By Joanna Williams
Although we claim that this time of COVID-19 is teaching society about interdependence, from the border we see this pandemic used to justify divisions that inflict more suffering on those who are already marginalized. We at the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) bear witness to how the combination of this pandemic and years of harsh immigration policies makes life untenable for people fleeing violence and families separated by borders.
For the past two years, the Trump administration has worked persistently and systematically to dismantle legal access to asylum, an essential protection for people fleeing violence. Now, under the guise of pandemic response, migrants in Nogales are experiencing the culmination of these harmful policies. Since 2018, instead of allowing people fleeing violence to present at the ports of entry to request asylum, the U.S. government has enforced a policy known as “metering,” under which migrants must wait for months simply to start the asylum process. We at KBI have accompanied and provided aid to these families in their desperate wait.
Now, under the guise of responding to COVID-19, the administration ceased all processing of asylum seekers at ports of entry and is immediately returning anyone who attempts to enter between the ports of entry without any access to the asylum process. This policy change means that a family from Mexico that arrived here in January after the father miraculously survived gunshot wounds now faces an indefinite wait in Nogales, Mexico, with little prospect of accessing safety.
As we take sensible public health measures to restrict non-essential activity, families like them who are fleeing for their lives ought to be considered as engaging in essential travel.
Moreover, the economic ripple effects of the pandemic traverses borders. Already we know that in 74% of cases, deportation of a parent means that the spouse left behind does not have enough money to support the children.
Now, families like that of a man deported last week after having lived 20 years in Phoenix, Ariz., are further economically marginalized. His deportation separated him from his wife and three children, one of whom has DACA status and the other two are U.S. citizens. Now his family has lost not only his earnings but those of his older children, who have been laid off due to COVID-19.
The survival mode in which this pandemic has placed us impedes both government officials and the general public from the hard and important work of re-imagining, that is, seeing the world as it could be and not just as it is.
Staff of the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) (above) serve a meal while maintaining social distance and wearing masks and gloves. This bi-national migrant ministry was founded in 2008 with support from the Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist, the Jesuits West Province, the Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hermosillo, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson, and the Mexican Province of the Society of Jesus. KBI puts faith into action by responding to the needs of migrants and promoting systemic change in humanitarian aid, education, research, and advocacy. Photo courtesy of the Kino Border Initiative.
Even as we at KBI work to maintain basic humanitarian services, such as the provision of food (above), we also believe that our most essential task continues to be animating communities on both sides of the border to the work of solidarity that we might enact our vision of a better world. Please join us in this work through prayer, reading migrants’ stories, and advocating for a more humane and just response.
Joanna Williams is director of education and advocacy at the Kino Border Initiative.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of the Kino Border Initiative.