(Father Michael McAndrew)
OXFORD, Miss. – Rigoberto Salas, his wife, and their five
children of nearby Batesville, Mississippi, were elated last March when a
Homeland Security court in Jena, Louisiana, agreed to cancel an order that
would have deported Salas back to his native Mexico. Still, he was held in
detention pending a federal appeal.
Eight months later the Immigration Board of Appeals reversed
the court decision and ordered him deported due to his lack of documentation.
He has lived in the United States since 1992.
His children, aged 3 to 14, grew up here.
Despite testimony that “two of his daughters are suffering
from depression, his son suffers from learning disabilities and is in special
education classes, and his youngest daughter is having nightmares and waking up
screaming at night,” the Board of Appeals decided the children “will be cared
for and supported” by their mother even though she is also undocumented. The
Salas family has appealed this decision.
The Salas family is one of many in Mississippi and across
the country caught in the madness of the immigration debate and politicians’
failure to pass real and meaningful reform of a broken system. As nationally
syndicated columnist Michael Reagan, son of the former president, wrote
recently, these families have become “a bargaining chip” in the battles between
Republicans, Democrats and President Trump.
Trump owes his presidency in part to his demagoguery of the
immigrant issue. He has ordered the end to DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals), the program that provides some protection to undocumented children.
He continues his ridiculous demand for a 1000-mile, $20 billion wall on the
Mexican border.
Like Trump, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant occupies the
state’s highest office in part because of his own anti-immigrant blusterings,
including a highly questioned claim that migrant workers cost the state $25
million a year (where’s the thanks for rebuilding the Gulf Coast after
Hurricane Katrina?).
Migrant workers came to the United States in droves after
NAFTA was signed in 1994. Countless numbers farmed small plots or held other
jobs that NAFTA destroyed. The legendary independent journalist John Ross
explained it succinctly: NAFTA “dumped so much bad corn in Mexico that millions
… abandoned their homes and headed north.”
Even Trump recognizes that NAFTA was a bad deal, but he
fails to make the connect to the hard-working migrants who had to leave behind
home, extended family, and culture to make a livelihood for their loved ones.
“There are forces that crush the spirit of people on the
move,” Father Michael McAndrew wrote in his 2013 book Migrant Faith. Based in
Greenwood and Bruce, Mississippi, the Catholic priest has worked with migrant
workers for decades. “There is the separation from loved ones. There are
feelings of guilt when the migrant is unable to be present with a parent or relative
when they are ill or dying.”
Then there are those torn from their families and forced to
return after building a new life here for years.
Seven days after the birth of his third child in March 2017,
Miguel Torres of Batesville found himself in the custody of federal immigration
officers and soon deported from the land he had called home for 15 years. Martin
Duron of Greenwood, father of five, was a prospering businessman in irrigation
systems management and on the parish council of his church in April 2017 when
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested him. He and his family departed
for Mexico in June.
ICE arrests have increased 40 percent under Trump. Last year
judges rejected 60 percent of those seeking asylum in the United States. Often
those returning to Mexico do so in great danger.
Deportees are “prime targets for crime, since they (are)
presumed to have money,” writes Sarah Stillman in a recent article on the issue
in the New Yorker.
“`Why do Americans hate Mexicans?’” a young Mexican named
Samantha once asked Father McAndrew during a 2007 sabbatical in Mexico. “It was
a question filled with pain and simply not understanding the animosity of so
many Americans.”
It’s a question that shouldn’t have to be asked.
This column appeared
recently in the Jackson Free Press in
Jackson, Mississippi.