After reading Emma Pitts’ excellent article on due process and deportation and reading some of the 450+ comments, I feel compelled to share some of my experiences. I am a lawyer and served as a mission president for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Latin America. I share just a few of the many real situations that several former missionaries and others have encountered.
A 31-year-old man who works in sales followed all of the requirements of the law and entered the country legally. He is one of the finest young men I have ever known. He lives in the U.S. and attends an English-speaking church congregation. He is working several jobs that are well below his capacity and aptitude in order to support his family. He does door-to-door sales. Some people have called him pejorative names and threatened to or have actually reported him to ICE while he was knocking doors. He has described the fear that all Latinos in his area are experiencing, including negative comments from fellow Latter-day Saints.
A 34-year-old man owns a landscaping company. Overnight, over half of his employees were either apprehended by ICE or have gone into hiding. He, too, has experienced negative and racist comments in his community and even at church.
A 29-year-old security analyst is a U.S. citizen who is married to a DACA recipient. They married and started a family shortly after he served a mission. His wife has since become a naturalized citizen. They attend a Spanish-speaking congregation in Salt Lake. Church attendance has fallen off the cliff with members caught up in ICE raids and others in hiding. His in-laws are undocumented. They have lived in the U.S. for over 20 years, work hard in minimum wage jobs, contribute to their community and are law-abiding.
A 28-year-old factory worker is from Honduras, married with two children. He joined a caravan four years ago walking the length of Central America with his wife and child. He requested political asylum at the border and was refused and turned around. Gangs in his country have held him and his family hostage with financial demands, beatings and ongoing threats, including stealing their property and important documents. When he went to the police for help, someone in the police force notified the gangs. He was repeatedly beaten. In desperation, he made the trek a second time. At the border, he again requested asylum. He now has Temporary Protected Status (TPS). I am representing him, pro bono, in his request for asylum. Now that we know of incidents where ICE has taken people into custody as they enter the courthouse for their hearing, I am deeply concerned that he could be apprehended and deported before the hearing, or literally on the courthouse steps.
A 42-year-old laborer was an interpreter for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. Through the help of a Utah service member, he immigrated to the U.S. with his family. His wife and children did not speak English. Several members of our congregation helped them resettle by buying clothes and home goods. They are thriving. They are legal immigrants under TPS, which the Trump administration has now terminated, leaving hundreds of Afghans behind to face imprisonment or death from the Taliban.
A 22-year-old student is a returned missionary and U.S. citizen in our congregation. She was in a local grocery store recently. She was speaking Spanish on a phone call to a mission friend and was approached by ICE agents demanding to know why she was speaking Spanish and who she was talking to.
I could share more of these real-life stories. This is not the America I know. I fear by reading the comments on Emma Pitts’ article that some Christians may need to go back to Sunday School and relearn some of those powerful lessons from the songs we were taught to sing as children.
What I simply cannot grasp, even among practicing Christians, is the abject cruelty we see too often in the public discourse. I’m reminded of a song I learned in church as a child: “I want to be kind to everyone, for that is right, you see. So I say to myself, ‘Remember this: Kindness begins with me.’”
I suspect that many of those who leave hateful comments would not do so if the curtain of anonymity was not there. We must be better!