12/23/20

By Josh Rubin

We all have our jobs. And we all decide what our jobs are.

I know that many people who visit this page are feeling hopeful about what will happen to people who have come to our border as migrants. But some of us have been among these pilgrims. We have seen the squalor that US policy decisions have imposed upon them. We have heard about kidnappings and rapes. We have watched as bodies floated in the river. We have watched as busloads of men, women and children are transferred to planes in chains, for deportation.

And we have heard promises from people newly elected, some promises even made in person to us, while the campaign took place. So we will be listening and watching carefully. There are lots of reasons to do this. The most important is that the suffering that is going on, in the Northern Triangle, in Mexico, in Africa, in Haiti, in many places in Latin America—all this suffering is urgent.

Many of us receive messages from people in the camp along the Río Grande in Matamoros. We hear their pleas. We have watched the floods. We have seen the snakes. We remember the bodies.

So when talk of Day One turns to talk of months and “guard rails,” we worry. We know that not everyone feels the urgency we feel. To some, even with good intentions, this is just one of many problems to be solved.

To us, to me, it is people to be saved.

I have decided my job is to watch, and to talk about what I see.