2/18/21

By Josh Rubin

It chills me to my bones to look out of my window at the falling snow, my mind going to Matamoros, Mexico, where perhaps a thousand people huddle in summer tents, wrapped as best they can against the freezing temperatures that have gripped them.

Plans are being made to finally bring people across the river. But, we are told, we must do it carefully. We have to have a system in place. It must be carefully coordinated, involving the appropriate agencies. Including one agency in Mexico that was implicated in a massacre a few weeks ago. A massacre of migrants, most from Guatemala, most from a small village there that became impossible to live in. Crime. Poverty.

And in Matamoros, as the temperatures have slowed and stilled the blood in several of its citizenry, the fenced families on the banks of the river are being counted, and encouraged to connect to the internet and register for the program being carefully assembled, so that the thousands of people denied hope for years now can make it the last 50 yards or so, along the walkway on the bridge, to the other side. Texas is cold, but it has the promise of warmth.

And some of us listen to a recording of a child in one of those tents, whimpering because her feet are so cold.

We have to be careful, don’t we?