Trying to tip the balance sheet toward kindness
That’s why we’re all here, trying to even things up against the agents and policies of cruelty.
Every time I come to the US-Mexico border, I scribble things in a tiny notebook that I always carry, observations and experiences I want to remember. So much can happen in a day working with other volunteers and hundreds of asylum seekers, it’s easy to forget some details.
After returning from a trip last year and reviewing my notes, I made a chart with two headings — kindness and cruelty.
The tally is uneven, with kindness getting the short end. But my scorekeeping is probably unfair, because the people and the organizations I worked with practice kindness every single day. Perhaps I take some of it for granted.
Here’s an example from each side of the ledger. Let’s get the bad one out of the way.
CRUELTY
This is something I see each time I volunteer in Texas with Team Brownsville. Several times a day, white vans from a private security company pull up outside our welcome center. The driver and at least one other person in uniform are armed, and they perform a disgusting ritual.
They open the van doors, and up to 10 men or women gingerly step out onto the sidewalk. They have been released from a nearby immigration detention center, aka prison, and are being processed by our government before traveling to family or sponsors in other cities.
The ritual: As they did again yesterday, the armed contractors lined the releasees up against the brick wall of the parking garage in view of the public. The releasees are always shackled in the van for the 22-mile ride, not just in handcuffs, but with long, shiny metal chains around their waists that are attached to the handcuffs — and to leg restraints.
Apparently the powers that be don’t understand that the immigrants they treat this way aren’t about to run away or cause a problem in the van. They want to be here.
There’s not a huge amount car traffic in front of the welcome center, but we are next to a busy bus station and there are always pedestrians about. They are given the message that these men and women are “criminals,” rather than human beings who fled persecution or poverty and have crossed into the U.S. invoking their legal right to seek asylum.
The sound of the chains falling to the pavement as they are unlocked is sickening.
The armed guards don’t like it when we take photos of this cruel piece of theater, but we do it anyway.
KINDNESS
I have witnessed many acts of kindness on this trip and many others — and not just from Team Brownsville volunteers.
Last week a young migrant from Venezuela had to wait two days for his bus to Maryland. I’m not sure where he slept at night in Brownsville, but he showed up at our welcome center before it opened. If we needed heavy boxes of supplies taken out to a vehicle or food to be brought in, he jumped up and pitched in.
He was very chatty and seemed happy to be around us. He wore a bright red T-shirt that, intentional or not, reflected the mix of confidence and mischief I saw in his face. In bold white letters, the front of it read, “There will be haters.”
When I think about kindness at the border, I often think of another young man, an American we met in Mexico back in 2019. His name is River and he worked as an herbalist at a refugee health clinic in Tijuana. Every time I think of him I think of … oatmeal.
Every morning River would brew up a huge pot of oatmeal and haul it to the official port of entry, where thousands of asylum seekers gathered to wait every day as they endured the previous U.S. administration’s cruel “Remain in Mexico” policy.
River would ladle out cups of free oatmeal to anyone who wanted it. But his kindness extended further.
I had actually forgotten about this part of the River story, but my frequent border companion Nina Wickett remembered it. She likes to tell how River also brought crayons and sheets of paper with him for the many children waiting at our nation’s doorstep — children who had spent yet another night with their parents in a shelter or on the streets of Tijuana.
The kids would draw pictures, and River would tape them up on a nearby fence to display them. River didn’t appear to have much disposable income, yet what he had went toward oats and art supplies for those who had even less than he did.
Grateful for you and others who stand up for compassion and against cruelty!
Another detailed and fascinating report, Jim. It’s almost as if you were a journalist in another life :)
Keep up the good work!