4/19/23

By Josh Rubin

They tell us that the way to address the terrible ordeal of the trip across the Darién Gap, that brutal stretch of extortion and risk, is to keep people from using it to get north, to keep them from following the drinking gourd to a dream of freedom. Freedom from poverty, from crime, from homelessness. They tell us that the way to keep children from crossing the border alone, without their families, and sometimes to find life-crushing work in slaughterhouses and chicken processors, is to stop being so kind to them, when families in their desperation surrender their beloved children, while they wait for their own chance, roaming the harrowing streets of corruption, or huddling in prison cells for lack of funds.

It is framed as a problem only if it reaches us. If we can only beat back the barbarians at the gate, to make sure we don’t ever get to see them. Invisible, they swell in the national imagination into vicious, ravenous invaders, justifying the vile treatment they receive at our hands. Or rather, someone else’s hands; ours are kept lily white and manicured. It is no wonder the walls are being built higher and higher, to keep us from ever seeing.

The homeless are unsightly, and the solution, they tell us, is to make them invisible, on both sides of the border. That is why we witness. To see, to really see. To see the pain, to see the hope, to see the struggle. To see their faces.

To see past the constructed barriers of hatred and fear. To see clearly what the homeless need.

The homeless need a home.