At the Comedor, Part 2

Imagine this:
You and your husband are at home one evening when three uniformed officials drive up. They handcuff both of you and remove you forcibly from the home, pulling you away from your three young children, aged 9, 7, and 4. The little ones are horrified and frightened to see their parents handled like criminals and taken away without explanation. “Where are you going?” they cry, “come back!” A court official takes your children and places them in another car, drives the other direction. You don’t know if you will ever see them again. You have no control over the situation, no voice in where your children are taken or who will explain where you have gone. You have no rights.

You and your husband are driven four hours south and deposited on the other side of an international border without money, possessions, or access to your children. You are told never to re-enter, that re-entry may incur a felony charge and long jail sentence. Your husband breaks down, a mess. You are also lost, tortured by worry and grief, and yet you must find a way to get the children back.

Sitting in a soup kitchen along with a hundred other people removed from their homes, workplaces and communities you find a volunteer amongst those serving food. You ask her to find your three children and bring them here, to a desperate place where you cannot find work, housing or regular food, but where you can be together. This Samaritan decides to help. She drives four hours north, finds the court official who has temporary charge of your little girls and little boy, and within a week or two, obtains temporary custody of the children from an aunt. Recall that she is a complete stranger to the children, and they have been officially released into her care.

Fortunately, she is an angel, and dresses the children carefully, placing pink bows in the girls’ hair, brushing pig-tails and washing faces. The children have clean, matching clothes and are bubbling over with worry and nervous excitement as they are bundled into the car. Down south, you and your husband are allowed to wait nervously in the safety of the soup kitchen, which is largely empty, between meals. You pace the small distance of the concrete floor and peer routinely through the chain-link fence at the cheerless, dusty street. Strangers come and go, their appearance barely noted as your tension mounts. Where are the children? They are late; are they safe? Was this a good plan?

Mom retreats to a bench and huddles as if in prayer, while father cannot contain his anxiety and walks outside on the hot pavement. At 4:00 in the afternoon three children rush the gate, surprising both parents. “Mama, mama!” they call. Your little boy grabs the door and shakes it eagerly. “Mama, Mama,” he repeats. You issue a cry of joy and leap for the locked door. A volunteer quickly moves to open it and the children melt into your body, which bends, umbrella-like, to shelter all of them in your arms. Tears are flowing, children jumping in small, excited bounces that will not remove them from their mother’s embrace. Their hiccuping sobs reverberate in the small space. Your husband hovers nearby, tears streaming down his dusty face, which crumples with relief and with pain.

That night you may find shelter in a temporary room, or you may sleep in the cemetery. There is no work here, and though your children are allowed to return north, you may not. You may not even consider this possibility for 11 years. The future does not look easy or good but for now, you are all together.

I witnessed the reunion portion of this story last weekend at the Comedor in Nogales, Mexico. Father John Dear describes the Comedor as: “a soup kitchen and refugee center run by the Jesuits and the Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist. They serve two meals a day to the hundreds dumped into Mexico after the U.S. deports them. The work at the soup kitchen goes on non-stop; the deported slump in hunger and exhaustion, but leave grateful for the human exchange.” in National Catholic Reporter April 13, 2010, http://ncronline.org/news/justice/our-matthew-25-duty-us-mexico-border

Our group from the Denver area had just spoken with the Sister in charge of the Comedor, learning she served 300 people the previous day, that people were limited to fifteen days of meals, that the flow of the hungry never slowed. As we rose to leave the young boy came to the gate with his passionate cries of joy for his mama. We stood uncertainly nearby, almost all women, almost all mothers. Tears leaked down our faces as we watched, imagining the terrible grief and anxiety of separation, feeling a shadow of the joy and relief of reunion. Did they see us at all in that moment? Doubtful. If they observed us, did they see our tears, or simply citizens who acquiesce in a policy that wrenched apart their family? Do they see fellow mothers or do they see “others” who cannot, or who will not, stop this unnecessary, fruitless, and painful policy of separating parents from children in the name of security and economy?