Submitted by Marjory on Fri, 2010-07-02 13:58

Filed under:

• Social Change in Oregon

Last week was a poignant reminder of how arbitrary U.S. immigration enforcement can be—and how the random decision of one law enforcement officer can alter people’s lives.

A volunteer and I were trying to find a time to get together. We set a date and were emailing back and forth to confirm a time, and then the communication stopped. Thursday I found out why.  A member of her family had been deported, and life as she knew it was turned upside down.

Her sister’s family was driving to a child’s birthday party when the police pulled them over for having a cracked windshield. A. Cracked. Windshield. Within minutes, a family outing turned into an immigration nightmare that ripped the family apart. The father was taken into custody and is now sitting in a detention center in Tacoma awaiting deportation.

Our volunteer’s family has deep roots in this country. Her extended family lives in New Mexico and as she describes it, "We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”  A Latina activist, she’s advocated for immigration reform for years because she cares about her community and because “it’s the right thing to do.”

The issues became much more personal when her sister fell in love with a man who immigrated to this country without papers. Ten years later, the life they built together is unraveling as he awaits deportation and his wife and children struggle to find solid ground without him. This weekend, they’re selling their furniture and other belongings to raise money so they can move back to New Mexico where relatives will help them find a place to live and can provide emotional and financial support.

As we talked, our volunteer distilled the complexity of immigration law into one heartbreaking image. “Imagine trying to explain to a child why a police officer—who she believes is there to keep her safe—is taking her father—who she believes is superman—away.” This incident will probably shape that child's image of what it means to live in this country for the rest of her life.

I remember getting stopped by the police a couple years ago for driving with expired tags.  I had the new tags in my car, just hadn’t had time to put them on yet. It took three minutes to find them, show them and get told to put the tags on before I started driving again. Driving without tags? As a white woman, that's just forgetfulness. I have the privilege of thinking about a minor traffic stop as just that—a minor traffic stop.

Immigration law is complex. But compassion isn’t. It’s time for us to find a way to allow families to live together. We should all be able to drive to a birthday party without living in fear of what we see in our rear view mirrors.

Photo by Dawn Allynn