Opposing ICE actions against migrants—without dehumanizing ICE agents
In recent months, I’ve become increasingly uneasy as I watch pro-migrant groups employ the tools of the oppressor: mockery and dehumanization. Certainly, widespread resistance to violent ICE tactics is important and necessary at this moment. This resistance makes it clear that Americans don’t think federal agents abducting their neighbors makes their communities safer. I’m a big believer that there are many ways to make change, and they are all important. Yet as a follower of Christ, I’m worried about what hate met with hate does to our collective humanity.
You may have seen the videos: protestors yelling profanities or a serenade at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent that includes lyrics like, “No one likes you.” One clip that has garnered significant attention is the video of an ICE agent slipping and falling on black ice. Stephen Colbert highlighted this clip in his Jan. 13 monologue, and then brought the clip back again during his Jan. 15 monologue, saying he could watch it on a loop, and “that’s my love language.” When I heard Mr. Colbert’s reaction to this clip, tears stung my eyes.
As someone who has filed scores of complaints on behalf of migrants alleging abuse perpetrated by ICE and Border Patrol over the past five years, I was surprised at my own reaction. The complaints I have filed document abuses like the non-return of personal belongings, torturous and unsanitary conditions in ICE detention, being chained for hours without food or water, and the use of excessive force. Recognizing the humanity of federal agents does not mean excusing these abuses. As deeply as I believe migrants who face abuse at the hands of federal agents deserve justice, I think the tears came because just as deeply, I believe that hate can only beget more hate. Mocking words are not comparable to these abuses, and there is a power differential to consider. Even so, laughing at the physical pain of an ICE agent touched a nerve for me.
First, on a human level, it brought me back to middle school. John, a classmate in sixth grade, thought it would be funny to pull a chair out from under me as I went to sit down. His timing was perfect, and I landed right on my tailbone. It really hurt, and people laughed.
Most of us know what it feels like to have someone else laugh at our own pain or misfortune. Schadenfreude, as the Germans call the celebration of another’s pain, goes against Jesus’ core teachings. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus calls his followers beyond tit-for-tat retribution to a higher moral standard that doesn’t seek revenge. In the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus paints a picture of a father who had every reason to be resentful but chooses instead to welcome his wayward son with a generous embrace. The book of Proverbs is even more on the nose: “Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and when they stumble, do not let your heart exult” (Prov 24:17-18).
If I’m honest, I often have to check my immediate defensiveness and judgment when I encounter federal agents in daily life. But I know Jesus calls me—and us—to a freedom that’s much deeper than scorn.
The clip also made me think of federal agents I have met during my years living at the U.S.-Mexico border. I thought about my neighbor, a retired Border Patrol agent, who came to help gently bandage a neighbor dog’s wound when I was home by myself and found her injured and bleeding.
It brought to mind a Customs and Border Protection officer I spoke with a few years ago as I was driving from Mexico into the United States after a day at the migrant outreach center where I minister. Typical of daily customs interactions, the officer asked what I was doing in Mexico. I said I had been working. He asked what kind of work, and I explained that I worked at a migrant shelter down the street. Nodding his head, he said, “I used to do that kind of work.” I was taken aback.
“Really, where did you work?” He went on to share about his role at a nonprofit coalition that worked for poor people in Tucson, Ariz., with a focus on affordable housing. He explained that his wife got pregnant, and with his nonprofit work, income could be unreliable and the limited benefits would not offer what his family really needed. “I hope one day I can go back to that work,” he said, “but for now I’m doing what I need to do for my family.”
The C.B.P. officer’s response challenged stereotypes I had harbored about the kind of person who would sign up for a job like his. He took this job for his family. His reply reminded me of Dorothy Day’s philosophy that we should work for a world where it is the easiest to do the most good. She summed up the purpose of the Catholic Worker movement this way: “Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love.”
