Angelus News | May 17, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 10

WITH GRACE
DR. GRAZIE POZO CHRISTIE
Our immigration disgrace
Orlando, a migrant from Ecuador,
carries 4-year-old Peter as they wade
through the Rio Grande from Mexico
into Eagle Pass, Texas, Oct. 6, 2023. |
OSV NEWS/ADREES LATIF, REUTERS
The United States has a long
history of embracing successive
waves of immigrants and integrating
them into a varied and colorful
populace with a shared, stable national
identity. We Americans are hugely
proud of being a land of immigrants
— a hospitable, open-hearted country
which has for centuries offered the
hard-working poor and oppressed of
the world a welcoming home with opportunities
to flourish. This is the story
that we tell ourselves, and one that I
believe in, having lived it myself, and
seen so many others live as well.
We are that land, and we should be
proud. But today, I think that this very
legitimate pride risks interfering with
a proper reaction to the humanitarian
disaster which is our southern border.
The correct reaction is horror, accompanied
by a fierce desire to see order
restored. Instead, we tend to equate
an open border with kindness. It is
anything but.
I’m not referring here to the heartlessness
of letting an uncontrolled border
facilitate the flow of fentanyl and other
illicit drugs into our country, a tragedy
that has resulted in more than 100,000
deaths each year. Nor am I referring to
the exposure of Americans, especially
those who live near the border but
increasingly in the rest of the country,
to violence from a criminal element
that moves unconstrained by national
boundaries.
My concern, rather, is with the
unkindness of policies that entice a
growing number of poor and vulner-
able people to make an increasingly
dangerous trek to our southern border.
The journey, which for most starts in
South America, the crossing itself, and
the aftermath, are rife with cruelty and
violence. The victims of the poverty,
corruption, and criminality of their
own countries become victims again
— this time of rape, prostitution, child
labor, and human trafficking.
Recent reporting on the conditions
in the Darien Gap, the 60-mile-wide
dense jungle separating Colombia
and Panama, which most migrants
must cross, describes a tragic situation
comparable to that of war zones.
The Gap’s rough terrain, its frequent
landslides, lack of roads, and drinking
water, scorching heat, insects, venomous
snakes, and crocodiles, are just the
beginning of the migrants’ troubles.
The hordes of economic migrants
(over half a million in 2023, and
expected to be much higher this year
according to Panama’s government)
face much greater perils: The very people
they pay to lead them through the
jungle, their coyotes or traffickers, are
just as likely as not to be members of
the many narcotic and criminal gangs
that roam the Gap, robbing, assaulting,
raping, and killing the migrants with
impunity. Even if the coyotes are not
members of the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s
largest drug cartel and a paramilitary
group, they are certainly incapable
of defending their charges from the
cartel’s depredations.
The stories and statistics are chilling.
The actual number of dead is hard
to know, but is believed to be in the
hundreds per year.
A recent New York Times report
describes victims beaten and robbed of
food, and even baby formula, “leaving
people battered and starving in the for-
26 • ANGELUS • May 17, 2024