What I Learned During My Visit to an Immigration Detention Center
A migrant being detained by ICE outside of Immigration Court in Harlingen, Texas. (Brian Strassburger, SJ)
Note: The names and countries of origin of those mentioned have been changed.
“Look for the red car in the parking lot behind the metro station.”
That’s where I met the other people with whom I traveled to an immigration detention center in rural Virginia, several hours from my own home. A friend of mine who works with immigration attorneys invited me to go and interpret between English and Spanish speakers and to assist the lawyers. I jumped at the opportunity. I’d never been to a detention center before and have rarely been to jails or prisons.
I was especially interested since the news this past year has been so filled with stories of immigrants being detained and deported. The government says that they are all criminals and the “worst of the worst.” Advocates say that they are mostly innocent mothers, fathers, teens and beloved community members. One thing everyone agrees on is that the number of migrants in detention is the most it’s ever been, and that the number of people being deported is sky high.
I wanted to see for myself who was actually being detained.
Jesuits were among those who gathered outside the Broadview Detention Facility in Broadview, Illinois, on November 1, requesting to offer Communion to migrants:
Upon arrival, we were each patted down and all of our belongings thoroughly checked. The walls were off-white painted cinder block, and rolls of razor wire lined the top of chain-linked perimeter fences. The detainees all wore bright-colored jumpsuits and were lined up and counted six times a day. They get paid two dollars per day if they work. Detention center is just a fancy word for prison.
I talked with a lot of immigrants. Some had been in the detention center for several weeks, some for well over a year, but it seemed like the majority had been there between six and 10 months. All of their stories were different, but there were a lot of similar themes.
Joel was from Honduras. He came with his wife and kids a couple of years ago after the local gang began extorting their business and threatening his daughters. They waited in Mexico until they were given an appointment by the U.S. government at one of the southern ports of entry, allowed to enter the U.S., and applied for asylum. About six months ago, he was stopped while going to work, handcuffed and sent to the detention center. He had never committed a crime and had entered the country legally, following all U.S. immigration laws. The authorities told him that if he voluntarily deports, he can be sent back to Honduras in a month or so. Otherwise, he can continue to pursue his asylum case while detained, which will take many months, potentially years. Meanwhile, his wife is looking for ways to pay the rent and buy groceries, and his daughters are wondering when they’ll get to see their dad again.
Fr. James Miracky, SJ, prays during a prayer vigil outside Delaney Hall, a migrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey, on Oct. 22:
Mario was from Colombia. He came to the U.S. 21 years ago and, with his U.S. citizen daughters, has several family businesses in southern Virginia. He seemed to need someone to talk to and shared a lot of his story with me. His two older daughters are now trying to keep the businesses afloat without him, and his youngest constantly tells him that she misses him and asks when he’ll be coming home.
Some of the immigrants are quite young: early 20s, or even teenagers. One young man from Guatemala, Juan Antonio, spoke quietly, and didn’t make much eye contact. Clearly, he was struggling under the weight of the decisions he’ll have to make. He didn’t have a lawyer and didn’t have money to pay for one. He could abandon his court case and accept his deportation now or continue his legal process without a lawyer. These days, only about 19% of applicants are granted asylum, and your odds in a courtroom are far worse without a lawyer.
Jesus will continue to call to us as he always does, inviting us to love our neighbors in need, despite the legal barriers our society has constructed.
I was surprised to see older gentlemen there as well. There was a group of them, all seated together, in the back of the room. I approached two of them to chat. One spoke Spanish, the other Arabic. Romeo, the Spanish speaker, said he’d been detained for eight months. The other gentleman about two years.
“Romeo, how long have you been in the U.S.?,” I asked.
“40 years.”
I speak Spanish very well but was sure I’d misunderstood. So I asked him again: “Excuse me, how long did you say?”
“40 years.”
He had lived and worked in northern Virginia for 40 years, since leaving Central America during the civil wars of the 1980s. His life in the United States had been peaceful, until eight months ago when he opened his front door and was arrested by ICE. Someone told him that since he’d been in the U.S. so long that he might qualify for a 1986 Ronald Reagan immigration law that gave some immigrants a path to legal status. He’s praying that’s true, because he no longer knows anyone in the country he was born in.
Our lawyers said that the immigrants in the detention center used to be primarily people with criminal records, but that’s not the case anymore. ICE’s own data shows that of those they have arrested recently, only 5% have been convicted of violent crimes. 40% haven’t been charged with a crime at all, much less convicted. On top of that, over a million, like Joel, entered the country legally and have followed every law, but have now been stripped of their legal status and subject to arrest and deportation.
Many Christians feel a tension between wanting to help those in need and believing that laws should be strictly enforced. It’s a legitimate tension, and one we must take seriously.
Pope Francis often referenced the parable of the Good Samaritan, and just before he passed, he offered it as a lens through which to think about our response to immigrants. One thing we don’t always appreciate about this parable, though, is how it also addresses the tension between the demands of the law and the call to aid those in need.
I talked with a lot of immigrants. Some had been in the detention center for several weeks, some for well over a year, but it seemed like the majority had been there between six and 10 months. All of their stories were different, but there were a lot of similar themes.
