, such as building houses. Other people volunteer with some of the humanitarian ministries that serve migrants, or even help migrants that they encounter by the side of the road, sometimes at considerable personal risk. One congregation in Bisbee has donated substantial funds to our desert water ministry, Agua Para La Vida. A few attend the weekly ecumenical vigil held at the border to remember the approximately 140 migrants who have died in Cochise County. Generally, however, there seems to be little desire within our churches to examine what it means to be a Christian in an era when the powers and principalities seem overwhelmingly arrayed against challenging the status quo of US immigration policy.
In closing, I can only pray that you do all in your power to prevent the enactment of any of the even more punitive enforcement bills now before you—those that would criminalize both economic migrants and Good Samaritans; those that would increase the walls, technology and firepower that kill hundreds of migrants every year and victimize countless others; those that would increase the destruction of families; those that would put the National Guard on the border; and those that would ignore the input of all constituencies on the border. And we will do all in our power to challenge the members of our churches to examine their faith and to act on what Scripture teaches us.
Thank you very much. I welcome your questions.
For further information:
Grania Marcus
(520) 364-9257
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