Immigration and the American Character
On June 11th, the judge in the federal case of Scott Warren declared a mistrial. The jury was hopelessly divided. Warren was prosecuted for harboring and transporting undocumented immigrants along the Mexican border. A conviction could have brought up to 20 years in prison. Warren is a volunteer for No More Deaths, a faith-based group that leaves water, food and medical supplies in the southwestern Arizona desert to reduce deaths of those attempting to enter the United States.
Warren's case is not unique. Teresa Todd, the four-time elected city and county attorney of Marfa, Texas, was arrested, on the side of the road, for human smuggling after allowing three migrants to shelter in her car after one of them ran to her vehicle pleading for help for his ailing sister. "It makes people have to question, Can I be compassionate?", she said.
Ana Adlerstein, a U.S. citizen and volunteer at a Mexican migrant shelter informed Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) that she would accompany a migrant seeking asylum. Nevertheless, after he stepped onto U.S. soil, she was detained for several hours and is being investigated for illegal alien smuggling. Adlerstein was dumbfounded: "If that's not how you are supposed to seek asylum at a port of entry, how are you supposed to seek asylum in this country?" When she said she wanted to call her lawyer if she was being arrested, she claimed the CBP officer told her "Tell your lawyer to come down here. We'll arrest him too."
The Warren jurors' deadlock is an apt metaphor for the seemingly hopeless divisions in this country over immigration at the Mexican border. Todd's consternation about why compassion is punished reflects the conflict between law and conscience that troubles many. Adlerstein's treatment by CBP typifies how the law and its administration can test the humanity not only of citizens but of law enforcement officials as well.
It would be easy, too easy, to demonize border agents in these cases. Yet, they are following the law. It is their sworn duty to do so. The question we must ask is: how did we get into the position where law and conscience conflict? How did we come to criminalize compassion? When this happens, disrespect for the law and law enforcement grows. When this happens, we put public servants in the position of setting their humanity aside in service of the law. We ask them to become people most never wished to become. When this happens, our civic culture frays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, commenting on slavery, said that "If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other ends fastens itself around your own." Antipathy toward and demonization of those crossing from Mexico is one end of our immigration chain. Good Americans, both human rights workers and law enforcement personnel, are the other. We are all enslaved.
This is a failure of elected politicians, the Congress and the President, in Washington, D.C. Our government should shape laws that call upon the best in Americans and shape exemplary moral character. Laws and policies should not pit us against each other or make us afraid to be compassionate. So long as government officials continue to view immigration through win/lose and either/or lenses, substituting political orthodoxy for humility and compromise, they will continue to worsen the American character. Some of the losers will be immigrants with justified claims for asylum. But the biggest losers will be Americans themselves. Divided from each other, distrusting of laws and lawmakers, and pulled away from their compassionate instincts, we will become less worthy carriers of the promise of America.
Photo Credit: Mitch Lensink
