Nautica Western’s Reviews > The Asylum Seekers: A Chronicle of Life, Death, and Community at the Border > Status Update

“Not enough is better than nothing. Not enough, once accepted, keeps us going and leads us on. Not enough, in the end, draws us toward each other in love and awareness of our mutual need.”

“It’s a great irony that a country founded on immigration- a country that continues to proclaim, proudly, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”- now formally welcomes fewer people who are “homeless and tempest tost” each year than any other developed country on earth.”

“This is what everyone on the street was risking their lives for, I realized: the safe hush of a table, a chair, a kitchen counter, a kettle. They weren’t things to be ignored, then, or walked past, or pushed away. They were, instead, the point: for the people pressed up against the border, for the men and some who lived on the streets of Boston, and also for me. We were all searching for home.”

“That self-proclaimed Christians in the United States supported our policies at the border made a mockery of the story of the birth of Jesus himself, and was simply grotesque. There was no theological stance […] that could possibly uphold or excuse this position. […] supporting our nation’s immigration policies while claiming to be a Christian is a fiction and a lie.”

“I mean, if Paulina and Víctor an Martín and all the others who are giving what they have for the sake of another are standing in place of Jesus, as they so visibly and indisputably are, where is it, exactly, that the rest of us are standing?”

“Go back home,” she said. “What else can I do?”

“Will you be safe there?”

“No,” she said flatly, entirely matter of fact. “First my oldest, then my next, and one day the little one, too, will have to choose: join the cartel or be shot.”

“No matter the depth of horror, or despair, or fear, or grief that swept through the street as regularly as day turned to night, the kids continued to- what is the word? Resist. Yes. They continued to resist in the most powerful way imaginable: with joy and laughter and love.

“It was hard to believe but true nonetheless: a nine-year-old boy who couldn’t hear or speak and his worn-out, too-soon-aged mother got the better of the US immigration system and forced our country to uphold our own laws. This was gospel topsy-turviness at its very, very best…” I mean isn’t that God?

Off topic but one of my favorite things is hearing descriptions of the desert from people who don’t live here. I try to look through their eyes every time I go outside: yeah, the landscape IS technicolor. And, yes, the open desert IS actually magnificent and arresting. Romanticize your life!! This is someone’s dream!!

At first, you wonder why this mother would go back if it isn’t safe for them. Don’t you want your children to be safe? But what is safe, if not in the arms of their own mother? How do you cross the bridge knowing your children will be ripped from you and sent hundreds of miles away? Will you see them again? How do you know if that IS safe? If that IS right? What right do I have to even contemplate this? I am sick