Joel was from Honduras. He came with his wife and kids a couple of years ago after the local gang began extorting their business and threatening his daughters. They waited in Mexico until they were given an appointment by the U.S. government at one of the southern ports of entry, allowed to enter the U.S., and applied for asylum. About six months ago, he was stopped while going to work, handcuffed and sent to the detention center. He had never committed a crime and had entered the country legally, following all U.S. immigration laws. The authorities told him that if he voluntarily deports, he can be sent back to Honduras in a month or so. Otherwise, he can continue to pursue his asylum case while detained, which will take many months, potentially years. Meanwhile, his wife is looking for ways to pay the rent and buy groceries, and his daughters are wondering when they’ll get to see their dad again.
Fr. James Miracky, SJ, prays during a prayer vigil outside Delaney Hall, a migrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey, on Oct. 22:
Mario was from Colombia. He came to the U.S. 21 years ago and, with his U.S. citizen daughters, has several family businesses in southern Virginia. He seemed to need someone to talk to and shared a lot of his story with me. His two older daughters are now trying to keep the businesses afloat without him, and his youngest constantly tells him that she misses him and asks when he’ll be coming home.
Some of the immigrants are quite young: early 20s, or even teenagers. One young man from Guatemala, Juan Antonio, spoke quietly, and didn’t make much eye contact. Clearly, he was struggling under the weight of the decisions he’ll have to make. He didn’t have a lawyer and didn’t have money to pay for one. He could abandon his court case and accept his deportation now or continue his legal process without a lawyer. These days, only about 19% of applicants are granted asylum, and your odds in a courtroom are far worse without a lawyer.
Jesus will continue to call to us as he always does, inviting us to love our neighbors in need, despite the legal barriers our society has constructed.
I was surprised to see older gentlemen there as well. There was a group of them, all seated together, in the back of the room. I approached two of them to chat. One spoke Spanish, the other Arabic. Romeo, the Spanish speaker, said he’d been detained for eight months. The other gentleman about two years.
“Romeo, how long have you been in the U.S.?,” I asked.
“40 years.”
I speak Spanish very well but was sure I’d misunderstood. So I asked him again: “Excuse me, how long did you say?”
“40 years.”
He had lived and worked in northern Virginia for 40 years, since leaving Central America during the civil wars of the 1980s. His life in the United States had been peaceful, until eight months ago when he opened his front door and was arrested by ICE. Someone told him that since he’d been in the U.S. so long that he might qualify for a 1986 Ronald Reagan immigration law that gave some immigrants a path to legal status. He’s praying that’s true, because he no longer knows anyone in the country he was born in.
Our lawyers said that the immigrants in the detention center used to be primarily people with criminal records, but that’s not the case anymore. ICE’s own data shows that of those they have arrested recently, only 5% have been convicted of violent crimes. 40% haven’t been charged with a crime at all, much less convicted. On top of that, over a million, like Joel, entered the country legally and have followed every law, but have now been stripped of their legal status and subject to arrest and deportation.
Many Christians feel a tension between wanting to help those in need and believing that laws should be strictly enforced. It’s a legitimate tension, and one we must take seriously.
Pope Francis often referenced the parable of the Good Samaritan, and just before he passed, he offered it as a lens through which to think about our response to immigrants. One thing we don’t always appreciate about this parable, though, is how it also addresses the tension between the demands of the law and the call to aid those in need.
“Parable of the Good Samaritan,” Jan Wijnants, public domain
The priest and the Levite, seeing the beaten man on the side of the road and turning away, were likely thinking about their own legal obligations. In Old Testament Judaism, touching a corpse would render them unclean, and therefore unable to complete their sacred duties in the temple. And so, possibly with the best of intentions, the priest and Levite continued on their way. They had their religious duties to fulfill, and the law was the law.
But then comes the Samaritan, an outsider and enemy of the Jews, who sees not a legal conundrum, but instead a beloved human being. He takes the man to an inn and pays for his care out of his own pocket. Jesus ends the parable by telling all of us to, “Go and do likewise.”
Joel, Mario, Juan Antonio and Romeo will most likely all still be detained when you read this, wondering what will happen to them and their families. Some may try to fight their deportation in court; others may surrender to it, beaten down by the months or years of detention and separation.
Meanwhile, Jesus will continue to call to us as he always does, inviting us to love our neighbors in need, despite the legal barriers our society has constructed.
The priest and the Levite, seeing the beaten man on the side of the road and turning away, were likely thinking about their own legal obligations. In Old Testament Judaism, touching a corpse would render them unclean, and therefore unable to complete their sacred duties in the temple. And so, possibly with the best of intentions, the priest and Levite continued on their way. They had their religious duties to fulfill, and the law was the law.
But then comes the Samaritan, an outsider and enemy of the Jews, who sees not a legal conundrum, but instead a beloved human being. He takes the man to an inn and pays for his care out of his own pocket. Jesus ends the parable by telling all of us to, “Go and do likewise.”
Joel, Mario, Juan Antonio and Romeo will most likely all still be detained when you read this, wondering what will happen to them and their families. Some may try to fight their deportation in court; others may surrender to it, beaten down by the months or years of detention and separation.
Meanwhile, Jesus will continue to call to us as he always does, inviting us to love our neighbors in need, despite the legal barriers our society has constructed.
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