3/4/21

By Josh Rubin

We are lucky enough to share in the joy of the people we got to know in the Matamoros encampment, those forced into the limbo of MPP, Remain in Mexico, joy at their orderly release to the other side of the river, to buses and planes and the embrace of their families. Each day we glimpse their happiness in the videos they send us, the things they tell us from their soaring hearts.

Many of us, though, carry the burden of knowledge of the damage that has been done, the scale of which we can barely dream. And also of the folks left behind, silently waiting for a reprieve that is not on the horizon. Those left in camp who never made it into the legal stream, or whose outcomes in the injustice of those courts that loom on the US banks of the fateful river were such as to deny to them any respite from a state of abject and unfeeling rejection.

The camp, surrounded by fence and razor wire, we are told, will fall soon, and some of those that still cling to refuge in its dwindling stands of tents have nowhere to go. They have no recourse. Mexico wants to forget the camp ever existed, the US wants to ignore those who fall through the cracks.

It falls to us to remember them. To keep them alive in our hearts. To find a way to bring them into focus. Disappearance happens so easily along the borders of our countries, and our consciousness.