Our current job market doesn’t always make it easy to love. The people we recruit and train to round up our undocumented neighbors are paid handsomely, in comparison with helping professions. Over the past year, in an effort to scale up recruitment, the Department of Homeland Security announced $50,000 signing bonuses, loan forgiveness and other perks in addition to starting pay around $90,000. People were lining up around the block to apply. Compare that to an entry-level elementary school teacher, who averages around $40,000 annual salary in Arizona or a social worker, who might make $46,000 to $66,000 a year.
When we build a society that handsomely rewards death-dealing work and forces those who care for children and the elderly to live in poverty, we shouldn’t be too surprised by our current reality. It should make us wonder, however, how we got here. If we did, maybe instead of mocking an individual ICE agent, we might be holding a conversion vigil outside the homes of private prison executives like George Zoley, executive chairman of the GEO Group, who described mass detention under President Trump’s second term as “an unprecedented opportunity.” Or CoreCivic C.E.O. Damon Hininger who last spring described this as “one of the most exciting periods in [his] career.”
This is not to say that federal agents shouldn’t be held accountable. It is unconscionable that federal agents can move freely through our cities, beating and even murdering residents and detaining people without cause and that simultaneously the Trump administration has gutted the agencies responsible for holding them accountable. I believe that anyone benefiting financially from the suffering of families under Mr. Trump’s indiscriminate immigration enforcement will one day have to answer for their choices, whether at the bottom or the top of the pyramid.
But we might consider that while ICE agents detaining our neighbors on city streets are being videotaped, the architects of mass detention and deportation, the same ones who financed Mr. Trump’s campaign, sit comfortably in their mansions, living lavishly off of people’s pain. The system they have created is working just as intended, causing either suffering or moral injury for all those involved—ICE agents included.
I was thrilled to see Mr. Colbert invite Maria Stephan of the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence on the Late Show on Jan. 23. She encouraged ICE agents to “remember our shared humanity in this moment.” I think that invitation is a message not just for ICE agents but for all of us. Maybe Jesus and Dorothy Day and Maria Stephan are inviting us to think more audaciously and creatively about what it means to build a society where it is easy to love. Imagine, for example, replacing mockery with a community fund that provides training and job onramps for people looking to leave ICE but without other opportunities to fall back on. Nonviolent alternatives are not easy, but they might just restore our humanity.
You may have seen the videos: protestors yelling profanities or a serenade at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent that includes lyrics like, “No one likes you.” One clip that has garnered significant attention is the video of an ICE agent slipping and falling on black ice. Stephen Colbert highlighted this clip in his Jan. 13 monologue, and then brought the clip back again during his Jan. 15 monologue, saying he could watch it on a loop, and “that’s my love language.” When I heard Mr. Colbert’s reaction to this clip, tears stung my eyes.
As someone who has filed scores of complaints on behalf of migrants alleging abuse perpetrated by ICE and Border Patrol over the past five years, I was surprised at my own reaction. The complaints I have filed document abuses like the non-return of personal belongings, torturous and unsanitary conditions in ICE detention, being chained for hours without food or water, and the use of excessive force. Recognizing the humanity of federal agents does not mean excusing these abuses. As deeply as I believe migrants who face abuse at the hands of federal agents deserve justice, I think the tears came because just as deeply, I believe that hate can only beget more hate. Mocking words are not comparable to these abuses, and there is a power differential to consider. Even so, laughing at the physical pain of an ICE agent touched a nerve for me.
First, on a human level, it brought me back to middle school. John, a classmate in sixth grade, thought it would be funny to pull a chair out from under me as I went to sit down. His timing was perfect, and I landed right on my tailbone. It really hurt, and people laughed.
Most of us know what it feels like to have someone else laugh at our own pain or misfortune. Schadenfreude, as the Germans call the celebration of another’s pain, goes against Jesus’ core teachings. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus calls his followers beyond tit-for-tat retribution to a higher moral standard that doesn’t seek revenge. In the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus paints a picture of a father who had every reason to be resentful but chooses instead to welcome his wayward son with a generous embrace. The book of Proverbs is even more on the nose: “Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and when they stumble, do not let your heart exult” (Prov 24:17-18).
