Dispatches From the Border: Bearing Witness

We came to the border because so many of us want to bear witness…bear witness to what? Bear witness to the practical expression of the policy of our country, policy that separates children from their parents and turns away desperate asylum seekers…at the wall.

On our journey we visited a detention center where children and parents are kept in cages, often separated from one another. We met customs and border protection agents who were clearly being directed not to speak with us. And we met Sr. Norma, a nun who single handedly runs what she called a humanitarian respite center, where families who have somehow managed to escape containment and have been released show up needing help with the very essentials of human life: a place to wash, some food to eat, a place to sleep.

And we showed up at the Brownsville courthouse, where a huge crowd of people gathered to protest family separation policies and to say: seeking asylum in this country is not a crime. It’s not a crime, even though the administration that governs America in this moment has vilified people who come here to seek a better life.

Standing on the banks of the Rio Grande river I thought: I hope people of faith have the courage to speak up. I hope our faith has feet in this moment, because it could be that there has never been a time in our lives when the gospel of Jesus Christ meant more.

Pastor Amy is joining a delegation of of 11  women faith leaders who will travel to the Texas/Mexico border to confront the Trump Administration’s cruel and immoral family separation and family detention policies which treat people seeking safety from violence as criminals and incarcerates entire families. Click here to see the complete collection of Dispatches from the Border.