2/18/20

By Josh Rubin

As so often now, we rise before dawn to put our eyes on a regular event, the wrenching sight of deportation, at the airport here in Brownsville. Buses, run by a transport and security company called Trail Boss, will arrive, and we will see in the windows of the buses the silhouettes of people, people who may raise their hands to show us that they see us, and that they are shackled.

We believe that perhaps they will be facing a choice when they arrive at their destination, to apply for asylum in a devastated country that has no infrastructure or support for refugees, or to go back to their own countries, and, as we have learned, perhaps face death at the hands of those they fled. Both choices could mean death. And so, the bus ride, the flight, the choice offered, could be acts of murder.

In the camp, on the other track of persecution offered by our evil conspirators, the US and Mexico, other choices are offered, few of which are good, and some of which are tragic. People contemplate, once they learn of the long odds against being granted relief by the US, a process designed to dress up persecution as justice, waiting forever, or dividing their families, sending children first, hoping to swim, or wrangle their own ways across later.

Many, as they wait, choose to tell their stories to those who will listen. We find, we listeners, that people mostly want to be known. They do not choose anonymity. There is a chant, sometimes, that we hear from those in the movement, for the dead, for those who die. “Say their names.”

The living need to be known, to be seen, to be loved. They need it more. That is what I have learned. Say their names. See their faces.