Lisa Haugaard started her comments on Tuesday afternoon’s premiere episode of “Welcoming the Stranger” with some plain talk about Central American migration to the United States.
Balloons swayed in the air, children kicked their swings toward the sky, and laughter floated beyond the fence as congregants and friends of Second Presbyterian Church gathered on the church’s playground after one of its first in-person worship services in months.
“I’m a Black Italian, a Black European, a woman who was born in Rome with Somalian roots,” said writer Igiaba Scego. She spoke out about herself after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died in police custody in Minnesota after being pinned to the ground, and whose last words were, “I can’t breathe.”
Forced to leave their homes and their countries, migrants often set out on journeys with a vague understanding of where they are headed. Refugees and asylum seekers know that even when the physical route itself is direct, their metaphorical journey is much less certain.
People from Cameroon, Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo are held in immigration detention centers because they put their trust in the United States as a place of safety, only to be denied due process and ordered deported.
Presbyterians and many other people of faith are accompanying asylum seekers from Central America and as far away as African nations through the U.S. immigration court process. Just how successful that coming alongside process will be remains to be seen as President-elect Joe Biden and the 117th Congress reshape U.S. immigration policy and laws beginning in January 2021.
In recent months, much of Mediterranean Hope’s focus has been on migrants already in Italy. Living below the radar in shanty towns, they are an exploited workforce, propping up seasonal harvests of tomatoes, citrus fruits, and olive oil; undocumented, without contracts or access to basic services.
In the fall of 2015, mission co-worker Nadia Ayoub was attending a conference with colleagues in Budapest when the city’s Keleti train station became the epicenter of the refugee crisis overwhelming Europe. She could not forget the images of children sleeping on cardboard, families with not enough to eat and the pervasive fear of what would happen next.
“I have faith that God will dry up the Rio Grande so that I may safely cross,” he said. He had been on the journey from Honduras to the U.S. for a month and a half when we met him in a migrant shelter in Arriaga, Mexico. His teenage son was traveling with him. He told us about the pressure on his son to join a gang and the lack of lawful means to support oneself in his nation. He talked of seeing people murdered in the street.
