Keep Families Together

          Yesterday, I participated in a Father's Day march for family unity at Southside Presbyterian Church to demand an end to the separation of migrant families

due to detention, deportation, and death in the desert.  Before I came to Tucson, I did not understand the complex web of immigration policies that tear families apart.  After living here for a year, I have heard countless testimonies of people who have been disconnected from their spouses, parents, and children.  Many undocumented parents go to work every morning with the fear they may not return in the evening to see their children.  

          Due to laws like S.B. 1070, police are allowed ask the immigration status of anyone they pull over, arrest, or suspect to be here without papers.  If someone cannot prove they are in the U.S. legally, the police call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Border Patrol to process the individual and take them to detention, prison for migrants. In detention, migrants are often abused as they wait behind bars for months, hoping for a court date or bond hearing.  If they are lucky and get a bond, they must raise thousands of dollars, which most working class migrants, do not have.  For more information, please read this Center for Immigrations Studies report on detention centers.

          Most detained migrants do not get access to a lawyer, do not receive a bond, and are deported back to their home countries. There, they must decide whether to create a new life in a country that may be unfamiliar, dangerous, or without jobs, or to take the perilous journey across the desert to reunite with their family in the United States. Many parents hike through the Sonoran desert, risking their lives to be with their children again. In the last 15 years, at least 2,000 migrants have died attempting to crossing the Arizona border alone. For more information on migrants deaths in the desert visit Colibri.

A mother embraces her son through the US-Mexico border wall. Source
Some families who cannot be in the same country, gather at the dividing line.  About a month ago, I saw a family having a picnic through the wall.

Why do we separate families?

          Every person who has died crossing the desert was someone's child.
          Every person who has been racially profiled is someone's friend.
          Every person who has been sent to detention is someone's mom, dad or supporter.
          Every person who has been deported is someone's partner, lover, daddy, papi, mama, mommy, tio, tia, cousin, or sibling.

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Praying at the shrine

During the march, we gathered at a shrine for migrants who have passed away in the desert and read this beautiful prayer:

Father's Day Prayer

God our creator, daily we call upon you and remember you as our father who art in heaven. You have known the joy of watching your child grow, of witnessing Mary, Joseph, and Jesus develop as a family or prophets who endured and challenged the oppression of their government.  You Father, journeyed with them through the darkness and the light, and in the darkest of moments when your own Son was apprehended, detained, and eventually murdered, you were there in the mercy and compassion of those who worked and continue to work tirelessly to keep alive his memory and message.

As we remember fathers and all those who have embodied such responsibility, we particularly pray for migrant fathers who journeyed thousands of miles with the dream of providing for their children, but who never reached their dream.  Many of them remain in our deserts simply as bones clamoring to you and us all for justice.  We remember these deceased migrants fathers, we pray for the livelihood of their children and family, and we ask that you continue to make of us instruments of life and not death.

We especially pray for all those crossing the desert as we speak, those dying of thirst, those who have lost their way in the wilderness, those who are enduring brutalities, those who are locked up and treated as though they were not human.  We pray for these your people, your holy ones whom you continue to send and whom we continue to reject at the border.  Bless them with perseverance, light their path, direct their way, shelter them from the burning heat, and comfort them in their despair.  On this father's day, may we remember that we are all brothers and sisters to each other, that I am in fact my brother and my sister's keeper, that you are Father to us all, and that ultimately, we are all migrant families journeying home.  May the courage of migrant fathers be also our courage in the struggle for justice and peace.  Amen.

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Alison Harrington, the pastor of Southside Church, ended the march with a great rallying cry to help us recommit ourselves to welcoming our neighbors and fighting with our migrant brothers and sisters for justice. I am thankful for the active community members of Tucson who come together, time and time again, to advocate for the just treatment of God's people.

My YAV family says, "Keep migrant families together!"