When Will U Learn That Your Actions Have Consequences Vine

Actions accept consequences.

On Day iii of our border trip to El Paso, we visited a migrant shelter in Ciudad Juárez, crossed the Paso Del Norte International Span back into U.South. soil, and and then took a bus to see a New United mexican states segment of the current "border wall" built years ago.

Everywhere we went, the message I received was that actions take consequences.

Casa del Migrante has a sign on superlative saying "welcome, brother and sister migrants." This is the main migrant shelter, with 485 men, women, and children staying at that place on the 24-hour interval we visit.

They firm people temporarily (from a few nights to over a month) from three kinds of circumstances: (ane) those who accept been deported after living many years in the U.s.; (2) those who have been displaced from their countries of origin and who want to stay and work in Juarez; and (3) asylum seekers who have been directed by Us Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to look processing.

The trees, space, freedom of movement, and people doing laundry made Casa del Migrante feel homey, in stark contrast to the prison-like Otero detention center.

"No human is illegal" mural in Casa del Migrante.

A mural of La Bestia, "The Beast", a reference to the network of Mexican freight trains which sacrifices safety for speed in bringing Central Americans upwards through Mexico. Nosotros were told women with immature babies strapped their children to them tightly and so the bouncing cars wouldn't cause the young ones to fall off to their deaths. In the mural, the Virgin of Guadalupe looks over the passengers, and represents faith in the journey.

After we got back on the double-decker, one of my colleagues told usa of a conversation with one of the migrants at Instance del Migrante. The adult female, Sofia, was from Republic of honduras, and when she heard we were a grouping of Jewish clergy, she said, "Shalom!" Information technology turns out she was Jewish, a nurse back home and relatively well off. But afterward reporting stolen medical equipment (maybe by gangs or past bribed officials, I couldn't tell), her life was threatened and so she fled with her thirteen-year-one-time son, who was going to have to miss his Bar Mitzvah.

Deportment accept consequences. Many were fleeing the roughshod consequences of gangs and criminal elements in their countries of origin.

Equally we crossed the bridge that connects El Paso and Juarez, I peered through the slatted bridge railing.

You may see in the news that many asylum-seekers are being held under this bridge. Here are more professional photos.

CBP has run out of space to agree people. Some of the people we were with wondered whether the result CBP seeks by publicly displaying this humanitarian emergency is a perception of hordes crossing and more support for building yet more detention centers and ultimately a forbidding wall. What I run into are desperate people seeking safety and a better chance at life. I see a failure of our clearing system to recognize refugees.

Our next cease is at the point where Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua meet. We run into a stretch of edge "wall", actually massive slatted steel fencing.

Twenty-viii feet tall. Five miles of this along the edge currently. On the other side are houses and a number of families, a very poor outpost of Juarez.

At ane point four kids are touching the obelisk that formally marks the edge with one manus and moving clockwise, a uncomplicated game of who lose bear on offset. I take information technology as a reminder that when I go out this region, I as well should not lose touch.

Even a steel fence with slats casts a solid wall of shadow.

While we pray Mincha, the afternoon prayer, virtually a minyan of Mexican children stand on the other side of the wall. While nosotros sing Oseh Shalom (One Who Makes Peace), 1 of the boys asks "One dollar please!" Sadly I don't have a dollar. Simply when another boy loses his tennis ball and in the midst of prayer it bumps confronting my feet, I accept a moment to kick it back to his country.

Information technology turns out that not too far from where nosotros were, a militia group, the United Constitutional Patriots, take been watching us. They are heavily-armed, ex-military, standing vigil until the wall is congenital along the full stretch of the border. Definitely terrifying. Although I wonder now if there is a website where you lot can press a push button and get your "white nationalist terror organisation name" by random.

Actions accept consequences. I've just started to learn near the connexion of this wall and U.Due south. economic policies. The wall was begun at the same time as NAFTA was created and which was built to this top during the Obama administration. Hither's an excerpt from this 2016 article that traces a little bit of the history of the wall.

"In 1994, the perceived threat wasn't terrorism. In part, the telephone call for more hardened, militarized borders came in response, amongst other things, to a never-ending drug state of war. It likewise came from US officials who anticipated the deportation of millions of Mexicans after the implementation of the new North American Costless Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which, ironically, was aimed at eliminating barriers to trade and investment across North America."

I'g about to fly back home, and continue to ponder what I've witnessed, what I've learned and have notwithstanding to acquire, and how to human activity locally to do what I can for more justice and kindness in a complex and painful organisation.

There are many ways y'all tin help too. Here, I'll merely listing 3 opportunities if you experience and then moved. And perhaps our actions will have consequences, also, in shaping the America of our greatest aspirations and ideals.

Learn – just ask, "Why practise people come up?" Research, ask friends, find experts, listen to personal stories, retrieve it through. Learn your own family unit histories of clearing.
Donate – Declaration House does amazing work in the El Paso commune taking about all of the people the ICE or CBP releases to the streets and housing them, feeding them, and helping them on to their destinations all through the country, via a network of many faith communities. They've been doing this work for over forty years. Jewish Family Services (JFS) in San Diego just recently started taking the lead in San Diego doing similar work.
Human action – Discover an organization locally, in your city or canton, and see if you can volunteer. If you speak Spanish, have a legal groundwork, or just desire to show upwardly in courtroom and support individuals, there is enough to do. If yous are at Temple Isaiah in Lafayette with me, wait for upcoming messages on how nosotros are getting involved in supporting our local immigrant communities.

Click here to read near my experience on the El Paso Border Trip Day 1 and Mean solar day 2.