The book I’m reading on Policy.
All week people have been asking me what it was like. Are there any solutions? What, if anything, can we do? Some people I think are looking for me to have some policy answer or a quick, maybe even easy, answer. But at this point… after what I saw? Well, it just seems like we’re past the point where policy or easy and quick answers are going to do much of anything. When I was at the border I tried to really listen to and hear every voice that would talk to me. I tried to really understand what the person was saying and where they were coming from. I tried as best I could to put myself in their shoes and try to see things from their perspective. I figured there would be times like now where I could sit down, think it through, and try to determine who’s wrong and who’s right. It seems like such a grey area and facts and statistics can be interpreted to say many different things depending on how you use them. I’m reading a book on policy now. It gives facts and figures in a compelling way. It doesn’t do too much to move me. It just gives me a lot to think about.
Thomas who is Mr. Brand’s right hand man it appeared. He told us that people cross at the pump station all day. We asked him what he does when he sees it. He said, “Let ‘em go.” We asked why and he said, “They’re just looking for a better life. “
Mr. Brand said Thomas doesn’t stop them because the cartels will know who called Border Patrol and who to “deal with.”
My heart moves me another way, though. It tells me that no matter what the policy has been or who’s policy it is or was, we - the US - have epically failed almost everyone but the cartels on both this side and the other side of the Rio Grande. While for sure there’s anger around the border and frustration to last days for reasons too numerous to name, there’s an under-current of fear, of weariness, of sadness that seems to underlie every conversation around the border. What moves me is the frustrations and feelings of helplessness of someone like Mr. Brand who’s conservative American values run so deep that words like “tradition” and “law and order” are near constant mantras in a conversation. Yet, he lives with the constant fear that all his power and all his wealth won’t be enough to protect his family and those who work for him and entrusted to his care from the growing dangers of the illegal drug and human trafficking trade. However, I find myself asking that if he would do anything to protect his family and if he knows how scary it is to feel powerless, then why can’t he see that most of those people just across that river are there precisely because they feel the exact same way?
As we ate lunch together, I asked him. The rough, brash, and dismissive look on his face and tone in his voice fell away. He told me about how we need to find better, wider paths to citizenship. We need to be proactive and look at the roots causing this crisis in both the countries these people are running from and the country they’re running to and do everything we can to address and fix those root causes. We talked about his respect for someone like Sister Norma whom he didn’t care for until he took a moment to step back and he realized that she was one of the few who weren’t just trying to help but was actually helping and making a difference in everyone’s lives on both sides of the border. We talked about his kids and his grandkids and about his wife that clearly stole his heart after 20 years being divorced and thinking that love just wasn’t in the cards for him. I tried to convince him to let me be his personal chauffeur and drive him around in his tank collection. I found myself looking into the eyes of a man who I was entirely prepared to view and understand as my “enemy” around this issue in so many ways and realizing that we both want the same things in many ways. We want a better world. We want people to be happy and safe. We want to protect people. We want to make our communities, our country, and our world reflect more of the kingdom of God. We share that goal. I truly believe that. Right now, we just disagree on how to get there and maybe even on what it looks like when we are there. But if we can agree on what the problem is and agree on the goal, who’s to say that other stuff can’t be worked out along the way?
Bere’ sitting in the country of her citizenship looking across the Rio Grande to the country of her origin.
I’m not trying to downplay or be dismissive of the very legitimate difference between Mr. Brand and I. A lot of what he said was very hard to hear especially considering my heart was shattered the day before seeing 2,000 people crammed into a park half a city block big. We talked to him just after I saw my friend Bere’ who’d just recently become a US citizen sitting on a concrete wall looking over the Rio Grande to the country of her origin seeing people on the other side waiting for us to leave in order that they may cross unseen into the land we now stood on the dream that we were living. We’d just finished praying with Thomas for those people and that dream when Mr. Brand pulled up. What I’m trying to say is that we shouldn’t let our legitimate differences with people strip us of the ability to see our common humanity. It’s something Mr. Brand and I actually agree on. The crisis of dehumanization surrounding the border is now so large that we’ll have no hope of “fixing” it unless we set aside our differences, no matter how legitimate, and start working together for a solution.
Mr. Brand. A truly unforgettable man…