If I’m honest, I often have to check my immediate defensiveness and judgment when I encounter federal agents in daily life. But I know Jesus calls me—and us—to a freedom that’s much deeper than scorn.
The clip also made me think of federal agents I have met during my years living at the U.S.-Mexico border. I thought about my neighbor, a retired Border Patrol agent, who came to help gently bandage a neighbor dog’s wound when I was home by myself and found her injured and bleeding.
It brought to mind a Customs and Border Protection officer I spoke with a few years ago as I was driving from Mexico into the United States after a day at the migrant outreach center where I minister. Typical of daily customs interactions, the officer asked what I was doing in Mexico. I said I had been working. He asked what kind of work, and I explained that I worked at a migrant shelter down the street. Nodding his head, he said, “I used to do that kind of work.” I was taken aback.
“Really, where did you work?” He went on to share about his role at a nonprofit coalition that worked for poor people in Tucson, Ariz., with a focus on affordable housing. He explained that his wife got pregnant, and with his nonprofit work, income could be unreliable and the limited benefits would not offer what his family really needed. “I hope one day I can go back to that work,” he said, “but for now I’m doing what I need to do for my family.”
The C.B.P. officer’s response challenged stereotypes I had harbored about the kind of person who would sign up for a job like his. He took this job for his family. His reply reminded me of Dorothy Day’s philosophy that we should work for a world where it is the easiest to do the most good. She summed up the purpose of the Catholic Worker movement this way: “Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love.”
Our current job market doesn’t always make it easy to love. The people we recruit and train to round up our undocumented neighbors are paid handsomely, in comparison with helping professions. Over the past year, in an effort to scale up recruitment, the Department of Homeland Security announced $50,000 signing bonuses, loan forgiveness and other perks in addition to starting pay around $90,000. People were lining up around the block to apply. Compare that to an entry-level elementary school teacher, who averages around $40,000 annual salary in Arizona or a social worker, who might make $46,000 to $66,000 a year.
When we build a society that handsomely rewards death-dealing work and forces those who care for children and the elderly to live in poverty, we shouldn’t be too surprised by our current reality. It should make us wonder, however, how we got here. If we did, maybe instead of mocking an individual ICE agent, we might be holding a conversion vigil outside the homes of private prison executives like George Zoley, executive chairman of the GEO Group, who described mass detention under President Trump’s second term as “an unprecedented opportunity.” Or CoreCivic C.E.O. Damon Hininger who last spring described this as “one of the most exciting periods in [his] career.”
This is not to say that federal agents shouldn’t be held accountable. It is unconscionable that federal agents can move freely through our cities, beating and even murdering residents and detaining people without cause and that simultaneously the Trump administration has gutted the agencies responsible for holding them accountable. I believe that anyone benefiting financially from the suffering of families under Mr. Trump’s indiscriminate immigration enforcement will one day have to answer for their choices, whether at the bottom or the top of the pyramid.
But we might consider that while ICE agents detaining our neighbors on city streets are being videotaped, the architects of mass detention and deportation, the same ones who financed Mr. Trump’s campaign, sit comfortably in their mansions, living lavishly off of people’s pain. The system they have created is working just as intended, causing either suffering or moral injury for all those involved—ICE agents included.
I was thrilled to see Mr. Colbert invite Maria Stephan of the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence on the Late Show on Jan. 23. She encouraged ICE agents to “remember our shared humanity in this moment.” I think that invitation is a message not just for ICE agents but for all of us. Maybe Jesus and Dorothy Day and Maria Stephan are inviting us to think more audaciously and creatively about what it means to build a society where it is easy to love. Imagine, for example, replacing mockery with a community fund that provides training and job onramps for people looking to leave ICE but without other opportunities to fall back on. Nonviolent alternatives are not easy, but they might just restore our humanity.
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