People Continue to Die Because of U.S. Border Militarization
Washington, DC – Yesterday, as many of us read The New York Times Magazine feature, “How U.S. Policy Turned the Sonoran Desert into a Graveyard for Migrants,” Edwin Rodrigo was dying.
According to Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, Edwin drowned trying to save pregnant women who had been struggling to cross the river. He could not swim. Edwin was the designated Guatemalan country leader at the migrant refugee camp in Matamoros, where over 1,000 people are forced to live while awaiting their asylum hearings under the Trump administration’s reprehensible “Remain in Mexico” policy.
Edwin leaves behind a pregnant wife, a young child, and many other mourners. Sister Pimentel posted on Facebook:
Tonight the camp Mourns! The Rio Grand has taken another life. A 20 yr old father from the refugee camp in Matamoros drowned today. Everyone at the camp is hurting! crying that their friend, their buddy, their brother, their grandson, their husband, their dad is gone. the young wife & baby he left behind cry unconsolable with unbelief that he is gone. Everyone asks “what happened? Was he trying to cross the river?” But he wasn’t. Everyone knew he can’t swim. He got close to see some pregnant women who were attempting to cross the river & he heard one scream and thought she needed help. then suddenly he is gone. He fell into the river? All there is, is silence & tears. El rio bravo se convierte en el rio de sangre! muchas vidas ya a tomado. Que triste que trágicamente inocente víctimas que buscan la vida encuentran la muerte. cuantas más vidas para que termine esta tragedia que continuamente está ocurriendo por ya más de un año causada por MPP. Everyone at the refugee camp will not sleep tonight because tonight everyone cries. Tonight we mourn with them.
The Times Magazine article, written with help from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, talks about the life and autopsy of Roberto Primero Luis, another Guatemalan man who journeyed north to seek a better future for his family. Of Achí descent, Roberto was a talented barber and the son of an evangelical pastor, as well as a husband and father. His child was born while he traveled to the United States; they never met. The article reviews how U.S. border militarization expanded under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and created the conditions that caused so many deaths of people seeking a better life:
As migrants have sought out increasingly remote routes through the desert, more of them have died. This is a fact not seriously disputed by anyone familiar with the problem, including the Border Patrol. But if we are to look at these deaths as the Pima County pathologists do, as a kind of slow-motion epidemic, we must label the desert a proximate, not an ultimate, cause. There are various ultimate causes, but perhaps the plainest, certainly the most traceable, is federal policy. Confronted with images of holding pens and parentless children, it would be easy to assume the policy began with President Trump, the latest face of a revived — though hardly new — American hostility toward migrants. In fact, it has been in place through four presidential administrations.
CWS President and CEO Rev. John L. McCullough declared: “Immigrants and asylum seekers continue to die needless deaths in the United States and at the hands of our government. Today we mourn the tragedy of Edwin’s death and each life lost. We stand with the families whose lives have been destroyed. We also recognize the lives lost by individuals held in immigrant detention in deplorable conditions. Together, we call on Congress to cut funding for ICE and CBP that fuels harmful and deadly anti-asylum and anti-immigrant policies, and we hold the administration accountable to immediately end immigration detention and stop blocking asylum seekers from protection in the U.S. Enough deaths from inhumane and un-American policies.”
The Interfaith Immigration Coalition is made up of 55 national, faith-based organizations brought together across many theological traditions with a common call to seek just policies that lift up the God-given dignity of every individual. In partnership, we work to protect the rights, dignity, and safety of all refugees and migrants.
Follow us on Twitter @interfaithimm
###