By Sister Sheila Karpan, SCL
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” -Saint Teresa of Kolkata
I was born in a small, coal-mining town in Wyoming with a population of less than 10,000 but boasting 57 different immigrant ethnicities. I’ve grown to realize how this diverse milieu influenced my thinking and values in deeply significant ways. As a Sister of Charity of Leavenworth, I have also been formed and live by our mission statement of committing to the ministry of meeting the critical needs of God’s people, especially the marginalized and the disenfranchised. In Denver, I worked for over 20 years in a community of people who migrated from Mexico, Central America, and Sudan. For the last six years, I have been drawn to continue to work with migrants and refugees as a volunteer at the southern border and, more recently, with new arrivals in Denver.
Reframing the Conversation
It’s challenging to discuss immigration because it is a complicated, multi-layered issue, and sometimes, we forget that human beings are at the heart of the discussion. I wonder where we would be today if we discussed immigration first and foremost as a humanitarian concern, with compassion and love, rather than a problem, a crisis, or an emergency. This could eliminate the fears that the labels migrants are given are meant to instill. Who dares to cross borders? They are our sisters and brothers.
Migration as Human Nature
The August 2019 National Geographic issue described migration as a worldwide phenomenon: “A World on the Move.” We are a migratory species. Humans have always moved. Who among us is a native of the place we call home? As said in the article, “We Are All Migrants,” by Mohsin Hamid, “We all experience the constant drama of the new and the constant sorrow of the loss of what we’ve left behind. It’s a universal sorrow and one so potent that we seek to deny it, rarely acknowledging it in ourselves, let alone in others. Instead, we are encouraged by society to focus only on the new rather than on the loss that is the other thread uniting and binding our species.”
Push and Pull Factors
Why do people migrate? It is commonly described by identifying factors that push and pull.
The most common push factors are violence, fear of exploitation and corruption, poverty, and climate change. The most common pull factors are employment, increased wages, education, security, and reuniting with family members who previously migrated.
Witness at the Border
Within this context, I’d like to focus on some of my recent experiences while in the company of people on the move. About five years ago, a call was made for women religious to volunteer at hospitality houses on the southern border. Over a while, I was able to be at Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas, Catholic Charities shelters in Laredo, Texas, and Tucson, Arizona, and when the border came to Denver.
Pope Francis said, “No one will ever deny that migrants are human beings, but in practice, in the way that we treat them and the decisions we make, we can show we consider them less important, less worthy, less human. For Christians, this way of acting is unacceptable.”
Welcome and Compassion
In the shelters, I saw the opportunity to serve and witness people being seen and treated with dignity and compassion. Whether they arrived bruised and scarred physically or emotionally from their long, arduous journeys, they were now safe and secure.
Service in the shelters consisted of meeting basic needs, which began when Border Patrol or ICE brought a bus load of people who had been processed and had spent variable amounts of time in detention centers. When I was fortunate to meet the bus, I saw people lined up like schoolchildren, looking exhausted, sometimes apprehensive, or even stoic.
I was fortunate to see each individual and greet them, “Bienvenido,” “Bienvenida.”
I imagined that this was likely the first time since they crossed the border into the United States that someone had said, “Welcome.” I also treasured the times when they were seated prior to orientation to bring them a cup of water. Later, at mealtime, I relished being in the serving line, offering the first warm food they likely had since they left home. It was not lost on me that the simplest of gestures, the smallest acts, were most meaningful.
From Inhumanity to Hope
This contrasts with the treatment many received just after their crossing. We were given accounts of holding cells so cold they were called freezers. It was their experiences in these cells that were most dehumanizing, and men, women, and children alike complained of the cold. A woman said her backpack was taken from her and thrown in the trash. Shivering, she bolstered her courage and asked the guard if she could have her sweater in the backpack. He allowed it and then threw the bag back in the trash. Both men and women brought from Yuma, Arizona, told of being crowded in holding cells with one toilet standing shoulder to shoulder, unable to move or shift positions. A woman told me they stood this way for four days.
People came to us wearing flip-flops, many with ankle bracelets; if they had shoes, the laces had been removed earlier in the holding cells. Piles of flip-flops were seen outside the showers, indicating that many people had found shoes in their size (or close to it) in the clothing room. Everyone was provided with food, a hot shower, clean clothes, and a place to sleep.
Guests were only at the shelters long enough to contact a family member or friend who would arrange for air or bus tickets to their destination. Over the years, that communication process changed. First, we saw people who had to rely on a shelter phone; now, almost everyone has a mobile phone. Being reunited on the phone with their loved ones is always a time of jubilation.
The Desperate Journey: Courage Against All Odds
How desperate are people to leave their home country? This question, unfortunately, is often not considered. We know migrants travel thousands of miles by foot, in buses, jumping trains, crossing barren deserts, climbing the border wall, swimming the Rio Grande, guided (and sometimes betrayed or abandoned) by smugglers—risking kidnapping, sexual assault, and death.
How desperate are they? A man escaped his kidnappers, willing to go through the sludge of a latrine, in order to reunite with his wife and infant child. I heard numerous accounts of travelers on buses who were stopped by masked men and women who entered demanding money and pointing guns. One woman told me she clutched a rosary and a small statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Thankfully, the female robber saw these and passed her by.
Individual Stories of Flight
A woman told me her husband had been murdered as he was going to testify as a witness to a crime. Since she, too, was interrogated, she feared for her life and hurriedly fled with her infant child and teenage daughter. On two separate occasions, the buses they rode through Mexico were robbed by armed individuals entering and pointing guns in their faces. As I was leaving the shelter at the end of my shift, I said goodbye to her when she told me their tickets had arrived, and they were leaving later that night by bus.
I thought often and still do about the complex trauma that people experience not only when they migrate but also by what precipitated their departure. Later that same evening, thinking of this mother, with her children, boarding a bus at night prompted me to go to the bus station, find them in the crowded waiting area, and stay with them until they boarded. While I cautioned them to be alert to individuals, I felt confident that I could reassure her that armed robbers would not stop the bus en route.
Toward Understanding and Compassion
Each migrant has a story. I believe sharing these stories will help our citizens think differently about migrants. They are the stories of what losses and risks people embrace as they move toward what they believe is more life, a better life without fear, and one that holds promise for them and their children.
Pope Francis tells us if we don’t listen, if we turn our backs, if we believe the scarcity myths, “Those who close borders will become prisoners of the walls they build.”
