We take their rosaries...

I came across a meme making the rounds on Facebook. It is a picture of neatly arranged rosaries that have been confiscated by the border patrol from undocumented immigrants trying to enter the United States.

Although the meme includes a partial link to the story that ran in the New Yorker in March of 2017,  it gives the impression that this is some new atrocity. Not hard to believe when there are so many new atrocities every single day. Please let me be clear...no one is more outraged, frustrated and shocked by this administration...by this president...than I am but this is something we cannot lay entirely at his feet. We have been doing this stuff for a long time.

Tom Kiefer is the photographer who took the pictures. He collected the personal items that were confiscated from undocumented immigrants by the border patrol. Most of the stuff ended up in the trash. He collected the items from 2003 to 2014. Below is the introduction on his website. El Sueño Americano (The American Dream)

Lurking beneath the bright and shiny dream of a better life, El Sueño Americano is a deeply disturbing reflection of our treatment of fellow human beings. As a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol janitor, part of the job was removal of trash bags at just one of our 136 facilities, where personal belongings are seized from migrants at or near the border. One day I looked into the bags. I glimpsed personal items, carefully chosen to support their owner’s desperate and dangerous journey. Items confiscated and trashed as ‘non-essential’; rosaries, bibles, wallets, clothes, coins, phones, food, soap, blankets, and family photos. Spending time with the confiscated items, organizing them, photographing them -- profoundly moved me. How precious were these to their owners? Disposing of them, I realized, was an act of dehumanization. El Sueño Americano is a visceral snapshot of what is happening, in direct defiance of those who would sweep it out of sight.

I am not really an advocate of totally open borders although I welcome immigrants. Yes, I know the immigration process is so broken and if my kids were suffering I'm sure I would make the trek to the US Border praying for mercy. But the heartlessness of the process that strips these people of their rosaries and little blue Spanish new testaments...and toilet paper, toothpaste, shoelaces, blankets, wallets and extra clothing is horrible.

I don't have the answers. I wish I did......

Here is the link to the New Yorker article. This is the link to a true/false discussion of the FB meme on Snopes.