Photos document the horror. Families' names reduced to a number, tags with this number attached to their clothing as they wait for Greyhound buses to take them away. Gazing at the faces of innocent children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag shortly before being taken away from their homes to relocation camps, or a young man sitting with his luggage, not knowing where he will be taken, can break our hearts today and remind us of the unholy power of fear.
Writing in "The New York Times," (Feb. 8, 2017), Maurice Berger tells us:
"Ms. Lange’s photographs capture not only the oppression of a people but also their struggle to retain their dignity: neatly dressed families huddled together, awaiting transportation to detention camps; a slouching girl, her eyes cast downward, guarding her family’s meager possessions; a group of children raising an American flag, affirming their loyalty to a nation that viewed them as alien and dangerous; a relocation center in Manzanar, Calif., in stark contrast to the majestic mountains beyond it.
"At the time, the internment was hailed by some and condemned by others. Activists warned that the incarceration of loyal and patriotic Americans would do little to protect the nation, and would serve instead as grist for enemy propaganda. In retrospect, some have compared the internment centers to concentration camps. Nevertheless, in February 1942, two months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that authorized the exclusion of all people of Japanese descent, both citizens and immigrants, from the West Coast.
"The order, which presumed that Japanese-Americans were disloyal and potentially traitorous, was meant to protect the country’s most vulnerable assets, including airports, power plants, railroads, shipyards and military installations, from sabotage and spying. As enacted, the order was unambiguously racist: While it also applied to German and Italian nationals, they were spared the indignity of mass incarceration and were instead evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
"Within weeks of the executive order, Japanese-Americans were ordered to secure or sell their houses, liquidate their businesses and abandon their work or studies. They were told to report to “assembly centers” with only the basic necessities — clothes, bed linens, toiletries and essential personal effects — they could carry. Pets were forbidden. Major household items were stored by the federal government, but at the owners’ risk.
"Conditions in the assembly centers, typically off-season race tracks, unused fairgrounds or stockyards, were abysmal. Families lived in tiny, often windowless stalls that were invaded by insects and smelled of urine and horse manure. The detainees were eventually relocated to newly built camps in remote areas, where they remained — beset by illness and depression, and surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards — for the war’s duration."
Linda Dakin-Grimm, a senior consulting partner at Milbank, an international legal firm, also does pro-bono work representing unaccompanied minors. She's also a theology student, who feels that she lives out her faith through helping the helpless caught in the system. Often she takes phone calls like the following:
"A father she knows - law-abiding and hard-working - has been arrested at his home by Immigration and Customs Enforcement while his child is at school. The lawyer-theologian has the presence of mind to remember school dismissal time; she will be there to meet the boy....The neighbor's call alerted Ms. Dakin-Grimm, but it takes her days to locate the father. After a month, he is released on $3,000 bail, thanks to a supportive letter from his Bishop. She explains, 'what comes next is a hearing, or series of hearings, in immigration court, where he tries to make a case for asylum or withholding of removal. If he cannot do that, he gets deported. Most people lose at this stage, but in part because they have no lawyer or a bad lawyer.'....
"...when ICE agents are searching for a particular person, they are now arresting anyone in their path deemed to lack proper authorization. We hear a new term for the undocumented innocent, they are 'collateral damage.'
".... A landmark study published in the Journal of Law and Economics analyzed the data classifying the recorded offenses of undocumented persons taken into federal custody...by ICE from 2008 - 2012. The data showed that almost one-third had no criminal record and of those with convictions only 28 percent were serious offenders. Thus a majority of the detained had no connection to criminally illegal activities....
"According to Mr. Trump's Executive Order, applying only to the Southern border, and targeting the Hispanic population, anyone may be 'apprehended on suspicion of violating federal or state law, including federal immigration law, pending further proceedings regarding these violations.'
"...Immigration law is now included in the violations of law that can trigger arrest. Consequently, when administration officials refer to making 'criminals' their priority, it implies that now every unauthorized person is a criminal, placing 'unlawful aliens' (usually Hispanic) in the same category as suspected terrorists." ( "America" magazine, Gonzales-Andrieu)
Ms. Gonzales-Andrieu says that a sizable majority of the undocumented enter legally with work or tourist visas. A young woman she knows has a father recruited by a U.S. firm under a work visa, which promised him that the family would be sponsored for permanent residency. After he spent years working for them, building a life for his family here, the firm closed. Now he had no job and no visa. A fraudulent immigration lawyer disappeared with all the family's funds. The whole family has now become undocumented, with no way to adjust their status. Multiply their agonizing situation and their fear and their life in the shadows by untold hundreds, maybe thousands. Who, in their situation, would report the fraud? How many are now close to destitute?
Ms. Lange's photographs are still relevant. Like Germany, we in the U.S. need to remember our own tendencies to Nazism displayed so viciously during World War 11 in the removal of innocent Japanese - Americans to interment camps. Today the targets of prejudice have changed, but the ugliness remains. As anti-immigrant rhetoric escalates, and racism and nationalism fervor pervade the country, do we, as individuals or a country, even care? As reporting is discredited, and news and information are manipulated and called "fake news," do we want to search for the truth?
Must we keep on being so overcome by unregulated fear and bias that we refuse to see other human beings as BEING human? Or do we close our eyes because we do not really want to see their humanity? How short-sighted are we, that the color of people's skin, or their language, or religion, or culture, affects our ability to recognize them as human beings with God-given dignity? Yet - Jesus promises that, if we have faith, he will cause the blind to see - that's us! - and that whatever we do or don't do for the least of our brothers and sisters, we do or don't do to or for him. Only eyes clarified by the Light of Christ, and hearts softened by unity with his Divine Heart of Mercy will find Christ in the helpless whom our pagan - yes, pagan - society maligns.
Chief Standing Bear, a Ponca chief, addressed a U.S. District Court in Oklahoma in 1879 after his people were forced off their land in Nebraska by the U.S. Government and driven south to Oklahoma. He said, holding out his hand -
"That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be of the same color as yours. I am a man. The same God made us both."
Standing Bear's words led to the recognition of Native Americans as persons under U.S. Law.
It is good to remember that God will eventually judge all of us - and each of us - on how clearly we are able to see, and courageously act on, the sacred personhood of all peoples.
Gonzales-